Today's Messages (OFF)
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| Forum: Transgender News |
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| Topic: Ruling Protecting Transgender Workers Goes Into Effect Today! |
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| Ruling Protecting Transgender Workers Goes Into Effect Today! [message #163834] |
Mon, 21 May 2012 16:53 |
 Amazon D 
Messages: 1667
Registered: October 2007
Location: Phila Pa .==>. Central... |
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Trans archival D |
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Ruling Protecting Transgender Workers Goes Into Effect Today!
http://transgenderlawcenter.org/cms/blogs/552-24
May 21, 2012: Masen Davis, Executive Director, celebrated today saying, "This is a historic day for human rights in the United States. From the Deep South to my home state of Missouri, starting today transgender and gender non-conforming people now have legal recourse if they face discrimination on the job. We no longer have to be silent when we are fired or not hired simply for being who we are. If you think you are being targeted with harassment or discrimination at work, I urge you to contact your local EEOC office and file a complaint."
(San Francisco, CA) - In a landmark ruling, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has announced that Title VII, the federal sex discrimination law, protects employees who are discriminated against because they are transgender. In its unprecedented decision, the EEOC concluded that "intentional discrimination against a transgender individual because that person is transgender is, by definition, discrimination 'based on ... sex' and such discrimination ... violates Title VII." The EEOC is the federal agency that interprets and enforces federal employment discrimination law, and today's decision marks the first time it has offered clear guidance on this issue.
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| | Topic: Against Me!'s Tom Gabel speaks on being transgender |
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| Against Me!'s Tom Gabel speaks on being transgender [message #163080] |
Wed, 09 May 2012 23:27 |
Katie
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| Quote: | Against Me!'s Tom Gabel speaks on being transgender
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Against Me! singer Tom Gabel speaks out on being transgender, and shares her plans to transition from a man to a woman.
The punk rocker has been privately struggling with gender dysphoria, and will soon start taking hormones and receiving electrolysis treatments, Rolling Stone reports.
Gabel is the highest profile musician to ever come out as transgender, although not the first overall, as MTV notes, and she tells Rolling Stone that's precisely the reason she's publicly sharing her story.
Prior to talking to Rolling Stone, Gabel had only revealed her plans to transition to "a handful" of family members and friends.
"I'm going to have embarrassing moments," Gabel tells Rolling Stone in an issue that arrives on newsstands Friday. "And that won't be fun. But that's part of what talking to you is about - is hoping people will understand, and hoping they'll be fairly kind."
The scariest part of the process, Gabel says, was anticipating how her wife Heather would react. "But she's been super-amazing and understanding," the musician, who plans to eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace, tells the mag.
The couple, who have a young daughter, intend to stay married.
A rep for the band tells CNN that Gabel isn't issuing a statement at this time.
Post by: CNN's Denise Quan contributed to this report
Filed under: Celebrities • Music
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http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/09/against-mes-tom-gabe l-speaks-on-being-transgender/?hpt=hp_c3
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| | Topic: Earliest Painting Of Transvestite Uncovered In London Gallery |
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| Earliest Painting Of Transvestite Uncovered In London Gallery [message #161825] |
Tue, 24 April 2012 08:06 |
Amazon D
Messages: 1667
Registered: October 2007
Location: Phila Pa .==>. Central... |
Senior Member
Trans archival D |
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/earliest-painting-o f-transvestite_n_1440785.html
An 18th-century portrait sold in New York to a British gallery as a "woman in a feathered hat" turns out to actually portray a man dressed as a woman, becoming the earliest known painting of a transvestite.
The transvestite painting, now called the "Chevalier D'Eon," is currently hanging in the Philip Mould Ltd. gallery in London and will possibly become a permanent feature in the British National Portraits Gallery, said art dealer and art historian Philip Mould, director of Philip Mould Ltd.
"We spent 30 years honing our skills at looking at British portraits, and you begin to spot anomalies," Mould told LiveScience. "Portraiture, despite the diversity of odd-looking people in the world, particularly in the 19th century, before advances in cosmetic science and dentistry and medical advances had taken place, but portraiture is always extremely straight-laced."
The finished portrait was typically a compromise between the artist (who was painting what he or she saw) and the sitter (who wanted to look their best); that means anomalies of facial features can be subtle.
Something about the "muscularity of his face" and a "suggestion of stubble" caught Mould's eye as odd. So Mould and a team of his "lost faces bureau" went to work to figure out the sitter in this painting, and along the way ended up finding the actual artist of the work.
Once the painting had been cleaned and restored, "his masculine traits became far more manifest," Mould said, including the masculine-angled face shape and the facial hair stubble. The other thing they noticed was the signature of the artist, which had been listed as Gilbert Stuart, actually was "T. Stewart." [5 Myths About the Male Body]
Putting the pieces together, including the fact that Charles D'Eon spent a fair amount of time on the stage fencing, the team nailed down the painter as Thomas Stewart, who also spent a lot of time in the theatre, Mould said.
Since the painting's unveiling this week, "we've had an interesting succession of individuals coming to pay homage," Mould said. "It's a combination of mirth and respect for a man who was bold enough, brave enough, but also extrovert enough to state his case."
In fact, D'Eon apparently lived the second half of his life as a transvestite during a time when cross-dressing was essentially unheard of.
Here's how D'Eon's transvestitism came to pass: He joined King Louis XV's secret service in 1755, had his first major military posting in London in 1763, before being appointed Plenipotentiary Minister to London. However, within months, he had a falling-out with the ambassador appointed to replace him in London, accusing the ambassador of trying to murder him. D'Eon also made public secret documents and ended up being sent to prison, which he escaped. [A Gallery of Death in Art]
Once escaped, D'Eon concealed his identity, reportedly, by dressing as a woman. Gossip about his gender began in 1770, with rumors that people were even betting on whether he was a man or a woman.
"D'Eon refused all offers to confirm or deny the rumor," Simon Burrows, professor of modern history at the University of Leeds, said in a statement in 2010. "He also demanded the French government pay off his debts and they agreed, terrified he would betray state secrets, including plans to invade England."
And after that, apparently D'Eon was forced to adopt female dress, and others accepted him as a female. So much so, that the truth was only revealed upon a medical examination after his death on May 21, 1810, which revealed his very male anatomy. Reportedly, his housekeeper did not "recover from the shock for many hours," according to the gallery.
The term "eonism," which is used in psychiatry to describe male adoption of female dress and manners, was derived from D'Eon's name.
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| | Topic: 'Alternating Gender Incongruity' Causes Rapid Shifts Of Gender, Scientist Claims |
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| 'Alternating Gender Incongruity' Causes Rapid Shifts Of Gender, Scientist Claims [message #161643] |
Fri, 20 April 2012 09:15 |
Amazon D
Messages: 1667
Registered: October 2007
Location: Phila Pa .==>. Central... |
Senior Member
Trans archival D |
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/19/alternating-gender- incongruity_n_1438911.html
A graduate student of famed neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has found a group of men and women who report that their sexual identity can switch involuntarily to that of the opposite sex and back again. The transgender metamorphosis, these people assert, can occur several times a day and at inopportune moments. It is also accompanied by the sensation of phantom breasts or genitalia of the non-biological sex.
The research grows out of Ramachandran's long-standing fascination with the study of body image and how it contributes to a basic sense of the self, work that has included investigations into the phantom limbs of amputees.
The preliminary study by Laura Case, Ramachandran's student, raises the prospect of a new category of transgenderism. "Alternating gender incongruity (AGI)," the neuropsychiatric term the researchers have tentatively proposed, describes the involuntary change of gender identity, along with perceived phantom sex characteristics, a tendency toward ambidexterity and bipolar disorder, all signs that suggest a biological basis for AGI. (A related term, bigender, defined as blending or alternating gender states, precedes AGI.)
A paper published in the April issue of the journal Medical Hypotheses--"Alternating gender incongruity: A new neuropsychiatric syndrome providing insight into the dynamic plasticity of brain-sex"--found 32 respondents (11 anatomically female) on an online bigender forum that hosts about 600. Average age was 29. About a third of the respondents said that gender switching was predictable. A majority said they switched weekly and 14 said the transformation occurred once or more a day.
Some quotes from the paper:
--"I still have the same values and beliefs, but a change in gender is really a change in the filter through which I interact with the world and through which it interacts with me."
--"If I'm in male mode and I see someone crying, I'll think more along the lines of 'Man up... while if I'm in girl mode I'll think more long the lines of 'Oh sweety!'"
--"I sometimes wake up thinking I have a penis," says one female respondent, "or that I have no breasts...I usually end up in tears and I can't get out of bed because once I get up I'll know for sure it's not really true and it's just my mind playing tricks on me, so I just lie there and cry. It's strange though because I normally don't even want to have a penis."
Medical Hypotheses is a controversial journal--it once published an article on the nature of navel lint--and only adopted a peer review system in 2010. Yet, Ramachandran, Nobelist Arvid Carlsson and other science luminaries have served on its editorial board because of its stated goal of foraging for "radical new ideas and speculations." Ramachandran published previously in the journal on phantom genitalia after sex-change surgery.
The "more research needed" refrain certainly applies to the AGI work, a concession the investigators themselves make. "These results are suggestive but not conclusive," Ramachandran says. "We need to rule out the possibility that this is just a variant of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) or the subjects are simply "roleplaying." Without the "smoking gun"- physical evidence in the form of fluctuating hormone levels or brain imaging data we don't know what we are dealing with. Its something we are currently working on."
At the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in early April, Case presented preliminary research that one nominal AGI subject who was anatomically male performed differently on cognitive tests depending on his gender state: when male, he did better at a targeting task (throwing darts) and he had a superior score on a verbal fluency test after a switch to the female state. It was inconclusive whether testosterone levels fluctuated with the change in sexual identity.
Case is now preparing to move ahead with a larger study of forum members in which she will conduct neuropsychological testing by telephone and examine hormone levels with saliva samples sent through the mail. The researchers are not ready yet to do brain imaging studies on the group, which is scattered throughout the country. Ultimately, that line of research would examine patterns of activity within each brain hemisphere that differ between sexes.
If the researchers' hypothesis holds, it would furnish an increasingly nuanced definition of sexuality. The Neuroskeptic blog, which wrote about the study, wondered what would have happened to the little-known bigenders before the advent of the term. The anonymous blogger wrote: "Would they have been identified as transgender? Maybe... but maybe not. Would they have had any label at all?"
The scientists expect that AGI could eventually be classified as a neuropsychiatric condition, which would point immediately to the deeper question of "the extent to which each of us is a multiplicity of genders, or even persons, co-existing in harmony." If this research succeeds, AGI could ultimately help provide a biological rationale for the protean nature of the self.
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| | Topic: Los Angeles PD: Drop TG patdowns, separate holding areas |
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| Los Angeles PD: Drop TG patdowns, separate holding areas [message #161137] |
Fri, 13 April 2012 11:37 |
 nancy
Messages: 230
Registered: October 2007 |
Senior Member |
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http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/04/13/lapd-drops-transge nder-pat-downs-eyes-separate-detention-space/
LOS ANGELES (CBS) -- Police on Friday signaled a department-wide shift in its treatment of transgender people both on the street and behind bars, including a reported plan to provide hormone treatments to transgender detainees.
