Interview With An Angel. . . Part 1

My friend Angel talks about his top surgery.

Lizador

Cover Story: Faces of Pride -- Dominique Storni

5/26/2009

by Kelly Ashkettle


Dominique Storni is a transsexual lesbian. He was born a boy and raised in Brigham City and Ogden in a Mormon household of eight children. He served a mission, and was married for 17 years, during which he fathered six children. In 2003, he underwent surgery to become a woman. She recently sat down with me at Mestizo Coffeehouse to tell me her story.

What's the difference between transsexual and transgender? We like to believe that gender is between your ears and sex is between your legs.

Are there different terms for pre-op and post-op? That's what we call it. "Pre-op" means before you've have surgery. "Post-op" means you've had surgery. And then there's another option called "non-op." I know some transsexual women who will grow breasts or have breast implants but never do anything to the bottom. Some of them are married to women who identify as heterosexual and want to enjoy the heterosexual benefits of intimacy. So the transsexual partner will say, "Well, I'll live as a woman but keep the male parts for our marriage," and the wife will go, "I'll allow you to live as a woman, but please be at least boy enough to satisfy my heterosexual needs." I think it's a beautiful arrangement of people that really love each other. . . .Read More

Bethany Black

5/28/2009

by Jay Richardson


As the UK’s foremost goth, lesbian, post-op transsexual stand-up, Bethany Black worries about being pigeonholed. So it’s a ‘recovering alcoholic, drug addict and love addict too’ who will be showcasing material from her forthcoming Fringe show this fortnight. After an admission of two botched suicide attempts in her debut, Beth Becomes Her, it’s reassuring to know that Love and a Colt 45 doesn’t presage ‘lucky’ number three but an American malt lager favoured by the comic in her youth. Her debut recalled Black’s transformation from Ben Horsley in intimate, sometimes queasy, detail and she explains that ‘because that show was really personal, I thought I’d go with something a bit more accessible this time, about all the stupid things I’ve done because of love and alcohol.’ . . .Read More

Gay Discrimination Proposal: Transsexual Speaks Up

by Jeni DiPrizio

5/27/2009


MEMPHIS, TN -- Shelby County Commissioners are considering passing an ordinance that would make it illegal to discriminate against someone because of his or her sexual orientation, identity or expression. The ordinance would protect all county workers. Commissioners are expected to vote on the proposal Monday, June 1, 2009. On Wednesday, June 27, 2009, commissioners debated the issue.

Commissioner Wyatt Bunker told fellow commissioners, “You would have to be in a cave to know this isn’t just the issue.” Bunker added, "It's part of a bigger movement. It's part of the homosexual agenda that’s being debated across the country.” He added “the homosexual agenda undermines family values and the family values this country holds dear.”

Darlene Fike is a transsexual who listened to Bunker and the other commissioners. Fike says “I would love to sit down with Mr. Bunker and talk about this from a Biblical perspective. I am a conservative Bible believing woman." . . .Read More

Houston Texas Transgender Center news clip

This is a news clip on the Houston, Texas Transgender Center. It is a very well done story, they even got all the pronouns correct and everything! If you are in Texas or thinking about moving to Texas and are transgender you should watch this video.

MorticiaAddams2

Tiaras at Thai transsexual beauty contest

May 2009

AFP

PATTAYA, Thailand (AFP) — Resplendent in a figure-hugging grey and black dress, Sorrawee Nattee wept tears of joy after being crowned Thailand's most beautiful transsexual at a unique pageant.

Sorrawee took the top prize at Miss Tiffany's Universe 2009 in the beach resort of Pattaya, beating off 29 other transsexuals and receiving a small Honda car, and 100,000 baht (2,860 dollars) in cash on Friday night.

"I'm very excited," the willowy 20-year-old from Thailand's southern Songkhla province said, touching the glimmering winner's crown with disbelieving fingers.

She appeared overwhelmed by hordes of photographers, camera crews and well-wishers, the scene played out before a live television audience of 15 million people.

