AlterNet.org – By Deb Price, Creators Syndicate
Job discrimination against transgender Americans usually goes unnoticed. But Congress will soon have the opportunity to outlaw most of it by passing the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.
Blue clogs. Colorful, girly, thrilling.
For 7-year-old Steve Stanton, secretly slipping his feet into his older sister’s clogs and clack-clack-clacking along the pavement to the candy store was pure magic.
“It just felt absolutely right. It felt so comfortable to do that,” Steve, now 48, recalls. “I was constantly looking forward to the opportunity. When I got to the candy store, I took the shoes off. And I never talked about it.”
Steve knew he felt different inside from other boys. And one day, after asking his mom what she would have called him if he’d been born a girl, he found a name for that difference. “Susan.”
“When she said ‘Susan,’ it kind of exploded with this tremendous energy in my mind. I can remember just shaking … ‘I am Susan. That’s it.’ It put a name to what I felt,” Steve says.