Tears Dry on Their Own - Amy Winehouse

When Rock Daily caught wind that casting agents were seeking “beautiful Asian transgender women” to star in Amy Winehouse’s David LaChapelle-directed video for “Tears Dry On Their Own,” we had visions of the saucy British soulster making her very own Crying Game. Alas, the finished project is pretty tame — a jilted but resilient Winehouse makes her way past a cast of colorful characters during a particularly harrowing stroll down Hollywood Boulevard. But if Winehouse (who’s partial to flamboyant makeup, herself) had taken a few cues from Hollywood, the plot could have been far more dramatic:

* Winehouse’s car breaks down, so she arrives at the doorstep of a creepy mansion where she sings and dances with a crowd of transgendered folks until everything goes wrong …

* On a road trip to a drag show in California, Winehouse experiences car trouble, so she and her traveling companions fight adversity in the small town they’re stranded in until they’re loved and respected by all.

* A small newspaper names one of Winehouse’s pals the Filthiest Person in the World, which draws the ire of a crazy neighboring family that sells babies on the black market. Somebody dies, somebody chows down on a pile of excrement and … scene. . . .

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The new closet

November 9, 2007

A revolution of indeterminacy or a clever marketing ploy? Either way, ambiguity is back in fashion, writes Guy Blackman.

It was Space Oddity-era David Bowie, with his dazzling orange hair and peroxide eyebrows, who turned ambiguous sexuality into prime pop capital. Back in the early '70s, Bowie and associates Lou Reed, Marc Bolan and Freddie Mercury titillated teen audiences with their daring ambivalence, setting the scene for a decade of glam and glitter in which hairy men in spandex were a disturbingly common sight.

Now, 35 years later, it seems that ambiguity is back. British artists such as Lebanon-born Mika and precocious, flame-haired Patrick Wolf lead a new pop pansexuality making flamboyant, lyrically suggestive music but refusing to discuss their private lives.

With a rich British legacy including glam, new romantic and Morrissey's back catalogue behind them, Mika and Wolf are knowing and referential while in the US a less self-conscious equal is Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons and bearded folk oddball Devendra Banhart.

Hegarty's songs have lines such as "one day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful woman" and his personal imagery involves elements of androgyny and transvestism, while Banhart's latest promo shots pay tribute to '70s San Francisco hippie drag troupe the Cockettes. He dresses skimpily in a jewelled bra, plastic fruit pinned to his underwear and colourful make-up lining his eyes and forehead.

None of these artists publicly identify as gay or straight, preferring to shroud their proclivities in mystery and enigma. But is all this ambiguity indicative of a new 21st century sexual fluidity, or does it just reflect a cannibalistic music industry, returning to the playful ambivalence of earlier decades for the sake of sales?

Hegarty takes an optimistic view, believing that youth are discarding rigid sexual definitions and seeking role models who reflect their indeterminacy.

"The new kids are very polymorphous," Hegarty says. "They seem really open-minded. They're not preoccupied with difference or separateness, which I find really refreshing."

For Hegarty, the '80s AIDS crisis put artistic joie de vivre temporarily on hold, and it took another disaster almost 20 years later to shock cultural producers back to vivid life.

"People are moving towards something that's sincere, they're not interested in cynicism, which really differentiates itself from my generation," says the 36-year-old.

"In America with the World Trade Centre, I felt like that was the crack in New York City, and then a year later everything started to weirdly flourish. Everyone woke up again - that's my theory."

But the Gossip's "fat, feminist, lesbian" lead singer Beth Ditto, who famously grew up eating squirrels in Judsonia, Arkansas, thinks differently.

To her, Hegarty's optimism could only exist in a city like New York, a zone of urban tolerance that hardly extends beyond city limits. "It's a really easy way to look at things," Ditto says.

"I know that in small-town Arkansas, it's not like that at all. I have a little sister who's a flaming bisexual and she gets a lot of f---ing shit for it."

She questions whether this decade has seen a new sexual permissiveness in pop music.

"There've always been queers in music," she says. "Little Richard created rock'n'roll - I mean, nothing's gayer than that! In the '80s you had New Wave but you also had hair metal and no matter what you say, that was queer as hell. And the literal meaning of 'punk' is a gay man, so gay is synonymous with punk. It's hard to know if it's any different now than it always has been." . . .