Arrested transgender men and women will be housed in a separate section of the Los Angeles Police Department's downtown Metropolitan Detention Center by the end of the month, according to a report published Friday.
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Lindsay said the separate section for as many as 24 people will be in a new women's jail module due to open at the detention center, according to the Times, which quoted him as saying "there's been a history of violence" against jailed transgender people.
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| | Topic: MSNBC: Chinese dancer becomes cultural icon after sex change operation |
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| MSNBC: Chinese dancer becomes cultural icon after sex change operation [message #160406] |
Tue, 03 April 2012 11:05 |
nancy
Messages: 230
Registered: October 2007 |
Senior Member |
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http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/03/10999602-ch inese-dancer-becomes-cultural-icon-after-sex-change-operatio n
Jin Xing is one of the brightest personalities in China today. She's a film star, talk show host and celebrated dancer, but it's her life off stage that's propelled her into the spotlight. She was the first person to have a sex change operation in China, and go public with it. Seventeen years later, she's become a cultural icon in China and the government even uses her as an unofficial ambassador of the arts.
"They want to tell the world, 'We do have an independent, free artist like Jin Xing," Jin explains.
Jin recently embarked on her first U.S. tour with her company, Jin Xing Dance Theatre. The premiere was in New York City, the place where she studied modern dance 20 years ago. Now 44, her return to New York fulfilled a promise she made and kept for two decades.
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| | Topic: Men sentenced to 18 years for slaying South African lesbian |
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| Men sentenced to 18 years for slaying South African lesbian [message #156955] |
Fri, 03 February 2012 17:33 |
Katie
Messages: 14663
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(CNN) -- Gay rights advocates in South Africa hailed a judge's sentencing of four men to 18 years each in prison for brutally slaying a 19-year-old lesbian.
Hatred fueled the 2006 stabbing and stoning of Zoliswa Nkonyana, who was targeted because of her sexual orientation, Magistrate Raadiya Whaten ruled.
Four years' credit was given to Lubabolo Ntlabathi, Sicelo Mase, Luyanda Londzi and Mbulelo Damba, meaning they will spend 14 additional years behind bars.
"The sentence sent a strong message that hate crimes would not be tolerated," national prosecuting attorney spokesman Eric Ntabazalila told the South African Press Association.
Gay rights advocates celebrated Wednesday's ruling.
"It was the first time discrimination based on sexual orientation was named as an aggravating factor in a South African criminal trial," the Triangle Project gay and lesbian rights group said in a written statement.
Gay marriage is legal in South Africa, which was the first African nation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Homosexuality is illegal in most African countries, based on rules left over from the British colonial era, when sodomy laws were introduced.
Despite South Africa's anti-discrimination provisions, attacks based on sexual orientation persist, rights groups say.
After interviews in six of South Africa's nine provinces last year, New York-based Human Rights Watch concluded that "social attitudes towards homosexual, bisexual, and transgender people in South Africa have possibly hardened over the last two decades. The abuse they face on an everyday basis may be verbal, physical, or sexual -- and may even result in murder"
This week officials from another rights group said they hope this week's sentencing will set a precedent across Africa.
"We hope that this message is heard loud and clear across the rest of the continent, where homophobic discrimination is widespread and where homosexuality is a crime," the non-profit People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty said in a statement.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/02/world/africa/south-africa-slay ing-sentence/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
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| | Topic: Suicide Rate for Trans Women Denied Implants Alarming |
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| Suicide Rate for Trans Women Denied Implants Alarming [message #155100] |
Sun, 01 January 2012 20:07 |
Cynthialee
Messages: 7016
Registered: September 2009
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http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/01/Suicide_R ate_for_Trans_Women_Denied_Implants_Alarming/
| snip | A new study from the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights (RFSL) concludes that breast implants are literally a life and death matter for transgender women who need the operation to "fit in as women in their everyday life." And the suicide rate among those who don't get them is at least 30 times higher than the average person.
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| | Topic: Beth Vandy Glenn succeeds at federal appeals court |
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| | Topic: American Airlines covers surgery for TS |
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| | Topic: Governor Brown Signs Bill Strengthening Employment, Housing, & Other Nondiscrimination Laws |
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| Governor Brown Signs Bill Strengthening Employment, Housing, & Other Nondiscrimination Laws [message #150007] |
Mon, 10 October 2011 11:03 |
Diana
Messages: 1089
Registered: October 2007
Location: Colorado |
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Governor Brown Signs Bill Strengthening
Employment, Housing, & Other Nondiscrimination Laws
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 2011
CONTACTS:
Mark Snyder, Transgender Law Center
(617) 416-0552; mark@transgenderlawcenter.org
Rebekah Orr, Equality California
(415) 498-0847; rebekah@eqca.org
Jill Marcellus, Gay-Straight Alliance Network
(516) 313-9659; jill@gsanetwork.org
Sacramento - Governor Jerry Brown signed into law yesterday Assembly Bill 887, the Gender Nondiscrimination Act, which will strengthen employment, housing and other civil rights protections for all Californians, particularly those who face discrimination based on gender identity and expression. The bill was authored by Assemblymember Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and sponsored by Equality California, Transgender Law Center and Gay-Straight Alliance Network.
"The Gender Nondiscrimination Act protects all Californians. No matter your skin color, your age, where you come from or whether you're gay, straight, or transgender, we are all protected by the same rights," said Assemblymember Atkins. "We share equal protection in employment, housing, and education. This bill ensures that no one is left out."
While California anti-discrimination laws already define "gender" to include a person's gender identity and gender expression, the Gender Nondiscrimination Act provides clarity to those who are victims of unlawful discrimination as well as for business owners, employers and other entities required to comply with the anti-discrimination protections by explicitly enumerating gender identity and expression as protected categories in a number of state codes.
"All hardworking people in California, including transgender people, should have an equal opportunity to earn a living and provide for their families," said Roland Palencia, Executive Director for Equality California. "No one should have to live in fear of being fired from a job or denied housing simply because of who they are. The Gender Non-Discrimination Act ensures that the law is clear and folks who experience discrimination know they are protected. We thank Assemblymember Atkins for authoring this important piece of legislation and Governor Brown for signing the bill into law."
In 2009, the Transgender Law Center released its "State of Transgender California" report. The report revealed overwhelmingly that Californians who experience discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression at work or elsewhere often times do not file complaints because they are unaware that they are protected by non-discrimination laws.
"The rights of transgender Californians are coming out of the closet," said Masen Davis, Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center. "Thanks to the fair-minded legislature and Governor Brown, employment posters and student handbooks will finally inform transgender people of their rights, and educate employers and schools about their responsibilities. It's about time."
More than 100 cities in the United States and hundreds of employers already provide clear non-discrimination protections based on gender identity and gender expression. Cities that list them as separate protected categories in non-discrimination ordinances include Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Oakland and West Hollywood.
"All students deserve the opportunity to attend school without fear of discrimination," said Gay-Straight Alliance Network Interim Executive Director Laura Valdez. "We are grateful to Governor Brown for signing this law to ensure that confusing legal wording will no longer stand between California's transgender and gender-nonconforming students and their right to a safe learning environment."
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| | Topic: Europe's Parliament Pushes For Reclassification of Transsexual |
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| Europe's Parliament Pushes For Reclassification of Transsexual [message #149577] |
Sun, 02 October 2011 14:01 |
Diana
Messages: 1089
Registered: October 2007
Location: Colorado |
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http://lezgetreal.com/2011/09/europes-parliament-pushes-for- reclassification-of-transsexual/
Europe's Parliament Pushes For Reclassification of Transsexual
Written by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on September 29, 2011.
The European Parliament is pushing for the World Health Organization to stop classifying trans people as mentally ill. Currently, gender identity disorder is classified as a "mental and behavioral disorder" according to the WHO's International Classification of Diseases. However, many trans people and clinicians prefer the term "gender dysphoria". Research has not been able to indicate a specific reason for gender dysphoria, but it is believed to be triggered by genetic and hormonal reasons.
The WHO's International Classification of Diseases is under review and will be finalized in 2015. It should be noted that it was not until 1990- almost twenty years after this was removed in the United States- that homosexuality was removed as a mental illness from that list.
It was Dutch MEP Emine Bozkurt who authored that amendment and stated that "Transgender identities are still considered a mental disorder by the World Health Organization. This must be changed urgently, and certainly by the time the next version comes into effect in 2015. Transgender people wishing to live in a body that matches their identity are of course entitled to medical treatment and its benefits, but the negative stigma surrounding them must stop."
Spanish MEP Raul Romeva I Rueda, vice president of the LGBT inter-group, stated "Considering transgender people mentally ill means they are not free to decide for themselves, and are often disrespected by the medical profession, their employers and their families. This call sends one clear message to the commission and the WHO: the pathologisation of gender identity must stop, as the pathologisation of homosexuality ended in 1990."
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Denise
[Updated on: Sun, 02 October 2011 14:28]
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| | Topic: Wally Worlds new transgender policy |
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| | Topic: Deportation of married LGBT Imigrants |
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| Deportation of married LGBT Imigrants [message #147577] |
Mon, 22 August 2011 17:44 |
Wendy C
Messages: 4340
Registered: October 2007
Location: Gateway to the West |
Senior Member
BL3D |
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Obama administration won't deport Venezuelan man who is married to an American man
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/obama-administration-won -t-deport-venezuelan-man-married-141322550.html
The last paragraph is especially notable.
[quoteThis is the second time the American government has used discretion to avoid separating a same-sex married couple, according to Benshimol's lawyer, Lavi Soloway. The first was in June. Soloway said in a statement that he's "cautiously optimistic" about the news that the government will review all 300,000 deportation cases to stop prosecutions against low-priority illegal immigrants. The agency said it will try not to separate families, including gay and transgender families.[/quote]
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| | Topic: "My Husband is Now my Wife." NYT piece |
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| "My Husband is Now my Wife." NYT piece [message #147539] |
Mon, 22 August 2011 06:25 |
Sabine
Messages: 137
Registered: July 2010 |
Senior Member |
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From the spouse perspective, just an essay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/fashion/modern-love-my-hus band-is-now-my-wife.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
This part:
"I'm sorry for all the pain I'm causing you."
Tears smudged the dots under his nose and rolled down his face.
"I know why I'm doing all this, but it's just crazy, isn't it?" he said. "And I regret all the years I felt so isolated. I wonder what I missed."
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| | Topic: TSA at LAX get transgender training |
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| TSA at LAX get transgender training [message #146657] |
Thu, 04 August 2011 20:55 |
nancy
Messages: 230
Registered: October 2007 |
Senior Member |
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44023853/ns/travel-news/#.TjtpIG GC9Ip
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Transportation Security Administration said Thursday that its managers at Los Angeles International Airport are undergoing mandatory sensitivity training after a transgender employee alleged she was ordered to dress like a man, pat down male passengers and use the men's restroom.
Ashley Yang, 29, who spent two years as a security checkpoint screener at LAX, was fired last summer after co-workers observed her using the women's room, according to a copy of her termination letter obtained by The Associated Press. She contested the firing, resulting in a settlement that mandated the training.
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But passengers are not subject to surgery requirements at the airport, he said
"When passengers come to the checkpoint, we have to screen the passengers based on how they present themselves. If they present themselves as male, they are screened by a man. If they present themselves as female, they are screened by a woman," he said.
