Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Savage Love: Letters
by Dan Savage
There are times when I suspect you give an outrageous response to a reader so you can get a free column out of the angry responses.
Regarding your response to Auntie Mame about the femmy 5-year-old nephew, I think calling his father’s reaction emotional abuse is completely over the top. Restrictive and unfair? You better believe it. But abuse? Nothing in her letter leads me think the kid would get pulled from his home by a social worker.
If the dad were abusing the kid, he’d be in his face calling him a sissy and a namby-pamby or whatever, and making him sit in a dark room. Or making him eat dog shit to make a man out of him (see the bookTen Points by Bill Strickland). Leave the term “abuse” for those who deserve it.
Iowan Dissenter
I just wanted to commend you on the superb advice you gave the lady who’s worried about hiding her nephew’s homosexuality from her brother. My son is exactly like the little guy described, and apart from making me sit throughHigh School Musical 2 instead of father-and-son rugby games, I couldn’t love him more. It saddens me that there are parents who set themselves and their kids up for the most astonishing amount of heartache by denying a kid’s sexuality.
All Power to Auntie Mame
“Auntie Mame” has a 5-year-old nephew who likes to play dress-up in girl’s clothes, and the father has forbidden him from doing so. You wrote that there’s “a 100 percent chance that your brother will one day regret his actions,” and even to tell the nephew that his father “will come around one day.”
I’ve got to call 100 percent bullshit on you. In fact, I’m sort of forced to wonder what planet you’ve been living on recently. I was also caught cross-dressing by my parents at about the same age—and their displeasure was clearly communicated to me, and I dropped it for the rest of the time I lived with them (mostly). We’ve never discussed it since—I’m now in my late 30s—and there’s no way in hell my parents are going to “one day regret their actions/come around.” Late in high school I was told that the one thing that would get me disowned would be to “run off with” my male best friend at the time.
Is my life destroyed? No, I really don’t think so. Perhaps screwed up a bit—I couldn’t even call this “emotional violence,” frankly, just a big difference in taste.
But at any rate,please don’t get the hopes up of Auntie Mame and her nephew in such an unrealistic fashion. Waiting for an acceptance that never comes may be far more hurtful, on an ongoing basis, than just accepting that your father and you don’t like all the same things.
Been There, Done That
While I don’t disagree with the advice you gave Auntie Mame—be supportive and prepare to provide more emotional and physical support—I wonder if the nephew in question isn’t experiencing more of a gender-identity challenge than one of sexual orientation. Yes, there’s the whole “Zac Efron is cute” thing, but what the heck does that mean when you’re 5?
As a breeder female, I chose at that age to play with the boys because they had trucks, and got dirty, and mixed up weird botanical crap found in the back yard and dared you to eat it. That was cool. Although I identify as female, I was drawn to the power of male environments. Perhaps young nephew isn’t even gender-identity challenged—he just likes the really fun—and powerful—parts about being a girl.
Plenty of self-respecting gay men never thought of putting on makeup and dancing to show tunes. Many have. Many females have never been enticed by silly boy shit. Many have. How ’bout we add the advice of not making assumptions about our young nephew while providing a safe space in which he can work it out for himself?
HFP
I was delighted to see Auntie Mame’s letter today, because I’ve been wondering for two years whether my 6-year-old son might be gay. It’s fine with me whatever his sexual orientation is, but one wants to know, and to be aware of who your children really are so you can be sure to parent them the right way. And I think the last thing you want, no matter what age your kids are, is toask them these things, especially when they’re sweet and shy and sensitive. You just want the conversation comfortable so they can tell you things.
Anyhow, two years ago he started asking whether men can marry men (I tell him people can marry whomever they love), and pointing out that “boys are much prettier than girls.” He’s sweet, shy, gentle and musical, and loves to paint his nails and dress up. He once asked wistfully if YouTube had any videos of “two men mating” (I assured him it didn’t).
This is all fine, and not a parenting challenge, and he’ll grow up to be darling whatever his sexual orientation is. But what has surprised me is the number of our liberal, open-minded, non-homophobic friends whose reaction when we would mention this is that “no one could possibly know at age 5 what their sexual orientation could be.” That seems wrong to me. You don’t have to know anything about sex, or to want to have it yet, to know what kind of person you are interested in. I knew perfectly well at age 4 that I was a princess and that I would marry a prince, and that princes were in some way attractive, even if I wanted nothing to do with them in real life.
Love My Son
I love your column, and think that 99 percent of the time, you are bang on, primarily because you recommend honesty and communication. However, this time I think you really blew it, primarily because you recommended dishonesty and subterfuge.
You were right on when you said the homophobic father was endangering his relationship with his son. As I once said to a homophobic mother: “Your attitude toward your son is never going to make him sorry that he’s gay. It’s only going to make him sorry that you’re his mother.”
However, you advised Auntie Mame to do the gay stuff with little Johnny on the sly. There we part ways. It’s not addressing the real problem, which is the father’s, not the boy’s. He’s learning at a young age to disrespect his father (who, I know, already disrespects Johnny), to do things on the sly (shades of Larry Craig), to not trust his father, to find an adult who will indulge him (manipulation), to lie, and worst of all, to bein the closet about who he is.
It’s all going to come out anyway—what 5-year-old can keep a secret, or even understand that one must be kept? Johnny will be punished, and probably the worst thing, Auntie Mame will be denied access, and then that little boy will have no one in his life to support him.
Better for Auntie Mame to bravely tell Daddy the damage he may be doing to his son and to his relationship with his son, and offer to pay for a few visits to a therapist for Daddy. Communication is what’s necessary here, not ideology or self-righteousness. A little boy’s future is at stake.
Ben J.
Auntie Mame and you both are making an assumption that is likely wrong. Lets go over the evidence: The young nephew likes “putting on makeup, watching and dancing along to musicals with vampy women (likeChicago), (and) playing dress-up.” This doesn’t sound so much like the child is gay, but rather that he’s possibly (male to female) transgendered. I should know because I am myself.
If instead of a nephew doing these things it was a niece, no one would mind or give it a second look. Assuming someone is gay and not possibly transgendered when in fact they are transgendered can cause just as much harm as assuming they’re straight when in fact they’re gay.
Having had my say, I will agree with your overall advice regarding the letter writer to be supportive and how to deal with the dad. Ideally all parents will let their children grow up to be whoever they will be free of preconceptions.
TGIRL
Transgender Rights Are A Worldwide Struggle
One of the things I've noticed over the last few years is how transpeople all over the world are gathering the courage to stand up, proudly proclaim their pride in who we are and fight for our human rights to be respected. The battle over ENDA in the United States is just one front in this struggle to not only gain recognition and respect but to be able to openly and honestly live our lives.
As a transgender person, my brothers and sisters are everywhere. I am not limited to the borders of the United States or my ancestral home continent of Africa in this regard. Any success that we as transpeople have somewhere on planet Earth affects me positively. I also share the pain and disappointment when I hear about the violence and repression faced by transpeople in many parts of Africa, Central America, South America, Jamaica and the United States or the legal setbacks in various countries when it comes to transgender issues.
I cheered when Israel's Dana International won the Eurovision song contest. I'm envious of my sisters in Thailand who get to transition early without the faith-based hatred that we face here in the States. I marvel at the beauty of the transwomen from Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and other parts of the globe. I was moved to tears when Georgina Beyer became the first transwoman ever elected to a national legislative body as a member of New Zealand's parliament. I was happy to see that then 12 year old Kim in Germany was allowed to transition and is now happily growing up as a teen aged girl. I'm thrilled by the victories that Spanish transpeople gained in terms of their name change rights. I was fascinated to discover that transpeople even exist in Iran and other parts of the Middle East.
