History
Ingersoll was founded in 1977 by Marsha C. Botzer and gained non-profit status in 1984. [1] [5] [6] [7] One of the reasons Botzer has cited for founding the organization is a problem of joblessness and underemployment of transgender people. [8] Botzer is quoted in the 2021 book Going to Trinidad by journalist Martin J. Smith that in the early years of the center she would tuck Ingersoll Center business cards between the pages of books in the Seattle Public Library's small collection of books on the subject of gender as an attempt to get the word out about the center's services in the pre-Internet era. [9] The primary service provided by Ingersoll is support groups led by local transgender and gender non-conforming people for their peers who are in need of support. [10] [5] [11] [7] [12] Another service the organization provides is helping individuals access gender affirming healthcare and navigate their health insurance. [13] [3] The center has also worked with people who have been through conversion therapy in and around the Seattle region before a law was passed in 2016 that outlawed the practice within the city. [14]
In 2012, the organization launched a program for vocational support called Seattle Transgender Economic Empowerment Project (STEEP). [15] [11] Botzer joined a Seattle LGBTQ task force under Mayor Ed Murray, and in 2015 the task force proposed city-wide legislation requiring that all single-occupancy restrooms be available as all gender restrooms. [16] Later that year the proposal was made law as the All Gender Restroom Ordinance. [17] [18] [19] [20] This made Seattle one of the first U.S. cities to enact such a law. [21] [20] The law and other local ordinances in Washington state were contested on a state-wide level when a voter initiative was created to ban such laws within the state. Ingersoll Gender Center lobbied in favor of the law and the rights of local municipalities during this time. [22]
After Donald Trump became President of the United States, Ingersoll Gender Center started publishing annual voter's guides with the first being for 2017. [23]
At the start of 2017, University of Washington School of Medicine launched a program to focus on training doctors in LGBTQ+ healthcare with collaboration and consulting from the gender center. [24]
The group lobbied for Washington state to allow the gender marker "X" option on driver's licenses and identification cards, which became state policy in November 2019. [25] The organization has also worked with local real estate developers on an affordable housing project in the historically LGBTQ Capitol Hill neighborhood for seniors. [26] Also in 2019, Botzer was appointed to a King County Council task force as a representative of Ingersoll Gender Center. [27] The purpose of the task force was to "spread awareness and understanding of gender nonconforming individuals and their experience with county departments and facilities". [27]
In 2020, the organization launched COVID-19 response programs to assist the communities it serves with issues brought on or exacerbated by the pandemic. [28] Part of the city of Seattle's early relief efforts was to distribute grocery store vouchers to residents who had lost work due to the pandemic. The city gave some vouchers to organizations, including Ingersoll Gender Center, to distribute within their communities to impacted families and individuals. [29]
In 2021 the Seattle Police Department was banned from participating in Capitol Hill Seattle Pride's march, and some gay cops said that they felt excluded from the Pride event. Botzer suggested a potential strategy to create solidarity between police and the LGBT community would be for the police department to hire more transgender cops, which she argued would reduce the accounts of police violence against transgender people. [30]
Controversies
Human Rights Campaign Transgender Framework
In 2019 the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) made an announcement of a new "trans-centered" framework, making transgender issues a priority for the organization for the first time. [31] Dozens of transgender activists and organizations wrote an open letter of criticism and concern over this announcement. [32] The letter said that the HRC was a cisgender-led organization that was co-opting ideas and efforts made by transgender (and especially trans people of color) activists. [33] [32] [34] Two leaders of Ingersoll Gender Center signed this letter. [33]
Response to the murder of George Floyd
Ingersoll Gender Center signed on with over 100 other American LGBT organizations to condemn racism in policing and police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. [35]
Internal issues of racism
On March 12, 2021 about a dozen present and former staff of Ingersoll came together as Ingersoll Collective Action and released a petition on actionnetwork.org alleging racist and abusive working conditions within the organization. [4] The collective self-identified as Black, persons of color, transgender, and disabled current and former employees. [4] The petition included a list of allegations and demanded the resignations of Executive Director Karter Booher, Program Director Jonathan Lee Williams, and Operations Director Louis Mitchell. Other demands included a public apology, an investigation to be performed, and that racial equity consultants be brought into the organization. [4] Evelyn Chow, a member of Ingersoll Collective Action who was also the company's economic justice manager at the time told the South Seattle Emerald that the local community of transgender people of color had known of a history of problems within Ingersoll for years before the petition was created. [4] An impetus for making the concerns public in March 2021 was that a Black Ingersoll employee felt their work in the support of Washington Senate Bill 5313 was being downplayed and misattributed. [4]
Several other nonprofit organizations working in a similar space to Ingersoll made public statements in support of the petition. Among these were Queer the Land, Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network, Pride Foundation, Alphabet Alliance of Color, Seattle Pride, and Gender Justice League. [4] [36]
The board of Ingersoll Gender Center responded in a public statement and pledged to conduct an investigation on March 17, 2021. [4] Ingersoll Collective Action published a response to their request for transparency with the investigation to their website, which said that the center had hired Onik’a Gilliam-Cathcart from the Seattle law firm Helsell Fetterman. [4] However on March 23, Ingersoll Collective Action made another public post stating their disappointment with the response from the organization to date. [4] On March 26 the center announced to their staff that all staff and contractors would be receiving two weeks of paid time off starting April 3, 2021 and that Gilliam-Cathcart would be reaching out to current staff during that period as a part of the investigation. [4] On April 16, Ingersoll announced that Karter Booher and Louis Mitchell were resigning for personal reasons and their departure would be effective June 1, 2021. [4]
The LGBT community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBT activists and sociologists see LGBT community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society. The term pride or sometimes gay pride expresses the LGBT community's identity and collective strength; pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. The LGBT community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBT community.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGBTQ individuals, including advocating for same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation, and HIV/AIDS advocacy. The organization has a number of legislative initiatives as well as supporting resources for LGBTQ individuals.