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| | Topic: Alaska sued in transgender driver's license case |
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| Alaska sued in transgender driver's license case [message #145818] |
Tue, 19 July 2011 05:01 |
nancy
Messages: 230
Registered: October 2007 |
Senior Member |
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/18/2319963/alaska-sued-in -transgender-drivers.html
JUNEAU, Alaska -- The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state of Alaska on behalf of a transgender woman, alleging that it denied her a driver's license listing her gender as female unless she provided proof that she'd undergone a sex change operation.
The lawsuit, which ACLU said was filed in state court in Anchorage Monday, states that denying the woman a license that accurately reflects her gender identity because she hasn't undergone surgery is unconstitutional.
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The state had issued K.L. a license designating her sex as female but issued a cancellation order about a month later, the lawsuit claims. The order, according to the lawsuit, said her license would be cancelled unless she replaced it with one listing her gender as male or provided proof from a doctor verifying "a surgical change was performed."
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| | Topic: Maine Denny's restaurants reverse restroom policy |
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| Maine Denny's restaurants reverse restroom policy [message #145378] |
Tue, 12 July 2011 05:42 |
nancy
Messages: 230
Registered: October 2007 |
Senior Member |
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http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/12/news/lewiston-auburn/m aine-dennys-restaurants-reverse-transgender-restroom-policy/
LEWISTON, Maine -- The corporate owner of Denny's restaurants has reversed its restroom policy in an agreement with a transgender customer and now permits all customers to use restrooms consistent with their gender identities.
The change, according to Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders attorney Janson Wu, "is common sense."
The agreement, reached in March and announced on Monday, is the result of a lawsuit brought by Brianna Freeman against the chain's Auburn restaurant after Freeman was denied access to the women's restroom there.
The agreement was announced jointly by Realty Resources Hospitality, which owns six Denny's restaurants in Maine, and the Boston-based GLAD Transgender Rights Project, which represented Freeman in her civil action.
The new restroom policy applies to all Denny's restaurants in Maine.
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| | Topic: U.N. council passes gay rights resolution |
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| U.N. council passes gay rights resolution [message #143308] |
Fri, 17 June 2011 11:37 |
Katie
Messages: 14663
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Location: La La Land |
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U.N. council passes gay rights resolution
By Jill Dougherty, CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
(CNN) -- In what the U.S. State Department is calling a "historic step," the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution Friday supporting equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation.
The resolution, introduced by South Africa, is the first-ever U.N. resolution on the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons.
It passed with 23 votes in favor, 19 opposed and three abstentions amid strong criticism of South Africa by some African nations.
Suzanne Nossel, deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations, told CNN, "It really is a key part in setting a new norm that gay rights are human rights and that that has to be accepted globally."
"It talks about the violence and discrimination that people of LGBT persuasion experience around the world," she said, "and that those issues ... need to be taken seriously. It calls for reporting on what's going on, where people are being discriminated against, the violence that is taking place, and it really puts the issue squarely on the U.N.'s agenda going forward."
Divided opinion continues among some countries about whether the time has come to take up gay rights in the U.N. forum, Nossel said, "so this resolution is really significant as far as gaining widespread support for doing just that."
The State Department lobbied intensively for the resolution, and Nossel said the United States was pleased to see African leadership, from South Africa in particular, as well as strong support from South America, Colombia and Brazil.
The resolution also will commission the first-ever U.N. report on the challenges that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people face around the globe. Nossel said the Obama administration hopes it will "open a broader international discussion on how to best promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons."
In March the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a statement, supported by 85 countries, on gay rights called "Ending Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity."
Friday's vote "marks a victory for defenders of human rights," said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "It sends a clear message that abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity must end."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made gay rights a key focus of the State Department's human rights agenda, expressing her view that "gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights."
At a gay pride event this month at the State Department, Clinton said, "Men and women are harassed, beaten, subjected to sexual violence, even killed, because of who they are and whom they love. Some are driven from their homes or countries, and many who become refugees confront new threats in their countries of asylum. In some places, violence against the LGBT community is permitted by law and inflamed by public calls to violence; in others, it persists insidiously behind closed doors."
Nossel told CNN, "it's not like discrimination or violence are going to end overnight" because of the U.N. resolution, "but now ... when there are proposals in parliaments or legislatures around the world to illegalize gay activity or repress people because of their sexual orientation, opponents can point to this and say, 'Hey, the U.N. has spoken out, there is a resolution that rejects this squarely.'
"That is the way these international norms are built," she said. "It's not from scratch. On women's rights, on minority rights, it builds up over time. So this is really a critical beginning of a universal recognition of a new set of rights that forms part of the international system."
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/06/17/un.lgbt.rights/in dex.html?hpt=hp_t1
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| | Topic: Video: Story of a trans TSA worker |
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| | Topic: Trans woman killed in Houston. |
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| | Topic: Oprah, I Hardly Knew You |
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| Oprah, I Hardly Knew You [message #141847] |
Tue, 31 May 2011 22:14 |
Diana
Messages: 1089
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Oprah, I Hardly Knew You
By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN
Published: May 27, 2011
Belgrade Lakes, Me.
THERE I was, on Oprah Winfrey's couch, when she turned to me and asked: "So. You have a vagina?"
As a transgender woman, I'd gotten this question before. I allowed as how I did.
Ms. Winfrey began to sing to me. "Yes, she has a vagina."
I interrupted her. "What you mean," I said, "is, yes, we have no bananas.'"
Everyone screamed. Ms. Winfrey said, "We'll be right back."
During that commercial break, as my interviewer was swarmed by her producers and directors, I got my first good look at her. The strange thing was that at such close range, she didn't look anything like Oprah Winfrey at all.
I've been on the program, the last episode of which ran on Wednesday, three times since then. Now whenever I go somewhere to speak about gender issues -- whether it's the National Press Club, Harvard, the Judiciary Committee of the Maine Legislature -- I find that there's one question I'm asked more frequently than any other.
"What is Oprah really like?"
It's asked by earnest moms in book groups, by excited teenagers, by literary critics who disdainfully claim never to have owned a television. Once, a stoner in a bar asked me that, then said, with considerable melancholy, "Dude, it should totally have been me who got to give everybody a car!"
I never know how to answer. Like a lot of authors, I had some anxiety about going on her program. There was the very likely possibility that I would make a colossal fool of myself. More urgently, I feared that transgender issues would be treated sensationally, as is all too often the case on daytime television.
I needn't have worried. Ms. Winfrey treated me with respect and that first show made a brief and unlikely best seller out of my tragicomic memoir, "She's Not There," about changing genders and keeping my family -- my wife and our two sons -- together. The day the episode was broadcast, my book went from about No. 300,000 on Amazon to No. 8.
Ms. Winfrey may not have hailed me as the next Tolstoy on that show (plus Tolstoy never had to allow people to film him putting on his pantyhose) but her endorsement helped people see that transgender Americans are human too. One viewer wrote to say, "The strangest thing about you, Jenny, is that, sitting there next to Oprah, you seemed almost like a person somebody could know."
Not all of my appearances went as well as the first. The last time, the episode was titled "Oprah's Most Memorable Guests." They included Ted Haggard and his wife; the husband of the woman who drowned their children; an 800-pound man who'd dieted himself down to 500; a mother with no arms and legs; and a previously recorded segment featuring the Texas polygamist wives. My sons had wanted to be on as well (we Skyped in from our living room) to show that children of transgender people can turn out to be perfectly well adjusted, and as this parade wheeled by, the younger one turned to me and whispered, "I thought you said she liked us?"
What could I tell him, except, "I know. I'm sorry. I thought so too"? (My older son only had questions about the polygamist wives. "If you're going to have 12 wives, shouldn't, like, one of them be hot?")
I was left feeling unsettled. Oprah Winfrey has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, started a school, entertained millions and helped to change the perceptions of gay, lesbian and transgender people in this country from marginal to mainstream. But at least some of her power has come from episodes like the one my sons and I shared with Ted Haggard.
Looking back, though, how could I be anything but grateful for my time as her guest? Last year, a trans woman stopped me as I was walking up Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, and told me that my appearance on the show literally saved her life.
"But can I ask you something, Jenny?" the stranger said, after she'd finished hugging me and wiping away her tears. "What's Oprah really like?"
What could I say? "She's nice."
As a guest, I felt that Ms. Winfrey was a very smart, inscrutable performer. It was only when I watched the show at home, safe in my living room, that I felt again that she was a woman I'd turn to for friendship and advice. She generates a sense of intimacy, to be sure -- but you can really appreciate it only from a distance.
After that first show, she paused with me backstage for a photograph. It was the first time all day I'd seen her off camera. "We did good today," she said, and she put her arm around me.
Later, when the photo was delivered to my house, I looked at the two of us standing there. With all that stage makeup on, I hardly recognized myself. But the woman to my right? That could only have been Oprah Winfrey.
Jennifer Finney Boylan, a professor of English at Colby College, is the author, most recently, of "Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor."
[Updated on: Tue, 31 May 2011 22:17]
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| | Topic: Nepal census recognizes 'third gender' |
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| Nepal census recognizes 'third gender' [message #141846] |
Tue, 31 May 2011 21:46 |
Diana
Messages: 1089
Registered: October 2007
Location: Colorado |
Senior Member
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Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- When census gatherers went door-to-door visiting 5.6 million households across Nepal this month, they collected information not only on the country's men and women, but also on a so-called third gender.
In what is believed to be a world first, Nepal's Central Bureau of Statistics is giving official recognition to gay and transgender people -- a move seen as major victory for equality in a country that only decriminalized homosexual relationships three years ago.
Among those happy to stand up and be counted in the third gender category is Dilu Buduja, 35. "I was born as a girl, but as I grew up I felt I was a boy. Today I totally feel like a man," he said.
A spokesman for the statistics bureau, Bikash Bista, said the new categorization was an attempt to open up the traditionally conservative country up to different points of view.
But the state's recognition of the rights of gender minorities, gays and lesbians has not come without a fight.
"We had to put in a lot of pressure to have the third gender counted in the census," said gender minority rights activist Sunil Babu Pant.
"It was only after we said that we would go to court that the officials agreed to include the third gender as a category."
If the case had gone to court, it would likely have been upheld thanks to a landmark 2007 Supreme Court ruling that directed the state to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and decriminalize "unnatural sex."
It also decreed the issue of citizenship certificates that clearly indicate an individual's choice of gender identity.
Citizenship certificates, which work as national identity papers, are needed in Nepal to open a bank account, own property, secure a job and get a passport among other things.
"The court also directed the government to form a committee to study what kind of laws can be made for same-sex marriage or civil union," said Hari Phuyal, a human rights lawyer who made the lead argument in the case.
"Nepal's 2007 ruling was an inspiration to even India and the ruling document was studied by the Delhi High Court [of India ] when it decriminalized sodomy last year," he said.
Pant, Nepal's first openly gay lawmaker, described the ruling as "very satisfying," but said its implementation was an "extremely slow and painful process."
His claim is underscored by the fact that Nepal 's Ministry of Home Affairs is yet to direct the country's 75 administrative districts to issue citizenship certificates that indicate gender identity.
"Local authorities did not know about third gender and they were afraid that they would lose their jobs if they gave such a citizenship," said Buduja, who last month became only the second person in the country to obtain a citizenship certificate indicating gender.
