Friday, November 30, 2007
Trans rocker endures setbacks and tragedy
November 2007
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE AND LADY JAYE |
To say that 2007 has been a challenging year for the pioneering and influential band Psychic TV is an understatement.
The gender-blurring band released its first album in over a decade, “Hell is Invisible ... Heaven is Her/e,” and has since faced setbacks, financial difficulties and discrimination on their most recent concert tour.
But it was the sudden and tragic death of one of the group’s core members, Lady Jaye, that brought the band to a halt.
The group was founded in 1981 by singer and artist Genesis P-Orridge, whose former band, Throbbing Gristle, helped to forge a sound that would evolve industrial music along with bands like Kraftwerk and Einstürzende Neubauten.
Psychic TV was an artier, more experimental progression of the industrial sound, where P-Orridge incorporated psychedelic rock into the mechanical sounds she had helped to create.
The group remained dormant after the mid-’90s, when P-Orridge decided to focus more on art and spoken-word projects. It was during this time that she met her soul mate, Lady Jaye, and began exploring what they would come to refer to as “pandrogyny.”
PSYCHIC TV Photo: Dan Mandell |
“Lady Jaye and I first met in New York in 1993,” P-Orridge said. “When we got married in 1995, I was the bride and Lady Jaye was the groom. From the minute we met, we were always cross-dressing with each other. It was very intuitive, I had found someone who was prepared to follow me in my fantasies and explorations no matter where I went. That natural attraction between us developed into thinking why we enjoyed being more like each other. We started to dress the same and do our hair and makeup the same. We decided that we wanted to explore our attraction to that process more deeply. We started to use cosmetic surgery and all the other modern technologies to physically look more like each other and that would become a third being, a third consciousness that we call the pandrogyn: the positive androgynous person.”
The two lovers further demonstrated their dedication to the concept of pandrogyny when they simultaneously received breast augmentation surgery on Valentine’s Day 2003. P-Orridge, who now identifies as female, explained some of the nuances of pandrogyny.
“We don’t want to change gender,” she said. “We want to include both genders. We started to look at creation legends from different cultures. We discovered that most creation myths originally stated that human beings were hermaphrodite and that the divine state of union is the hermaphrodite. The process of existence is the reclamation and reunion of male and female into one new being which we call the pandrogyn.”
P-Orridge and Lady Jaye were living in New York City when a friend of Lady Jaye’s, future Psychic TV drummer Morrison Edley (of the Toilet Boys) convinced P-Orridge to give the then-dormant band another listen.
“I realized that I did like listening to those songs,” she said. “They were pleasurable in and of themselves. We decided that we would do one gig and see what would happen and it was in New York in 2003. It was in the middle of a big blizzard but it was completely packed. That made me understand that there is a very strong fan base that care very much for what we represent to them.”
The enthusiastic response led the newly reformed band (featuring Lady Jaye singing on live samples) to do a European and North American tour in 2004 and head back into the studio in 2005 to record “Hell is Invisible ... Heaven is Her/e,” which was released in July.
The tour to support the album was fraught with setbacks and controversy. In August, the band was scheduled to perform Anderson’s Fifth Estate in Scottsdale, Ariz., which had made headlines last year after the owner banned transgender patrons. Apparently, owner Tom Anderson was unaware that Psychic TV had transgender members.
Transgender advocates planned to picket and crash the concert, but Psychic TV opted to move the show to a different venue to avoid a violent confrontation and the appearance of endorsing the club’s policies. (The club owner has since changed his policy and now allows transgender patrons.)
A planned European tour in October had to be cancelled after the band discovered that the tour’s organizers had misled them about the number of shows booked and that they would end up losing money on the trek.
The band was gearing up for a tour of the East Coast when tragedy struck. Lady Jaye collapsed and died Oct. 9 in her home in Brooklyn from a previously undiagnosed heart condition.
Jaye’s sudden passing was devastating to the band, and especially to P-Orridge, whose life was extraordinarily intertwined with Jaye’s.
“We were together for 14 years and because we were so fortunate that we tended to make money doing creative work of our own, we spent every minute of every day and year together,” she said. “Our intellectual life was an ongoing dialogue between ourselves about pandrogyny, evolution and identity. Every single aspect of my personal life was fully integrated with Lady Jaye.”
Psychic TV canceled all tour plans for the rest of the year until they can sort out their future.
“We really weren’t sure at first what we should do,” P-Orridge said. “Even now, when we have had offers to do concerts — we were offered to play with Bjork in Mexico City this month — we agreed that if we looked behind us and she’s not there, it’s going to be really hard. At the same time, luckily, she’s left a legacy of a great number of samples for what she’s already created and what she was working on for new songs. So we will be able to play again. It’s just going to be a very emotional situation for a while. Everyone in the band agreed we would wait until after the New Year before we’d start to get specific.”
P-Orridge said that Jaye’s spirit lives on, at the very least, in her art and idea, which she intends to continue on with.
“I don’t usually use the word ‘I’ anymore,” she said. “I’m training myself to say ‘we.’ Pandrogyny was fantastic when Lady Jaye was alive but since she passed on, we’ve received several very strange paranormal messages and phenomenon that suggest she’s still active in whatever the other dimension is that we travel to. So while emotionally it’s terribly difficult for my person to even function right now, intellectually, the pandrogyn is now two spirits and two different dimensions and one body. So we’re going to carry on changing my body to still look more and more like Lady Jaye’s.” . . .
Library of Congress Can Be Sued for Discriminating Against Transgender Veteran, Says Federal Court
WASHINGTON, November 28, 2007 (ACLU) – Rejecting the federal government’s attempt to throw out a transgender veteran’s sex discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress, a federal judge ruled today that the case can go forward.
The American Civil Liberties Union brought the lawsuit in June 2005 on behalf of 25-year U.S. Army veteran Diane Schroer who was offered a job as a senior terrorism researcher but was later told she was not a “good fit” after her future boss learned she was in the process of transitioning from male to female.
“After putting my life on the line for my country for 25 years, I couldn’t believe that I could be refused a job that I was told I was the most qualified for solely because I happened to be transgender,” said Diane Schroer, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Officer who specialized in fighting terrorism.
“But today’s decision makes me proud that I served a country that values equality and fairness.”
After retiring from the military, Ms. Schroer, who had been hand-picked to head up a classified national security operation while serving as an Airborne Ranger qualified Special Forces officer, applied for a position with the Library of Congress as the senior terrorism research analyst.
Soon after she was offered the job, which she accepted immediately.
Prior to starting work, Ms. Schroer took her future boss to lunch to explain that she was in the process of transitioning and thought it would be easier for everyone if she simply started work as female.
The following day, Ms. Schroer received a call from her future boss rescinding the offer, telling her that she wasn’t a “good fit” for the Library of Congress.
In its motion to dismiss, the government argued that Title VII, which protects against sex discrimination, does not protect transgender workers.
The court rejected this argument, ruling that the fact that Ms. Schroer is transgender does not bar her from bringing a sex stereotyping claim.
The court said: “Title VII is violated when an employer discriminates against any employee, transsexual or not, because he or she has failed to act or appear sufficiently masculine or feminine enough for an employe.” the court ruled
“Today the court sent a very clear message that employers can be held liable when they make decisions about whom to hire based on stereotypical views about gender as opposed to merit,” said Sharon McGowan, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project.
“Employers, including the government, are now on notice that discriminating against transgender workers may land them in court.”