Many in Bay Area call anti-bias measure an act of betrayal

Thursday, November 8, 2007

National civil rights organizations are celebrating the passage by the House of legislation that would add "sexual orientation" to a list of federally protected classes, but some San Francisco groups refuse to take part in the party.

The vote Wednesday on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, also known as ENDA, postponed several times, was ultimately revised to remove protection for transgender workers, which upset gay rights groups here and across the country. Democratic leaders said the removal was necessary to get the act passed. But more than 300 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leaders opposed the exclusion, saying it is unfair and sends the wrong message.

"People are livid," said John Newsome, co-founder of And Castro for All, a bias awareness group. "If the first step out of the gate leaves people behind, it is an ill-conceived first step."

The Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights supported the revised bill, saying an incremental approach is sometimes necessary, and that the move marks a step forward.

"We are happy for our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters and understand that we are making legislative progress, but we feel that there is a lot of work still to be done," said Cecilia Chung, deputy director of San Francisco's Transgender Law Center. "We are disappointed that this version is not all-inclusive." . . .

VA system issues memo on treating trans vets

by Ethan Jacobs
staff reporter
Thursday Nov 8, 2007

With little to no fanfare the Veteran Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System issued a patient care memorandum to its staff in September detailing guidelines for providing care to transgender patients. Advocates describe the memo as a landmark achievement in transgender healthcare and say it is the first known case of a VA system demonstrating in writing its commitment to creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for transgender veterans.

"The thing is there are other facilities that are doing what is in this policy," said Monica Helms, president of the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA). "The difference is these other places don’t have a written policy, so it’s almost like the doctors that are there who treat transgender individuals, they decided this is how they’re going to do it, and the only difference is Boston decided to put it down on paper."

She said she knows of about a dozen other VA hospitals and healthcare systems that provide inclusive healthcare for transgender patients, but TAVA has been pushing for them to put that policy in writing, and the Boston VA system is the first they know of to do so.

Diego Sanchez, former co-chair of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), praised the memo’s author, VA clinical psychologist Dr. Jillian Shipherd, for her commitment to ensuring that transgender patients receive adequate healthcare throughout the entire VA Boston Healthcare System. About 10 years ago when he was serving as director of JRI Health’s TransHealth Education and Development Program, Sanchez said Shipherd contacted him and asked him to do staff trainings at the Jamaica Plain VA hospital. Sanchez and Holly Ryan, now co-chair of MTPC, did a series of trainings for the staff focused on three areas: General trans healthcare and barriers to care, HIV prevention for trans patients and mental health and substance abuse issues in the trans community. By about 2000 Sanchez said he began receiving positive feedback from trans patients about the treatment they received at the VA, particularly after the VA added an option for patients to identify as transgender on medical forms and began the practice of referring to patients according to their chosen name and gender pronoun.

Sanchez said by putting basic standards of care for transgender patients in writing, Shipherd has ensured that all providers in the Boston VA system understand their obligation to transgender patients.

"I’m absolutely delighted that she is able to do that at this time, and the reason is because policies require that everyone is competent," said Sanchez. . . .

TIME: The Gender Conundrum

Illustration for TIME by James Worrell

Thursday, Nov. 08, 2007 By LAURA FITZPATRICK

It's a parent's nightmare dilemma: experts say there's a fifty-fifty chance your child will attempt suicide before age 20. Should you opt for an experimental medical treatment that might prevent it? Parents of children whom experts call gender variant are faced with just that question. If a child doesn't identify with his or her biological sex, the onset of puberty, says Laura Amato, a youth-suicide counselor who runs an online transgender support group, can make that child feel like "part of a real-life horror story ... because the wrong parts are changing."

No reliable data exist on how many U.S. children are gender variant, although the National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that as many as 3 million American adults are. But studies suggest that gender-variant adolescents are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other teens. Now, increasingly, hormone treatments that delay physical maturity are being seen as a lifesaving alternative for gender-variant kids, but the remedy is also generating medical and ethical questions about interfering with the natural development process. The treatment--a series of injections to interrupt the brain cascade that launches puberty by regulating gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)--has not yet been submitted for FDA approval for gender-variant children. But it is available from international physicians and some U.S. doctors prescribing off-label. In February the first U.S. clinic for gender-variant children opened at Children's Hospital Boston. . . .