Pradeep Khadka, of sexual and gender minority rights advocacy group Blue Diamond Society -- founded by Pant nearly a decade ago -- say delays in fully enforcing the 2007 ruling represent a struggle between conservative and liberal elements in Nepalese society.
Though discrimination persists, there is progress. The government is also finalizing a list of discriminatory laws that need to be changed so that gender minorities can enjoy the same rights as others, including inheritance rights.
Two years ago it also formed a committee to make recommendations on legislation governing same-sex marriage or civil union. It is in the final stages of the completing the report.
"We visited several districts in the country and Norway to look at its experience and use it as a case study," said sociologist Chaitanya Mishra, a member of the recommendation committee.
According to another member of the committee, it will recommend that the government legalize same-sex marriage, which would be a first in South Asia.
"There are 50 to 60 couples waiting to get married on the day same-sex marriage is legalized," said Buduja, who is among those hoping to tie the knot.
But activists say, reluctance among officials to issue the sexuality-specific citizenship certificates means that day may be far away. And without the certificates, many may be reluctant to disclose sexuality to census gatherers.
"But this is an encouraging step forward," Pant said.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/31/nepal.census.gen der/index.html?npt=NP1
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| | Topic: Transgender basket ball player calls it quits |
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| | Topic: http://www.parentdish.com/2011/04/11/sex-change-drugs/ |
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| http://www.parentdish.com/2011/04/11/sex-change-drugs/ [message #137586] |
Mon, 11 April 2011 12:50 |
Amazon D
Messages: 1667
Registered: October 2007
Location: Phila Pa .==>. Central... |
Senior Member
Trans archival D |
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http://www.parentdish.com/2011/04/11/sex-change-drugs/
Sex-Change Drugs Given to Children as Young as 12
by Tom Henderson (Subscribe to Tom Henderson's posts)
Apr 11th 2011 1:30PM
1Comments
Filed under: In The News, Health
The drugs stop puberty and stunt sex organs. Credit: Getty Images
You suddenly realize you are a woman trapped in a man's body.
Bummer. This could be the worst year of elementary school ever.
Some people will tell you the age of 12, is a tad young to make life-altering decisions, but for those unprepared to wait, lo and behold, there are drugs.
The Daily Mirror in London reports children as young as 12 are being given drugs to prep their barely pubescent bodies for switching genders. The drugs stop puberty and stunt sex organs and prevent the development of facial hair and sperm in boys and breasts in girls.
According to the newspaper, doctors admit most of their young patients don't follow through with sex-change operations. Many of them simply turn out to be gay.
Nonetheless, they tell the Mail, getting injections of the drug makes it easier to operate on them later.
"The majority of our referrals are 15-plus. Of the children aged 12 and 14, there's a number who are keen to take part," Polly Carmichael, a physician who runs Britain's only gender identity clinic in London, tells the Mirror.
Britain just recently began offering the drugs to the late-elementary school crowd, following the United States, Holland and Germany.
However, there are very few places in the United States where children can go for the treatments. One of them is Children's Hospital in Boston.
Norman Spack, an endocrinologist at the hospital, defended the treatments in a 2008 interview with the Boston Globe, telling the newspaper he treated children, many of whom had attempted suicide, who had fled from Britain to receive treatments.
"And I've never seen any patient make (a suicide attempt) after they've started hormonal treatment," he told the Globe.
"All I know is that when I see preadolescents, they have been dressing in the underwear of the other sex for years," he added. "These kids are almost certainly transgendered. They're a unique population of patients. By the time a kid comes in to see me, both parents have agreed that the child is in danger and needs some form of intervention. And that has led to heavy-duty counseling for the child and parents. Therefore I see young people and families who have been evaluated by skilled professionals."
The health risks are minimal, he told the Globe.
"The biggest challenge is the issue of fertility," he said in the 2008 interview. "When young people halt their puberty before their bodies have developed, and then take cross-hormones for a few years, they'll probably be infertile. You have to explain to the patients that if they go ahead, they may not be able to have children.
"When you're talking to a 12-year-old, that's a heavy-duty conversation," he added. "Does a kid that age really think about fertility? But if you don't start treatment, they will always have trouble fitting in. And my patients always remind me that what's most important to them is their identity."
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| | Topic: STUDY FINDS PERVASIVE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST TRANSGENDER PEOPLE |
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| STUDY FINDS PERVASIVE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST TRANSGENDER PEOPLE [message #130214] |
Fri, 04 February 2011 11:33 |
Diana
Messages: 1089
Registered: October 2007
Location: Colorado |
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GROUNDBREAKING STUDY FINDS PERVASIVE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST TRANSGENDER PEOPLE
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - February 4, 2011 The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) today released a comprehensive new report, "Injustice at Every Turn," revealing the depth of discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming people in a wide range of areas, including education, health care, employment, and housing. The study, based on the results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), was based on responses from over 6,450 participants. The NTDS is the first large-scale national study of discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming Americans, and paints a more complete picture than any prior research to date.
Among the key findings from "Injustice at Every Turn":
Respondents were nearly four times more likely to live in extreme poverty, with household income of less than $10,000.
Respondents were twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the population as a whole. Half of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace, and one in four were fired because of their gender identity or expression.
While discrimination was pervasive for the entire sample, it was particularly pronounced for people of color. African-American transgender respondents fared far worse than all others in many areas studied.
Housing discrimination was also common. 19% reported being refused a home or apartment and 11% reported being evicted because of their gender identity or expression. One in five respondents experienced homelessness because of their gender identity or expression.
An astonishing 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide, compared to only 1.6% of the general population.
Discrimination in health care and poor health outcomes were frequently experienced by respondents. 19% reported being refused care due to bias against transgender or gender-nonconforming people, with this figure even higher for respondents of color. Respondents also had over four times the national average of HIV infection.
Harassment by law enforcement was reported by 22% of respondents and nearly half were uncomfortable seeking police assistance.
Despite the hardships they often face, transgender and gender non-conforming persons persevere. Over 78% reported feeling more comfortable at work and their performance improving after transitioning, despite the same levels of harassment in the workplace.
Said Rea Carey, Executive Director of the Task Force: "By shedding light on the discrimination that transgender Americans face, this study poses a challenge to us all. No one should be out of a job, living in poverty, or faced with sub-par health care simply because of their gender identity or expression. The scope of the problem is clear, and now we must come together to solve it."
Said Mara Keisling, Executive Director of NCTE: "Reading these results is heartbreaking on a personal level--each of these facts and figures represents pain and hardship endured by real people, every single day. This survey is a call to the conscience of every American who believes that everyone has the right to a fair chance to work hard, to have a roof overhead, and to support a family. Equality, not discrimination, is the ideal that Americans believe in, have fought for, and need to apply here."
Read the Executive Summary (1 MB)
Read the Full Report (25 MB)
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| | Topic: Victoria Kowalski, judge with a trans medical history |
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| Victoria Kowalski, judge with a trans medical history [message #125942] |
Thu, 30 December 2010 21:47 |
CarolynnL
Messages: 1820
Registered: October 2007
Location: Central Time Zone |
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She is the first transgender person known to have been elected as a trial judge and one of very few elected to any office.
Read the article here, before it is archived in a few days.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_16966747?nclick_chec k=1
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| | Topic: Gendering Toys is Good for Nobody |
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| Gendering Toys is Good for Nobody [message #123943] |
Fri, 10 December 2010 14:05 |
Diana
Messages: 1089
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Location: Colorado |
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Gendering Toys is Good for Nobody
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/12/09/gendering-toys-is -good-for-nobody/
I wasn't surprised when my son, Zachary, was teased for bringing My Little Pony in for first-grade show-and-tell. After all, I had been following the story of Katie, a first-grader in Evanston, Illinois, who had been mocked for choosing a Star Wars water bottle. Katie's mother, Carrie Goldman, blogged about the incident, and her post quickly went viral, with over a thousand women Star Wars fans leaving Katie supportive comments. Having read Katie's story, I had a sense of what might be coming when my son showed up in the kitchen holding Twilight Sparkle and announcing, "This is my show-and-tell."
Frankly, anyone who has been inside a toy store lately has seen the extraordinary gender division. There are girls' toys and there are boys' toys, and there isn't a whole lot in between. You'll know when you are in the girls' section by the bright pink glow and the predominance of kitchen-related items. That's also where you'll find My Little Pony, in all her sparkly, pastel magnificence. If, however, you're looking for the boys' section, just head for the dark toys featuring building supplies and weapons. That's where the Star Wars merchandise is shelved.
Toy marketing has become increasingly gendered over the last decade and a half, according to Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author with Sharon Lamb of the books Packaging Girlhood and Packaging Boyhood. Although initially related to the anti-consumerist Riot Grrrl movement, girl power resonated with girls and so became fodder for the marketers. "Suddenly, we saw in the mid-nineties everything being called 'girl power'," says Brown. "Crafts, makeup, shoppingeverything traditional 'girl' was given this new edge, but the message was the same." That message? Girls need lots of pink, fluffy toys.
But kids can still play with whatever they like, right? It's not that easy, unfortunately. "We rarely see girls and boys in the same commercials," explains Brown, or in the same section of the toy store. "Toys are heavily marketed through stereotypes. It's all about making it simple to sell products to little kids."
The fault doesn't just lie with toy manufacturers. Although Hasbro, maker of the My Little Pony and Star Wars toys, did not respond to my interview requests, marketers with other toy companies explain that the retail stores have tied their hands. Top retail stores define the sections and are reluctant to stock gender-neutral toys because they don't have a section for them. But when I went to my local Learning Express, an educational-toy-store chain, they told me that they don't carry male dolls because no one will buy them.
So marketers and toy stores are throwing up their hands, saying they are responding to consumers' tastes. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, and the children lose out. By the time they are in elementary school, children are well aware of which colors and products are intended for them. Their choices have been severely limited by the adults around them, to the detriment of the children. "Diversity is always better in terms of cognitive development, in terms of relationships and social environments," says Brown. "When you offer few options and give kids a very narrow slice of life, there are things they don't learn, experiences they don't have."
What the children do learn is strict gender norms, and the children who don't adhere to those norms frighten their peers. "They're made anxious by difference because we've given them sameness," Brown says. To alleviate that fear, they tease the child who doesn't conform.
When the teasing starts, adult response is crucial. While Katie and Zachary had similar experiences at school, Goldman and I had remarkably different ones when we tried to address the problem. My child's teacher put a stop to the individual instance of teasing and that was the end of it, but Goldman's community took the teasing as a call to action. "There could have been defensiveness, from the school, from the parents of the first-grade boys," Goldman says. Instead, the community and the school have come together to talk over the issues and break through gender norms. The school is considering bringing in a group to teach an anti-bullying assembly. A Star Wars fan organized a Geek Pride for Katie day, with over 19,000 people pledging to wear Star Wars clothing this Friday in support of Katie, although Katie's school is making it a Proud to Be Me Day, in which every child in encouraged to wear whatever interests her or him. That kind of proactive response can help to combat the strict gender lines that toy companies establish.
Campaigns like Pink Stinks in the United Kingdom bring publicity to the way gender has been scripted for our children. Every now and then the media runs an article on the tyranny of pink or the elusive tomboy. However, the best way to combat gender stereotyping and gender bullying is to refuse to lock children into gender norms. Children are bombarded with marketing, but every time we teach a girl to build or a boy to nurture, every time we give a girl a Star Wars water bottle or pick up a My Little Pony for a boy at a yard sale, we are opening up options that the toy stores and companies have shut down.