I jumped for joy when the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 was passed by the British Parliament. The recent Irish case allowing a transwoman there to change birth documents will hopefully help us here in the States.
Some of my early role models when I was growing up in the 70's were international in scope such as Britain's Caroline Cossey. I'm inspired to fight harder for my rights here in the States by drawing on the examples of courage from Ugandan Victor Juliet Mukasa , the Queen of Africa and transactivists in Argentina.
And my thoughts are reciprocated in other parts of the world as well. The upcoming Transgender Day of Remembrance started here in the States but has quickly become a worldwide event. I was pleased to discover that my blog is read internationally when I noted that Portugal's Eduarda Santos links her transgender blog to various posts of mine on occasion. I hope that you international readers are enjoying getting to learn about what life is like for a transgender person who also happens to be an American proud of her African roots.
I'm delighted to see that transgender pageants are exploding in popularity in the Philippines, Thailand and Great Britain and that our transpeeps in South Korea, thanks to Harisu, can not only get their name changes done but get married as well.
Even China has an emerging transgender community with Chen Lili as its poster girl. And like Georgina Beyer, more transpeople are getting elected to public office in various countries, including my own.
We are all interconnected. Transpeople know this lesson better than anyone. Just look at how SRS technology advanced. It was an international effort and we traveled to wherever it was available.
In 1952 the late Christine Jorgenson got her pioneering surgery done in Denmark. Others later flocked to Morocco in the 1960s to get the updated techniques from Dr. Georges Burou that modern SRS is based on. The late Dr. Stanley Biber of Trinidad, CO built upon and perfected it during the 70's and 80's. Montreal surgeons Dr. Yvon Menard and Dr. Pierre Brassard built on that work and Dr. Michel Seghers was doing cutting edge SRS surgeries as well in Belgium. Now transpeople flock to Thailand from all over the world to take advantage of the reasonably-priced cutting edge work of the Thai doctors to get it done.
The civil rights struggle, like the medical advances in SRS techniques is an international one as well. We may feel in our various countries from time to time that we're fighting it alone, but we aren't.
But the fight is an ongoing one. Just as we have religious zealots in the United States seeking to retard our progress, so do our brothers and sisters around the world. Islamic fundamentalists are opposing our sisters in Malaysia and Indonesia. Nigerians have the double whammy of being opposed by Islamic and Christian fundamentalists.
Like the US Republican party, there are politicians pandering to the bigot vote like Prime Minster John Howard of Australia and our transsisters are caught in the crossfire. The Catholic Church has moved from an affirming position on transgender issues to an increasingly intolerant one under Pope Benedict XVI. Our sisters in the Philippines have recently suffered a blow from their Supreme Court in terms of being able to change their birth documents.
As former South African president Nelson Mandela so eloquently stated, 'the people are their own liberators.'
We must take his words to heart and act as our own liberators. We must continue to support each other, reach out to supportive family members and friends, win allies, pool information, strategies, tactics and information so that we reach our ultimate goal: respect of our humanity.
We transpeople should never give up hope. We must continue to fight to have our basic human rights in our various homelands respected and protected. That must happen if we wish to contribute our talents to help build our communities and our respective nations. We must be able to work without being harassed or denied employment we are qualified for. We mush be able to live quality lives without having fear, shame, guilt and the specter of violence heaped upon us. We must be able to freely use our talents to accomplish whatever we set our minds to do and have the faith to believe that one day we will prevail over the Forces of Intolerance.
And yes, I believe this will happen in my lifetime. . . .
Transsexual women
The Court recently denied the petition of Rommel Jacinto Dantes Silverio, a transsexual, to change the entries in his birth certificate in the Office of the Civil Registrar -- specifically, his gender from male to female and his first name to “Mely.” This despite the fact that Silverio had undergone what is technically called a “sex-reassignment surgery” in Bangkok in 2001 to become a biological woman. The Court, however, ruled that while the petitioner “may have succeeded in altering his body and appearance through the intervention of modern surgery, no law authorizes the change of entry as to sex in the civil registry for that reason. There is no special law in the country governing sex reassignment and its effect. This is fatal to petitioner’s case.” The Court concluded that it is up to Congress, if it chooses, “to determine what guidelines should govern the recognition of the effects of sex reassignment.”
The riveting story of Rommel/Mely Silverio is detailed in an intimate Internet account titled “My Life as a Transsexual Woman,” which he/she divides into: (1) pre-gender transition from birth to 1995; (2) pre-surgery days in Hawaii from 1996 to 2000; and (3) post-surgery life in the Philippines from 2001 to the present.
It was as a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa that I came to know Rommel very well. His late mother Anita I knew back in Manila. He was all of 230 pounds but over time I could notice a gradual change in his appearance. He had embarked on a regimen of female hormone pills and estrogen shots. I teasingly told him one day that he was becoming “sexy” but to be “careful.” By the end of 1996, he had already lost 50 pounds. He continued the routine until he lost another 30 pounds. So by now, he was down to 155 pounds evenly distributed in his 5’8” frame. He was becoming a woman and gaining a “greater sense of self-esteem and confidence.”
He went on to defend his dissertation on youth sexual behavior in 2000, and had acquired a “boyfriend” who consented to have him go to Bangkok for the sex change. For about three hours, a renowned Thai surgeon performed vaginoplasty and breast augmentation, increasing her breast size from A to D. Her recovery and post-surgery therapy lasted 18 months, after which she introduced her boyfriend, the man she was going to marry, to her family.
While Rommel had become Mely, for which she was ecstatic, several problems arose. The name on her passport was that of a man and inspectors couldn’t reconcile this with the tall, svelte and well-dressed woman standing in front of them. She had to have two sets of documentation all the time to attest to the fact that Rommel and Mely were one and the same. Bank personnel would do all sorts of checking, so she would seek out only those that already knew her to avoid any confusion and embarrassment. And so on. She could have easily come back to the United States where she wouldn’t have these hassles.
But discriminatory comments such as that the Philippines is not ready for transsexual women like her only increased her resolve to be treated equally and justly. Such remarks only “added fuel to my desire to be regarded as a professional colleague, to be treated with respect as a woman, and to be given a fair chance at life in general.” She escalated her personal struggle to attain “full legal recognition as a woman here in the Philippines, my country of birth” by petitioning the courts to change her gender and first name. The Court of Appeals denied her petition, which was a devastating blow. I am certain that the Supreme Court verdict upholding the lower court was even more devastating.
So, what now? I have great compassion for Mely -- whom I will always remember as Rommel -- who is really a very bright and likable individual. What does it matter really -- Rommel or Mely, man or woman -- it’s the same human being! And she has gone through the whole process with extreme pain of validating the essence of her identity and humanity. What more can we ask? But the law as they say is cruel, but it’s the law.
As a footnote, the large majority of transsexual (TS) transitions work out very well over the long term as documented in Lynn’s “Transsexual Women’s Successes.” However, in some cases, complete TS transitions “fail to meet very unrealistic expectations, and way too late the transitioner may realize that undergoing sex reassignment surgery (SRS) was a BIG mistake.” Among the “regretters” is Renee Richards, who was born a male but transitioned as a female via surgery in 1975 at age 40 and became a famous tennis player. She wished she had not done it, but too late. She realized she would always be seen as a transsexual and never as a real woman that she had earlier hoped to become.
My only hope for Rommel/Mely is that she won’t regret the biggest decision she made in her life, and that society will become increasingly tolerant, if not accepting, of diversity in all its possible senses and meanings.