New York Plays Key Role in Fight for Transgender Rights

by Andy Humm
November 2007

As the debate over civil rights protections on the basis of “gender identity and expression” heated up in Congress, five of New York City’s members in the House of Representative voted against the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act on November 7 because it does not cover transgendered people. At the same time, pressure is building in Albany for at least the Democrat-controlled Assembly to add gender identity to the state human rights law, which incorporated protections for gay people in 2002 while defeating an amendment covering people of transgender experience. In New York City, where the city law has covered gender identity since 2002, transgendered people still encounter persistent discrimination, putting this new civil rights measure to the test.
The City Law

New York City was late among major cities in adding sexual orientation to its human rights law. It did not pass what was known as the “gay rights bill” until 1986 and took until 2002 to add gender identity. Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund called the city law “great,” but said, “That doesn’t mean we don’t have a long way to go.”

Silverman said that while much of the discrimination that many New Yorkers experience tends to be subtle, people who are transgendered still are subject to discrimination that is “so obvious and degrading” that it is hard to believe.

He is handling a complaint now from a person whose license was marked “M” for male even though she presents as a woman. When she showed identification to get served in a bar, the manager said, “Your ID says male. I can’t accept that.”

“ It’s certainly OK to ask to see an ID to verify a person’s age,” Silverman said, but it illegal to discriminate based on gender identity or expression. In response to her compliant, a police officer went to the bar on the border of Chelsea and Greenwich Village. Although sympathetic, the officer said, “We can’t do anything.”

On the last Sunday in June, Khadijah Farmer, a lesbian with close-cropped hair, was using the women’s restroom at the Caliente Cab Company in the Village when a male bouncer burst in and banged on her stall door demanding that she leave. Farmer said she tried to show the man her license identifying her as female, but the bouncer wouldn’t look at it. He threw Farmer and her friends out, making them pay for food they had just started eating. Ironically the incident took place on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Day just south of Sheridan Square where the Stonewall Rebellion launched the modern gay movement in 1969.

Representatives of the restaurant deny Farmer’s version of events, but refuse to offer one of their own. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund is suing the Caliente Cab Company and transgendered people and their supporters have picketed it. The establishment has not, however, been put out business by an angry community

Melissa Sklarz, a veteran transgender political activist, served on a committee at the City Human Rights Commission that worked on guidelines for implementing the city transgender rights law and believes “more and more people are aware of the law now.” But, she said, “For the law to work, we need courageous people like Khadijah Farmer who are willing to stand up.”

As the Farmer case illustrates, you do not have to be a transsexual or a transitioning transperson to need the protection under the category of gender identity and expression. Farmer says she is happy being a woman, even if her style of dress and grooming lead some people to mistake her for a man. Indeed, we all cross traditional gender boundaries in small and sometimes large ways, from women who wear pants and men who wear makeup to women who fight wars and men who won’t.

Beyond the question of discrimination, these issues have very practical implications, particularly in this era when everyone must constantly show identification. Joann Prinzivalli, director of the New York Transgender Rights Organization and a transwoman, has a driver’s license that says “female.” The license was issued before 2002 when people had to have completed transgender surgery to be identified in accordance with their identity and not their biology. New York State will also change the designation on a birth certificate if one is post-operative.

But Prinzivalli’s passport still says “male” and by 2013, we are all going need a passport or federal REAL ID for air travel even within the United States and to enter federal buildings. In those cases, her gender presentation will not line up with how she is identified on her papers. “I’ll be shut out of air transportation,” she said. In the politically explosive debate over identification documents mostly dealing with undocumented immigrants, the concerns of transpeople are not considered.
Legislature Resists Transgender Protections

The Republican-led New York State Senate finally added sexual orientation to the state human rights law in 2002. But the Senate remains resistant to protecting transgendered people. It will not take up school anti-bullying legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has said he is not interested in protecting, as he put it, “transvestites.” The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act has not so much as had a hearing in his house.

For its part, the Democrat-dominated Assembly voted to open up marriage to same-sex couples earlier this year. However the Assembly, under Speaker Sheldon Silver, has refused to take up amending the state human rights law to add “gender identity and expression.” . . .