The court put off for a later day the question of whether Title VII’s ban against sex discrimination also bans discrimination based on gender identity.
However, the court did reject the government’s contention that laws barring sex discrimination are limited to a person’s chromosomal configuration.
The court explained: “It is well-established that, as a legal concept, ‘sex’ as used in Title VII refers to much more than which chromosomes a person has.”
LINK
Schroer v. Library of Congress - Case Profile ... from ACLU website. |
Trans Woman’s Library Lawsuit Moves Forward
Diane Schroer will get her day in court. The Library of Congress originally hired the military veteran as their top terrorism researcher. After hearing that Schroer - then David - planned on becoming a woman, the Library refiled her application in the trash can.
Schroer and the ACLU promptly filed a discrimination suit against the Library of Congress. The government attempted to dismiss the case, saying that federal law doesn’t protect trans folk and, therefore, they can discriminate all they want. A federal court, however, disagreed and said the case can move forward. Wouldn’t it be hot to see the government fucked by a trans woman?
New Poll Shows Hillary Leading Among LGB Voters
In a new survey released by Hunter College, Hillary Clinton leads all Democratic candidates in support among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) Americans. According to the poll, Hillary leads with 63 percent, 41 points ahead of the next candidate.
"I’m honored to have the support of so many in the LGB community," said Clinton. "Together, we can end the divisiveness of the past seven years and change the direction of this country so that we embrace the full diversity of our nation."
The poll also found that 72 percent of LGB likely voters consider Senator Clinton a supporter of gay rights. As President, Hillary will also work to end discrimination in adoption laws, sign hate crimes legislation and ENDA into law, and put an end to the failed policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. She will work to make sure that gay and lesbian couples in committed relationships have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans. . . .
POV, Critique, Opinion: Proposed Sex-Ed Lessons for D.C. Schools Said to Falsely Claim Homosexuality Innate
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 28, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - D.C. Public Schools’ proposed health learning standards would fail a true-false test, since many of the guidelines presented in the new standards are wrong and harmful to D.C.’s youth, according to an ex-gay advocacy group which testified before the D.C. Public School Board today. The School Board held its hearing today to listen to public comments on the new sex ed guidelines.
According to Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), the proposed teaching standards on sexual orientations excludes information on ex-gays; incorrectly implies that homosexuality is innate; and presents the viewpoint that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders lead a healthy and normal lifestyle without including ex-gays in that mix.
The standards will introduce the concept of “gender identity” to sixth graders, which will include transgenders, transvestites, and cross-dressers. “This standard introduces transgenderism as perfectly normal and natural, even though ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ is classified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association,” Griggs said.
Grace Harley, an African-American and former transgender, testified on behalf of PFOX that the new proposed standards, in addition to being factually flawed, do not adequately reflect the values of the predominately African-American and Hispanic student populations that the D.C. public education system serves.
According to PFOX, thousands of men and women make a personal decision to leave homosexuality each year. Not including ex-gays in the discussion of sexual orientations amounts to viewpoint discrimination, according to the group. “The ex-gay community deserves tolerance and equal treatment,” said Griggs. “The public schools of the Nation’s Capital should not promote some sexual groups (homosexuals, bisexuals and transgenders) while censoring others (ex-homosexuals). Yet the standards will teach students that it is normal to change your gender (transgender) but not normal to change your unwanted same-sex attractions (former homosexual).”
PFOX is a national organization which supports families with a homosexual child, advocates for the ex-gay community, and educates the public on sexual orientation. It is especially active in working to eliminate negative perceptions and discrimination against former homosexuals. . . .
Remembering the T in LGBTQ
by Jack Harrison
This month, Georgetown University Pride is organizing a week of programming themed issues as well as issues of gender norms and expectations. But why is specific programming necessary for these groups when everything that Pride does is meant to apply to the entire LGBTQ community, which clearly includes the ‘T’?
There are examples of why this is necessary everywhere in the queer world—perhaps and, perhaps most notably in the form of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act that recently passed in Congress with the blessing of the Human Rights Campaign, the nations largest LGBT civil rights organization. The act is meant to protect against bias in the work place, but the provisions on sexual orientation (that would have done the same for gender identity and expression) were removed .
GU Pride is trying to correct past injustices and contemporary failures, at least in our microcosm of the far greater movement, by using this week as the beginning of a serious push to build a Georgetown community that is more inclusive of sexual and gender minorities and allies representing not only all queer identities, but also of diverse racial, ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds.
I grew up on the back of a small mountain outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee and attended six years of all-male Christian school, during four of which I was open about my homosexuality. The picture that this may evoke in terms of the bigotry I faced is more extreme than my actual experience. I come from an exceedingly supportive home and always surrounded myself with socially liberal people, and find that geography actually plays less a role than one might think. My city and school situations posed problems for me as a homosexual male, but I never witnessed hate violence of the caliber we have seen on this campus this semester. The important thing about what I did go through before coming here, though, is that I have not been discriminated against and hated because of my sexuality, but rather because of my femininity—though the two have been unfairly conflated by many an aggressor.
What I do in the privacy of my bedroom is of little concern to most people. The real issue lies in how uncomfortable it makes people that I, along with countless others, do not fit neatly into the box labeled “man” and exhibit all the behavioral expectations that go along with it, which is, ultimately, a more minor version of the identical problem faced by the transgender community.
I find it is ridiculous when activists on both sides of the line call for a split between these two causes. As if it weren’t enough that a man loving another man is, in its base, a transgression of gender roles, a substantial group within the transgender population identifies sexually as other than straight (from bisexual transmen, natural born females who identify as men, to butch women who live complex lives between transmen and lesbianism) and a substantial portion of sexually queer people exhibit examples of gender non-normativity (from screaming queens to androgynous lesbians and cute, spunky gay boiz).
The problem arises from people’s assumptions of the lines that divide us. Heterosexual cross-dressing men worry that people will believe them to be gay; transsexuals fret that genderqueers playing with their expression will cause people to take their largely static identity less seriously; gender-normative homosexuals often feel held down by stereotypes of butch lesbianism and femme homosexuality. The goal of this week is to emphasize the importance of engaging with individuals and emphasizing who they feel they are over how they are perceived.
Gender theorists Gordene MacKenzie and Paisley Currah describe the term ‘transgender’ as referring to a “gender galaxy.” So do all of us represent specific interactions of the various elements of our identities, and only through exploring those can we begin to get a clearer picture of who we are. . . .
TSA plan could make travel particularly unsafe for some
Ina Fried
Major air carriers are opposing a Transportation Security Administration plan to collect the birth dates and genders of airplane travelers, along with their full names, saying the added data collection will create needless hassles.
While the new data collection could add to the annoyance of air travel for the masses of air passengers, the move would pose a special challenge for those of us for whom the question of gender is more complicated than checking one of the two boxes.
Now, I fly a lot. And while some people may see me as female, and others as male, the fact of the matter is that almost no one looks at the gender written on my driver's license. It's there, but right now, the only time it is being checked is when a screener double-checks that the name matches the one on the ticket. Besides, most people use their eyes to determine gender and only if they are particularly confused, will they look at such documentation.
But adding gender to the screening process is bound to make life difficult for many transgender people. Within the transgender community are people who appear opposite their legal gender, but haven't--or can't--change their legal gender.