In a nation obsessed with beauty pageants and famous for its sexual tolerance, this elaborate contest is taken every bit as seriously as the more traditional competitions. . . .Read More

Trans fact

When a person in the center of a media maelstrom has had a sex change, is it fair game for the press?

by ADAM REILLY | May 20, 2009

Aiden Quinn used to be a woman. Now he's a man. It's a titillating detail — but is it news?

Quinn, you'll likely recall, is the 24-year-old subway driver from Attleboro who — moments after text-messaging his girlfriend on the evening of May 8 — crashed a Green Line train into another near the MBTA's Government Center stop, injuring roughly 50 passengers and causing an estimated $9.6 million in damages. The accident dominated the Boston news for days and prompted the announcement, on May 13, of a no-cell-phones policy for the T's drivers; it also led to Quinn's firing.

Given Quinn's admission that he was, in fact, texting prior to the accident, there's a general consensus that he's a dumbass. But there's no such agreement among the Boston media as to whether his switch from identifying as a woman to a man was germane to the larger story. . . .Read More

Nebraska Parents Allow Biological Son, 8, to Live as the Girl She Says She Is

by Kilian Melloy
EDGE Staff Reporter
May 18, 2009


Parents of an 8-year-old transgendered child who insists on her gender identity despite her male physiology have decided that it’s in their child’s best interests to allow her to live as a girl.

The decision means removing the child from Catholic school, where the issue of the child--now free to live as "Katie," rather than "Ben"--being transgendered was regarded as "unfair" to ask others to accept.

The move also pre-empts potential acts of aggression from Katie, who, reported a May 16 story in the Omaha World-Herald spat at a classmate who called her a "boy."

In an example of Katie’s artwork, a picture shows Katie being called a boy by another child; the legend reads, "I feel angry when..." . . .Read More

First Transgendered Mayor

CatholicNationalist

Tasmanian take on transgender issues

May 12, 2009

by Şafak Timur


ISTANBUL -They are often in the media when they are arrested for prostitution, beaten by a client or police, or worst of all when they are victims of a hate crime. But this time transgender people living in Istanbul are on camera to talk about themselves and their lives to an independent filmmaker from Australia’s Tasmania.

"I just saw two transvestites waiting in the street near two police who were heavily armed standing in front of a police station," said Julien Poulson as he told the Hürriyet Dailiy News & Economic Review about one of the many moments that impressed and inspired him to make a documentary about the transgender community in Istanbul.

Born to a family with Irish roots who were deported to Tasmania Island by Britain, Poulson is familiar with Turkey through his ancestors as well, who battled against Ottoman armies at Gallipoli. Poulson said he would like to see "what is under the carpet" rather than just the nice palaces in the city like a tourist. He said he first encountered the transgender community "accidentally."

"We were sitting in a café in Taksim when an acquaintance asked me whether I had seen the transvestite’s street in Taksim and I went to see," he said. There are places in cities where nightclubs in one area make a "red light district," but Istanbul’s transvestite street is not like that, Poulson said. "It is just an ordinary street with a couple of buildings and people from the windows calling out [for clients]," he said. . . .Read More

Is My Marriage Gay?

By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

May 11, 2009

Belgrade Lakes, ME

AS many Americans know, last week Gov. John Baldacci of Maine signed a law that made this state the fifth in the nation to legalize gay marriage. It’s worth pointing out, however, that there were some legal same-sex marriages in Maine already, just as there probably are in all 50 states. These are marriages in which at least one member of the couple has changed genders since the wedding.

I’m in such a marriage myself and, quite frankly, my spouse and I forget most of the time that there is anything particularly unique about our family, even if we are — what is the phrase? — “differently married.”