Belinda A. Aquino is director of Philippine Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she has been professor of Political Science and Asian Studies.
Over One-third Of Former American Football Players Had Sexual Relations With Men, Study Claims
In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral sex.
The 47 men, aged 18-23, were all American Football players who previously played at the high school (secondary school) level but had failed to be picked for their university’s team and were now cheerleaders instead. They were at various universities from the American south, Mid-West, west and north west.
Dr Anderson, now of the University of Bath, UK, said the study showed that society’s increasing open-mindedness about homosexuality and decreasing stigma concerning sexual activity with other men had allowed sportsmen to speak more openly about these sexual activities. He found that this sex came in the form of two men and one woman, as well as just two men alone.
He said that the sexual acts described differed from acts of ‘hazing’ or team-bonding that often include pretend-homosexual acts.
“The evidence supports my assertion that homophobia is on the rapid decline among male teamsport athletes in North America at all levels of play,” he writes in his study, entitled ‘Being masculine is not about whom you sleep with…Heterosexual athletes contesting masculinity and the one-time rule of homosexuality’. It will be published in the journal Sex Roles in January. . . .
Either way, "Miriam" an awful dating show
There's Something About Miriam , 10 p.m., Fox Reality Channel)
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Yes, there is something about Miriam, all right. She's a guy. Or, well, a pre-op transsexual, anyway. Welcome to "The Crying Game: The TV Series."
Six strapping heterosexual British dudes. One stunning Latin model. A mansion in Ibiza. The guys compete in this "reality" dating show to be the one who gets to go on a weeklong yacht cruise with Miriam and pick up 10,000 pounds ($20,670) in the bargain. What they don't know, of course, is that she is in one very important area actually a he.
Fox Reality Channel snatches this show whole from the U.K., where it's said to have been a controversial hit nearly four years ago under the title "Find Me a Man." The suitors here don't become privy to their prize's true anatomical nature until near the end of their quest, which is simply cruel. Miriam offers that she is into "straight guys," so it's no wonder she has been so frustrated in her search for Mr. Right to this point. That penis thing keeps getting in the way.
The contestants here engage in various physical challenges -- under the direction of a genuine no-nonsense drill instructor -- to impress the object of their affection. Previews from upcoming episodes confirm that there is early speculation about Miriam's gender among the lads. It's undeniable that Miriam, who was 21 at the time, is beautiful. But it's also obvious that she is pretty dim, making her an appropriate subject for this pointless piece of exploitation. . . .
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Two former men share transgender experience
Diana Bubser
October 31, 2007
Transgender activists Barbara "Babs" Casbar and Terry McCorkell spoke to a crowd of about 30 College students Thursday night in Forcina Hall to address the historical, political and social issues of transgender advocacy. They also shared their own gender identity experiences: the two former men now each lead the life of a woman.
"This room is a pronoun-free zone," McCorkell declared.
The lecture was presented by PRISM, the College's organization supporting the equality of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.
"We are always looking to educate ourselves and others," Angel Hernandez, president of PRISM, said.
Wearing a multicolored dress and flashy jewelry, McCorkell spoke of her teenage years, when she was not only interested in girls, but wanted to be one. However, she waited until her 30s to join transgender support groups and start communicating with others about the issue.
The work McCorkell did in the 1990s laid the foundations for New Jersey Laws against Discrimination, and she was honored by then-Sen. Jon S. Corzine as "Activist of the Year."
"I used to be shy as a man, but learned to be assertive as a woman," she said.
Casbar referred to herself as a "woman scarred by many years of testosterone." After her wife died, she realized she was a "lower-class citizen." Instead of crying, she decided to take action.
Casbar is now the head of the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey and serves on the boards of Garden State Equality and New Jersey Stonewall Democrats.
A PowerPoint presentation was then shown explaining the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.
"Sexual orientation is who you are attracted to, while gender identity is who you identify with," it said.
McCorkell feels New Jersey is the "most knowledgeable on gender discrimination" of all the states. However, she also points out that transgender acceptance is not nationwide. . . .
Reform Jewish Leader Calls on House to Pass Transgender Inclusive Non-Discrimination Act
Contact: Sean Thibault or Kate Bigam
202.387.2800 | news@rac.org
Washington, D.C. October 29, 2007 — In anticipation of this week’s House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, issued the following statement:
We are pleased by the House’s planned vote later this week on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that will provide long-overdue protection to gay and lesbian Americans at risk of workplace discrimination based on their sexual orientation. The right to earn a living without fear of discrimination ought to be extended to all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet in 31 states, it is legal to fire, demote, or fail to promote an employee based on sexual orientation; in 39 states, it is legal to do so based on gender identity.
That is why it is essential that the House also pass an amendment to be offered by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), which will add gender identity protections to the bill. Extending workplace protections to the entire gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community bolsters the moral power of this legislation.
Throughout our nation’s history, our leaders have had to make many tough decisions about issues of justice and morality. Rarely have these decisions been easy. As Reform Jews, we are guided by Jewish tradition and text that teaches us that all human beings are created b'tselem Elohim, in the Divine image. Our nation’s sacred texts also guide us, as well as Americans of all faiths and no faith, reminding us that we are all created equal. We look forward to working with members of Congress in support of legislation that achieves that goal.
###
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is the
Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism, whose more
than 900 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, whose membership
includes more than 1800 Reform rabbis
India: Depicting the transgender truth
Shai Venkatraman
Tuesday, October 30, 2007: (Mumbai):
It's a community most people ridicule or prefer to keep at arm's length.
But what does it mean to cross the gender divide, to be free of being male as society defines it?
That's the theme explored in the film Our Family.
A true story about a family of transgender women that unfolds over three generations.
The film's set in Tamil Nadu and tells the story of Aasha, Seetha and Dhana, who are bound together by ties of adoption.
Aasha is the grandmother, Seetha her adopted daughter and Dhana who is adopted by Seetha and her partner Selvam.
"We wanted to make a film which would question the way people look at the hijras. We wanted to look at the human rights violation, the stigmas and also look at the warmth and celebratory aspect of it," said Dr Anjali Monteiro, Filmmaker.
The film documents their journey as they discover their sexual identities and progressively blur the lines between themselves and what's seen as normal social behaviour.
"They become a regular family. So the woman Seetha does the cooking. She does assert herself but in trying to do so she asserts her womanly identity even more, one of the things that struck us was that they were normal but in trying to be normal they had to play out the politics of being normal in some sense," said K Jayanshanker, Filmmaker.
The film will not release commercially and will remain limited to the festival circuit. Clearly that's one barrier that will take some time crossing. . . .
Stereotypes under fire
When Knoll Larkin was coming out, he said he thought everyone smoked.
Smoking seemed to be accepted as a part of the bar culture that historically provided the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community with a safe haven, said Larkin, health services coordinator for Affirmations, an LGBT community center in Ferndale, Mich.
These perceived high smoking rates inspired Affirmations to collect information on the number of actual smokers in the LGBT community and gather their views on the health, social and economic aspects involved with smoking.
It also prompted their support for a Michigan bill that would ban smoking in places of employment, such as bars and restaurants.
Affirmations’ study — using information compiled in 2006 — revealed that 53 percent of the more than 350 people surveyed were past or current smokers, 33 percent of which identified as current smokers.
The average age of survey respondents was 35, with a range of 16 to 66. Most respondents, 76 percent, identified as gay or lesbian, 14 percent identified as bisexual and 2 percent identified as heterosexual, according to the study.
Contributing factors to smoking for LGBT people include heightened stress levels, increased incidence of substance use, reduced access to health care and targeted marketing by the tobacco industry, according to the study.