In some states, a legal gender change is a relatively straightforward process, while other states demand proof of medical intervention such as surgery or hormones, options that many transgender people cannot afford and some would just rather not pursue. A few states, such as Ohio, where I was born, won't let someone change their birth certificate at all, no matter what steps they take. Federal agencies like the Passport Agency and the Social Security Administration have their own rules, which can be more stringent than state rules. So that means some people may have a drivers license that says male, but a passport that says female, or vice versa.
I'm all for making the skies safer, but security for all should not come at the expense of making an already vulnerable group even more likely to be singled out for harassment. I hope that, in addition to making sure the benefits of any changes outweigh the costs and hassles, that the TSA privacy folks also looks into making sure that the system provides for the safety of those of us with complicated genders. . . .
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Guy Turned Girl Seeks Love on Reality TV
'Transamerican Love Story' Stars a Transgender Woman Picking From a Pool of Men
By SHEILA MARIKAR
Nov. 30, 2007
In the hormone-loaded, rejection-ridden world of reality dating shows, there are many variations on the old boy-meets-girl/girl-meets-boy scenario:
Dashing boy meets lots of girls -- "The Bachelor." Scorned girl meets lots of boys -- "I Love New York." Bisexual girl meets 10 boys and 10 girls -- "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila."
And now, transgender girl meets eight boys who know, from the get-go, that their would-be lover was not always a lady -- "Transamerican Love Story."
The show stars Calpernia Addams, a 36-year-old transgender woman who was born male but transitioned to female -- surgery, hormone treatments and all -- in her early 20s. The Tennessee native served in the Navy during the first Gulf war, where her relationship with an Army private led to a brutal gay bashing that killed him, drove her to become a transgender activist and inspired the 2003 film "Soldier Girl."
After moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting, Addams quickly soured on the singles scene. So when Logo, MTV's cable network targeted at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender viewers, came to her with the idea for "Transamerican Love Story," she jumped.
"I get attention from men but a lot of times I won't let a relationship start because I know how complicated it's going to be," Addams said. "Usually on a third date or so, if it seems like it's going to be serious, I tell him about my history. Unfortunately, they usually leave."
Addams gets to decide who leaves in "Transamerican Love Story." The show's format doesn't stray far from the reality dating series norm: Eight bachelors in their 20s and 30s attempt to coexist under the same roof as Addams whittles them down through a series of challenges -- in one, the California boys compete to see who can best cater to her Southern tastes. (None of the bachelors were available for comment because the show is still in production).
What is different is that Addams is honest. While the lotharios and ladies who star in other dating shows may hide everything from their income (remember "Joe Millionaire?") to their sexual preference (the contestants of Tila Tequila's show didn't know they'd be competing with the opposite sex when they signed on), Addams is upfront about her transgender status from the beginning. . . .
Uganda: Govt Must Tighten Screws On Gays, Lesbians
Mayanja Nkangi
Uganda is experiencing an internationally orchestrated Crescendo of demands for "rights" by the homosexual fraternity: male, lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Transvestite:
Essentially these "rights" reduce to only one, namely, the absolute, non-negotiable, "right" to pursue and enjoy sexual pleasure man with man, woman with woman; with the bisexual exploiting the pleasures of both worlds, and the transgender covetting and securing the sexual pleasures which both God and his or her heterosexual parents never gave him or her.
The Transvestite is apparently ambivalent as to which sexual genus to firmly pursue, but fits himself or herself somehow. Thus this alleged right is pure sexual hedonism or the relentless pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake.
The gay claim to legitimise same sex unions or marriages is purely ancillary to the sexual pleasures and is merely an insurance or security for accessing and enjoying same sex sexual pleasures.
What is implicit here is a claim to the 'right to sex', and this should be readily conceded as a human right which is universally accepted by humanity.
However, the mode of sexual activity is itself a societal, rather than a human right and can only be sanctioned by the community in accordance with the moral cultural, religious, or legal norms of that particular community. Sodomy and lesbianism are modes or kinds of sex and are therefore subject to societal regulation by sanction or prohibition, in conformity with a community's interests.
Astonishingly, the Ugandan gays and lesbians are claiming their sexual orientations as a 'human right' and are seeking to coerce Ugandans into stamping the national seal of approval on these weird practices. But for the majority of Ugandans this demand is uncompromisingly unacceptable. They could suffer the moral and cultural outrage silently, but asking them to applaud the sexual deviations goes against the grain.
A right being an entitlement to own, possess, do or say something, or else, forbear, the homosexual fraternity maintain that they are entitled to sodomise natural men, and the lesbians to adopt masculine sexual postrues (whatever they do).
And their rationale for this? "Well, that is what we want and how we want it!" Wanting something is not a sufficient reason for a community or state to sanction it. The next demand could then be the decriminalisation of bestiality (sex with animals) or the laws against adultery or incest. The demand for homosexuality and lesbianism, and their related activities, must be firmly resisted on the ground that these practices violate the cultural, religious, moral, and legal norms of the country. . . .
OMG! First post!
November 27, 2007
Okay. I'm supposed to use this first entry to describe myself a little and some of my background so that from here on in whenever you read anymore of this thing you have a good idea of where I'm coming from, but it's like the most awkward thing in the world.
I thought about it, though, and I decided the best possible way to do this is to just drop all the major bombs first and get them out of the way. That's how I handle this stuff when I have to talk about them with someone in real life, so I may as well do it here - so here we go:
a. I'm 17. I've been HIV+ since I was 14, so that's 3 years now.
b. I'm a transgender kid. FTM to be more specific. No, if you met me on the street you wouldn't be able to tell. Seriously. I've been on HRT for almost 5 months now, it's a pain in the ass (literally, they're intramuscular injections and your ass cheek is a pretty muscular place) and it's difficult for such a variety of reasons (physically/emotionally/mentally/financially, is the list I usually run off) that I can promise you it's not something I chose.
c. Also, I'm gay. I like the boys. The boys like me. You know how it goes.
I'm a gay, HIV+, 17 year old trannyboy. Be afraid, bitches.
All things considered though, I'm not that strange (I know, shut up). There are a few other things that are a bit different about me than most boys my age though. I don't go to a regular public highschool. I used to, but kids suck. I'm now homeschooled via a cyber school on the net - it's safer for me, I can work at my own pace, I don't have to stress over what the kids in my class are gonna do or say to me and I get to sleep in. Also, it's much more comfortable to do Brit Lit in your pajamas. Taking into consideration the amount of time I took off for not feeling well, because I was afraid of being harrassed and because my teachers gave me a hard time because of all of that, I was missing a lot of school, as well. I'm doing much better now. My geometry grade is crap (like a really low C at the time of writing this) but everything else is all As and high Bs.
I guess one of the things that bother me the most about being + at this age is the fact that a lot of people assume that it's okay to ask me 'how I got it'. You don't ask adults how they became positive, so why is it alright to ask me? Seriously guys. Most people assume that I was born with it, or I got it medically somehow, but I didn't. And if you think 14 year olds (and even younger, honestly) aren't having sex, I suggest you take a day trip to reality to get a better understanding of what's going on. They are, and I was, and a great deal of the stuff you'll probably hear me angrily rant about is how poorly kids are being taught about sex and HIV. I angrily rant a lot, though, you'll notice. :D
As far as the transguy thing goes, I am usually pretty outspoken about it. However, I reserve the right to live my life as comfortably and happily as possible, and that includes not informing everyone I know about the fact that I am trans. I want to just live my life as a normal guy. Unfortunately there is so much trans prejudice in the world that wanting to be treated like a normal guy and simultaneously telling everyone I'm trans just isn't possible. That is why not wanting to go public about my HIV status isn't the only reason why I will not be using my full name in this blog, and why I've chosen to use a baby picture instead of a recent picture of myself. That's just how it's gonna be, at least for now and until/if I decide I'm willing to risk the chance of everyone finding out about these things - which I'm not saying is never gonna happen, but for right now I think that'd be a pretty bad idea.