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| | Topic: Payette Transgender Woman Awaits Arson, Weapons Trial in Isolation |
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| Payette Transgender Woman Awaits Arson, Weapons Trial in Isolation [message #123726] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 09:10 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
Location: Salem, Oregon |
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Beginning Life Founder
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Payette Transgender Woman Awaits Arson, Weapons Trial in Isolation
Posted by Jody May-Chang on Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 3:38 PM
Monday, Dec. 6, Catherine Carlson, 53, was in Payette Country Court for a preliminary hearing after a psychological evaluation earlier this month deemed her competent to stand trial.
After over an hour of testimony by city and county officials and first responders to the July 11 incident where Carlson set fire to her Payette trailer, Judge A. Lynn Krogh, found "probable cause" to proceed with the case. Carlson is scheduled to be arraigned on January 7 where a trial date will likely be set.
Facing up to 40 years in state prison, Carlson said she sees herself a martyr for an issue she has been fighting in Idaho for several years: dignity and respect for transgender citizens.
Carlson is a transgender woman who had a legal name change in California as a prerequisite to sexual reassignment surgery she had 30 years ago.
According to Carlson, the state of Idaho was not aware of her male history until it was revealed in court over a civil matter more than a decade ago by her own mother. Carlson said ever since Idaho has listed her male name as an a.k.a. despite her efforts to have the name removed.
Carlson said she was frustrated by being outed with every traffic stop or ID check by police and having that information broadcasted over police scanners., Carlson said it "puts a target on her back" in the small conservative rural community where she lives.
Asked if she plans to plead guilty, Carlson told City Desk, "Of course I am not going to plead guilty, the reason I did what I did is because they refuse to let me live my life, so it's up to them to do something with my life." Carlson said if police and officials, "want to be bigots it's going to cost them," referring to the cost of a trial and prison.
Payette Country Sheriff, Chad Huff, told City Desk, although Carlson has been a "model inmate" she is being kept in isolation in the old jail and that Carlson is within earshot of male inmates. Asked why Carlson is not being held with other females, Huff said, "That is on the advice of my legal counsel. That is why we put her in a separate cell." Huff reason, "that's just what [legal counsel] told me so I follow the advice of my attorneys." Where Carlson is being kept she is observed by male jailers where in the female pod, Huff says there is a female jailer on duty at all times.
Payette County Jail
In contrast, Kristina Ross, a male-to-female transgender woman currently in Ada County Jail on another matter, is being held in general population with other female inmates.
http://www.boiseweekly.com/CityDesk/archives/2010/12/07/paye tte-transgender-woman-awaits-arson-weapons-trial-in-isolatio n
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| | Topic: Hatboro mayor vetoes anti-gay-bias measure |
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| Hatboro mayor vetoes anti-gay-bias measure [message #123725] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 09:05 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
Location: Salem, Oregon |
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Beginning Life Founder
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Hatboro mayor vetoes anti-gay-bias measure
Posted on Wed, Dec. 8, 2010
By Jeremy Roebuck
Inquirer Staff Writer
As one of Philadelphia's biggest suburbs is poised to join the growing list of communities enacting a new kind of antidiscrimination ordinance, another municipality has opted out.
Hatboro Mayor Norm Hawkes vetoed a measure Monday night that would have established a borough commission to review prejudice claims - a step advocates argued was necessary to extend protection to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people not currently shielded under state law.
Lower Merion commissioners are expected to approve a similar measure at a special meeting Wednesday night.
"I don't feel anyone should be discriminated against anyplace or anywhere," Hawkes said Tuesday. "But I think this is much better handled on a state vs. local level."
Across Pennsylvania, 17 municipalities - including Philadelphia, West Chester, State College, and Doylestown - have enacted ordinances prohibiting discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations based on sexual orientation or gender identity. At least 11 more, such as Radnor and Haverford, have measures pending before their governing bodies.
While the proposals protect all minority groups, pressure to pass them has come largely from the LGBT community, which says its members are left unprotected by state and federal statutes.
State law bars discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and ethnicity. But 21 other states, including New Jersey, have added protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
"I've always thought of this as a very local issue," said Jason Landau Goodman, a University of Pennsylvania student who has led the charge to pass such a law in his hometown of Lower Merion. "It's basic protection of residents in the township."
Hatboro's ordinance, approved last month by a 4-3 vote, would have created a volunteer human-relations board to hear complaints from residents who felt their rights had been violated. If the panel found discrimination had occurred, its findings could be introduced as evidence in a lawsuit.
The proposed board was modeled on those created in recent years in other Philadelphia suburbs. While none of those panels has reported any complaints, advocates argue their existence sends a clear message.
"If there's a problem, there's something in place to handle it," said Bill George, a past president of the Hatboro Chamber of Commerce and a gay man who argued in support of the measure.
Hawkes said allowing untrained volunteers to decide discrimination cases could open up Hatboro taxpayers to legal liability.
"I feel the state has much better resources to handle these situations," he said.
The legislature, however, has shown little interest. In the last five sessions, State Rep. Dan B. Frankel (D., Allegheny) has offered a bill to add LGBT antibias protections, but has yet to get it to a floor vote. Though he plans to try again next session, he concedes that the chances are slim.
"It would be very hard next session, given that Republicans control both chambers," he said, "and the majority leader in the House has been clearly opposed."
That's why Lower Merion, like other suburbs in recent years, decided to act, said Stephen Glassman, chairman of the state Human Relations Commission. After months of wrangling over wording, the township commissioners are expected to approve an ordinance.
There is a move in Hatboro to override Hawkes' veto. The council is to reconvene next week on the issue, though the ordinance's supporters concede that getting the necessary five votes on the seven-member council is a long shot.
Contact staff writer Jeremy Roebuck at 610-313-8212 or jroebuck@phillynews.com.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20101208_Hatboro_may or_vetoes_anti-gay-bias_measure.html
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| | Topic: Haverford School grad returns to tell HER story |
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| Haverford School grad returns to tell HER story [message #123724] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 09:02 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
Location: Salem, Oregon |
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Haverford School grad returns to tell HER story
Published: Tuesday, December 07, 2010
By Cheryl Allison
Jenny Boylan
"You guys look different, too," a speaker at the Haverford School told teachers and classmates in the audience, to break the ice.
Admittedly, though, Jenny Boylan, Class of '76, has gone through a transformation well beyond aging.
Boylan, who attended the private all-boys school from eighth grade through graduation, did so as James Boylan. A professor of creative writing and American literature at Colby College in Maine since 1988, she is also a transgender woman, who made the physical transition in her early 40s.
Her first return to Haverford in more than three decades last Friday morning to talk with the school's Diversity Alliance and speak to the Upper School coincidentally comes as Lower Merion Township and several other local municipalities, including Radnor and Haverford townships, are considering adopting anti-discrimination ordinances.
Lower Merion, the first of the group, was set to hold a public hearing and vote Dec. 8 on its ordinance, which would prohibit discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.
After three versions, the legislation, whose drafting has had the unanimous support of Lower Merion's board of commissioners, was expected to be enacted.
Boylan, whose 2003 memoir "She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders" was a national bestseller, is a Valley Forge native who grew up in Newtown Square and Devon. Realizing that your gender is not the same as that of the body you have been born into "is hard. It's not something I would wish on anyone," she told students. But Boylan, who was not open about her situation then, added, "One of the things that made it less hard was this place," in the friends she made and in the teachers who encouraged a love of literature and writing.
Boylan said she wanted to talk with students about "how we come to understand ourselves and others, people who are different." She operates on the theory that the best way is through a person's "story." "It's hard to hate anyone whose story you know," she suggested.
And that is when she read to students a short story she has written for an online initiative that was prompted by the number of recent suicides of young people who are gay, who had been bullied or "outed." It's called the It Gets Better Project, Boylan said. Its purpose is to "encourage young people like you to know that, if your heart aches, it will not always ache the way it does now."
The story was her own, a description of a journey she made at a particularly dark time. She got in the car one night and started driving toward the most remote place she could get to, the farthest reach of Nova Scotia.
As she passed through towns, she "thought about settling in one of those little villages and starting over," but it seemed to her, if she followed through on her knowledge of her real self, "In order to be whole, I'd have to give up on every dream except one."
At last, one morning, Boylan found herself on a cliffside over the ocean. In the gray mist, she leaned farther and farther out, until she told herself, "Well, all right, if this is what you came here to do, then let's do it."
Just then, "a huge blast of wind blew me back" onto the ground, and Boylan said, "I felt some kind of presence," a voice asking "Are you all right, son? You are going to be all right."
"I'm still not sure whose voice it was," Boylan continued reading. "My heart tells me it was the voice of my future self," she said, assuring her "your greatest curse, against all odds, will turn out to be your greatest gift." And so it has been, she said.
Students asked her if she prefer to call herself transgendered or a woman. "The more interesting question," she reflected, "is what's the difference between a man and a woman? ... In your lives, as you go forth, you will find that the things you think are true and obvious are elusive and complicated." But, "Am I a woman? Sure."
Another student wanted to know how her family reacted when she began her change.
"It made our lives into a mess for a while. We cried a lot," Boylan said. She had married as a man, "hoping I could keep this thing a secret forever." She had two young sons.
"I had to tell the person I loved most in the world that I'd been lying to her," Boylan said, but her wife "decided her life was better with me in it than out of it," and they have continued to raise their boys, now 14 and 16, together.
The thing that worried her most, Boylan said, was that "people would be mean to my kids," but that has not happened. "Could it be," she wondered, "that it's not as big a deal as we think?"
"If this all still seems like just weird stuff to you, you're not alone," Boylan concluded. Their personal challenges may be different, but the important question is, "When that time comes, what will you do? How will you find your courage?"
The students responded with a standing ovation, an outcome that she wrote about a little later in a blog post.
She admits she was apprehensive about returning to her school.
"When it was all over, the following thing happened: the boys leaped to their feet, all 300-plus of them, and cheered like I was Elvis," she writes with some wonder. "It was one of the most astonishing moments of my life."
But later, sitting at lunch with some of her classmates and teachers, she adds, "I thought with amazement how the world is full of wonders. Full of unexpected transformation. Not only my own, but even in places like this."
The public hearing on a Lower Merion Township anti-discrimination ordinance will take place at the Township Building, 75 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, Dec. 8 at 6 p.m.
http://mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2010/12/07/main_line_t imes/news/doc4cfe8cb6486d0188692575.txt
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| | Topic: States to consider rights of genderless people |
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| States to consider rights of genderless people [message #123722] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 08:40 |
Teresa
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States to consider rights of genderless people
Sean Nicholls
December 9, 2010
THE need for a national approach to legal recognition of ''genderless'' people - who identify as neither male nor female - will be raised by the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, at a meeting of his state and territory counterparts in Canberra tomorrow.
The issue was highlighted in the Herald in March through the story of Norrie, a genderless Sydneysider who has battled the state bureaucracy for the right to be recorded as ''sex not specified'' on official documents.
Norrie, who was born in Scotland, became the first person in NSW to be neither man nor woman in the eyes of the state government after being issued with a Recognised Details Certificate containing the notation.
