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I'm perfectly fine with that. Fuck off, Vox.

A proposed Housing and Urban Development rule would allow
federally funded homeless shelters to judge a person’s physical characteristics, such as height and facial hair, in determining
whether they belong in a women’s or men’s shelter, according to
a copy of the rule’s text obtained by Vox. Advocates say this
ultimately targets both trans women and cisgender women with
masculine features, which could force them into men’s shelters
and put them at risk for harm.

The proposed rule, first announced by HUD in a press release
issued on July 1, would essentially reverse the Obama-era rule
that required homeless shelters to house trans people according
to their gender identity. While the new rule would bar shelters
from excluding people based on their transgender status, it
would also allow shelters to ignore a person’s gender identity —
and instead house them according to their assigned sex at birth
or their legal sex. In other words, a trans woman can’t be
turned away from a shelter for being trans, but she can be
forced to go to a men’s shelter.

Dylan Waguespack, a spokesperson for True Colors United, an
advocacy group that focuses on supporting LGBTQ homeless youth,
told Vox in early June that HUD Secretary Ben Carson is “talking
out of both sides of his mouth.”

“They are trying to put forward this narrative in which
transgender people are protected from discrimination, but in
fact, when you read the proposal itself, it does the exact
opposite,” he told Vox. “It creates unsafe conditions and unsafe
barriers to housing and services for trans people in the midst
of a global pandemic.”

The copy of the rule obtained by Vox has already passed
congressional review, according to several sources familiar with
the process, which is one of many steps needed before the text
is released publicly. When asked about the text and status of
the rule, HUD pointed Vox to their July 1 press release.

The rule’s language, according to the leaked text, states that
single-sex shelter staff “may determine an individual’s sex
based on a good faith belief that an individual seeking access
to the temporary, emergency shelters is not of the sex, as
defined in the single-sex facility’s policy, which the facility
accommodates.”

In order to do this, HUD will allow shelter staff to take into
account “factors such as height, the presence (but not the
absence) of facial hair, the presence of an Adam’s apple, and
other physical characteristics which, when considered together,
are indicative of a person’s biological sex.”

In essence, the proposed rule encourages women’s-only shelter
staff to use a visual appraisal of a woman’s appearance to judge
whether that person is woman enough to use the facility.

If a shelter operator judges a homeless woman’s appearance to
not fit what they believe is her assigned sex at birth, they
would then be allowed to ask for proof of that person’s sex
before housing her in the women’s facility.

“Evidence requested must not be unduly intrusive of privacy,
such as private physical anatomical evidence. Evidence requested
could include government identification, but lack of government
identification alone cannot be the sole basis for denying
admittance on the basis of sex,” reads the rule’s text, as it
currently stands.

There are two main problems with forcing trans homeless people
into spaces that correspond with their birth-assigned gender
rather than their gender identity. The first is that such a
policy exposes trans people, especially trans women, to
potential violence and sexual assault inside those spaces. And
as a result, trans people are more likely to choose sleeping in
the streets rather than risk going to a shelter.

Because of a cycle of discrimination and poverty, trans people
are more likely than their cisgender peers to experience
homelessness. According to the National Center for Transgender
Equality, 29 percent of trans people live in poverty, and one in
five trans people in the US will be homeless at some point in
their lifetimes. The numbers are even starker for Black trans
people: A 2015 report indicated that 34 percent of Black trans
people live in extreme poverty, compared to 9 percent of Black
cis people.

And while the rule is likely to fall hardest on trans women, it
also opens the door to targeting butch women with more masculine
presentations, as has already happened with gendered bathroom
policing.

Waguespack told Vox Friday that Carson is showing a “willful
disregard for the survival of transgender people” and risks
putting trans people in harm’s way. “He’s on the wrong side of
history and the wrong side of the law,” he said. “It’s critical
that trans people across the US hear the message loud and clear
that they are legally entitled to gender-appropriate
homelessness services under the law.”

Democratic lawmakers have pushed back on the proposed rule
The proposed HUD rule is the latest in a long line of anti-trans
policies rolled out by the Trump administration. Almost
immediately after he took office in 2017, the administration
rolled back an Obama-era memo for schools to fairly treat trans
students. Then in July of that year, Trump announced he would be
ordering the military to ban trans people from serving. The
administration went after trans prisoners as well in May 2018,
deciding that in most cases, trans people should be housed
according to their assigned sex at birth.