I'd like to use this space to not only talk about what's going on in my life, but to bring to the attention of whoever is reading some issues that normally go ignored that are personally relevant to me. You don't hear a lot of talk about issues specific to HIV and teenagers, or how trans people are affected by HIV, either. Those are topics that are important to me so I'll probably be bringing them up a lot. Not to bore you guys or anything, just because I think they deserve some attention.
Finally, I suppose, if by reading what I write here one teenager prevents himself or herself from getting HIV, or one trans person that is already HIV+ understands there are other people out there struggling with their issues, or someone who isn't affected by any of this stuff comes away with a better understanding - and maybe even has some of their opinions changed, I would be happy.
Also, I really like to talk, so that's appealing, too. I have a couple of friends that are going to tell me to just blog about it now whenever I start ranting. . . .
Cross-dressing terrorist 'bride' caught in Iraq
November 28, 2007
A wanted terrorist has been arrested in Baghdad after he tried to slip through a checkpoint dressed in a wedding gown.
The crossdressing criminal was stopped by US soldiers who became suspicious of the man, and his companions who were posing as a bridegroom and witnesses.
It is just the latest ruse conceived by terrorists who are coming up with more elaborate plots to attack occupying forces.
There are tens of thousands of extra US troops in the Iraqi capital as part of the 'surge' policy.
And levels of terrorist violence in Baghdad have been falling.
But US forces are themselves increasingly being blamed for shootings. American soldiers killed at least six people yesterday in a variety of incidents, including three women who were travelling in a minibus. . . .
POV, Critique, Opinion: Constitutional Amendment to Protect the Transgendered?
November 28, 2007
Mrs. Schlafly asserted that the constitution refers to “we the people” and “citizens”. The word “men” is not in the constitution, and therefore an amendment to include women is unnecessary. Furthermore, it is a lie that the proposed amendments will add the word “women”. The texts read: “equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.” Neither “sex” nor “equality” is defined, leaving wiggle room for interpretation by activist judges. Such lack of specificity could have dire results. The amendment would have implications for property, divorce, and prison regulations. The courts could require the integration of single sex schools, and the merging of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. They could insist that school sports become unisex, and bathrooms as well. The amendment could even be interpreted to require recognition of same-sex marriage. The list of unintended consequences is endless.
Mrs. Schlafly inquired if the amendment pertains to “the sex you are or the sex you do”. We should further ask if it pertains to the sex you’ll become in the future or the sex you think you are. Despite the audience’s laughter, the question has serious implications.
Even if the amendment were modified to read “women” rather than “sex”, it is unclear how “women” would be interpreted. Genetically male transsexuals who undergo surgery to become female, still retain male chromosomes. Though male at birth, they elect to have “sex-reassignment surgery” to “correct” mind-body dissonance. Hermaphrodites who do not get corrective surgery (“intersexuals”), also do not fall neatly into one category of sex. Additionally, “she-males” who obtain female hormones and breasts, but choose not to complete surgery, forever remain pre-op transsexuals. The definition of “women” could include the gambit of sexually confused individuals who present themselves as women.
The “transgender movement” refuses to be limited to two genders. There is a “gender continuum” they explain. Male and female are two extremes on that continuum. Other genders include intergender, agender, ambigender, gender atypical or “other”. (This is unrelated to one’s sexual orientation, which runs the gamut from straight, to gay, bisexual, asexual, and pansexual.) Some make the distinction between gender and sex. They explain that sex is determined biologically and is male or female. Gender is a social construction composed of psychological, social, and cultural aspects of maleness and femaleness. It includes clothing, personal interests, and personality traits, which are characterized as masculine or feminine. Gender appears to be an obvious fact, but is really a societal invention. To social constructionists, everything is subjective. There is no such thing as reality, only social convention. More radical sociologists contend that sex, in addition to gender, “belongs to the world of meaning” rather than physical reality.
The extreme left claims that children as young as 15 months old can exhibit signs of being transgendered. Children are transgender when “what’s between their legs does not match what’s between their ears” and it’s not a passing phase. Transgender “experts” advise parents of transgender children to go along with their child’s pronouncement that they are a member of the opposite sex. Supposedly, this will help the child avoid depression, self-hate, drug use, negative body image, and all kinds of harm the child might develop if encouraged to acknowledge the truth of his or her physical sex.
The DSM IV is the authoritive source of diagnoses for professionals in the psychological and psychiatric fields. It lists alternative gender identities as mental disorders. The transgender community disputes this characterization, insisting that it is only a disorder if the person who has it experiences feelings about it that cause him/her distress or disability. Instead, they promote the view that these disorders constitute “gender giftedness.” Anyone who thinks otherwise is likely to be slapped with the newest label: “transphobic”.
Most federal and state anti-discrimination laws limit protections to men and women. There are no legal protections against discrimination for people who consider themselves to be both sexes, neither sex, or “other”. Even the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA), recently promoted by liberals in Congress, was stripped of legal protections to the transgender community.
If amendments are made to the federal or state constitutions prohibiting discrimination “on account of sex”, then who will be protected depends on how the courts define “sex.” Will it extend to the transvestites in women’s bathrooms, male employees who want to wear dresses to work, transsexuals in military barracks, or male psychotics with delusions of being female? If gender is socially constructed, then the push from the left is to reconstruct it. They endorse the notion of “gender self-identification”, which dictates that you are what you think you are, even if your biology indicates otherwise.
Will your sex be defined by your physical characteristics at birth, by society, or by each individual?
You might think that your sex was determined by God, nature or science. But leftists promoting the ambiguous language in the ERA are all too happy to leave that determination up to the courts. . . .
Transforming Coverage
Transgender issues get greater respect—but anatomy remains destiny
By Julie Hollar
Transgender is hardly a new concept, but until recently it’s been considered by the media to be a topic for tabloid talkshows, not serious news programs. The tide is turning, though; as more and more public figures are coming out as having a gender identity different from their birth-assigned sex, and transgender characters are finding their way into more mainstream entertainment media (on TV shows like All My Children and movies like Transamerica), transgender stories are likewise moving from Jerry Springer to CNN at a remarkable pace.
As of this writing, the major network and cable news programs had nearly doubled their coverage of transgender issues in 2007 compared to the same period of time in 2006. But while it’s an encouraging start, quantity does not necessarily equal quality, and coverage is still plagued with a narrow uniformity of subjects and a relentless and invasive fixation on anatomy.
The explosion of coverage this year can be traced in part to the public coming out of two relatively high-profile figures: Largo, Florida city manager Steve Stanton was outed as transgender by the St. Petersburg Times on February 22; just two months later, longtime L.A. Times sportswriter Mike Penner announced in a column that he would henceforth be writing as Christine Daniels (4/26/07).
Stanton, who had served as city manager for 14 years, had developed a detailed communication plan for transitioning from male to female at work that was pre-empted by the St. Petersburg Times’ “scoop”; city commissioners fired Stanton a week later. It was hardly the first time a transgender person has been fired for transitioning, but it got an unusual amount of media play, no doubt because of Stanton’s high-level public position.