Mandi Rabe, a member of People Respecting the Individuality of Students at MSU, or PRISM, said she doesn’t see the LGBT community as being affected by smoking more than any other population.
“I think it’s still a stereotype that the queer population does more drugs,” said Rabe, a political theory and constitutional democracy sophomore. “With my own involvement in the community, I don’t see it any more. Clearly out of all the stereotypes, it’s one of the least worrisome — but it’s still something that needs to be dealt with.”
According to the American Cancer Society, more than 30,000 LGBT people die from tobacco-related diseases each year.
Smoking also increases the risk of blood clots in transgender women who take estrogen, and heart disease in transgender men who take testosterone, according to the National Coalition for LGBT Health.
David Jaques, president of Respecting Individuals on Neutral Grounds, or RING, said the number of LGBT and heterosexual smokers seems to be proportionate.
“It’s like saying gay people ride more bikes than straight people — there’s not a correlation in my mind,” he said.
The difference in generations also should be taken into account, Jaques said. Older people seem to smoke more than younger people, he said.
Jaques, who said he doesn’t go to bars or clubs very often, said banning smoking would only make it more enjoyable to go out. . . .
Methodists Vote to Keep Transgender Pastor
In a potentially landmark decision, the United Methodist Church has ruled that a transgender pastor who applied for a name change can remain in the ministry. The decision in case of the Rev. Drew Phoenix was released on Tuesday by the church's Judicial Council.
The United Methodist Church, or UMC, bans gay people from serving as clergy, but its Book of Discipline makes no mention of transsexual people. "Essentially, they said that I'm a pastor in good standing and therefore I'm appointable," says Phoenix, who leads St. John's in Baltimore.
In affirming Phoenix as an ordained minister, the council left aside the specific question of whether transgender people can serve. What mattered here was that Phoenix faced no "administrative or judicial action" beyond the question of the name change itself. "The Judicial Council does not reach the question of whether gender change is a chargeable offense or violates minimum standards established by the General Conference," council members wrote.
Phoenix says he always felt male. As a girl, the Methodist minister says, he was known as "Dave Gordon's son." Even when he was preaching as Ann Gordon, Phoenix says, people related to the pastor as a man. But it wasn't until last year, at the age of 47, that Gordon decided to undergo surgery and hormone therapy -- to formally become male.
After the then-Rev. Gordon was reappointed as Drew Phoenix at the Baltimore-Washington Methodist Conference in May, members of the UMC petitioned to ban transsexuals from serving. Now, with the Judicial Council's ruling, Phoenix plans to continue at his church.
Phoenix says he knows he's something of a test case, but calls his transition a gift to the church. The ruling "is outstanding," he says. "It's historic."
UMC members have been wrestling with issues of gender and sexuality, as have other branches of the wider Protestant church. The Phoenix case was one of several on the Judicial Council docket that dealt with such matters, including one from northern Illinois for an initiative called "Affirming All Familes" and another from the California-Nevada conference about plans to "Welcome and Include LGBT" people in church leadership.
The church could take up the issue of transgender clergy again at its general conference in April. Questions concerning sexual minorities have become regular a feature of national UMC gatherings. "It has come up at every general conference in recent years," says spokesperson Diane Denton, "so I would expect it would be an issue again."
Monday, October 29, 2007
My $150,000 body
Shinan Govani, National Post
Published: Saturday, April 22, 2006Nina Arsenault is a columnist for Fab Magazine, a freelance writer and sex-trade worker. Her television appearances include Showcase TV's Kink and Global's Train 48. Shinan Govani reported in January about her famously friendly chat with Tommy Lee at Ultra Supper Club; she has previously revealed that she has ''had sex with two professional athletes, a movie star, two TV personalities, the CEOs of two Fortune 500 companies, four guys who worked for the mob, a string of strippers, many male models, a bunch of body builders, loads of nightclubbing suburban guys ... all of them straight."
- - -
Last December, I lay on the operating table of one of Toronto's top plastic surgeons getting my boobs re-done with state-of-the-art cohesive gel silicone implants, a.k.a. the ''gummi bear implant.'' They're nicknamed for their gelatinous consistency.
Anesthesia coursing through me, I aggrandized my upgraded $9,000 breasts. With no liquid silicone they can't rupture and leak. They've a more realistic droop and came custom made in shape and size -- differentiated by a tenth of a centimetre to my specifications.
''Can I keep my old breast implants after you take them out of me?'' I asked the doctor.
I didn't know that I'd need five more operations to fix complications from this impending boob job. I've had 50 cosmetic procedures to transform my body, some in Third World countries and hotel rooms, and the latest surgery has gone wrong.
Has it all been worth it? I'm a whole new woman.
- - -
I grew up, a little girl inside a little boy's body, in The Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park in Beamsville. By age five, I loved Barbie dolls and X-men comics. I'd pretend I was Storm, fighting evil in a disco-inspired super-bikini, with a killer bod to boot. I also had secret crushes on the prepubescent hell raisers of my little town, foul-mouthed boys who already smoked and who'd probably end up doing time for petty crimes. One summer afternoon, they allowed me a peek at the glossy images they'd heisted from their fathers' hidden caches of Playboy magazines. I was awestruck by portraits of an elusive, fully sexual female-ness that seemed more mythical than real.
Innocently, I thought to myself, ''I want to look like that when I grow up.''
By 1997, I'd become a 22-year-old man who resembled character actor Crispin Glover (the ''Thin Man'' from the Charlie's Angels movies). I was living in South Africa when my doctor noticed a cyst growing below my left eye. Worried it would cause serious damage to my face, he sent me to a plastic surgeon. The physician injected freezing into my face. I felt no pain as he started cutting, but I heard tissue tearing. He cauterized some bleeding and my nostrils filled with the smell of my own burnt flesh. Minutes later, he was sewing me up. I paid him with money my parents had sent me; thanks to the favourable exchange rate, roughly $100 Canadian covered it.
The horrific memories faded when I saw my improved appearance and realized the potential of plastic surgery. I arrived for my post-op visit and confessed, ''I want to be a woman.'' . . .
Love Bites.
Birth Right
BY SASHA
When someone changes gender, do they get their birth certificate changed? WKRP
I spoke to three transpeople, initially expecting just a simple yes-or-no-and-away-I-go. It sparked a really interesting dialogue, though, since it turns out you can have your birth records changed but, at the moment, you aren't legally obligated to. In Canada, the process of changing your sex and then your ID exists in somewhat of a neutral area -- not that the informality is a sign of our unrestrained liberalism, just oversight.
Anyone can change the name on their birth certificate (for $137), thereby making it easy to change it on all subsequent ID. Though changing your sex is cheaper ($37), it requires more effort and, certainly, some consideration.
My colleague Adrien has been living as a man for several years, and hasn't changed his records in any way. He's had no major problems at borders, but one reason he's reluctant to have his ID reflect his sex change is, on the very slim chance he's ever arrested, he'd rather be imprisoned with a bunch of biological females than a bunch of biological males. Transpeople have a lot to think about when they go through their changes, and no doubt the totally shitty fact that they're so often targeted in hate crimes informs some decisions.
Canadian celebrity transsexual Nina Arsenault never bothered to have her identification changed. Her passport reflects her female status only because, when she applied for it, officials judged by her submitted photo that she had checked the wrong box and amended it. The rest of her ID is male. "Crossing the border is terrifying for me, the States specifically," says Nina. She once went with a girlfriend who is very convincing, but whose passport says male. When they explained to the border patrol they were transsexuals, the guys got on their walkie-talkies and had all their colleagues come over to gawk at them, making remarks like, "Let me get this straight: you two have dicks?" They didn't let them cross, claiming they were a flight risk. Don't you just love those nightclubs where you're treated like shit at the door and then they won't even let you in?