Deirdre Finney and I were wed in 1988 at the National Cathedral in Washington. In 2000, I started the long and complex process of changing from male to female. Deedie stood by me, deciding that her life was better with me than without me. Maybe she was crazy for doing so; lots of people have generously offered her this unsolicited opinion over the years. But what she would tell you, were you to ask, is that the things that she loved in me have mostly remained the same, and that our marriage, in the end, is about a lot more than what genders we are, or were. . . .Read More

Texting Trolley Driver Is Transgendered Male

Driver Tied to Boston Crash Cited Transgender Status Before Hiring

by Michele McPhee

BOSTON, May 11, 2009


The Boston-area transit authority trolley driver who allegedly slammed into another train while text-messaging his girlfriend Friday was hired as a minority because of his transgendered "female-to-male" status and had three speeding tickets on his driving record in recent years, ABC News has learned. . . .Read More

Gender change 'priceless'

Local transsexual woman beginning PhD on the topic

By ALYSSA NOEL, SUN MEDIA

May 11, 2009


The approximate cost of surgery to transition from a man to a woman? Around $20,000.

The cost for a woman to become a man? Roughly $80,000.

The peace of mind that comes after years of hoping, dreaming and planning to make the gender you feel match the sex you are? Priceless, according to Carol Allan, a local transsexual woman who made her transition nearly two decades ago and is now beginning a PhD on the topic.

Transsexual people, both pre- and post-surgery, have been in the media across Alberta since the provincial government announced in April that it would no longer fund sexual reassignment surgery.

But while Allan fully disagrees with that move, she says transsexuals have been portrayed as needy people lapping up welfare money, unable to stand on their own feet.

Transsexual people, like the rest of the residents in the province, run the gamut when it comes to socio-economic status, she said. And it's the ones at the bottom of that heap that she's worried will suffer from the slashed health-care spending. . . .Read More

Sex vs Gender (for Joan)

Transgender speech for Joan's class.

REELworldDorchestah

Fierce and Fabulous

5/6/2009

Lee Ann Cox

Some have tattoos to look tough or hip. But the large one peeking from Owen Daniel-McCarter's sleeve is sweet. It depicts a childhood memory of flying a kite with his beloved grandfather, who was gay. The idyllic scene is as you'd expect, except Daniel-McCarter '04 is wearing a dress.

The dress is a universally understood symbol of the sex he was assigned at birth, but Daniel-McCarter now identifies more closely as male than female. It can be a confusing concept for the uninitiated, but a couple hours with this charismatic "trans-identified" activist attorney — transgender, translucent, transgressive — and you may be the one transformed, with a new way of seeing, a new empathy, a new scrutiny of both self and systems that determine how justice is meted out.

It begins with a crucial understanding. Gender (the social construct that defines what's masculine and feminine, separate from anatomical sex) can be as fluid as conversation, with moments of laughter and intensity, sadness and joy. . . .Read More

Unemployed straight guys attend transgender job fair

by Ashley Harrell

5/5/2009


When the man who had always been a man walked in, well, that was a little strange. After all, this was registration for the fifth annual Transgender Job Fair at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center last week. The point was to help connect transgender folks — who have a difficult time finding work, even in a thriving economy — with savvy, sensitive employers.

And although there were no hard and fast rules about attendees being gender-bending, it seemed pretty ballsy for a man who had always been a man and who identified as one to show up at the fair. He was in jeans and a buzz cut, and exuded regular-guyness. "What do I have to do?" he asked volunteer Sherilyn Connelly.

Connelly was also there to find work, as she was recently laid off from her job as a Web producer at Cubik Media. She made her male-to-female transition in 1999, and is fabulously distinctive with her darkly lined eyes and orange-, purple-, and platinum-dreadlocked hairdo, which she has affectionately dubbed "the Squid." . . .Read More

Austrian court strikes down transsexual surgery law

by Rex Wockner

5/7/2009


Austria's Administrative High Court has struck down a law that blocked recognition of male-to-female transsexuals' new gender unless an individual's penis had been removed. . . .Read More

Teenage girl who wants to be a boy wins right to have breasts removed

6 May 2009

News-Medical.Net

Reports than a teenage Australian girl has won the right in court to have both breasts surgically removed, have made the headlines around the world and evoked some very strong criticism.

The 17-year-old, known as Alex in court and referred to as a boy, was born female but lives as a male, has a psychological condition that makes him/her unhappy with his/her gender.