Daniels’ coming out, too, received a good deal of attention, though it was done with the support of the L.A. Times—another indication of media’s shifting attitudes towards transgender issues—and thus resulted in a less dramatic and shorter-lived news story. When Daniels told her boss at the Times that she was planning to transition from male to female, the paper arranged for her to make the change in a column in the paper, and added an online blog for her to write about the process; the feedback, according to Daniels, was overwhelmingly positive and supportive (LATimes.com, 4/30/07).
‘One ugly chick’
Newsweek soon explored gender identity in a cover story (5/21/07). And similar stories have been cropping up in other outlets across the country; the Boston Globe, for example, recently published a lengthy two-part feature on a local family practice doctor who transitioned to female (8/12/07, 8/19/07), and the Rocky Mountain News (9/1/07) profiled a detective who did the same.
The increased attention and apparent seriousness with which media are taking transgender stories today is remarkable; the idea of CNN inviting a transgender media critic to explain to them on the air the appropriate terminology to use when covering transgender issues (11/29/05), for example, would have been unthinkable not long ago, and both the Associated Press and New York Times style guides have recently added editorial guidelines to ensure that transgender people are covered using the name and pronouns they prefer, regardless of their biological or anatomical status—in other words, calling a transgender woman “she,” for example, regardless of whether she’s had any sort of surgery, taken hormones, or looks masculine or feminine to the reporter. It may seem like a small or simple detail, but for transgender people who had long been denied the right to define themselves—with media calling them by names and pronouns they don’t identify with—it’s an important step in the right direction.
That’s not to say that tabloid coverage has disappeared from the mainstream media; both the New York Post and New York Daily News headlines regularly refer to transgender people as “trannies,” often in stories emphasizing crime or scandal. The New York Post (6/13/04) ran an article on transgender Medicaid recipients getting critical hormones under the headline “Tranny RX Sex Scams,” and has no compunction about referring flippantly to transgender people with sensational and dehumanizing terms such as “he-turned-she” (6/2/07) or “transvestite hooker” (11/17/06).
MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, too, regularly brings up transgender news items to scorn or make fun of them; he has called being transgender a “profound personality disorder” (2/23/06), declared sex reassignment surgery “an act of a crazy person” akin to “setting your hair on fire or blinding yourself” (2/23/06), and often makes derisive and immature comments about transgender people like “That dude is one ugly chick” (10/25/06). “Just because you’re castrated and have a fake set of boobs does not make you a woman,” Carlson insisted (6/1/06).
And sometimes the transphobia is slightly more subtle, as when Paula Zahn introduced a segment on a transgender teenager (CNN, 3/9/07) as being about “a family dealing with a truly bizarre problem,” or Barbara Walters explaining in a preview of her special on transgender children (ABC, 4/27/07) that “only by compassion, and understanding, and enlightenment can we accept them.”
A uniform narrative
What’s notable about so much of the more ostensibly “good” coverage, though, is how uniform and narrow it is. The narrative is by now quite familiar: A somewhat prominent white, middle-to-upper-class man comes out as a transgender woman, her long history of feeling “trapped in the wrong body” is detailed, and her struggles and surgeries are documented, as are the struggles of those around her to understand and embrace her change.
The focus on white male-to-female transgender people isn’t terribly surprising, considering media’s long-standing bias towards white male newsmakers (e.g., Extra!, 5–6/02); people like Stanton, Daniels, the Boston doctor and the Colorado detective, originally living as men, were all in reporters’ and editors’ sphere and on their radar, and so theirs are the stories that tend to make the news.
While Newsweek’s cover story broke that mold with a think piece on gender and gender identity, it was accompanied by five online profiles (5/13/07) of transgender individuals, every one of whom was a professional, white male-to-female. Most of the profiles were simply personal coming-out stories, with only a hint of political critique here and there. In fact, the piece most focused on discrimination was a profile of a vice president at Prudential, who talked about corporations’ advancement in transgender rights and what it’s like to come out at work—from a white senior manager’s perspective. While it’s perhaps simultaneously heartening and depressing that the worst challenge she identified was suddenly experiencing sexism in the workplace, the profile, the Newsweek package as a whole and the prevailing media narrative all project a vision of a transgender reality that hardly reflects the struggles of the many transgender people in positions of less power in their workplace, or those who can’t even get a job in the formal work sector, or those who otherwise face discrimination compounded by factors of race and class.
Statistics are not easy to come by, but one study found that in Washington, D.C., only 58 percent of transgender people surveyed had paid employment, 15 percent reported losing a job due to discrimination and 43 percent had been the victim of violence or crime (Gender.org, 2002). A similar study in San Francisco found that nearly half of transgender respondents had faced gender identity–based employment discrimination and over 30 percent had faced discrimination while trying to access healthcare (NCLR.org, 2003). It’s these stories that go missing while Newsweek muses to the Prudential VP, “Switching from slacks to panty hose cannot be easy.” . . .
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Cross-dressing day sparks school exodus
November 28, 2007
by Bob Unruh
A public school's "gender-bender" cross-dressing event, where boys were supposed to dress as girls and girls as boys, has prompted at least dozens, perhaps hundreds, of students to flee the tax-supported institutions in Iowa.
Many of the parents apparently are members of the Christ Apostolic Temple in Des Moines, which teaches a biblically based doctrine of rejecting the world's values.
"Christ Apostolic Temple Inc. Fellowship ... is a Bible-based organization that believes one must 'come out from among them and be ye separate.' (2 Cor. 6:14-17)," the organization's website says.
The Des Moines schools are celebrating a centenary, but have lost students this year because of one school's promotion of cross-dressing |
That apparently includes cross-dressing, an event which has found sponsorship in other arenas from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which has promoted a school lesson plan for teaching boys and girls to cross-dress.
State officials in Des Moines confirmed to WND that at least 80 children whose parents were alarmed by the "Gender-Bender Day" during homecoming week at the city's East High School have moved their children from the various districts in the area into homeschooling plans. Several parents told WND that the number could be in the hundreds. . . .
POV, Critique, Opinion: Is Sex Meaningless?
By Joel Hilliker
Some people think utopia is a place where sex is meaningless.
A group of lawmakers, judges, lawyers and educators in America, Britain, Canada and elsewhere want to engineer a world free from oppression and hate. They want to introduce a golden age of tolerance and understanding. They seek a society where everyone is accepted, where no one is condemned, where everyone feels emotionally validated, where no one’s feelings are ever hurt.
That might sound like a noble dream—but their version of it is a nightmare.
It is a world where the line between male and female doesn’t exist. Where not only is it just as common to be homosexual or bisexual as heterosexual, but every person has the choice—with society’s full, unflinching support—to act, dress or even biologically exist as either male or female, or anything in between. Where a school teacher, police officer, priest or president can be a man who likes wearing dresses and high heels, and anyone who expresses discomfort over the idea can be silenced with the full force of the law.
This utopian world removes pressure on singles to marry, pressure on married people to remain together, pressure on parents to make sacrifices for their children, and pressure on children to view their parents as authorities. In other words, it undermines the pillars of family life.
