Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson expressed concern about big, hairy men trying to infiltrate womens homeless shelters during an internal meeting, according to three people present who interpreted the remarks as an attack on transgender women.
While visiting HUDs San Francisco office this week, Carson also lamented that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women, two of the agency staffers said.
Carsons remarks visibly shocked and upset many of the roughly 50 HUD staffers who attended Tuesdays meeting, and prompted at least one woman to walk out in protest, the staffers said.
Carson has a history of making 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.
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 Carsons 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 womens shelters -- and not singling out transgender women as big, hairy men.
Told of HUDs response, employees who were at the meeting said that was not clear from Carsons remarks.
Transgender advocates called HUDs defense of Carson a common, damaging and insulting trope that had long been debunked.
"Its 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.
Its a mythical notion that policies that are inclusive of transgender people somehow pose a threat," she said. "Its frankly despicable that such a harmful notion would be used by someone charged with facilitating programs meant to help people in need, many of whom are transgender.
New legal protections for transgender people do not increase the number of crimes in restrooms, locker rooms, or dressing rooms, and reports of privacy and safety violations are exceedingly rare, according to a study published in the March 2019 issue of Sexuality Research and Social Policy.