Related tales of Nina's include having her breasts and ribs done in Mexico just after 9/11 and then going through the border at Houston, where they demanded she take off her surgical girdle because the gauze made it appear as though she had dynamite strapped under it. (She refused.) As well, she was turned back another time and forced onto a plane full of cranky Thunder Bay residents who had all been informed over the intercom that their flight had been held up by a transsexual -- guess who, everybody?! . . .
A case of her: channeling Joni
John Kelly moves audiences and the singer herself with 'Paved Paradise'
John Kelly says "Paved Paradise: The Songs of Joni Mitchell" is "about getting at the essence of something." (josef astor) You won't see "Joni Mitchell" on Commercial Street in Provincetown, handing out show leaflets to tourists alongside the drag Cher, Barbra, and, yes, Susan Lucci. With her yellow hair, her tilted beret, and a billowy outfit right off the cover of "Hejira,""Ms. Mitchell" appeals to far more rarefied tastes. When she beckons, only the fanatics queue up, eager to hear sweetly edgy trills, lines of wisdom, and some homespun stage banter, eh?
And anyway, this Joni isn't strictly a drag queen, evoking one shining icon during year after year of hot Cape Cod nights. She is John Kelly, an Obie-winning New York actor, singer, and dancer whose long list of stage credits extends to "Orpheus X" at the American Repertory Theatre and "James Joyce's The Dead" on Broadway. She is a man who pays camp-free homage to the "woman of heart and mind," as Mitchell has called herself, with a performance of Mitchell songs that's as moving as it is funny, as sincere as it is droll.
Impersonation? Drag? Cabaret? Kelly no longer tries to define his show, "Paved Paradise: The Songs of Joni Mitchell," which the Theater Offensive is presenting at the Boston Center for the Arts Thursday through Nov. 4.
"Believe me, I was lip-synching Maria Callas recordings at the Anvil [gay bar in New York] in punk drag in 1979," he says recently during a visit to Harvard Square, speaking in gentle tones that barely hint at his piercing Joni-esque tenor. "That's how I started. I was hanging out with all these amazing drag performers. But I'm trained as a dancer and a visual artist and now as a singer. . . . And so still I'm always grappling with the semantics of it."
Most people are surprised to learn that the late Divine, the diva in John Waters movies such as "Hairspray," did not consider himself a drag queen so much as a character actor. Kelly, too, feels he just happens to be crossing genders as Joni: "A Barbra Streisand queen or a Cher queen, they're very defined, and when they don't do it well enough, it's not working. I really don't look like Joni. It's an acting thing. I change the way I walk, I change my face, my nose tends to feel smaller when I focus on my mouth. . . . But it's not really looking like her and not always even sounding like her. It's more about getting at the essence of something." . . .
Australia: Transgenders, Big Spenders And Suspenders
by Tracey
Chanel is a transsexual sex worker and was just nineteen when she began working the streets. Unlike most young people, Chanel’s worries were not focused on fashion or what she was planning to do on the weekend. Instead, she was more concerned with where was she going to sleep that night and what her next meal would consist of, or more to the point, if she was even going to be having one.
How does someone find themselves in such a predicament? And why, ten years later, does she still choose to work in this industry?
I meet with Chanel at her place of work called Tiffany’s Palace. From the outside it’s fairly unassuming. Inside a number of paintings hang precariously from mauve coloured walls and the aroma of freshly cut flowers linger in dimly lit rooms. A sign on the counter reads, “No condom, no sex”.
I greet her, and soon after, the door bell rings.
“Ooh, that’s our shopper, got any cash on you?” she says excitedly. “She brings make up and sunnies, all sorts of things – real cheap too.”
The shopper enters, high as a kite, her baby son waiting in a pram outside. She’s selling Gucci sunglasses for a tenth of their value, $150 jewellery for $20 a pop and top quality make up at bargain bin prices. She has hats, nail art and moisturisers by the dozen.
‘Welcome to the dark side,’ I think to myself. ‘In just ten minutes of entering Chanel’s world I’ve already rubbed shoulders with sex, drugs and theft.’ Half an hour later and the shopper leaves beaming, with an empty bag and a full wallet.
Chanel is stunning to look at and as she gives me a tour of the parlour I am astonished at how beautiful everything is. It’s not at all like the image I had conjured up in my mind. It’s later that I realise that subverting these kinds of stereotypes is exactly what Chanel is all about. . . .
Rebecca Romijn family fears
10/17/2007 - Rebecca Romijn - The Late Show with David Letterman - October 17, 2007 - Ed Sullivan Theatre - New York City, NY, USA © Janet Mayer / PR Photos
"Ugly Betty" star Rebecca Romijn is worried she may have to quit the show if she wants to have children.
Rebecca, who married actor Jerry O'Connell in the summer, believes the hit US TV show's bosses will struggle to create a pregnancy storyline for her character, because she plays a transsexual.
She said: "Motherhood is absolutely on the cards. I would like to have a couple of kids and I think Jerry would too. I don't know exactly when, but it will be interesting to see how the writers will figure it out if I get pregnant while we are shooting 'Ugly Betty'. My character Alexis Meade is not supposed to have a womb!"
Rebecca, who met Jerry at a Las Vegas hotel three years ago, also revealed she often used her feminine charms to get her way with men before she met Jerry.
The stunning blonde star explained: "Of course I have used my feminine wiles to get what I want. But I really don't manipulate Jerry. We focus on friendship - that comes first with us. That is how we fell in love.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Nina's Unstoppable! desire to be herself
As a child growing up in a Beamsville trailer park, Rodney Arsenault was shown pictures of the beautiful, naked women in Playboy by some other kids.
There was instant attraction – of a very different sort.
There were no pre-pubescent sexual stirrings, but a desire by Rodney to become one of those "gorgeous, glamorous women" he admired, because he was "a little girl trapped in a little boy's body."
By age 24, Rodney had two master's degrees and was one of the youngest course instructors at York University, teaching acting, but was ready to jettison that promising career and his male identity for a female one.
Rodney changed his name to Nina while still at York and let nothing – not money, pain, negative social attitudes or medical concerns deter "her" from that goal, which was achieved after nine years and about 60 cosmetic surgeries and procedures costing $160,000, financed by working in the sex trade.
It's that determination that has Arsenault being cited for this year's Unstoppable! theme award at the annual Pride Gala in Toronto, one of eight persons to be honoured for their achievements in different categories.
"Knowing that Pride Toronto selects one Canadian queer who embodies the event's theme every year, I'm really honoured that it's me. I know so many unstoppable people," Arsenault says.
"I had this long-term vision in my head of the type of woman I wanted to be and that sort of woman doesn't blend in very well. I'm kind of over the top in my gender expression – with all my cosmetic surgeries, the way I wear my hair and my flashy clothes. But I walk down the street every day with dignity." . . .