Perhaps most critical was the administration’s attack on LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act,
finalized in a new rule on June 12.

Even though it has yet to be released, the HUD rule has already
received congressional pushback. In a letter to HUD Secretary
Ben Carson dated June 29, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged the agency to reconsider the release
of the HUD rule because of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock
v. Clayton County on June 15, which held that discrimination
against trans people is considered sex discrimination.

“The release of a potentially applicable Supreme Court decision
during the period of our regulatory review is unique and raises
concerns about the applicability and implementation of the
proposed rule,” reads Wexton and Waters’s letter.

Carson responded to the lawmakers with a letter of his own on
July 13, which was obtained by Vox, rejecting the premise that
Bostock would apply to the proposed rule. “[A]n individual’s sex
is relevant in the specific category of cases covered by the
Department’s proposed rule, which is concerned with single-sex
temporary or emergency shelters,” read the letter. “These
facilities, by virtue of their temporary nature, are not deemed
‘housing’, do not fall within the purview of the Fair Housing
Act. Therefore they may lawfully elect to serve only one sex. We
note that the Bostock decision assumed that ‘sex’ referred ‘only
to biological distinctions between male and female.’”

Carson goes on to claim that the existing rule, which requires
shelters to house trans people according to their gender
identity, “permits any man, simply by asserting that his gender
is female, to obtain access to women’s shelters.”

Associating vulnerable trans women with predatory men is a
classic anti-trans dog whistle. In truth, there’s no evidence of
wide-scale instances of men posing as trans women just to enter
women’s spaces. Instead, advocates say the opposite is true —
that putting trans women in men’s shelters is a recipe for
harassment and potential assault.

Even the rule’s text admits that there’s little proof that trans
women are a threat to cis women in women’s shelters. “While HUD
is not aware of data suggesting that transgender individuals
pose an inherent risk to biological women, there is anecdotal
evidence that some women may fear that non-transgender,
biological men may exploit the process of self-identification
under the current rule in order to gain access to women’s
shelters,” reads the proposed rule.

Carson and Wexton have had a lengthy — and public — back and
forth on trans issues, stemming back to a May 2019 hearing of
the House Committee on Financial Services in which the lawmaker
asked Carson whether the agency had any plans to change the
Equal Access rule, which currently requires homeless shelters to
house trans people according to their gender identity. At the
hearing, Carson said there were no plans to do so, but the very
next day the agency announced its intention to change the rule.

Wexton immediately called the move out on Twitter.

In an October 2019 HFSC hearing, Wexton challenged Carson over
comments in which he called trans women “big, hairy men” at an
internal meeting with HUD staff in San Francisco a month
earlier. Carson refused to apologize, instead decrying
“political correctness.”

On Friday, Wexton again clashed with Carson over the proposed
rule in responding to his letter. “Secretary Carson’s insistence
on pressing forward with this discriminatory policy — despite
the Bostock ruling and clear consensus among experts and service
providers opposed to this rule change — betrays a disturbing
determination to target and endanger trans Americans,” she said
in a statement to Vox. “The Secretary has made one bad faith
argument after another to try and push this anti-trans rule
forward, and the weak justifications he makes in this letter are
no different.”

Once the HUD rule is published in the Federal Register, it then
goes up for public comment for 60 days. One of the issues HUD is
asking for public comment on is what physical characteristics
should a shelter operator be able to use to judge a person’s
“biological sex.”

“HUD requests comments on what are good faith considerations
that are indicative of a person’s biological sex. Should HUD
define what constitutes a good faith belief for determining
biological sex and what type of evidence would be helpful for
determining an individual’s biological sex? How, if at all,
should government IDs be considered?” reads a passage in the
public comment section of the rule’s text obtained by Vox.

Advocates say this asks the public for thoughts on how shelter
operators might legally spot a trans person. “The idea that
there could be a list of characteristics for an intake staffer
at a homeless shelter to refer to in order to decide where
someone will be forced to sleep — or even decide if they can
access shelter at all — is Orwellian at best and, at worst,
reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenics,” said Waguespack.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/7/17/21328708/proposed-anti- trans-rule-homeless-shelters-judge-women
 

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