The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) is an organization affiliated with the Republican Party which advocates for equal rights for LGBT+ Americans, by educating the LGBT+ community and Republicans about each other.
The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) is a nonprofit social equality organization founded in 2003 by transgender activist Mara Keisling in Washington, D.C. The organization works primarily in the areas of policy advocacy and media activism with the aim of advancing the equality of transgender people in the United States. Among other transgender-related issue areas, NCTE focuses on discrimination in employment, access to public accommodations, fair housing, identity documents, hate crimes and violence, criminal justice reform, federal research surveys and the Census, and health care access.
Violence against transgender people includes emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal violence targeted towards transgender people. The term has also been applied to hate speech directed at transgender people and at depictions of transgender people in the media that reinforce negative stereotypes about them. Trans and non-binary gender adolescents can experience bashing in the form of bullying and harassment. When compared to their cisgender peers, trans and non-binary gender youth are at increased risk for victimisation, which has been shown to increase their risk of substance abuse.
Mara Keisling is an American transgender rights activist and founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. She is a trans woman who began transitioning in her early 40s. In 2003, Keisling founded the National Center for Transgender Equality to advocate for the rights of transgender people in the United States.
The state of Washington is seen as one of the most progressive states in the U.S. in regard to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights; with jurisprudence having evolved significantly since the late 20th century. Same-sex sexual activity was legalized in 1976. LGBT people are fully protected from discrimination in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations; the state enacting comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation regarding sexual orientation and gender identity in 2006. Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2012, and same-sex couples are allowed to adopt. Conversion therapy on minors has also been illegal since 2018.
The National LGBTQ Task Force is an American social justice advocacy non-profit organizing the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. Also known as The Task Force, the organization supports action and activism on behalf of LGBTQ people and advances a progressive vision of liberation. The past executive director was Rea Carey from 2008-2021 and the current executive director is Kierra Johnson, who took over the position in 2021 to become the first Black woman to head the organization.
The Equality Act was a bill in the United States Congress, that, if passed, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, federally funded programs, credit, and jury service. The Supreme Court's June 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County protects gay and transgender people in matters of employment, but not in other respects. The Bostock ruling also covered the Altitude Express and Harris Funeral Homes cases.
Seattle has a notably large LGBT community, and the city of Seattle has protected gay and lesbian workers since the passage of the Fair Employment Practice Ordinance in 1973. Seattle's LGBT culture has been celebrated at Seattle Pride which began in 1977 as Gay Pride Week. Gay cabaret traveled in a circuit including Seattle and San Francisco since the 1930s. Seattle had gay-friendly clubs and bars since the 1930s including The Casino in Underground Seattle at Pioneer Square which allowed same-sex dancing since 1930, and upstairs from it, The Double Header, in continuous operation since 1933 or 1934 until 2015, was thought to be the oldest gay bar in the United States.
Gender Justice League (GJL) is an advocacy group for transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming individuals in Washington State in the United States. The group advocates for transgender legal, political, and medical rights as well as participating in protests, awareness raising, and fundraising events.
LGBT culture in St. Louis is characterized by a long history of progressive activism as well as racial divisions and the city/county divide. St. Louis city is relatively liberal with multiple gayborhoods and several LGBT organizations. In 2019, Realtor.com dubbed St. Louis the 8th most LGBT-friendly city. Due to hostile legislation at the state level, however, it has become common for LGBT residents to relocate to Illinois for better protections and healthcare access.
The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is a memorial wall in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, dedicated to LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes". Located inside the Stonewall Inn, the wall is part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to the country's LGBTQ rights and history. The first fifty nominees were announced in June 2019, and the wall was unveiled on June 27, 2019, as a part of Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 events. Five honorees will be added annually.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inequities experienced by marginalized populations, and has had a significant impact on the LGBT community. Gay pride events were cancelled or postponed worldwide. More than 220 gay pride celebrations around the world were canceled or postponed in 2020, and in response a Global Pride event was hosted online. LGBTQ+ people also tend to be more likely to have pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma, HIV/AIDS, cancer, or obesity, that would worsen their chances of survival if they became infected with COVID-19. They are also more likely to smoke.
Marsha C. Botzer is a Seattle based activist and non-profit administrator who has been working in the Transgender rights movement since the mid-1970s. Botzer is a trans woman herself. She founded Ingersoll Gender Center in Seattle in 1977, making it the oldest non-profit organization working in the space of transgender rights. Botzer was also an early member of Hands Off Washington and a founding member of Equality Washington, as well as Out in Front Leadership Project.
George Bakan was an American organizer for LGBT movements and the editor-in-chief of Seattle Gay News. He died in 2020 at age 78.
Transphobia in the United States has changed over time. Understanding and acceptance of transgender people have both decreased and increased during the last few decades depending on the details of the issues which have been facing the public. Various governmental bodies in the United States have enacted anti-transgender legislation. Social issues in the United States also reveal a level of transphobia. Because of transphobia, transgender people in the U.S. face increased levels of violence and intimidation. Cisgender people can also be affected by transphobia.
"Protect trans kids" is a slogan used in support of the transgender rights movement with a focus on transgender youth. The phrase is often used in protests by transgender rights activists, being placed on signs and shirts. Professional athletes and entertainers have also been documented using or wearing the phrase in support of pro-trans rights sentiments.