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Nothing extraordinary for Jo Normal
Dear Mariella 'My sister is a depressed, post-op transsexual. She has no friends, no job, and feels her life has not moved on. I'm very supportive, but have run out of advice' Mariella Frostrup Sunday October 28, 2007 The Observer The dilemma My sister is a post-operative transsexual who had the op six years ago. She is almost 40 and lives alone. She has never felt happy in her own skin, and this has become more pronounced since the op. In her own words, she is a 'freak' and 'not real' and is very aware of people staring at her when she is out and about. She is on antidepressants, but they don't help. She has a nonexistent social life because she is scared of people and their reaction to her, although she has had a loyal best friend for years. Over the past five years she's got back in contact with Mum and as a family we are supportive, although our brother is still in denial about it. How can she stop feeling like a lesser person, and sort her life out? She wants to move nearer to me, which I fully support, to find a job, a house, etc. However, she is in a dark place, and motivating her to look for a job and to see that life can be exciting is difficult. She has a big birthday coming up and is depressed her life has not moved on, yet she is the one who has not moved it on. I have run out of advice and motivational support. I love her a great deal and only want her to be happy. What should I/she do? . . . |
Hearing changes how people perceive gender
CHICAGO, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- People can feel unsettled when a person's voice doesn’t fit his or her gender, because the brain may do multi-sensory processing, a U.S. study suggests.
Lead author Eric Smith, a graduate student; Marcia Grabowecky, a research assistant professor of psychology; and Satoru Suzuki, an associate professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University say researchers have long thought that one part of the brain does vision and another does auditory processing, and that the two don’t communicate with each other.
"But emerging research suggests that rich information from different senses come together quickly and influence each other so that we don’t experience the world one sense at a time," Grabowecky said in a statement.
The researchers used "simple tones with no explicit gender information to get a window into how vision and audition work together to process gender information," Grabowecky said.
The study, published in Current Biology, shows that when an androgynous face was paired with a pure tone that fell within the female fundamental-frequency range -- 160 to 300 Hz -- people were more likely to report that the face was that of a female. . . .
Blanchett enjoys cross-dressing roles
| Last Update: 10/26 10:31 am |
Australian actress Cate Blanchett loved dressing up as a man so much in her new movie - she is to do it again on stage.
The 38-year-old donned men's clothes in Todd Haye's forthcoming movie I'm Not There, as one of several thespians to portray musician Bob Dylan.
Now Blanchett intends on appearing in a stage version of The War Of The Roses for the Sydney Theatre Company Down Under, and will once again take on the role of a man.
She says, "I see nothing strange about it being a cross-dressing production. In Shakepeare's day, men played all the roles and I think we can learn so much about each other if we swap around now and again."
What’s in a Name
Illustration by Leanne Shapto
Shirley Temple didn’t make many enemies, but Alleen Nilsen can think of a few people who loathed America’s sweetheart. Nilsen, a professor of English at Arizona State University and president (with her husband, Don) of the American Names Society, once met a Shirley from a family that used the name for four generations — for its men. As soon as Temple stamped it as indelibly girlish, Shirley IV disgustedly switched to Shirl. There was no Shirley V.
Dozens of longstanding male names — Kim, Beverly, Ashley, etc. — have met the same fate. Linguists know the pattern well: not long after a boy’s name catches on with girls, parents shy away from christening sons with it. “We crowd them out,” Nilsen says. Consider some examples from the Social Security Administration’s baby-name database. Through 1955, “Leslie” consistently appeared among the 150 most popular boys’ names. About a decade earlier, it began to catch on among girls. And the “crowding out” Nilsen mentioned took place. “Leslie” fell out of favor, dropping from a peak of 81 in male popularity rankings in 1895 to 874 a century later, and will most likely never gain traction with men again. Dana, Carol and Shannon met similar ends.
By contrast, Jordan has appeared in the Top 100 most popular names for both sexes since 1989, and other modern unisex names coexist peacefully, too. Angel, overwhelmingly male until the mid-’50s, became popular for girls around 1972. Yet boy Angels surpassed girls in 1986, and the name now sits at No. 31 for men, 160 for women. And the popularity of Logan for boys (it perennially appears in the Top 50) may have eroded its cachet for girls, an unusual reversal.
The best example of a new gender-fluid name is Peyton, which wasn’t popular until the quarterback Peyton Manning emerged. It tested parents’ tolerance of ambiguity, since it lacked strong gender connotations. The name caught on with girls first in 2000. But parents, perhaps hopeful for their sons’ athletic futures, loved it for boys too. Strikingly, its popularity with both sexes surged and dipped in lock step over the past decade — meaning parents responded to the fickle laws that govern name popularity identically, as if sex made no difference. Peytons of both sexes probably gained thousands of peers when Manning’s Colts won the Super Bowl in February.
The loosening of sex roles may have freed parents to choose neutral-sounding names like Riley and Jaden (or Jayden), but other factors bolstered ambiguous names, too. Herbert Barry — co-author of the paper “Feminization of Unisex Names From 1960 to 1990” — found that between 1900 and 1910, 27 boys’ names and 26 girls’ names accounted for half of all names. Between 1990 and 2000 it was 60 and 90 names, respectively. The upshot is that parents are less likely to encounter any child named Devin, say, and are therefore less likely to associate that name with either sex. . . .
Drag queens camp it up for Pride Week
Danielle LampkinJonathan Smith
Staff Writers
Oct. 26, 2007
Founders Auditorium was packed Oct. 23, as students gathered to watch the performance of 4 Drag Queens, including well-know singer/actor Jackie Beat; Also known as Kent Fuher. Beat is the lead singer of Dirty Sanchez and has appeared in numerous films and TV shows. Leah Heagy
Wearing rather high stilettos and more make up than most women, several drag queens graced the stage of Founders Auditorium to be a part of “Confessions of a Drag Queen” on Tuesday.
While many felt the show was entertaining and funny, the main purpose of the show was to educate people about the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and questioning community.
The event was just one of five that was featured for Housing’s Pride Week.
“I heard nothing but positive remarks from people, even though we started late due to technical difficulties,” resident assistant Adam Carranza said. “I thought it would be a low turnout because it was a gay event and (audience members) were still out there.”
“I thought it was a great event,” junior arts and music major Alan Hernandez said. “It was something that needed to be heard.”
About 220 people attended the event, which was sponsored by Housing and Residential Life and Campus Activities Board.
The event lasted a little more than an hour, featuring several acts that perform professionally as drag queens across the region.
Jackie Beat served as master of ceremonies and provided the audiences with a huge array of topics that sent them into a laughing frenzy.
Most of Beat’s laughs came from song parody that featured explicit and risqué topics, ranging from gay men to Catholic priests.
“My favorite part (of Jackie Beat’s performance) was the rap song at the end,” Jacob Delgado, a senior movement and sports science major, said
.
“The way she mock but at the same time inform was useful,” Hernandez said.
The three featured drag queens participants, Jayla, Susie Q and Serenity that performed at the event lip singing to songs like “Let’s Get Loud” and “Diamond Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” . . .
How to Act Like a Princess ;)
Transgender advocate lauds OSU’s stance on the issue
News Journal
MANSFIELD — Last year “Advocate” magazine named Ohio State University the No. 1 transgender-friendly campus in America.
Last week, Jack Miner, associate registrar and president of the OSU-Columbus Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender SXociety, spoke to OSU-M and North Central State College students about understanding the Transgender community. A large portion of his speech focused on the life of a Transgender on a college campus. A transgender is a person appearing or attempting to be a member of the opposite sex.
“Every month, one to four Ohio State students and alumni become Transgender,” Miner said. “This is something that’s really becoming more common and regardless of your beliefs on the matter, we all need to be educated about the Transgender society.”
Miner said in the past few years, OSU has installed transgender-friendly bathrooms on their main campus.
“If you’re in the process of transitioning from a woman to a man, would you use the women’s or the men’s restrooms?” he said. “It can be confusing, and so to make it easier on the person, we have Transgender restrooms that they can use.”
Miner said housing arrangements are also an issue.
“Should a Transgender live with men or women? It really depends on who you ask,” he said. “I say it depends on which gender the person identifies him or herself with. If you say you’re a woman, than you’ll live with women.”