Advertisement: Story continues below It was issued after two doctors agreed that Norrie, who was born male but had gender reassignment surgery and now prefers not to identify as either sex, was physically and psychologically androgynous.
But the certificate - which may be provided by the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages to immigrants who have changed their sex and want it recorded - was later ruled invalid.
''The case of Norrie earlier this year highlighted that some people wish to identify as having an unspecified sex," Mr Hatzistergos said.
He noted that a report last year by the Australian Human Rights Commission recommended that an adult should be allowed to choose to have an unspecified sex recorded on official documents and records.
''This is a very complex area of social policy with very significant legal and practical implications on a national scale,'' he said.
A ''sex not specified'' classification could potentially raise difficulties for governments in areas such as marriage, which is defined in legislation as being between a man and a woman.
Other areas for discussion may include placement in aged care, hospital rooms, emergency refuges and prison, as well as the issue of security protocols such as body searches.
Norrie, who welcomed the move to raise the issue at the meeting, has lodged an appeal against the decision of the registry with the Administrative Decisions Tribunal and expects a decision within months.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/states-to-consider-rights-of- genderless-people-20101208-18pxg.html
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| | Topic: Canada Issues Dress Rules for Military Transsexuals |
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| Canada Issues Dress Rules for Military Transsexuals [message #123719] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 08:29 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
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Canada Issues Dress Rules for Military Transsexuals
by Kilian Melloy
Wednesday Dec 8, 2010
The United States continues to struggle with the issue of allowing gay and lesbian patriots to serve their nation in uniform. Meantime, much of the rest of the Western world has moved on. Case in point: Canada not only allows gays and lesbians to serve, but now has a dress code for transgendered servicemembers who are transitioning.
A Dec. 8 article in Canadian newspaper the National Post reports that, according to a supplement to a military manual, Canadian servicemembers have a right to dress according to their gender identity. They are expected to dress in the manner of what the supplement calls their "target gender," the article says. The supplement was sent to servicemembers via email.
"This is an important step towards recognizing a community that has always struggled for equal rights and basic human protection," the head of the Canadian branch of Parents and Friends and Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Cherie MacLeod, told the media.
But the supplement ruffled feathers, because it came in the wake of a report that asserted that the Canadian military is not doing enough for the families of troops killed in action overseas. The article cited Scott Taylor, who publishes the military publication Esprit de Corps. Taylor said that the two documents appearing so close to one another "couldn't get much worse" in terms of "timing," and added, "It's so removed from what the guys are facing over in Afghanistan." The article indicated that Taylor that the issue of supporting the families of servicemembers killed in action "doesn't really relate to dress codes of the transgendered."
It is also a relatively rare occurrence for a Canadian servicemember to transition, the article said, noting that only "one or two of [the national Defense Department's] troops [go] through sex changes a year."
But the supplemental instructions were necessary to deal with those rare instances, according to Defense Dept. spokesperson Rana Sioufi, who told the media that the military "must recruit, house, clothe, train and deploy its members. This requires clear direction and standardized instructions to deal with individuals who may not fall into the generally accepted gender categories."
The new regulations specify that transgendered troops are to be treated with "utmost privacy and respect," and recognizes what health experts have to say: transgendered individuals have a deep-seated sense that they belong to the gender other than the one they were born to. Living as the "wrong" gender can make transgendered individuals more likely to suffer mental stress and depression.
The article noted that the Canadian military provides medical support for troops in transition from one gender to the other, and has done so since 1998.
That does not mean that transgendered individuals are universally embraced within the ranks of the Canadian military. One transwoman, Cpl. Natalie Murray, told the media that her superiors sought to get her discharged as she was transitioning from male to female.
"They try and turn things around and invent an excuse so they can get rid of you, and they almost succeeded, but fortunately cooler heads way up high prevailed," Murray said on a CBC radio program. "There shouldn't be any issue at all. We're just regular people doing a regular job, the same job as everybody else."
Although the United States military, unlike the Armed Forces of our Western allies, continues to bar service by openly GLBT individuals, transgendered federal employees now enjoy a degree of protection under policies put into place by the Obama administration after a decorated veteran planning to transition was denied employment at the Library of Congress.
Diane Schroer was a top candidate for a position at the Library of Congress, but she was denied the job late in the hiring process after revealing that she was transitioning from male to female. Schroer sued, and the case drew headlines. The case was settled in Schroer's favor; she was awarded half a million dollars in back pay and damages. In the process, she disproved the theory offered by her former prospective employer that by becoming a woman she would lose the trust and confidence of her colleagues in the military.
To the contrary, media reports noted, Schroer's military peers stood by her unflinchingly. Her victory was hailed as a landmark in the progress for full equality for transgendered Americans.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2= news&sc3=&id=113896
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| | Topic: Nina's luftballons |
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| Nina's luftballons [message #123717] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 08:26 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
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Nina's luftballons
Richard Burnett
rburnett@hour.ca
December 9th, 2010
It is pure synchronicity that I am blabbing with Nina Arsenault - the most celebrated transsexual in Canada - on international Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside each Nov. 20 to memorialize those murdered because of anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.
Nina, star of her critically-hailed, autobiographical one-transwoman show, The Silicone Diaries, is very aware of this too.
"The hardest part of my transformation was when I was living as a woman but still looked very masculine and people would make fun of me on the street," Nina says. "They'd yell things out of their car. I realized there is a double standard for transsexuals, because if you're a beautiful transsexual, people will accept you more easily. If you 'pass' you will be more accepted. You may not even be noticed. But if you don't pass... That's what really hurt me - people don't see you as human."
Truth is, after 60 cosmetic surgeries over eight long years, Nina doesn't look very human.
photo: Hamish Kippen
Similarly, last winter when I asked famed NYC tranny (and photographer Dave LaChappelle's muse) Amanda Lepore what she thinks she looks like, Lepore replied, "There is something alien about my face - there is something spacey about me. If I dressed like Lady Gaga, [my face] would get lost. But because I dress retro, vamp and classic, the [alien] qualities come out more."
Nina Arsenault is equally frank. "I look like a cyborg," she says, unafraid to showcase her eye-popping 36D-26-40 bombshell body in her first play, the aptly-named I Was Barbie, which was a hit during Barbie's 50th anniversary at Toronto Fashion Week in June 2009.
But it wasn't always so.
The first scene in The Silicone Diaries is set in the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park of Beamsville, Ontario, where Arsenault lived with her parents and brother until the age of six. In this scene, young Nina (then Rodney) and the local trailer park boys gather to look at a stack of Penthouse magazines. Today, 30 years later, it is Nina who looks like she could pose for Penthouse.
"My parents are generally supportive, though my mom thinks I'm too sexy," Nina admits. "She thinks I didn't need to get my breasts done so large and my lips so big. And she thinks I wear too much make-up. She's worried about my life being difficult but now that they've come to see my plays, they get a kick out of how audacious I am."
While Disney-style drag queens now entertain the masses (I felt gay life was neutered in the hugely-popular, Broadway-bound Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical I saw at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre two weeks ago), trans is - as America's one-man gay-AP Rex Wockner told me last week - "the new way to terrorize the bourgeoisie. Gay is so passé."
Or as Nina says, "I don't differentiate between gay people and straight people anymore. I differentiate between queer people and normative people. Normative are those who buy into mainstream ideals of beauty, of where they should live and what is an acceptable lifestyle. Because gay people can now get married and adopt kids, a lot of gay people have become [conservative] too - and in some ways just as judgmental as straight people used to be. That's an unfortunate development in [today's] gay community. I just don't fit in."
Still, post-surgery Nina continued to make headlines as a hostess in Toronto nightclubs, then as a columnist for the Queen City's Fab magazine. She took it to the next level, selling out I Was Barbie at Toronto's We're Funny That Way comedy festival and Halifax's Queer Acts Festival, all the while keeping her name in the news with high-profile TV appearances (including on Fashion Television, OUT TV's The Locker Room and Kink on Showcase). Then came The Silicone Diaries in November 2009, Arsenault's tour de force retelling of her life, from the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park to becoming a sex worker to pay for all of her surgeries (which so far have cost her $200,000).
Silicone Diaries' 90-minute monologue - which will be published in an upcoming anthology of queer plays by Borealis Press - also recreates Nina's infamous "Crying Game-style collision" with Pamela Anderson's ex-hubby, rocker Tommy Lee. "One night at Toronto's swanky Ultra Supper Club he was in the sectioned off VIP area and the place was packed with star fuckers, silicone-enhanced women with bad extensions. These wanna-be Pamela Andersons were intentionally trying to capture his eye. I just happened to be there and he picked me out of the pack to come over and sit on his lap."
Needless to say, the meeting ended quickly.
"Was he polite?" Nina asks rhetorically. "I think he's a laidback guy who's seen it all. I had the sense that he's an adventurous guy with a wild sense of humour and a really big heart."
"Among other things," I crack.
Nina laughs. "Yeah, he's really cocksure!"
In another scene from The Silicone Diaries, Nina the former sex-worker slinks onstage in a transparent dress that pretty much reveals everything cocksucking did for her (Nina hasn't had the chop but is castrated). The way Nina has reshaped her body reminds me of Pete Burns of the 1980s Brit-pop band Dead or Alive, who says his body is an ever-changing piece of art.
"I feel the same way," Nina says. "And from my body, I spin off other arts, like photographs of my body, or this play about my body. The next phase of my work will document the signs of aging. I don't really see myself ever stopping. I've always taken pictures of every stage of my life and videotaped all of my surgical procedures."
When I ask Nina if she still goes for touch-ups every now and then, she laughs heartily.
"Well, I didn't go for five years! I got really sick of it, [especially after] putting all those strange dicks in my mouth [to pay for it all]!" Nina laughs again. "So I took a break. People were beginning to think I was addicted to plastic surgery and I thought I looked as good as I could possibly look. But I don't think I could let my face age naturally at this point. Because I don't have a natural face. Once it starts dropping I won't look like an old woman. I'll look quite strange, I think. We always say, 'Once you've had this much work done, you're always in the game.'"
Just like Cher and Joan Rivers. "Yeah, they're in the game," Nina agrees. "Imagine if Joan Rivers let that face fall and those cheeks started sliding down? It wouldn't look right."
This transition is at the heart of The Silicone Diaries. It's not so much about a boy becoming a girl as it is about beauty. "My story has now become about a transition from being ugly to becoming beautiful, even if beautiful means looking plastic. At some point looking beautiful became more important than looking like a woman. It became more important than looking natural. And I don't think my transition will ever end because my body is always changing, always aging. Losing beauty, faded beauty - I don't think my transition will ever be over. Maybe one day I'll even decide to get my pussy."
http://www.hour.ca/columns/3dollarbill.aspx?iIDArticle=20900
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| | Topic: DiManno: Elite athletes are not created equal |
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| DiManno: Elite athletes are not created equal [message #123715] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 08:14 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
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DiManno: Elite athletes are not created equal
By Rosie DiManno - Columnist
Published On Thu Dec 9 2010
Sprinter Caster Semenya of South Africa celebrates after winning the women's 800m at the ISTAF Berlin Grand Prix athletics
competion on Aug. 22, 2010. Gender determination rules will be issued to resolve an issue involving Semenya.
FABRIZIO BENSCH/REUTERS
Born female does not mean born entitled, except perhaps to gentlemanly courtesies and it's bad manners to demand good manners.
