Film note: Turbulent times for transgender teens

By Julia Opoti , TC Daily Planet

June 26, 2008

XXY tells the story of Alex (Inés Efron), a hermaphroditic Argentinian teenager on a quest for her sexual identity. Alex, who physically appears female, is sheltered by her parents: the family moves to a remote portal town in Uruguay so that Alex won’t be treated “like a freak.”

XXY, a film directed by Lucia Puenzo. Showing on June 27 as part of the Queer Takes film series at the Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis. For tickets ($8) and information, see walkerart.org.

The beginning of the film is a little hard to follow, but it slowly picks up steam. As the family attempts to lead a “normal life,” Alex faces the prospect of surgery. . . .Read More

Question Gender

How many genders are there?

Say no more: Transsexual Israeli tops Lebanese song chart

27 June 2008

By DAVID BRINN


While overtures recently made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres toward the Lebanese government to enter into direct peace talks have fallen on deaf ears, that doesn't mean the Lebanese are tuning out everything Israeli.

Aderet.
Photo: Courtesy

"Say No More," a pulsating trance music track by up-and-coming Israeli female singer Aderet and DJ Dvir Halevi, has been at the top of the playlist this month on the "Beirut Nights" Internet radio station devoted to dance music (www.beirutnights.com).

"We found out they were playing my music by chance," the 32-year-old Aderet said on Wednesday. She grew up in a religious home in Jerusalem and launched her musical career after undergoing a sex change operation following her IDF service over 10 years ago.

"I put out a dance single last year - a cover of Alice DJ's 'Better Off Alone' - which was big in the clubs in Israel, and when our production team did a search on Google, we found the song on lots of playlists around Europe and on Beirut Nights." . . .Read More

On Stonewall anniversary, transgender activists remind LGBT movement of its roots

By David Seitz , TC Daily Planet

June 25, 2008

Like many such celebrations, the Twin Cities Pride celebration takes place in June, in part to commemorate New York City’s Stonewall Inn uprising, which began in June 1969, and is widely recognized as a galvanizing event in the history of sexual rights organizing.

But as mainstream acceptance grows for gays and lesbians – particularly those who conform to relatively traditional gender roles – what many forget, says Tara Yule, owner of Pi Bar and Restaurant, is that Stonewall and similar struggles were started largely by poor, urban transgender people of color. In fact, she adds, much of the police harassment at the Stonewall Inn that ultimately motivated bar-goers to fight back was justified by an ordinance regulating gender-appropriate clothing.

First popularized in the United States in the 1970s, transgender is an umbrella term used by a wide variety of people who, for various reasons, feel the gender assigned to them at birth is no longer adequate to describe who they are. Some may identify as “female-to-male” or “male-to-female,” transitioning from one gender to “the other,” but many others do not. For many people, gender isn’t an either-or proposition.

“I like the word genderqueer to describe my gender identity for the same reasons I use queer to describe my sexuality – it has a radical progressive edge, and it doesn’t indicate a binary,” says activist Max Gries, who co-chairs the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition (MTHC) and serves on the University of Minnesota Transgender Commission.

As a genderqueer person, Gries says using public restrooms can be tricky, and even dangerous. In transgender communities, the term “tranny bladder” is used to refer to having to “hold it” for long periods of time when unisex or family restrooms are unavailable. At best, this is uncomfortable; at worst, it can lead to health problems. . . .Read More

Transgender Youth Conference Takes Place June 28

William Henderson

June 26, 2008


The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) and the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (BAGLY) will co-host the first annual Massachusetts Transgender Youth Summiton Saturday, June 28 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge.

The Summit is geared toward youth 24 and under that identity as or fall under the transgender label from across Massachusetts. Objectives of this summit, say organizers, are to empower transgender youth; build a strong youth leadership network; provide information on the political process; transgender youth rights; voter registration; to encourage activism and civic participation. . . .Read More

Professor lives as 'full-time' transgender woman

June 26, 2008

By Karen Hunley
The Auburn Villager

Gwynedd Thomas

As a polymer and fiber engineering professor, Dr. Gwynedd Thomas teaches Auburn University students about the correct composition of protective body armor. In a way, she says, this instruction is a metaphor for the protective yet false shield she carried around most of her life. Until recently, she begrudgingly accepted and portrayed her birth gender—male—so she wouldn't have to face the social repercussions.

About four years ago, Thomas decided it was worth the risk to be herself.

"There comes a point in everyone's life, often as you're approaching the end of your life, that you've got to express yourself as yourself," she says.

Thomas is in her mid-50s, and she became a "full-time" transsexual, or transgender, woman last fall. This entails dressing, speaking and expressing herself in every way possible as a woman, even though she

was born male.

"I was already aware by the time I was 3 years old that I was gender variant," Thomas says. "(Transsexuals) are the gender we say we are, we just didn't get the right body."

That may change, however, as the professor is considering gender reassignment surgery. But if this doesn't "come to pass," whether for financial or personal reasons, Thomas says she's content to continue living as a female in every other way.

"This is not about choosing sexual partners," she adds. "I am considering it because I would like to be who I should've been to the best of my ability." . . .Read More

Bad Plastic Surgery - The Lionel Show

Lionel discusses the dark side of plastic surgery.

Be careful and use good judgment as you explore and consider plastic surgery.

Sworn to virginity and living as men in Albania

June 23, 2008

Dan Bilefsky

KRUJE, Albania: Pashe Keqi recalls the day nearly sixty years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father's baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

Had she been born in Albania today, says the 78-year-old sworn virgin, who made an oath of celibacy in return for the right to live and rule her family as a man, she would choose womanhood.

