Chris Cadelago Surely the judges, seated at a narrow table facing the stage, don't know that most nights she cries herself to sleep. That she came to Los Angeles from Tahiti six years ago to be a star, and when that didn't work, traded sex for rent money. That she's tried to take her own life more times than she can say because she's always hated that thing between her legs, because she's a woman trapped in a man's body. "Are you ready, Lani?" asks a judge from out front. Lani Manoa walks to the end of the stage, grips the microphone and lets loose her rendition of Celine Dion's "The Greatest Reward." Manoa belts out the lyrics as if she's desperate, as if this chance to become a performer may just save her life. "They told me my voice gave them chills," Manoa, 25, said afterward. "For the first time, maybe the first time in my life, I knew this was just the beginning." . . .Read More
4 May 2008
(05-04) 04:00 PDT Hollywood -- The woman in a slinky black dress with a tropical flower tucked behind her ear waits backstage, nerves steady.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
AsiaSF gender-bending club goes Hollywood
Doctor becomes advocate through fight for legislation
By ASHLEY SMITH
4 May 2008
The political fight picked up steam at a potluck supper one Sunday. Dr. Jennifer Madden's task was to drum up support for a bill expected to be nothing short of wildly unpopular.
And as far as she knew, the people gathered for dinner had never done this type of thing before. But there was excitement in the room.
Madden, a physician living in Nashua, was about to take on the insurance industry. She was to testify before a commerce subcommittee, with seasoned health-care lobbyists working against her. The bill fell under a category of legislation Gov. John Lynch had said he would not support because of the already high cost of health-insurance premiums.
When the hearing day finally arrived in early 2007, the group of 15 or so walked to the third floor of the Legislative Office Building in Concord. People gathered in the hallway were laughing at the bill's description posted on the wall.
"They were like, 'Oh, transsexuals, they want hormones?' " Madden said. "But when we got in that room and we started to testify, we changed things."Madden later found out the subcommittee members had planned to kill the bill. They would hear the testimony as planned, but had already decided to vote it down. But something shifted in that room that day, and they didn't vote it down. . . .Read More
School challenge: Transgender student is age 9
By Joelle Farrell and John Sullivan
May 3, 2008
or school officials in Haverford Township, the challenge was daunting: What do you do when a 9-year-old student, with the full support of his parents, decides that he is no longer a boy and instead is a girl?
Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a "social transition" for their child.
The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school's 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls' clothes and be called by a girl's name.
Some parents objected. Eight called the principal to ask that their child not attend the session, and some posted angry messages on the Haverford Township blog.
"Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote the parent who started the blog thread, which had been viewed more than 3,000 times as of yesterday. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow."
Other parents thought the school should not have called attention to an already delicate situation.
"I did not think that the letter needed to go out," said Valerie Huff, whose daughter is friends with the transgender student. "The kids don't make any big deal about it at all." . . .Read More
Egyptian Pharaoh May Have Been Natural Transsexual
May 04, 2008 BALTIMORE — Akhenaten wasn't the most manly pharaoh, even though he fathered at least a half-dozen children. In fact, his form was quite feminine. And he was a bit of an egghead. So concludes a Yale University physician who analyzed images of Akhenaten for an annual conference Friday at the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the deaths of historic figures. The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh's body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Dr. Irwin Braverman believes. And Akhenaten's head was misshapen because of a separate condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age. . . .Read More
Transsexual husband annuls marriage and enters into civil partnership with wife to keep pension benefits
Two women have married each other in a civil partnership - more than 30 years after they became husband and wife.
Martin Packer had to annul his marriage to Linda so he could be legally recognised as a woman after a sex change.
This left both of them facing a financial blow as they would have had to forfeit certain tax and pension rights. . . .Read More
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Transgender voice - Beginning
Hello everyone, this is my first voice video where I try to give some tips as a beginner in making my voice more feminine if you are male to female like me. . . .Read More
Gender Outlaws: Switching from a man to a woman (or vice versa)
Daisy Grewal, Ph.D.
April 23, 2008
Transsexuals and transgendered people can often tell us a great deal about our society because they've experienced what most of us never will: being perceived as a man or a woman in the same lifetime.
