So Amanda Simpson, America’s first transgender presidential appointee (or at least the first to openly say so), is a little peeved. She’s worried over the perception that she may have been hired for her sexual identity rather than her qualifications. “Being the first sucks,” she says, adding that she hopes to “always win people over with who I am and what I can do.”
Amanda Simpson
Me too. After all, I’m also a trailblazer – as the world’s first gnome to host a news program, I feel a lot of pressure from the woodland creature community to succeed. If I do, then who knows who might follow in my footsteps: centaurs, minotaurs, fawns, succubi, hags, ogres, tree-people, trolls, marsh-wiggles, People of the Toadstools (don’t call them “toads”), and finally, one day: Robert Reich.
But Amanda, you only have the groups that champion transgender rights – as well as your own political party – to blame for this. After all, it’s the Human Rights Campaign who said quote, “As the first transgender person appointed by the president, Amanda is not only eminently qualified for her new position…but she is also a trailblazer for equality.” And of course, it’s the Democrats – the party of identity politics – who made Obama’s racial makeup ominpresent in 2008. We needed to prove to the world that America could elect a black President, after all. And that hasn’t made Obama’s job any easier. The same thought must keep him up every night: “Was I elected because of color or competence?” Go back to sleep, Mr. P. – you know the answer.
Anyway, I’m happy for Amanda. But to be taken seriously, she and others will have to stop taking gender or ANY – identity, seriously. The role of government is not meant to be a bastion for employment trailblazing, but to protect us from harm, pure and simple. And for Simpson’s sake, the sooner they drop the “she’s the first” rhetoric, the better it will be for her.
And besides, being a transsexual in government is no big deal. Qaddafi broke that ground decades ago.
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