And born female but transgendered to male isn't a license to cheat, under the rubric of civil liberties.
In the world of sports, this distinction matters. It's not about genital arrangement or re-arrangement. It's about muscle mass and skeletal structure. It's about DNA and testosterone. It's about intrinsic biology and the superior physical strength of men.
Lana Lawless is a retired 57-year-old American police offer for 18 years a Special Weapons and Tactics cop in Southern California -- who underwent gender-reassignment surgery in 2005. In October, she filed suit against the Ladies Professional Golf Association and several of its sponsors alleging violation of her civil rights under state law after being deemed ineligible for the women's long-drive world championship. Lawless won that event in 2008. (In 2009, the swing-fling was cancelled.)
Her legal suit is still before the United States District Court in San Francisco. But the LPGA didn't wait for a verdict. Caving to pressure and clearly anxious to avoid potential injunctions that might have suspended profitable tour stops in California the governing body put its controversial "female at birth rule'' to a membership ballot last week. The ladies voted to amend the LPGA constitution and remove the "female at birth'' requirement.
As an independent organization, the LPGA is free to do as it pleases. If those women don't mind competing against transgendered individuals and few will be directly impacted by a 57-year-old one-time man in their midst, because Lawless won't be playing on their tour then it shouldn't bother anyone else either.
Yet there's an issue here that transcends the narrow universe of women's golf, and even more specifically the little-known long-drive event, which falls under LPGA standards sanctification: The conundrum of applying broad civil rights to the inherent exceptionalism of sports.
What's good for society the recognition that we're all created equal, even when some among us recreate their very identity, switching anatomy if not human atoms isn't necessarily good or right or defensible among elite athletes.
Competitors in nearly all athletic pursuits are categorized by gender, then further subdivided by weight class in sports such as boxing, age on golfing and tennis circuits, and skill level.
The objective has always been a fair playing field. Further, by definition, competitive sports are inherently (italics here) unfair (close italics) when compared to just about any other professional or recreational pursuit. There will always be a winner -- and then everybody else.
While this core reality has been blurred in, for example, our school system which increasingly ascribe to the philosophy that everybody's a winner in their own way and failure should never be attached to effort the concept makes precious little sense when imposed on sports.
Even Dr. Renee Richards, the male-to-female tennis player who famously and successfully sued tennis authorities in the 70s to compete on the women's pro tour, is now seriously conflicted about entitlement privileges in sports.
"A transsexual person, like it or not as we wish, may be in a special category,'' Richards told USA Today last week, pointing out that a young transgendered woman could have distinct advantages against women in sports where strength is a factor.
"I can feel her angst at not being accorded every last bit of rights and privileges that she feels she is now entitled to,'' Richards added, in reference to Lawless. "On the other hand, I'm not so sure I feel that she is entitled to the right of competing on the LPGA with other women, although I think in her case, it's probably just fine because she's 57.''
So there's that caveat. But where would further categorizing stratification revolving on an ideal of fairness lead us in sports? Mixed transgendered doubles at Wimbledon? A transsexual Masters for aging duffers?
The Lawless dilemma differs from the matter gender identity enigma of middle-distance Caster Semenya. The South African born and raised a female, a gender she never questioned found herself at the centre of a firestorm after crushing the field at the 2009 world championships, where she blazed her way to gold. It's believed (though never officially confirmed) that Semenya is a hermaphrodite, having both male and female sex chromosomes. She was forced to have gender testing but was cleared to compete at as a woman by the International Association of Athletics' Federation in July.
While some rivals complained that Semenya had an unfair advantage because of her masculine physiognomy and testosterone count, she has only ever competed as a female. She (italics here) is (close italics) a female.
Lawless is a female, too, both legally and in her own mind. She has purportedly been taking drugs to suppress testosterone production. "I've lost muscle mass,'' the 5-foot-11, nearly 200-pound golfer, has said. "I don't have large guns (biceps). They give you a drug that stops you from producing testosterone. Your muscles atrophy. I feel like I do not have any power.''
Her bone structure, however, remains that of a man. And her male muscling is still evident.
The International Olympic Committee stopped gender-testing years ago and opened its door to transgender athletes in 2004 provided athletes have completed reassignment surgery and had at least two years of postoperative hormone-replacement therapy. Other sports organizations such as the Women's Tennis Association have followed suit with similar policies.
But the competitive sports issue remains complex, far more so than societal and cultural attitudes. That's because sports isn't about attitudes and inclusiveness. It's about quantifiable data: speed, height, length, strength, age and, yes, gender.
That's the measure of a man. That's the measure of a woman. And sometimes, in sports at least, the two can't be conjoined into one.
http://www.thestar.com/article/904101--dimanno-elite-athlete s-are-not-created-equal
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| | Topic: Ecuador's First Gay Marriage Includes Transgender Man |
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| Ecuador's First Gay Marriage Includes Transgender Man [message #123714] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 08:08 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
Location: Salem, Oregon |
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Ecuador's First Gay Marriage Includes Transgender Man
By On Top Magazine Staff
Published: December 08, 2010
Ecuador will have its first gay marriage this Friday, December 10.
Joey Hateley and Hugo Vera will exchange vows in Quito during a civil ceremony officiated by Councilor Norman Wray, the president of the Metropolitan Commission on Gender (Comision Metropolitana de Genero), according to the website proyecto-transgenero.org.
Hateley, the artistic director of TransAction Theatre Company, transitioned from a woman to man, but is legally considered female. The British-born thirty-five-year-old Hateley and Vera, a twenty-three year-old Ecuadorian, are considered a gay couple and can only marry due to that technicality.
"The couple Hateley-Vera are considered a gay couple like any other, with the difference that they can marry and procreate," the group wrote in its announcement.
According to Hateley's profile posted on Facebook, he is an MA graduate from Lancaster University and is currently teaching at Manchester University.
"Joey has performed and worked with trans adults and vulnerable young people in Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Ecuador, India, Namibia, Peru, Quito, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, USA and the UK," the profile reads.
The couple is expected to marry at 3PM at the Civil Registry office.
http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=7048&MediaType=1 &Category=24
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| | Topic: Rural California Opens Trans Clinic |
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| Rural California Opens Trans Clinic [message #123713] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 08:03 |
Teresa
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Rural California Opens Trans Clinic
By Megan Dickey
December 08, 2010
A health center in Humboldt, Calif., Tuesday launched a monthly clinic designed with the needs of transgender people in mind.
Project HEALTH, or Project Harnessing Education Advocacy and Leadership for Transgender Health, provides much-needed health resources for transgender clients. Project HEALTH coordinator Kara Desiderio told The Times Standard there are few transgender clinics in California and that access to health services like the Humboldt Open Door Clinic remains a barrier for transgender people.
"I think it's excellent that Humboldt being such a rural area is stepping up to address this issue," Desiderio said.
The clinic will dedicate its services specifically to transgender clients the first Tuesday of the month from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/12/08/Rural_Cal ifornia_Opens_Trans_Clinic/
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| | Topic: Enough cause found to move forward with Carlson trial |
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| Enough cause found to move forward with Carlson trial [message #123711] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 07:57 |
Teresa
Messages: 9342
Registered: September 2007
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Enough cause found to move forward with Carlson trial
By William Anderson
Argus Observer
Wednesday, December 8, 2010 11:07 AM PST
PAYETTE -- A preliminary hearing for a Payette transgender resident charged with a pair of felonies determined there was enough probable cause to move forward with a trial.
Catherine Carlson, 52, has undergone a psychological evaluation and was found fit to stand trial.
At Carlson's preliminary hearing, Monday, it was decided there was enough cause to go to trial for felony charges of arson and use of a hoax destructive device. Carlson will be arraigned at 9 a.m. Jan. 7 at the Payette County Court House.
Carlson faces charges stemming from an incident that took place in the morning of July 11.
That morning, the Payette Police and Fire departments responded to a call reporting Carlson's residence, at the Northgate Trailer Park in Payette, was on fire, following an explosion. When arriving, authorities discovered what appeared to be a number of pipe bombs on the porch, along with a message saying the house was booby-trapped.
A second call to authorities reported a pick-up truck, which was later determined to be Carlson's, had been set ablaze.
The third and final call came into Payette authorities with reports of Carlson running nude along U.S. Highway 95 near Payette, while carrying what appeared to be a pipe bomb.
The pipe was not a bomb, however, but Carlson is being tried under a newer law in Idaho that went into effect the first of July. The law makes the use of a hoax destructive device, or a fake bomb, a felony. Carlson, who underwent a sex reassignment surgery in 1980, initially wanted to represent herself but has been appointed an attorney. She has stated that the fires and the bomb threats were a way to draw attention to her plight of not being recognized as a woman by government officials.
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/doc4cf fcb4c0ef3c476417850.txt
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| | Topic: Transgender writer Jennifer Finney Boylan comes home to Philadelphia area |
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| Transgender writer Jennifer Finney Boylan comes home to Philadelphia area [message #123710] |
Thu, 09 December 2010 07:35 |
Teresa
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Transgender writer Jennifer Finney Boylan comes home to Philadelphia area
Posted on Thu, Dec. 9, 2010
By Dianna Marder
Inquirer Staff Writer
CLEM MURRAY / Staff Photographer
Author Boylan is known for playing a mean rock-and-roll piano ; here she plays at her childhood home in Devon where she grew up as a boy. Boylan lives in Maine and teaches English at Colby College; her visiting professorship at Ursinus College this semester is allowing her to spend time with her mother at home.
Jennifer Finney Boylan is at ease now in the living room of the Devon home where she spent her boyhood.
She has not always been comfortable in this place.
When she lived here as 13-year-old James Richard Boylan Jr. and had the whole top floor to herself, she did her homework with the dead bolt on the bedroom door, wearing the bra and sweater she kept hidden behind the room's faux wood paneling, and trusting she'd hear the stairs creak if anyone approached.
Now a professor of creative writing at Maine's Colby College since 1988, Boylan, 52, is a visiting prof this semester at Ursinus in Collegeville. Staying in Devon has allowed Boylan cherished time with her mother, while driving to Maine once a month to be with sons Zach, 16, and Sean, 14, and her wife, Deirdre Grace.
Their 1988 marriage weathered Boylan's 2002 sexual reassignment surgery and they are together still as loving, if not entirely intimate, partners.
Jenny Boylan is a tall, slender blonde who often gets hit on by men heedless of her wedding ring. And she is happily married, buoyed by the pleasures of parenting, teaching, and writing.
Her groundbreaking memoir, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (Broadway Books, 2003), was the first best-seller by a transgender American.
It landed her on Larry King Live twice, a Barbara Walters special, the Today show, the History Channel, CBS's 48 Hours, and Oprah Winfrey (four times). She played herself in two episodes of All My Children, and Will Forte played her for a skit on Saturday Night Live.
She got, still gets, tons of letters. Some from transgender individuals and some from people coping with the difficult changes or realities in their lives.
"Moms with autistic children, men who want to act on career changes. . . . "
The recognition also led to situations that might be comical if not for their outrageous nature: "I've actually had photographers ask if they can get a shot of me putting on my panty hose."
Her second memoir, I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted (Broadway Books, 2008), is set in this Devon home, originally known as the Coffin House, for the earliest owners of the land on which it was built. It was here that she looked at her reflection in a mirror one day and saw a woman standing behind her - an ethereal image, perhaps, of the woman she would become.
