Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Transgender Bathroom Reforms Cheered By Activist Jen Richards

By Ted Cox | June 20, 2016 6:23am
 Jen Richards has left Chicago to pursue a career as a
Jen Richards has left Chicago to pursue a career as a "storyteller" for "traditionally marginaiized folk" in Southern California.
View Full Caption
Her Story

CITY HALL — A leading transgender activist and screenwriter said Chicago is staying on the forefront of civil rights with its expected move this week to grant open access to bathrooms.

"I honestly thought the tide had turned on this, but I was wrong," Jen Richards said on the phone last week from her transplanted home in Southern California. "I know that it's turning, but whether it's turning with any finality, I can't say."

In fact, the tide did turn, recently, and Chicago briefly found itself going out with it. North Carolina was widely criticized after it passed a law demanding that anyone be required to show government identification to gain access to a men's or women's restroom.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an executive order in March in response banning city travel to North Carolina. But the city's latest changes to the Human Rights Ordinance, passed in 2003, also mandated ID checks — which at the time were believed to grant the transgender community more freedom, not less.

Emanuel acknowledged a month ago that the 2003 legislation was "ahead of its time," but "had discrimination in it," leading him and the Council's LGBT Caucus to propose an amended ordinance removing that ID requirement.

A new city ordinance, granting open bathroom access and sponsored by Emanuel and the LGBT Caucus, heads to the full City Council for final passage Wednesday after clearing committee earlier this month.

William Greaves, former city liaison to the LGBT community, testified that the ID requirement was agreed to at the time as a trade-off to earn other non-discrimination rights for transgender people. He said it was easier then to get an ID with the desired sex on it.

Richards confirmed that. "I have to say that Chicago, overall, was one of the better cities to be in for trans people," she acknowledged. "Chicago had a name- and gender-change clinic," Richards added, run through the Transformative Justice Law Project. "They'd walk you through every step," she said.

Yet the process typically took six weeks, she added, and also required "a fairly hefty fee."

Thus, the simple common-sense approach, advocated in the new Council measure, to simply let people use the bathroom they choose.

"It does make sense now," Richards said in endorsing the Chicago reforms. "We need to make it easier."

After 30 years in Chicago, Richards left the city last year to head for the show-biz capital of Southern California and work on her web series "Her Story," which had a successful first-series run online and is now eligible for Emmy Award consideration.

While she appears in "Her Story" as an actress as well, Richards said she considers herself "a storyteller" specializing in the tales of "traditionally marginalized folk."

She felt compelled to go west to the show-biz capital, because that's where stories are being made and filmed, but she sees the tide turning there as well — in a good way.

"It's slow-moving. It's sort of fundamentally conservative. But it is very aware of criticism," Richards said of Hollywood. Television, she said, is leading the way in that regard, showing that "those changes are possible, and you can still make money while having many diverse voices."

At the same time, she added, she sees "an increasing acceptance that you have to have trans people play trans characters," unlike, say, Jared Leto's Oscar-bait star turn in "Dallas Buyers Club."

Richards said she also recently had a script accepted by a noted development lab, and if it moves forward to production she'd like to return to Chicago to shoot it.

"I do miss the city," Richards said. "I think I've been back four, five times for events on panels or whatnot." Yet, thus far, that hasn't allowed her sufficient time to return to old favorite haunts in Andersonville and elsewhere in the city.

"I don't miss the weather, though," she added. "I have to say, you get spoiled very quickly" in Southern California — "75 and sunny every day."

For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: