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Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal gives emotional House speech on her gender-nonconforming child
Source: The Guardian
Congresswoman gives emotional House speech on her gender-nonconforming child
Pramila Jayapal celebrated her child’s ‘newfound freedom’ and urged legislators to enact protections for LGBTQ people
Sam Levin in San Francisco
Tue 2 Apr 2019 20.59 BST
The US congresswoman Pramila Jayapal gave an emotional speech about her gender-nonconforming child while advocating for LGBTQ civil rights legislation, saying her child had discovered “newfound freedom”.
Jayapal, a representative from Washington state, choked up on Tuesday as she talked about the impact of her child embracing their gender identity: “I didn’t intend to say this today, but my beautiful now 22-year-old child told me last year that they were gender non-conforming, and over the last year, I have come to understand from a deeply personal mother’s perspective … their newfound freedom … to rid themselves of some conformist stereotype of who they are, to be able to express who they are at their real core.”
The Democratic legislator, speaking at a House committee hearing, said her child had always done well in school but had carried a “heavy burden of conflict in their own being, that I could not fully identify or help to express”. But the “deeply impactful moment” of her child embracing their gender has allowed for “their creativity, their brilliance, their self expression”, Jayapal continued: “My child is free to be who they are, and in that freedom comes a responsibility for us as legislators to protect that freedom.”
The moving speech in support of the Equality Act, which would provide non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people across the country, was a rare moment of an elected representative speaking out about gender-nonconforming and non-binary identity, meaning people who are neither male nor female.
-snip-
Pramila Jayapal celebrated her child’s ‘newfound freedom’ and urged legislators to enact protections for LGBTQ people
Sam Levin in San Francisco
Tue 2 Apr 2019 20.59 BST
The US congresswoman Pramila Jayapal gave an emotional speech about her gender-nonconforming child while advocating for LGBTQ civil rights legislation, saying her child had discovered “newfound freedom”.
Jayapal, a representative from Washington state, choked up on Tuesday as she talked about the impact of her child embracing their gender identity: “I didn’t intend to say this today, but my beautiful now 22-year-old child told me last year that they were gender non-conforming, and over the last year, I have come to understand from a deeply personal mother’s perspective … their newfound freedom … to rid themselves of some conformist stereotype of who they are, to be able to express who they are at their real core.”
The Democratic legislator, speaking at a House committee hearing, said her child had always done well in school but had carried a “heavy burden of conflict in their own being, that I could not fully identify or help to express”. But the “deeply impactful moment” of her child embracing their gender has allowed for “their creativity, their brilliance, their self expression”, Jayapal continued: “My child is free to be who they are, and in that freedom comes a responsibility for us as legislators to protect that freedom.”
The moving speech in support of the Equality Act, which would provide non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people across the country, was a rare moment of an elected representative speaking out about gender-nonconforming and non-binary identity, meaning people who are neither male nor female.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/02/pramila-jayapal-speech-equality-act-gender-nonconforming-child
Link to tweet