She also has new work to share: a young-adult novel, Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror (Katherine Tegen Books, 2010), a Harry Potteresque work written with inspiration from her boys.
She has an essay in It Gets Better, an anthology that grew out of the YouTube project of the same name started by syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage in response to a spate of suicides by gay teens. That's due out in March.
Her newest novel, I'll Give You Something to Cry About, about a family on a road trip with a significant stop in Philadelphia, is due out from Random House in 2012.
That brings to 11 the number of books she has pounded out, perhaps a bit too forcefully.
"As a result of all that pounding on the computer keyboard and 35 years of playing piano," she says with some remorse, she developed problems with the nerves in her arms.
These days she uses a dictation system, still managing an output of 1,000 words a day.
"The situation with my arms demands that I do this," she says, "but I've found that hearing the words aloud also improves my writing."
Her parents wouldn't have wanted this.
"It broke their hearts that I became a writer, not because they didn't think I had the talent, but because it would mean a hard life. And it was. And it is."
Boylan's father (J. Richard Boylan, who was vice chairman of Provident National Bank, later PNC Bank) died well before she transitioned. Her mother, Hildegarde, displays photos of Boylan, as a college grad and as a lovely young woman, in the parlor.
"Mom still radiates optimism and hope, and I know I have that," Boylan says. "It's one of the ways I've survived being transgender.
"It can be such a ridiculous and miserable condition to find yourself in. It can tear the bark off a person."
Nearly a decade after her transition, Boylan still finds the most innocent of questions can expose a minefield. An honest answer to a simple "What does your husband do?" would demand a level of disclosure beyond what's called for in casual conversation.
She is grateful for the power her visibility lends to others, but mindful of her privacy.
"There are all kinds of activism," she says. Hers is accomplished by telling stories that make transgender people familiar to the larger population.
This month, Boylan will return to speak to students at the Haverford School, "my allegedly all-male alma mater," for the first time.
"I've spoken at boys' schools all over the country, but for the longest time [Haverford] didn't know what to do with me."
"I am the most visible transgender person in the country," she says. "But Philadelphia, which is my home, has never claimed me. Just once, I'd like to be a hometown hero."
"Maybe that's one of the reasons I came to Ursinus. To be able to live here as my own hard-won self, and to walk these beautiful streets, finally without shame and with pride."
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Contact staff writer Dianna Marder at 215-854-4211 or dmarder@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/diannamarder.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20101209_Transgen der_writer_Jennifer_Finney_Boylan_comes_home_to_Philadelphia _area.html
[Updated on: Thu, 09 December 2010 07:37]
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| Bold Crossings of the Gender Line [message #123690] |
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/fashion/09TRANS.html?_r=3& amp; amp;hp
December 8, 2010
Bold Crossings of the Gender Line
By WILLIAM VAN METER
IT'S certainly a statement on our times that, in the same month, James Franco graces the covers of GQ and Candy. In GQ, he appears in a moody head shot. In Candy, a style magazine dedicated to what it calls the "transversal" -- that is, transsexuality, transvestism, cross-dressing, androgyny and any combination thereof -- Mr. Franco, shot by Terry Richardson, vamps in trowel-applied makeup, heavy jewelry and a woman's dominatrix-style power suit.
Candy, it turns out, is but one of the more visible bits of evidence that 2010 will be remembered as the year of the transsexual. Yes, Mr. Franco is just dressing up and doesn't feel he was born the wrong sex. But it is a grand gesture of solidarity with gender nonconformists and certainly hasn't affected attendance at "127 Hours."
Other celebrities have flirted with "the other side," cross-dressing for fashion publications. On the cover of the current Industrie, Marc Jacobs is decked out in one of his signature women's designs (albeit with a beard). Japanese Vogue Hommes revealed its new male model, Jo Calderone, who was, in actuality, Lady Gaga.
Not since the glam era of the 1970s has gender-bending so saturated the news media. The difference now is that mystery has been replaced with empowerment, even pride. Consider a few happenings that have blipped recently on our radar. The blog of a young mother whose 5-year-old son had dressed like Daphne on "Scooby-Doo" for Halloween went viral, initiating a nationwide discussion on the fluidity of gender. (The mother ended up on "Today.") The performance artist Kalup Linzy became a downtown phenomenon in Manhattan for his gender-bending portrayals of soap-opera divas. Oprah Winfrey welcomed transsexual men to her program.
In November, a transgender student pledged a sorority at Trinity University in Texas. Original Plumbing, a zine for trans-guys, came out with a fashion issue.
This month, Simon & Schuster will publish "My Princess Boy," a children's book about a boy who wears pink gowns. "It's not acceptable for us to sit back when children are taking their lives because they're not accepted for who they are," said the author, Cheryl Kilodavis, who based the book on her 4-year-old son.
The only thing that would have raised more awareness of trans people would have been a link with the president -- even better, a link that rhymed. That's when the "tranny nanny," Barack Obama's transvestite nanny from his boyhood in Jakarta, Indonesia, was discovered and made headlines. "Trans people are slowly becoming a common part of popular culture," said Paisley Currah, a political science professor at Brooklyn College who specializes in transgender rights and is the author of "United States of Gender," which will be published next year.
"Sixty years ago, The New York Daily News used its whole front page to talk about Christine Jorgensen's sex change operation -- 'Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty,' " Mr. Currah said. "Now you have transgender models and mayors. They elicit interest, but it's not some incredulous response. The public is much more aware of the possibilities of transgender people existing and taking part as leaders in the social and cultural life."
And so they are. "There are always going to be people who don't fit into boxes," said Victoria Kolakowski, who was just elected a superior court judge in Alameda County in California. "What we consider to be normal is evolving and changing. That frightens many people, but it's the nature of our times." When Ms. Kolakowski takes the bench in January, she will be the nation's first transgender trial judge.
Moonlighting fashionistas dabbling in cross-dressing have surely helped advance the transsexual image, but the real strides in 2010 were made by actual transsexuals and those who define themselves on a spectrum of gender rather than simply male or female. The clearest call to arms was the arrival of the transsexual model Lea T.
For Givenchy's fall advertising campaign, Ms. T. was photographed by Mert and Marcus in a feathery blouson. When the ad was released in May, it set off a press frenzy, with Ms. T.'s modeling agency, Women, receiving more than 400 interview requests.
Ms. T., 28, has been a friend of the Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci, since she was 17. (The "T" stands for Tisci; he unofficially adopted her into his family.) She worked for the fashion house in various positions and as a fit model. It was Mr. Tisci's idea to have her in the campaign.
"He saw that my transitioning process was hard, how prejudiced people are and how I was suffering," Ms. T. said. "He wanted to make me happy to have a nice picture of me."
Ms. T. wasn't outed by the news media. In fact, it was a condition of her agreeing to do the ad that Mr. Tisci mention in interviews that she was transgender.
"When you are a transsexual, you look for your future, and you can't see it," Ms. T. said. "I thought this would be a nice message for another tranny: 'Look, we can be the same as other girls and boys.' It's small, but it makes you feel like you have a little chance. Maybe a transsexual will open a magazine and think: 'That's cool. We can be whatever we want.' That's why I did the Givenchy campaign."
Since the Givenchy ad, Ms. T. has become a popular editorial model, appearing twice in Vogue Paris. In 2011, she will be a guest on Oprah Winfrey's show in its final season.
Born in Brazil to a soccer player father and a religious Catholic mother, Ms. T. was raised in Milan, to which she has returned to await her sexual reassignment surgery. She knows it won't be a magic cure-all. "This is something you are going to keep for your life," she said. "I will always feel uncomfortable, but it will make my life a little easier, and I will look in the mirror and see something I like more."
TRANSSEXUAL models have a long lineage. After a youth spent feeling trapped in the wrong body and going through a difficult transition, modeling could be viewed as the ultimate physical validation. But for many, happiness was fleeting. There has been a transsexual moment in fashion in virtually every decade, dating to the early 1960s when April Ashley modeled for British Vogue and was photographed by David Bailey and Lord Snowden. In 1961, Ms. Ashley's transsexual status was revealed in the British tabloids, jettisoning her career and prompting the removal of her name from a film she had completed.
The Andy Warhol actress and muse Candy Darling (who inspired the naming of Candy magazine, not to mention the Velvet Underground song "Candy Says" and Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side") was a 1970s sensation. "Beautiful Darling," a touching documentary about Ms. Darling, will open next month. It traces her life from rejection to stardom and, ultimately, to her death from leukemia in 1974. She is now recognized as a pioneer in an era when it was illegal in New York City for a man to wear women's clothes, an act that was known as "impersonating a female."
"The fashion industry is embracing transsexuals as they did in the '60s and '70s," said Katie Grand, the influential stylist and editor of Love, the British alternative fashion magazine. "The difference at the moment is that high fashion has embraced these characters for advertising, as well as Vogue and Oprah Winfrey." In its last issue, Love highlighted transsexuals, and for the next issue, Ms. Grand just finished a feature in New York with transgender models, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier.
In the '80s, Stephen Sprouse's transgender model/muse was Teri Toye. "Her style was effortless and very downtown," said Connie Fleming, who in the early '90s was briefly fashion's transsexual "It" girl (then going by the name Connie Girl). "All black, the bangs -- it was very rock 'n' roll. I idolized her."
Back then, Ms. Fleming was a fixture on Thierry Mugler's runway. In 1992, she starred alongside Linda Evangelista and Nadja Auermann in George Michael's "Too Funky" video. Ms. Fleming is now a fashion illustrator, designs a clothing line and, on occasion, works as a notoriously glacial club doorperson.
"There were girls who came before me," she said, "like Tula and Tracy Africa. Before them, there was Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, who worked in fashion and were visible. It's always come in and out. It's like a flavor of the month, and let's get into it, and then there's always a backlash."
FOR the utopian Technicolor version of the trans lifestyle, there is now Candy. Introduced in 2009, the magazine was an immediate smash in the fashion world. An annual issue, which costs $55, is limited to 1,000 copies. The second issue, with Mr. Franco, sold out in two days and is going for hundreds on eBay.
"Gay magazines talk about the rights of gay people and the achievements of the gay movement," said Luis Venegas, the founder and editor. "I didn't want Candy to be like that. I wanted it to be like Vogue. There are few groups of people for whom fashion, makeup and hair is more relevant." (In the Franco issue, Mr. Venegas has a cameo, dolled up as Anna Wintour.)
Just don't call it a niche publication.
"With people like Bruce Weber, Terry Richardson and David Armstrong, it's not underground or niche," Mr. Venegas said. "It's something that everybody, especially in the fashion and art world, could be interested to look at."
For all of this newfound gender liberation, there are people who worry that it is just a passing fancy.
"There's room to be proud of transgender and gender-nonconforming people positively profiled in the media," said Ady Ben-Israel, the program coordinator at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in Manhattan. "At the same time, it's important to advocate for sustained media attention, not just celebrating people who attain a particular beauty standard that reinforces gender norms, which are a source of a lot of the difficulty for trans people in the first place."
Ms. T. imagines the heightened visibility of transsexuals as the precursor of a new enlightenment.
"I hope we have a big revolution," she said, "and people change their minds about us -- that it is just the beginning."
[Updated on: Fri, 10 December 2010 13:59]
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