By having a non-discriminatory clause, Miner said Transgender students know they will be accepted at OSU.
“We’ve pushed other campuses to also adopt this clause,” he said. “OSU did this a few years ago. It’s a great way to say, ‘You’re welcome here.’ ”
Miner added that OSU is also willing to change names on diplomas for graduates who later became Transgender.
Chief student affairs officer Donna Hight asked Miner what plans are in the works to keep the five commuter OSU campuses as progressive as Columbus.
“Well, you’ve got folks like me going out and spreading the word, and that’s what we really need to do,” Miner said. “We need passionate people out there making acceptance happen.” . . .
Friday, October 26, 2007
Now It’s Nobody’s Secret
October 25, 2007
From left, Christian Dior for spring 2008; Louis Vuitton for spring 2008; a Marc Jacobs model in 2007.
POOR Miss Lucarelli. Our sixth-grade English teacher became the inadvertent object of our mirth the day we caught her tugging at a corset strap that had strayed from the sleeve of her shirt. More shaming than dandruff, that risqué glimpse of underwear made us giggle till we hurt.
Today it would scarcely rate a glance, that sort of exposure having lost its taint back in the day when Madonna was a girl. In fact, if Miss Lucarelli deliberately wore her corset outside her shirt, it would establish her as a paragon of hip, a role model for the throngs of women who buy lingerie for shaping and comfort and, increasingly, for show.
Lingerie items have become “display pieces,” said Stephanie Solomon, the fashion director of Bloomingdale’s. Corsets, slips, panties and camisoles are as extravagant in their design, and as coveted, as Louboutin platforms or a YSL tote.
Lingerie’s cachet as a sexy, emphatically visible component of a woman’s outfit has contributed to rising sales. According to NPD Group, the market research firm, sales of bras, panties, slips, corsets and even old-school relics like garter belts, climbed to $10.6 billion for the 12-month period ending in July, a 10 percent jump over the previous 12 months. Clearly, the category known quaintly as intimate apparel has climbed to the top of women’s shopping lists.
“What is really driving the growth of the business,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst of NPD, “is that showing off your lingerie has become very much a fashion trend.
To women of all ages, visible skivvies are all but scandalproof.
“Showing your intimate apparel today is socially acceptable in most generations,” Mr. Cohen said, an assertion supported by an NPD survey last spring in which 77 percent of respondents, women of varying ages, said they were comfortable revealing bits of their underwear.
Pushing lingerie into a more public role are design and construction that are all but indistinguishable from swimwear or even evening wear. Choosing lingerie “is about what makes you look good, but also what looks good with or through your clothing,” said Monica Mitro, a spokeswoman for Victoria’s Secret, the brand that catapulted racy flimsies into the public eye. “People are taking the bold step to actually incorporate underwear as part of their outfit.”. . .
Same-sex Attraction Is Genetically Wired In Nematode's Brain
"They look like girls, but act and think like boys," says Jamie White, a postdoctoral researcher and first author of the new study. "The [same-sex attraction] behavior is part of the nervous system."
"The conclusion is that sexual attraction is wired into brain circuits common to both sexes of worms, and is not caused solely by extra nerve cells added to the male or female brain," says laboratory leader and biology Professor Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
"The reason males and females behave differently is that the same nerve cells have been rewired to alter sexual preference," he adds. "Our conclusions are narrow in that they are about worms and how attraction behaviors are derived from the same brain circuit. But an evolutionary biologist will consider this to be a potentially common mechanism for sexual attraction."
"We cannot say what this means for human sexual orientation, but it raises the possibility that sexual preference is wired in the brain," Jorgensen says. "Humans are subject to evolutionary forces just like worms. It seems possible that if sexual orientation is genetically wired in worms, it would be in people too. Humans have free will, so the picture is more complicated in people."
White and Jorgensen conducted the study with technician Jeff Gritton and three University of Utah biology undergraduates: Thomas Nicholas, Long Truong and Eliott Davidson. The study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation.
The Rules of Attraction -- for Worms
Nematodes, or C. elegans, are millimeter-long (one twenty-fifth of an inch) worms that live in soil and eat bacteria. Because the same genes are found in many animals, nematodes, mice, zebrafish and fruit flies often are used as "models" for humans in research.
Nematode worms lack eyes, so attraction is based only on the sense of smell. There are no true females and only one in 500 nematodes is male. Most are hermaphrodites, with both male and female organs. Jorgensen and White loosely refer to hermaphrodites as females because they produce offspring.
"A hermaphrodite makes both eggs and sperm," Jorgensen says. "She doesn't need to mate [with a male] to have progeny," but can fertilize her own eggs. "Most of the time, the hermaphrodites do not mate. But if they mate, instead of having 200 progeny, they can have 1,200 progeny."
Nematodes are few and far between in soil. So natural selection favored hermaphroditic worms because when they found an abundant food source, they were able to feast and make babies even if no males were nearby, Jorgensen says.
Male nematodes must find hermaphrodites if they are to reproduce, and they find them by smelling their sex-attractant odors or pheromones.
The Mind of a Worm is Sexualized
Jorgensen says the study looked at three possibilities, namely, whether male attraction to hermaphrodites results from:
- Four "accessory" or extra smell-related nerve cells named CEM neurons that are found only in male brains. The worms gain these neurons during their version of puberty, their fourth larval stage.
- Four "core" or basic smell-related nerve cells -- two named AWC and two named AWA -- found in both males and hermaphrodites.
- Both the accessory and core neurons.
The answer was that male attraction involves the combination of both accessory and core nerve cells. The involvement of the core neurons was a surprise.
"We thought the extra CEM neurons provided sexual preference" because fourth-stage males are not attracted to hermaphrodites but adult males are, Jorgensen says. "We found instead that the brain -- which is the same in young males and hermaphrodites -- is rewired during the worm equivalent of puberty -- the fourth larval stage -- to make the males attracted to hermaphrodites."
"What we show is that the shared nervous system [common between male and hermaphrodite] is broadly sexualized," and sexual attraction can be changed by essentially flipping a genetic switch in that common brain, he adds.
The study involved these key experiments
The researchers used laser microsurgery to kill the male-only CEM neurons in young larval males. The resulting adult males still were attracted to hermaphrodites.
That suggests the core neurons -- brain cells common to both the male and hermaphrodite brain -- are sexualized, and that the extra CEM nerve cells found only in males are not necessary for sexual attraction even though they normally play a role in it.
The biologists zapped eight different kinds of nerve cells involved in the sense of smell and taste: the four kinds of CEM neurons found only in males and four kinds of core neurons (AWA and AWC) also found in hermaphrodites. If any of the eight types of neurons was damaged in adult males, attraction was impaired. But when the nerve cells were zapped before puberty in fourth-stage larvae, they grew into adults with normal attraction to hermaphrodites. That shows "the nervous system can compensate for lost neurons as it goes through puberty," Jorgensen says.
"Normally there are eight sensory neurons in nematodes," says White. "You can take away seven of the eight prior to sexual maturation, and as long as there is one left, he can still be sexually attracted. ... Why would an organism that has only 383 nerve cells use eight of them for sexual attraction" It must be that the behavior is very important. There is redundancy. The system is flexible."
Next, "we took the hermaphrodite brain and we activated the genes that determine maleness," but only in the brain and not in the rest of the worm, Jorgensen says. Hermaphrodites with masculine brains "were attracted to other hermaphrodites."
The results show sexual orientation is wired into the brain in both sexes of worm.