The Family Court in Melbourne has decided that the removal of both breasts would help Alex to build a new life as a boy but the decision has evoked anger from many who say it is irresponsible.

According to reports Alex has "gender identity dysphoria", a psychological condition where a person believes they are the opposite sex and has been on hormone treatment since he was 13 to prevent menstruation.

Alex apparently applied to the court for a double mastectomy before he turned 18 - the age at which he would not need the court's consent and which he would no longer receive social support services as a minor.

Family Court chief justice Diana Bryant says Alex lives life as a male, was socially constrained by the breasts, avoided being hugged and wore binding at the beach and the breasts were an impediment to his social development, which everyone thought was very important.

Judge Bryant was quoted as saying that the evidence 'overwhelmingly' showed, that it was in his best interests and the order was made quickly so that he could have the operation straight away. . . .Read More

3x ftm

This is a story of 3 Korean FTMs (Female Toward Male) who struggle
to have their true lives.

Synopsis:

This documentary portrays the diversity within FTM transgenders
in South Korea through the experiences and life of three
FTMs.

Each individual has different processes of identification
and diverse reasons why he wants to be an FTM, or has no other
choice but to undergo FTM surgery: H has always wanted to be a
man with physical power and tough behaviour from his childhood;
K has been always confused with who he is, ever uncomfortable
with and unfit for any gender role and only recently found who he
has been since learning about transgender; finally, J, who met a
girlfriend at a lesbian community, decided to be a man for a better
career and to satisfy his girlfriends demands.

This documentary also tries to encourage each of them to affirm
their sexuality over the binarism of gender which is clearly divided
into male and female. For non-transgendered individuals, it can be
an opportunity to discover and expand their own perceptions of
diverse sexuality.

newasiafilmfestival

Sex change Army hero Jan to become Scotland's first 'transgender' police officer

By Miles Goslett

May 2, 2009

A paratrooper who underwent a sex-change operation has been accepted by the police as a trainee woman constable.

Jan Hamilton, formerly Captain Ian Hamilton, quit the Army in 2007 after 20 years’ decorated service and embarked on a full gender reassignment programme.

Now living in Glasgow, she has been accepted by Strathclyde Police to begin two years’ probationary training, making her Scotland’s first transgender police officer.

A source said that Miss Hamilton, 44, had ‘sailed through’ the initial six-month selection process: ‘Jan Hamilton scored highly in the written tests and had no problem with the fitness tests.

'She completed the mile-and-a-half run in about 11 minutes, even though women are allowed to take up to 16.’ . . .Read More

'Etiquette guide' for Thai monks

April 27, 2009

BBC News

A Buddhist preacher in Thailand has announced plans for new guidelines aimed at curbing the flamboyant behaviour of gay and transgender monks.

The "good manners" curriculum - the country's first - is being introduced in the northern province of Chiang Rai.

The senior monk told the BBC he was particularly concerned by effeminate activities among novices such as the wearing of make-up and tight robes.

More than 90% of the Thai population are followers of Buddhism. . . .Read More

Margaret Cho geared up for 'Dead'

4 May 2009

By Lisa Respers France


ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Comedienne Margaret Cho knows a great deal about Hollywood's obsession with body image.

The once-zaftig actress is co-starring in a new series for Lifetime titled "Drop Dead Diva" about a brilliant plus-size attorney who finds her body inhabited by the soul of a shallow wannabe model.

The Sony Pictures Television-produced show debuts July 12 and stars Broadway actress Brooke Elliott as lawyer Jane Bingum.

Cho plays Bingum's gal Friday, Terri, and it's a more serious role than fans might expect of Cho, known for her irreverent, and often political, humor.

She recently spoke with CNN about her new project, how President Obama helped inspire her upcoming music album (seriously, she really does have a music album coming out) and why some folks in the gay community are a little peeved with her.

CNN: What drew you to this particular character in "Drop Dead Diva"?

Margaret Cho: I thought, what a wonderful part. To me, it's kind of like Moneypenny in James Bond. [My character] gives Jane all of her assignments and gets her on track with this amnesia story that she gives her. . . .Read More