Providence City Councilor Michael Correia gave up his leadership position last week as president pro tempore after a recording went public in which he’d made a number of anti-transgender remarks about a Black transgender woman. On the recording, Correia mocked the gender identity of Justice Gaines, a Black transgender woman and community activist who works for the Providence Youth Student Movement and has served on the city’s community-police relations working group.
According to MetroWeekly, after the news broke Correia apologized directly to Gaines and publicly on Facebook, posting, “As someone who has spent the greater part of my adult life serving my community and city, I regret that my words may have hurt anyone in the LGBTQIA community, my friends, family colleagues and constituents in that community.”
Reports MetroWeekly, the remarks in question were made in a conversation with a staffer on one of four recordings “that local CBS affiliate WPRI unearthed in October, all of which are part of an internal investigation into Correia that came about because of ‘multiple complaints,’ according to the station.”
On the recording, Correia and the staffer misgendered Gaines as “he” throughout their conversation, and Correia disparagingly referred to Gaines’s body, at one point referring to her as “it.”
Reports MetroWeekly:
After the tape became public, Gaines, who works for the Providence Youth Student Movement and sat on the City Council’s working group to create the Providence Community-Police Relations Act in 2017, said she was “hurt and upset and sad,” adding that the comments about her breasts were “disgusting.”
“To have a city councilman mocking or making light of my pronouns or what being transgender means, when there are people in his ward who he represents who he’s supposed to be fighting for who are like me, who are trans women, who are nonbinary…that’s upsetting,” she said at the time.
“You don’t refer to people as ‘it,’” she added, noting that Correia and the council staffers continually misgender her throughout the recording — despite the Journal referring to her using female pronouns. …
City Council President Sabina Matos (D-Ward 15) and Mayor Jorge Elorza had previously called on Correia to resign his leadership position, which he had been slated to hold onto until 2023.
In his apology announcing his resignation as president pro tempore — but not his Council seat — Correia said he had met with Gaines and apologized to her directly.
“I understand these actions have broken trust between myself and the public and I am asking for the opportunity to earn back that trust,” he wrote.
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