Proponents of this vision overlook, ignore, dismiss and ridicule any evidence that exposes the flaws in their thinking. And of that, there are mountains. Evidence showing biological, emotional and mental differences between men and women. Evidence showing the benefits of traditional marriage to both husband and wife, as well as society at large—and the high costs associated with its dissolution. Evidence showing the enormous advantages to children—in personal safety, academic performance, financial well-being, emotional stability, self-respect, and assimilation into law-abiding adult life, among other things—of growing up under the same roof with both biological parents, a living arrangement built upon a strong, stable relationship between a sperm-producing adult male and an egg-producing adult female.
Nevertheless, the reality-challenged individuals who refuse to acknowledge this evidence sit in some of the most powerful offices in Western civilization.
Such is the state of our society after decades of determined chipping away at the foundation of traditional family. Views that once inhabited the shadowy fringes are stomping their way into courtrooms and legislative chambers. Bit by bit, activist leaders are codifying their twisted vision into reality, aggressively introducing new laws and filling the judicial record with new precedent, giving them the legal power to stamp out dissent.
Legally Protecting Gender Confusion
One of their most recent victories occurred last October in California. The Golden State’s famous governor signed four bills into law, three of which criminalize behavior deemed discriminatory against cross-dressers, bisexuals and homosexuals (the fourth law enables homosexual couples to share a last name as if they are married). Specifically, one law strips state funding from any program guilty of such discrimination, another mandates that no instruction in public schools “promotes a discriminatory bias,” and a third demands that all public schools prominently display anti-discrimination policies.
The “discrimination” in these laws is broadly defined, including any bias against anyone based on “gender.” If you are unfamiliar with what this term has come to mean, allow the new California law to explain it to you. “Gender … includes a person’s gender identity and gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth” (emphasis mine). In other words, if Burt wants to wear lipstick and panty hose and call himself Bertha, the law now obligates everyone to pretend as if this is perfectly sane behavior.
Illegal discrimination now includes anything “perceived” as different treatment because of behavior “perceived” as not stereotypically male or female. It includes anything that might suggest that a child living with biological Dad and Mom is advantaged over someone living with a single homosexual man or woman who has multiple partners. It could include a business treating a cross-dressing job applicant different from anyone else. It could include a reference to family in a school textbook that fails to mention it’s just fine if it involves a homosexual couple. You can be sure that zealous lawyers are itching to test the new laws by putting such “crimes” on trial.
California is now one of nine states with explicit non-discrimination laws for transgender individuals. By January, similar laws will also be in effect in four other states. Thus, against all common sense, gender confusion is protected by law—placed in the same category as biological realities like race and sex.
The implications of these laws are enormous. Universities nationwide are hosting gender-neutral student housing, bathrooms and locker rooms; transgender law advocates are pushing for student health insurance plans to include hormones and “sex-reassignment surgery.” Last year, New York City’s homeless shelter system, which segregates men and women, began allowing people to decide which shelters to use based on whether they “feel” male or female. Some people are pushing to open women’s public toilet facilities and locker rooms to Burts-turned-Berthas everywhere. Thus, to protect the right of a man who says he feels more comfortable as a woman, the law is preparing to trample on the right of women who feel more comfortable in public bathrooms devoid of perverted men.
That is the truth of the matter. If you think these social engineers are preaching a doctrine of tolerance, think again. Theirs is a deeply intolerant world view. They demand that the world conform to their thinking. . . .
Guidelines under fire for 'biased' sex courses
By Gary Emerling
November 28, 2007
Proposed guidelines for sex-education classes in D.C. public schools face opposition from critics who say the standards are biased against abstinence-only education, promote the view that homosexuality is innate and are not age-appropriate.
"I'm quite confident if you surveyed all the public school parents in D.C., the majority would not agree with these standards," said Richard Urban, executive director of Urban Life Training and Reality Assessment (ULTRA) Teen Choice, which promotes abstinence.
Mr. Urban is among those slated to testify tonight at a public hearing before the State Board of Education, which is expected to vote on the standards next month.
The guidelines say eighth-grade students should be taught the definition of sexual orientation "using correct terminology" and learn that some people "may begin to feel romantically and/or sexually attracted to people of a different gender and/or to people of the same gender."
They say sixth-grade students should be taught that "people, regardless of biological sex, gender, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and culture, have sexual feelings and the need for love, affection and physical intimacy."
Ninth-graders should be taught to "analyze trends in ... contraceptive practices, and the availability of abortion," the guidelines state.
Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), said her organization is concerned that the term "sexual orientation" in the standards could lead to a curriculum that teaches that homosexuality is innate.
She also said the suggested standards for sixth-graders could introduce "cross-dressing as perfectly normal and natural," and that guidelines for teaching kindergartners about different family structures are inappropriate. . . .
PEACE AT LAST
HAYNE Suthon, owner of Lucky Cheng's, the downtown eatery where the waitresses started out in life as boys, has made peace with ex-husband Robert Jason. Their bitter divorce in 2000 resulted in huge lawyer fees, arrests and domestic-violence accusations. The couple, which once co-owned a production company, has reunited to make a 10-part documentary series on transsexuals to be called "Being T." "Half of them work for me," said Suthon. "One's a professional golfer. We focus on tranny chasers, too." She said that her ex was "back on his game" as a producer and that the two had made amends after dumping their divorce lawyers and speaking to each other in "a civilized manner."
LGBTs in Asia Face Criminalization
November 27, 2007
Earlier in the year a court in Pakistan jailed a same-sex couple for perjury, raising the taboo issues of homosexuality and transsexuality in the conservative society. Shumail Raj, who had undergone a couple of operations already to become a man, was accused of lying by the court as court-appointed doctors who examined Raj said he was still a woman! The sentence was subsequently suspended by the Supreme Court.
Sexuality confronts and challenges cherished notions of culture, traditional values, practices and rituals. And hence sexuality outside marriage is not recognized, sexuality of women is not seen as existing, sexual choices other than of the heterosexual variety are criminalized and transgender people marginalized. And our societies, because of these age-old structures, values and roles assigned to men and women within it, while very rarely assimilating transgender and transsexual issues. Because how do you fit ‘these people' into these traditional roles of a man and a woman? And that is why very often transgender persons, in their own lifestyles, also tend to slip into the accepted stereotypes of orthodox relationships and each person's role within it as defined by the society that rejected them in the first place.
Some Indian epics, so rich in their diverse stories, have had the space for everyone. Shikhandi was the warrior in the epic Mahabharata that no one could kill because he was ‘neither man nor woman.' And yet in many Indian films transgender people have been the subject of ridicule and buffoonery, increasingly replacing the regular targets like overweight or drunk people. And these would be seen as signs acceptance - when they become the butt of jokes in the mainstream media and entertainment. At least you are not been hidden in dark corners and spoken of in whispers!
Sexuality is inextricably linked with social exclusion. Heterosexuals constitute the sexual elite while Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual and Transgenders (LGBT), sex workers, the HIV-infected constitute the sexual pariahs, the social outcastes. And with barely any control over the environment that they live in, they face the worst kind of abuse and human rights violations imaginable. Often abandoned by their families (due to the associated stigma) or given up to be brought up by similar groups due to their ambiguous sex, they very literally start early in life to fend for themselves. Having being pushed into the peripheries of society by their own families, they often become sex workers.
The most serious problem comes when attempting to access health services, if and when they are available. Even in places where health services from the government are accessible, the abusive language and rough physical treatment coming as part of the ‘free service' -- stigmatizing behavior by the supposed care providers -- causes the biggest damage. The attitude of the service providers more often than not forces LGBT individuals to seek recourse in places where they are treated with more dignity or at least the pretense of it.