A worthy read on this topic is Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw, which chronicles some of her experiences as a transsexual woman. One memorable passage describes the first time Kate walked into a store after being able to successfully pass as a woman. She was shocked to find that nobody was treating her with any respect. A so-called "normal" woman who's been a woman her entire life would never know the difference. . . .Read More
Asheville's transgender community speaks
Lisa Gillespie • April 30, 2008
ASHEVILLE – At age 8, Holly Boswell decided she had magic powers.
Her mother had given Holly a Peter Pan book, and she fixated on the character of Tinkerbell. Holly was then a little boy, but she had been questioning her gender identity since age 2 or 3, she said. “I was thinking to myself, What am I — a fairy?”
Only much later did she find another word for herself: Transgendered.Boswell was one of four transgendered Asheville residents who spoke Tuesday night at an event organizers called “Transcendence.” The 90-minute program of documentary film clips and discussion was held at the Unitarian Universalist Church. . . .Read More
Lesbians forced to live in anonymity in India
Shai Venkatraman
April 29, 2008
In the US, lesbian talk show host Ellen Degenres created history as the country's topmost television star.
But in India, in Tamil Nadu, transgender athlete Shanthi attempted suicide because she was constantly humiliated about her sexuality.
In a more progressive Kerala, lesbian suicides continue to be on the rise but their police still write them off as ordinary deaths. To this day, sexual minorities in India, especially women are outcastes, shunned by society even their own families.
In the anonymity of our cities, they still find spaces to blend in. But in rural India, coming out means violence, brutality and even death.
Travelling from Gujarat to Karnataka NDTV heard stories of transgenders, bisexuals and lesbians - some visible, most invisible.
Julie met Rekha when she was thirteen years old. Both of them belong to lower middle class families of a village in Kerala. They were classmates and good friends. . . .Read More
Students close mouths, open minds for Day of Silence
Nicole Higginbotham
4/29/08
What began as a University of Virginia class assignment in 1996 has since become a national event, allowing students and faculty across the U.S. to speak up on issues concerning gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals in the school setting.
On April 24, UNO participated in the Day of Silence event, with JohnCarl Denkovich, director of the Gender and Sexual Orientation Agency, organizing the day's proceedings. Many students participated on campus by not speaking and handing out information to other students.
During an event in the Milo Bail Student Center, several speakers addressed issues relating to discrimination and bullying including Meredith Bacon, professor in the political science department, and Sara Barnett, GLSEN Jumpstart/Central High School Student Leader.
GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, is a national organization that focuses on sexual identity and orientation acceptance.
"There are many people … who feel very isolated on campus and cannot be who they are," said Joseph Price, professor in UNO's English department. . . .Read More
Report reveals disturbing divide in treatment of transexuals in the EU
By Adam Lake • April 29, 2008
The International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA)-Europe and TransGender Europe have published a comprehensive report on the experiences of health care by transgender people in European Union.
The revealing poll shows the disturbing divide in the treatment on transgender people in Europe.
The legal survey is the result of the largest and most comprehensive data collection on transgender people's lived experiences to date.
In the UK, there is estimated to be around 15,000 transsexual people who self-identify as the opposite gender from the physical body they were born with.
Around a third of them have surgery to change their bodies to be the opposite sex
The report has show how life can still be very hard for transgender people in some parts of Europe.
Many transgender citizens still fear for their safety, the report concluded.
It also looked at how many trans people were unable to work due to discrimination, and facing great difficulties in obtaining access health care as well as gender reassignment services.
Transsexual people experience varying degrees of acceptance around the world. . . .Read More
Monday, April 28, 2008
Shaving my legs is such a drag
April 28, 2008
Contributed by Julia Serano
I had about seven different conflicting thoughts/emotions upon viewing this video:
1) Oh my god, I *cannot* believe that companies are actually using personal endorsements from transgender-spectrum people to help sell their products to non-trans women. How groundbreaking!
2) And at the same time, how disturbing! I think I am experiencing the same queasy feeling right now that old-school gay/queer rights activists most certainly felt when beer companies first began offering to sponsor pride parades and queer events. . . .Read More, and the many comments.