To masculinize the brains of hermaphroditic worms, the researchers activated a gene named fem-3, but only in the nervous system. The fem-3 gene makes the body develop male structures such as a tail, which male worms use for copulation. With the gene active only in the brain, the hermaphrodites still had the same bodies and genitalia, but their brains were male, so they were attracted to other hermaphrodites.
To demonstrate the hermaphrodites produce sexual attractants or pheromones, the researchers washed hermaphrodites, and put some of the wash water on agar, a jelly-like growth medium, in a culture dish. When worms were placed on the dish, males moved toward the hermaphrodite wash water while hermaphrodites moved away.
When the scientists genetically altered hermaphrodites' brains to change their sexual orientation, they crawled toward the pheromones of other hermaphrodites.
"People debate whether the brain is influenced by sexual hormones from the gonads or whether the behavior is derived from the brain alone," Jorgensen says. "In this case, it's clear the brain is sexualized. ... The surprise was that sensory neurons found in the hermaphrodite brain are involved in sexual attraction in males."
The study was published online Thursday, Oct. 25 in Current Biology, and will run in the journal's Nov. 6 print edition.
HOT GET USED TO IT: Kids Coming Out on YouTube
Twelve-year-old Isaac Baker can't believe more than 2,000 people have viewed the four-minute video he posted on YouTube this summer. The emotional clip -- titled "Self Portrait (There Once Was a Little Girl)" -- documents his transformation from the girl born as Iris into the preteen boy he's always felt he really was. "I thought my video might help people," he says. "I just hope it helps others understand that they're not alone."
Isaac may be the youngest person using YouTube to celebrate his emerging gender identity, but he's in good company. Dozens of people between ages sixteen and twenty-six have posted video blogs documenting their transitions. Erin Armstrong, a twenty-two-year-old Utah native, has a backlog of sixty-plus videos: One demonstrates how she gives herself biweekly hormone injections; another deals with her Mormon family's reactions. "When I started my blog, I couldn't find other transgendered people on YouTube," she says. "Now it's exploded." Her clips often get upward of 10,000 views. "Before the videos, I was starting to feel a little lost," she admits. "It helps to feel like I have a community that supports me -- even if it's a community I may never get to meet." --JENNY ELISCU
Doctors battle to save 'human pin-cushion'
Doctors in China have saved the life of a woman who had 26 pins and needles inserted into her body when she was a child in an apparent attempt to change her sex to a boy.
The objects were discovered when the 29-year-old woman, named in local papers as Luo Cuifen, went to hospital for a check-up after she started experiencing blood in her urine.
 |
They had penetrated vital organs such as the lungs, kidney and liver, while a needle in her brain had broken into three pieces.
Others in her chest were lodged near major arteries.
 |
The woman believes they were inserted into her as a child by her grandparents, who were disappointed she was not a boy.
They are now dead, but if true, it would be another example of the effects of the heavy preference for boys over girls in many parts of Asia.
 |
Since the one-child policy came into force, around the time of Miss Luo's birth, many girl children have been aborted, abandoned, or killed after birth – in some cases by grandparents.
Miss Luo, who comes from a rural area in Yunnan, one of China's poorer provinces, told doctors she had two needles removed when she was a child but had had no health problems until she gave birth. . . .
Come out, come out, wherever you are
 |
When you’re a teenager, it’s difficult enough to figure out who you are and what the hell you’re all about without other people judging, mocking, and hating you. I remember being teased every single day in high school by this one kid (Dan, who-shall-remain-last-nameless-but-was-totally-Asian) because I was quiet and awkward and had a penchant for flowing Ren Faire–style dresses. (Shut up.) To me, that seemed intolerable — enough so that I begged my mother to allow me to stay home from school day after day.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like for teenagers who are gay or transgender. What if I’d been a guy in a Ren Faire dress?
Things have become a bit more progressive since I was an adolescent, many high schools still miss the mark vis-Ã -vis providing resources for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students. Thankfully, unless you’re stuck in the cultural and sexual abyss that is the Bible Belt, colleges and universities now provide plenty of on- and off-campus support and community opportunities for GLBT students. In Boston, it seems that all of the major academic players have at least one student organization dedicated to the needs of GLBT students.
Getting into and paying for college in the first place is a hurdle that all potential students face, but for GLBT students, just finishing high school can be difficult. Jorge Valencia, the executive director and CEO of the Point Foundation — a scholarship fund dedicated to providing financial aid, mentoring, and leadership training to GLBT students — says that gay and transgender students are much more likely than their straight counterparts to drop out of high school, often because of verbal and physical harassment from peers.
“Young people are now coming out at a much earlier age,” says Valencia, “There are students that endure violence and harassment every day because they want to live their lives as who they are. The Point Foundation wants to reward those students who have endured, and proven to be leaders.”
Designed to support their scholars through the entirety of their academic careers, the Point Foundation scholarship is available to a range of students, from those entering undergraduate programs all the way up the academic ladder to PhD candidates. The fund looks for students who have exhibited academic prowess and leadership skills, and especially a need for financial, emotional, and social assistance. “The masses could really learn from inter-generational mentoring, which we provide,” Valencia says. “By targeting young people who have leadership prowess, we believe we will create a ripple effect. . . .
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Freshman Democrats kill transgender amendment
| October 25, 2007 | |
| Reps. Tim Walz (Minn.) and Ron Klein (Fla.), leaders of the class of freshman Democrats, carried a message to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday that their fellow first-term lawmakers did not want to vote on an amendment extending civil rights to transgender employees. House Education and Labor panel Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), whose committee passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, said he told the freshman lawmakers at their Wednesday breakfast with Pelosi that the amendment did not have the votes to pass and would not be brought to the House floor. In addition, Miller told the freshmen he recognized that the amendment exposed the first-term lawmakers to political attacks from conservatives and liberals alike, said two sources who attended the breakfast. Democratic leaders are wrestling with when and how to bring the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) had introduced an amendment extending the civil rights protections to transgender workers. Such language was included in the initial bill until Democratic members convinced House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to pull it. Frank approves the transgender language but maintains it lacks the votes to pass. “People didn’t want to force a ‘hard’ vote that might hurt their election chances,” Hilary Rosen, a Democratic lobbyist and gay and lesbian advocate, wrote on the Huffington Post, a liberal blog. Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget said on Wednesday in its Statement of Administration Policy that President Bush’s senior advisers would recommend he veto the bill on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and restricts religious liberty. |
Thailand: NLA defers Mr/Ms bill
A bill allowing transgender people to use titles appropriate for their new sex has been put on hold after male National Legislative Assembly members spoke against it.
October 25, 2007
They said the "ambiguous identities" of post-operative transgender people could be confusing and affect common practice, such as mandatory Army conscription and ordination into the monkhood.
The assembly yesterday withdrew the bill pending government scrutiny within the next 30 days. Amphol Watthanajinda said unclear gender could be used to deceive partners in courtship or marriage, and a criminal's hard-to-identify sex could make police work and crime prevention difficult. It was counter-productive for the public, he added.
Juree Wijitwathakarn introduced the 10-article bill, which was tabled yesterday with the support of her fellow NLA members. She cited complaints from transsexuals about discrimination and social inequity and injustice. General Ood Buengbon, a former Defence Ministry permanent secretary, said men with ambiguous titles and appearance caused legal problems and headaches during annual Army conscription.
Assemblyman Wallop Tangkhananurak supports Juree's bill. However, he said it needed a provision to allow for the original sex of a citizen to be noted on identity cards. This would prevent confusion and deception.
Deputy Interior Minister Banyat Jansena said the government - which is reportedly reluctant to declare its stance - needed 30 days to scrutinise it. . . .