Most laws for people of alternate sexualities are archaic and continue to treat them as criminals. Hence, due to the illegal status bestowed on them not only is the cycle of exploitation and violence endless but due to the limited access to health services - more out of social ostracism as also refusal of treatment - they are forcibly pushed into back alleys for unsafe abortions and other treatments at the hands of quacks.
And in multicultural societies the laws are not just archaic but even confusing as evidenced at various symposia during the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (4thAPCRSH) in Hyderabad, when several speakers spoke of the laws existing in their respective countries or regions. For instance, the fine on a Muslim transgender in Malaysia is much higher (anywhere between $200-$800) as opposed to $14 for a non-Muslim transgender. And it is this criminalized status that really poses the biggest threat to most people of diverse sexualities as they find themselves in situations of unprotected and potentially risky encounters - both in terms of health and laws of the state. . . .
Gulf authorities to pay for gender reassignment
Gemma Pritchard
The Bahraini government has agreed to pay for a trans person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Thailand.
According to daily English-language newspaper Gulf Daily News, 32-year old Hussain Rabie is due to fly out to Thailand on Thursday to undergo female-to-male surgery on Sunday.
Rabie, who is partially blind in his right eye, hopes to return to represent the Bahrain Disabled Sports Federation in the men's shot put and discus.
His trip to Thailand is being fully funded by the Bahrain Health Ministry and he also has a court order to protect him if he is questioned by immigration officers.
The Health Ministry will pay more than BD5,000 (�6,400) for his operation, accommodation, plane ticket, food and drink while he is there.
When he returns, his final hurdle will be the Bahraini courts, where he is battling for the right to be recognised as a man and officially change his name to Hussain.
"I am so happy that the ministry offered to pay for the operation," Rabie told Gulf Daily News yesterday.
"I was very concerned as to how I would manage - I didn't know where to get that amount from."
He said that he wrote to former Health Minister Dr Nada Haffadh asking for support, but could not believe it when the ministry responded.
"I would like to thank the ministry for their help and support."
He added: "I am still not officially Hussain, but hopefully after the operation I will get a court order stating that I am a male and then all my identity cards and passport will change and I will officially be a man."
As a result of his decision to have the operation, he has now been suspended from his job as an operator at GPIC, been shunned by peers, separated from his husband and stopped from going to the gym.
However, he said although society is slowly starting to accept his situation after he went public, people are still opposed to him having the operation.
"People are still not aware of the kind of surgery being carried out," he said.
"The community accepts homosexuals, so why are they against me?
"What they are doing is legally and religiously prohibited, but I have seen so many people who are leading a normal life and working. Everybody around them accepts them.
"I am medically unfit and I want to correct my problem."
Rabie first approached a lawyer in August 2005 and legal papers calling for him to be legally recognised as a man were filed in June last year.
He submitted medical reports from Al Khalidi Medical Centre, Jordan, Ibn Al Nafees Hospital and Shifa Al Jazeera Medical Centre, Bahrain, at two court hearings last year.
The High Civil Court also ordered for a medical report to be compiled by a Public Prosecution doctor.
That report states that he is suffering from a gender identity problem and has no female reproductive organs. . . .
Let me lead a normal life
| |||
By rasha al qahtani MANAMA A WOMAN about to embark on the rest of her life as a man has appealed to the people of Bahrain for acceptance. Bahraini Zainab Abdulhafed Rabie will leave for Thailand on Thursday for her final sex change operation. She hopes to lead a normal life as a man when she returns and has already won the support of the Bahrain government, which is paying for the surgery. The Health Ministry will pay more than BD5,000 for her operation, accommodation, plane ticket, food and drink while she is there. She has also been provided with a court order that explains her condition, which she can produce if she is stopped by immigration officers - something that has happened often in the past. When she returns, her final hurdle will be the Bahraini courts, where she is battling for the right to be recognised as a man and officially change her name to Hussain. "I am so happy that the ministry offered to pay for the operation," she told the GDN yesterday. "I was very concerned as to how I would manage - I didn't know where to get that amount from." Ms Rabie said she wrote to former Health Minister Dr Nada Haffadh asking for support, but couldn't believe it when the ministry responded. "I would like to thank the ministry for their help and support." The 33-year-old will be accompanied to Thailand by her brother and will have the operation next Sunday. She will then remain in hospital for two weeks for supervision. "After the two weeks I will have to stay in Thailand for a month-and-a-half for regular checkups," she said. "I have a court order stating my condition, which will help me at the airport and avoid confusion. "I am still not officially Hussain, but hopefully after the operation I will get a court order stating that I am a male and then all my identity cards and passport will change and I will officially be a man." Ms Rabie was born with a condition known as intersexuality, a term used to describe someone born with a reproductive or sexual anomaly, but only found out the truth when she got married at 25. She has now been suspended from her job as an operator at GPIC, been shunned by her peers, separated from her husband and stopped from going to the gym. However, she said although society is slowly starting to accept her condition after she went public, people are still opposed to her having the operation. "People are still not aware of the kind of surgery being carried out," she said. "They think that I am having a sex transfer instead of a sex correction." Before she learned the truth about herself, Zainab, who is partially blind in her right eye, represented the Bahrain Disabled Sports Federation in women's shot put and discuss. Now she is looking forward to getting back into the sport and competing against men. "I am ready for the operation and I have no fears - the result will make me very happy and hopefully let me go back to my normal life. "The community accepts homosexuals, so why are they against me? "What they are doing is legally and religiously prohibited, but I have seen so many people who are leading a normal life and working - everybody around them accepts them. "I am medically unfit and I want to correct my problem." Ms Rabie's lawyer, Faouzia Janahi, said her client was still struggling to gain acceptance. "They do not want to treat her as a male or a female, so what is she supposed to do?" "She is going to correct her sex, not change it. People should know what the two different procedures are before judging. "As for her work as an operator with GPIC, nothing has changed. She is still suspended from work and is still getting a salary. "Hopefully, after the operation, everything will fall into place and Zainab will lead a normal life." Ms Rabie knew from the age of eight that she was different from other girls, but her family never noticed anything unusual. It was not until she was 31 that she decided to seek legal advice. Zainab first approached her lawyer in August 2005 and legal papers calling for her to be legally recognised as a man were filed in June last year. She submitted 11 medical reports - from Al Khalidi Medical Centre, Jordan, and one each from Ibn Al Nafees Hospital and Shifa Al Jazeera Medical Centre, Bahrain, - at two court hearings last year. The High Civil Court also ordered for a medical report to be compiled by a Public Prosecution doctor. That report shows that she is suffering from a gender identity problem and has no female reproductive organs. It says she also has a higher percentage of male chromosomes in her body than female chromosomes, as well as "obscure external genitals". She has had a mastectomy and will travel for Thailand for her final operation. |
Transsexual enlightens crowd
"I thought I was God's one mistake," said Rachel Crandall, executive director of TransGender Michigan, about her being a girl living in a boy's body. The speech took place in the Gold Room in the Bovee University Center on Monday as part of Transgender Awareness Week.
by Ian Glennie
11/28/07
Rachel Crandall is a transsexual on a mission for awareness and acceptance for all.
She made that known Monday night at the Charles V. Park Library Auditorium.
Crandall, executive director of TransGender Michigan, was born a male. She said she only identified with females since she could remember.
She used her personal experience to express the physical, mental and emotional strife transsexuals face.
