Founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality Mara Keisling stood behind a podium Thursday night, her frame draped in a rainbow flag, and proclaimed victory.
“All of the stuff you think the LGBT movement wants, we will win very soon,” Keisling said. “Everybody must know that the war is won.”
The ASU Downtown Queer and Allies Club invited Keisling to the Walter Cronkite School to speak about transgender discrimination, racism and her experiences with the National Center for Transgender Equality.
In speaking about the LGBT movement, Keisling was quick to point out differences between it and other historical movements.
“We started off further ahead,” Keisling said. “We had the right to vote. We had the right not to be property. We had the right to our lives. We started in a more privileged place.”
Keisling and her team at the NCTE are also looking to end discriminatory placement of transgender people in solitary confinement. Transgender inmates are often put into solitary confinement rather than being assigned a men’s or women’s prison, Keisling said.
Keisling said that in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention centers, transgender people are sometimes kept in solitary confinement for up to 130 days.
“If you can’t keep people safe without torturing them, let them go,” Keisling said. “Give them ankle bracelets or something.”
Before Keisling opened the floor to questions, she told the audience that she wanted to do a segment called “Hey white people, let’s talk more about race.”
“White people have been trained not to talk about race and racism,” she said. “It’s kind of become a mission of mine to get people to talk more.”
After opening up the floor to discussion, Downtown Queer and Allies Club President Lauren Mislove spoke up about her views on the subject.
“I think one of the issues with racism that I’ve run into is that we are really good at focusing on the ways that we are underprivileged, what we don’t discuss are the over-privileges,” Mislove said. “It’s very easy to say this group is marginalized because of X, Y and Z, but we never really look around and say this group is advantaged because of X, Y and Z. We’re not acknowledging our whiteness.”
Phoenix resident and dental student Mario Hernandez spoke about the club that he co-founded, called the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project. He said that it is difficult to be undocumented, but what is even more challenging is to be undocumented and queer. And it’s an experience that is not widely known.
“It’s not spoken about,” he said.
Keisling is an advocate for immigrant rights.
“I think the coolest political thing that’s happened in the last ten years has been the youth immigration movement,” she said. “It’s this amazing thing.”
As Keisling wrapped up, she left the group with words of advice to find a passion and stick with it.
“I just hope you all find a vision, you find something that really means so much to you,” she said. “Dare to be powerful.”
Contact the reporter at emma.totten@asu.edu
