GenderPAC (the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition) was an LGBT rights organization based in Washington, DC working to ensure that classrooms, communities, and workplaces were safe places for every person to learn, grow, and succeed, whether or not they conform to expectations for masculinity or femininity.
[citation needed] The organization argued that violence and discrimination based on gender variance was not limited to people who identified as trans.
[3] Its areas of activism included incidents of discrimination against trans and gender-variant people, as well as youth and issues of workplace fairness.
In 1996, the group began holding National Gender Lobby Days, during which activists would meet with members of Congress to discuss discrimination and violence.
One part of these events was a Congressional Diversity Pledge, which asked Members of Congress to affirm that their own office would not discriminate against employees because of their "gender identity or expression."
In 1997, GenderPAC produced The First National Study on Transviolence, a large research project on violence against transgender and gender-variant people.
[6] GenderPAC exemplified what certain feminists opposed about queer rights movements and certain elements of gender studies: Sheila Jeffreys wrote that its aims ignored women in favor of "transgenders [sic], most of whom are men, and homosexuality," and that the organization's conception of gender as something that should be protected, and the basis for individuals rights that needed to be respected rather than eliminated, would serve to reinforce discrimination.
This view brought the organization to crisis when it took on the case of a self-identified "butch lesbian" who sought help after being repeatedly harassed at work and ultimately fired for allegedly looking "too masculine."