"I felt like a little girl trapped in a little boy's body," she told the audience of about 30 people. "I wanted someone to understand and except me for who I was."
Crandall said being one's self is not only an issue that transsexual, bisexual and gay people face, but is an issue that everyone must come to terms with.
Her speech was part of CMU's first Transgender Awareness Week.
"It's a great step in the right direction," said Flint senior Will Calhoun. "It's bringing awareness to students that have been previously unaware of these issues."
Crandall said she was in an almost constant state of despair and depression while growing up, and spent the majority of her life crying.
"It was the feeling that you were God's one mistake," she said. "A number of times I wanted to kill myself."
She said she didn't come out as a transsexual until she was 34. Before then, she lived as a man.
Once she came out of her failed marriage to a woman, she lost her career and she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital.
She said there was a period in her life when she would do nothing but rock back and forth in the fetal position for weeks. . . .
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Love Your Body! A Transwoman's Guide to Health & Wellness
November 25, 2007
National Coalition for LGBT Health
www.lgbthealth.net
Our transwomen's bodies come in all colors, shapes and sizes, and all of us need to take care of them. However, good health care can be hard to get, due to discrimination, lack of medical clinicians who understand our needs, and lack of health insurance coverage. To keep our bodies healthy and whole, we must become informed consumers, educating our health care providers and ourselves.
HORMONE THERAPY involves taking estrogen and sometimes an anti-androgen to promote breast development, soften skin, lighten body and facial hair, decrease fat in the belly and increase fat in the hips and thighs. It is not risk-free, and you should not take estrogen without medical supervision and regular blood tests. If you are taking estrogen or considering it, keep these points in mind:
- Every transwoman's body is different ñ there is no way to predict how your body will respond to estrogen. Taking more estrogen than prescribed by your clinician will not speed up the changes you desire, and will possibly make you ill.
- After breast growth occurs, you should learn how to do a monthly Breast Self-Examination (BSE). You also should get an annual breast exam and an annual mammogram.
- If you smoke, quit, because smoking increases the risk of blood clots while taking estrogen. Blood clots can stop the blood flow within your legs, lungs, brain (stroke) or heart (heart attack), all of which can cause permanent damage, including paralysis and even death.
- If you want to become a biological parent in the future, you should consider freezing your sperm prior to starting estrogen. Estrogen lowers your sperm count and will eventually cause infertility. However, you still could make someone pregnant, especially in your first year of hormonal use. If you have penetrative sex with someone who can get pregnant, you should use condoms or some other protective barrier.
- You still should get an annual prostate exam, even if youíve had Sex Reassignment Surgery. Taking estrogen should reduce prostate problems, but there is a slight chance it may cause prostate enlargement.
- If you inject estrogen, never share your syringes with anyone. Discard used syringes immediately and safely. If you can't afford new syringes, contact your local needle exchange program.
Injecting silicone is dangerous to your health. The safest way to get your curves is still through medically supervised hormone therapy. Contact a local transgender support group for the most experienced doctors in your area, or inquire at a local gay and lesbian clinic.
SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY - If you want Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), follow the Standards of Care of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA). Although imperfect, these guidelines still offer the best protection for patients and surgeons. After SRS, see a gynecologist for a pelvic exam once a year.
SEXUAL HEALTH - Use condoms or a protective barrier with your sex partners. If youíve engaged in unsafe sex, be sure to get tested for Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
MENTAL HEALTH - Living in an intolerant world can cause stress, anxiety and depression. A mental health therapist can really help you deal with things. Take care of your body and your mind. . . .
Intersex Children: Into the Hands of Babes
November 6, 2007
By Melissa Hendricks
Reprinted with permission from the Johns Hopkins University Magazine. Visit the JHU Magazine website here.
"It was a little 7-year-old," says Reiner, "who just about tore everybody's guts out."
A urologist turned psychiatrist, Reiner had devoted his career to treating young patients born with irregular genitals. Some had ambiguous genitals--a scrotum along with a phallus that resembled a clitoris, for example. Others, though genetic males, had no penis or had an extremely rare condition called micropenis.
Physicians for several decades had recommended that children in this latter group be raised as girls--thinking based largely on pioneering work done in the 1950s and '60s at Hopkins, one of the few medical centers in the world that specialized in treating children with such disorders. Common practice in a case of a boy who lacked a penis or had a micropenis was to surgically remove the testes, construct female external genitals, and prescribe female hormones--then send the child home to be brought up as Sally or Susie. To do otherwise, it seemed, was to subject these babies to an unimaginably cruel childhood of locker room taunts and psychological pain, followed by a frustrating adulthood of sexual inadequacy.
Gender reassignment occurred in other cases too, depending on the diagnosis. But in all cases, the standard was to decide promptly whether the infant ought to be a boy or girl and then to be consistent in rearing the child as that gender (a process described in my story "Is It a Boy or a Girl?" in the November 1993 Johns Hopkins Magazine).
Reiner had wholeheartedly subscribed to this model throughout the 1970s and '80s, first as a urology resident at Hopkins and then as a urologist in private practice in central California. But over the course of his career, he had become troubled by a dearth of information on the psychological and sexual outcome of children with urogenital conditions.
In 1992, he returned to Hopkins to train as a psychiatrist and to specialize in treating patients with urogenital disorders. He now directs Hopkins's Gender Identity and Psychosexual Disorders Clinic. Recently, he concluded the first phase of an outcomes study that included 36 genetic males who had been born with a complicated birth defect that included the lack of a penis. It was during the course of the study that Reiner met the 7-year-old I'll call Kayla.
Like most of the other children in the study, Kayla had been castrated and was being raised as a girl. But she was not a happy child. Small and aggressive, she had gotten into a number of fights with her classmates. Rather than the dolls her parents gave her, she played with cars and trucks, and she had insisted that her schoolmates call her by the biblical boy's name she had chosen for herself. Eventually she had refused to go to school altogether.
Reiner gave Kayla a battery of psychological tests and found that she came out overwhelmingly male on measurements of gender-typical behaviors and self-concept. He told Kayla's parents what he had observed. After some reflection, the parents decided that their child ought to know that she had been born a boy. They asked Reiner if he would tell her.
So the next day, Reiner explained to Kayla that she had been born a boy who had no penis, so her doctors and parents had decided to raise her as a girl.
"His eyes opened about as wide as eyes could open," recalls Reiner. "He climbed into my lap and wrapped his arms around me and stayed like that."
As Reiner cradled the child in his arms, he felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted, and he himself was overcome with emotion. The child remained in his arms without moving for half an hour.
Reiner now believes children are born either boys or girls, and that no matter what happens to them, be it surgery or rearing, they remain that way. "When you work with these kids, you see that they're not making a decision," he says. "They have always known. The sense of who one is--[boy or girl]--is a crucial existential aspect of humanity. It is powerful and inborn." The absence or presence of a penis is incidental. "The most important sex organ is the brain."
Reiner now says that surgeons ought to hold off on surgically castrating patients like Kayla. Further, he suggests that the same cautious approach should perhaps apply to patients with other urogenital conditions. "One can draw inferences, but one has to do it with caution," he notes, given that having ambiguous genitals stems from myriad causes. "But if it's not life threatening, I would favor prudence." If a child has ambiguous genitals, he says, families and physicians might decide using the best medical information available whether to call them boys or girls, but wait for the child to decide whether to opt for genital surgery. . . .