By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Susan Ashley Stanton, whose transition from male to female attracted national attention but got her fired last February from her 17-year job as city manager in Largo, Fla., spoke to a small audience at Unity Temple in Oak Park Dec. 2 about her experiences.

“Like many of you, I always felt there was something different about me, from an early age,” Stanton said. “I kind of denied what I was feeling for most of my life.”

Stanton described how for years she worked as a highly respected city leader in Largo, but would “pack for two”—transitioning into her identity as Susan—whenever she traveled out of town.

She decided finally that she wanted to live fulltime as a woman but was unprepared last February when a local newspaper reporter went to her office and told her that the newspaper had learned of her plans and intended to publish a story about her the next day.

“Somehow my eight-page transition report had been given to them,” Stanton said. “I’d shared it with just five people. …You can’t tell somebody you’re a transsexual and say, ‘If you could, just keep it to yourself.’ It just doesn’t work.”

At a hastily called news conference, Stanton said, she wasn’t as prepared as she probably should have been for some of the questions.

“I created some of my own problems in the interest of being open and authentic,” she said.

Initially, Stanton recalled, she got positive responses from the people she worked with and from the Largo County commissioners she worked for. But within days, she said, the commissioners were discussing how to terminate her contract.

“My community was a good community,” Stanton said. “This was not a community where bigotry and prejudice ran rampant. The people who fired me were for the most part friends…and still are, I hope.”

Instead, Stanton said, she thinks the commissioners and people of Largo were unprepared—unsure of whether they could trust the city manager they thought they had known for 17 years and uneducated about how and why people transition from one gender to another.

Stanton said she believes the lessons of what happened to her apply to the political effort to win civil rights protections based on gender identity.

“I’ve had conversations with senators and congressmen and I’m probably the poster child for why we need ENDA (the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act),” Stanton said. “My congressman said to me, ‘I don’t know anybody who’s transgender.’ …And if you don’t know, you make decisions predicated on fear.”

Stanton’s appearance was sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign and she addressed the GLBT community controversy over HRC’s recent decision to support a version of ENDA that doesn’t include gender identity protections. HRC was the only GLBT group in the country to support passage of that version of ENDA.

“Until we as a trans community do a better job of education, to expect organizations such as HRC or the Congress or the city council of whatever city to give equal protection to our community—it’s just not going to happen,” Stanton said. “The biggest thing we need to do as a community, instead of aiming the poison dart at HRC, is to get rid of the sense of victimization in this community.”

An announced protest of HRC by Illinois’ leading transgender advocacy organization, Illinois Gender Advocates, failed to materialize at the Stanton appearance, though a handful of activists sported buttons critical of HRC’s stance on ENDA.

In a statement distributed prior to the meeting, IGA officials reiterated that more than 360 GLBT groups nationwide have spoken out against passage of a version of ENDA that doesn’t include both gender identity and sexual orientation protections for employees.

“We sincerely hope that HRC will change its policies and reach the same conclusion,” the IGA statement said. “Unfortunately, we note several troubling recent developments that suggest HRC is actually unwilling to work together with anyone from the LGBT community on these concerns—namely the recent resignation of transgendered HRC board and council members and reversal of prior HRC board action supporting only a gender identity-inclusive ENDA.”