"Over the last ten years in Los Angeles, there's been a noticeable increase in the number of transsexual teenagers, kids who were born as boys but live as girls, and vice versa. Cris Beam has spent the last two years getting to know these kids, and tells the story of two of them, Foxxjazell and Ariel."
Click on the title above and then "Full Episode."
This is an audio program, from the "This American Life" public radio international series, based on the book "Transparent: Love, Family, And Living The T With Transgender Teenagers" (2007) by Cris Beam.
A highly recommended book.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
A Pride Trans-formation
D.C.'s trans community organizes its first dedicated Capital Pride event
With new protections for transgender people going into effect in October 2006, Washington has the distinction of leading the country in protecting the transgender community from discrimination, according to the D.C. Trans Coalition.
Among the protections offered by the city, transgender people cannot be prevented from using gender-specific facilities, such as restrooms; employers must treat transgender medical needs as they would any other legitimate medical need; and neither businesses nor city agencies can require a person to disclose information about gender transition.
But on June 3, D.C.'s trans community will achieve another milestone, this time outside of the legal realm. On that Sunday, the community will celebrate the first Trans Pride.
''It's very, very, very important,'' says SaVanna Wanzer, chair of Capital Pride's transgender committee, a board member at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, and a self-identified trans woman. ''It's been a terrible fight just getting this event together, with budget issues. The transgender community needs its own event, rather than just using us as entertainment. That's all we've been allowed to do.''
The Sunday event, the first specifically transgender pride offering in Capital Pride's 32-year history, will run from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church at 400 I St. SW. Admission is free till 6 p.m., with the first five hours dedicated to forums with topics such as social justice and religion, and a health fair. . . .
Spain local election sees first transsexual woman as councillor
| By m.p May 30, 2007 - 10:01 PM | |
Manuela Trasobares holds the political balance of power in her Castellón village
El Mundo reported on Wednesday that Sunday’s local election has left the government of the village of Geldo, in Castellón, in the hands of the first transsexual woman in Spain to be voted in as a councillor.
The paper quotes a report from the ‘Diario Digital Transexual’ that the Partido Popular and PSOE both achieved three seats in the poll.
The remaining seat went to ARDE – Acción Republicana Democrática Española - the party led by Manuela Trasobares. A pact between the two main parties is seen as highly unlikely.
El Mundo says the 45 year old changed her sex at the age of 15 and was married last year in a ceremony attended by almost all the 900 residents of the village.
She says it was her own neighbours who asked her to enter the world of politics, in a village which was governed in the last legislation by an unexpected alliance between the conservative Partido Popular and the left-wing Izquierda Unida coalition, with the Socialists in opposition.
IU lost their one seat to ARDE in this year’s election.
San Francisco Chronicle: Shaking up transgender assumptions
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Transparent
Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers
By Cris Beam
HARCOURT; 323 Pages; $25
Real women can have penises. And "the brain and the heart are the only organs with a gender, and ... all genital modification or lack thereof is simply a personal aesthetic choice." These are some of the titillating ideas explored in "Transparent," Cris Beam's first book.
But Beam's engaging narrative does more than just provoke or amuse. It helps readers adjust their assumptions, as Beam admits hers were adjusted, about a world many may be unfamiliar with.
Beam teaches creative writing at the New School and Columbia University and has written for Teen People, Parenting, Out, Mademoiselle and the radio program "This American Life." But in 1998, she was a freelance magazine writer with spare time. She began volunteering at a high school in Los Angeles for gay and transgender teens.
After 2 1/2 years Beam burned out and quit. But she loved her students, even with "their attitudes, and the occasional danger and regular tragedies," and she maintained contact with several of the kids.
"Transparent" is the result of those meetings, which occurred from 1998 through the summer of 2005. Beam found her way into this nuanced world through the lives of four transgender girls, Christina, Domineque, Foxxjazell and Ariel, genetic males living as females. She intersperses their stories with edifying facts, figures and definitions, clearing away the distortions and misconceptions embedded in today's gender-rigid society. . . .
Transgender American Veterans Association
The Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) was formed to address the growing concerns of fair and equal treatment of transgender veterans and active duty service members. As the population of gender-different people increases, then so does the population of veterans and active duty service members who identify as such. TAVA serves as an educational organization that will help the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense to better understand the individuals they encounter who identify as being gender-different. As veterans, we have also served proudly, and will continue to do so. TAVA is here to help where we can.
It's a trans world
The author of a new book about transgender teenagers in Los Angeles talks straight about hormone smuggling, life on the street, and the rise of America's first trans-rapper.
Jan. 5, 2007 | "Transgender": Does even the word confuse you? If you were asked to define it, could you?
If not, you're hardly alone. For years, the transgender community has existed in the shadow of the gay, lesbian and bisexual rights movement -- though most trans-people agree that redefining their gender has little to do with their sexual orientation. The word is applied to everyone from drag queens and sex reassignment surgery patients to femme gay men and butch straight girls. And these days, when discussions of transgender do happen, it's usually in the context of the sex industry or debates about unisex bathrooms and gender-blind hallways in college dormitories. With such boundless, cloudy meanings, is it any surprise that even the most sex-savvy, gay-friendly, politically correct among us still have a hard time explaining the term?
Cris Beam, the author of "Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers," hopes her new book will help take on some of the mysteries and misconceptions that still haunt the transgender community. Beam, now 34, moved to Los Angeles in 1997, while her girlfriend attended graduate school. Lonely in her new city, she became intrigued by Eagles, a local high school specifically for gay and transgender kids; with the time left over in her freelance writing schedule, she began to work there as a volunteer. During the two and a half years Beam taught at Eagles, she discovered a complex but marginalized tribe of transgender teens who had nowhere to go but the streets. "Transparent" chronicles those stories, and describes how, within a few years, Beam found herself deeply involved in the kids' lives, entangled in their dreams, disappointments and their search for the truth about themselves and their gender. . . .
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