*Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is straight trippin’ … again. In public. We know this because he reportedly made comments about “big, hairy men” trying to infiltrate women’s homeless shelters during an internal meeting. Carson’s comments were interpreted by present at the meeting as an attack on transgender women.
Carson also volunteered his thoughts that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women, two of the agency staffers said.
Carson’s comments reportedly stunned and upset many of the 50 HUD workers during the meeting, causing one woman to walk out in protest.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the HUD secretary Chas made dismissive comments about transgender people. While running for president, he referred to transgender people as “abnormal” and said they should not be in the military. As HUD Secretary, he weakened Obama-era protections for transgender people, saying he believes in equal rights, not “special rights.”
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Here’s more via the Washington Post:
In May, the agency introduced a proposal that would allow federally funded shelters to deny people admission on religious grounds or force transgender women to share bathrooms and sleeping quarters with men.
Carson has addressed the proposed change using different terms in public, most notably during Congressional hearings, when he has said his responsibility is to “make sure everybody is treated fairly. ”
But he has repeatedly mocked transgender people in internal meetings in Washington, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations in which the person was involved.
“His overall tone is dismissive and joking about these people,” the official said. “It’s disrespectful of the people we are trying to serve.”
Asked to respond to the detailed accounts of Carson’s language in San Francisco and Washington, a HUD senior official released a statement that said: “The Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered individuals. Any reporting to the contrary is false.”
The official, who did not want to be named because he was not present during the meetings, said Carson was referring to men who pretend to be women to gain access to battered women’s shelters — and not singling out transgender women as “big, hairy men.”
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The Wapo report also said that when told of HUD’s response, employees who were at the meeting said that was not clear from Carson’s remarks.
Meanwhile, transgender advocates called HUD’s defense of Carson a common, damaging and insulting trope that had long been debunked.
“It’s gravely insulting to have the specter of violence from cis gender men used to restrict the rights of transgender people who are ordinarily the victims of that violence,” said Gillian Branstetter, spokeswoman for the National Center for Transgender Equality.
You can read/learn MORE about this Washington Post story at MSN News.
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