A coming out party
In the coming months, you're going to hear more from Ottawa's transgendered community as it makes an effort to gain understanding and acceptance
By ANN MARIE MCQUEEN
26 April 2008
He works for one of Ottawa's three emergency services. A father in his 30s, married, with two children.
Privately, he's been putting on women's clothes since he was eight.
He fears what would happen if anyone found out.
Even if he was officially accepted on the job, he believes, knowing his co-workers' attitudes, it would wreak havoc on his career.
"Unfortunately," he says,"we have to cloak ourselves." . . .Read More
TV has never seen more transgender characters
By P. Ryan Baber
25 April 2008LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Although long known to the gay community, breakout star Candis Cayne became a household name this year with her recurring role as the male-to-female transgender character Carmelita on ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money."
She also made history as the first transgender actress to play a transgender character in primetime, and she even shared an onscreen kiss with William Baldwin.
"It just never would have occurred to me to cast a person that wasn't transgender," says creator and executive producer Craig Wright. "The minute Candis walked through the door, there wasn't a single ounce of opposition."
This was a bold step for a network at a time when most LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) ground is broken on cable. With two cable networks -- Here! and Logo -- providing dedicated gay content, and numerous other cable networks featuring LGBT characters in original miniseries, documentaries and dramas, the LGBT experience is being portrayed with more complexity than ever. . . .Read More
Opening the Door to the Inclusion of Transgender People
New publication provides invaluable ‘how-to’ advice to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations seeking to become fully transgender-inclusive | |
| WASHINGTON, DC - April 28 - The National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force today released a joint publication titled Opening the Door to the Inclusion of Transgender People: The Nine Keys to Making Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Organizations Fully Transgender-Inclusive, geared toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations. “Transgender inclusion has been an important issue in the LGBT community, particularly in the past year. Yet, many organizations struggle with how exactly to become fully transgender-inclusive. We are excited to offer this free new resource,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE). Opening the Door, which is based on years of personal and professional experience within LGBT organizations, makes the case for full inclusion at every level of an organization. It examines the need for genuine, consistent advocacy for inclusion of gender identity and expression in policies, programs, legislative stances and public positions, and explores critical issues such as understanding the transgender experience and the role of an ally, how to address staffing issues, dealing with prejudice and ways to further outreach. The voices of LGBT leaders discussing real-life experiences with transgender inclusion are found throughout the guide. . . .Read More |
Peter Kay targets TV talent shows with new comedy
Apr 28 2008
COMEDIAN Peter Kay is making a TV series based on talent shows - starring himself as a tubby transsexual.
Britain's Got The Pop Factor will parody The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, having previously sent up club acts in Phoenix Nights.
This time, one of the characters Kay will play is transsexual singer Geraldine King - whose real name later emerges as Gerry. . . .Read More
Hot Docs Review: Be Like Others
Apr 28th 2008
by Monika Bartyzel
There is one moment in Tanaz Eshaghian's Be Like Others that starts by plucking at our insistent hopes for happiness. Hungry for love and affection from his family, Ali Askar tells a story about being thrilled when his father insisted that Ali have breakfast with him. While it was such a simple action, it was one with insistence that Ali had never seen before. This act seemed full of the loving camaraderie and acceptance that the young man had dreamed of. His father poured them tea, but Ali refused to drink it; he realized that this wasn't a warm act of fatherly love. This wasn't a breakthrough moment in their relationship. Ali's father was trying to kill him with rat poison. His father would rather kill his son than allow him to get the sex change that he yearns for.
But it is more complicated than a transsexual wanting a sex change. In Iran, this matter is complicated because homosexuality is punishable by death, and transgendered lifestyles are not an option. . . .Read More
Thursday, April 24, 2008
JACKSON INSPIRED BY DRAG QUEENS
Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com)
4.23.2008
Janet Jackson is so impressed by the legion of drag queens who attempt to mimic her act she'd like to be one.
The Control hitmaker admits she checks out drag stars who have their own Janet Jackson act whenever she hears of one - and some are amazing.
She chuckles, "One of them was at the Baton (Show Lounge) in Chicago. This was a few years ago. And she did a wonderful job. . . .Read More