"Back then, it was better to be a man because, before, a woman and an animal were considered the same thing," says Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of Raki and smoking cigarettes. "Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men and are even more powerful, and I think today it would be fun to be a woman."

Sworn virgins became the patriarchs of their families, with all the trappings of male authority, by swearing to remain virgins for the rest of their lives.

The ritual was a form of self-empowerment for rural women living in a desperately poor and macho country that was cut off from mainstream Europe for decades under a Stalinist dictatorship. But in Albania today, with Internet dating and MTV, the custom is all but disappearing. Girls no longer want to become boys. . . .Read More

be like others

June 24, 2008

David F. Khalili

What would you do in order to be with the one you love? To be able to walk down the street without facing constant discrimination? That was the question that many of the young gay Iranian men faced in the documentary Be Like Others. While homosexuality is deemed as a sin in Iran, feeling as though your gender and biological sex do not match is viewed as a mistake made by God. Therefore, Ayatollah Khomeini offered a "path" towards correcting this mistake 20 years ago by not only permitting sexual reassignment surgery but allowing it to be financially covered by the government. As an Iranian-American and sexuality researcher I became incredibly fascinated when I first heard about this, I knew homosexuality was very much unacceptable but was completely unaware of this ruling. This is especially poignant during a time where there is a war between western states and the Middle East, where war against Iran and its ideologies seems depressingly imminent.

The film follows a group of young pre-op Male-to-Female transgender women who are going through the preliminary stages and bureaucracy of obtaining the right to have this surgery. We meet Vida, a 26 year-old queen of all "diagnosed transsexuals." . . .Read More

Good Vibrations Showcases David Steinberg’s "Divas of San Francisco"

David Steinberg is pleased to announce that an exhibit of 39 photos from his new book, Divas of San Francisco: Portraits of San Francisco will be on display at the Polk Street Gallery of Good Vibrations from June 26 through July 20, 2008. This show is an expanded version of his recent show at Seattle's Benham Gallery, which received much attention in the press when the show was vandalized on two occasions.

Join him, as well as several women photographed for Divas of San Francisco, at a reception for the opening of the show, this Thursday evening, June 26, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

Good Vibrations Polk Street Gallery is located at 1620 Polk Street, between Sacramento and Clay.

Gender-bending: the original spirit of Pride

AIDAN JOHNSON

Special to Globe and Mail Update

June 25, 2008

Downtown Toronto will shut down Sunday as people gather to celebrate homosexuality and gender-bending. The occasion is Pride Day, one of Canada's largest cultural events.

Some complain that the event's mainstream acceptance has left Pride without soul, a massive corporate-sponsored opium-farm. Where, the radicals ask, is the deep iconoclastic spirit of the very first Pride marches, before it was safe to be gay?

More than ever, the answer is in the second part of what the Pride revellers gather to be proud of: not homosexuality, but gender-bending. Today, in most parts of Canada, almost anyone can be gay. But to be transgender takes a particular courage.

Canadians are steadily approaching the new cultural battleground of transsexual rights mindful of ethical lessons from previous debates about minorities. There is also a more personal connection. Everyone is realizing that their gender identity is complex, and we feel natural empathy where that complexity is most intense. An extraordinary transgender "pride" is still necessary, however.

Canada's youngest MP, Pierre Poilievre, spoke out against covering sex changes under the public health budget a few weeks ago. Inventing a term that conjures images, Mr. Poilievre said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty favours a "sex-change program" because he wants the funding for his province. Mr. Poilievre also said surgery for diagnosed transsexuals is meantime "medically unnecessary," which is news to medical scientists. . . .Read More

George Carlin on Our Similarities

George Carlin on little things we share.

. . .if not 'THE,' then certainly one of the best comedians ever.

Love ya, George, 1937-2008.

Our favorite George Carlin one-liners

• I typed the word Google into Google. Guess what came up? Everything.
• You know what would be fun? To have a set of twins, name them Dumbo and Goofy and then just sit back and see how their personalities develop. I’ll bet they’d really enjoy going to school everyday.
• I’ve never seen a homeless guy with a bottle of Gatorade.
• In this country, alcohol is hardly ever seen as a drug problem. Instead, we think of it as more of a driving problem.
• I don’t own any stocks or bonds. All my money is tied up in debt.
• There are caregivers and there are caretakers, and yet the two words are not opposites. Why is this?
• You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.
• I have an impersonal trainer. We meet at the gym, we don’t talk, he works out alone, and I go home.
• Regarding the Boy Scouts, I'm very suspicious of any organization that has a handbook.
• You know what's fun? Go to a German restaurant and insist on using chopsticks. . . .Read More

(There's one about gender there somewhere. R.A.)

India: Eunuch wins hearts on Sallu's show

Laxmi dispels myths about the transgender community

June 24, 2008

Salman with Laxmi and her friend on the set of "Dus Ka Dum"

Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, the eunuch who made news when a documentary on her life was screened at the Mumbai Festival and television channels, will be seen as a contestant on Salman's TV show "Dus Ka Dum".

During the recording of the show, Laxmi's quick wit, humour and nakhras had everyone rolling in laughter. Laxmi dispelled some age-old myths about the transgender community. . . .Read More

Brill, Stephanie & Rachel Pepper. The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals. Review by Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L.

Brill, Stephanie & Rachel Pepper. The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals. Cleis Press. Aug. 2008. c.270p. ISBN 978-1-57344-318-0. pap. $16.95. CHILD REARING

Verdict: Libraries may own books dealing with transgender adults, but this is the only guide about raising transgender children. While the general message to parents is that “you have nothing to apologize for and nothing to be embarrassed about,” the authors make it clear that parents and families will not have it easy. Realistic and empowering. . . .Read More

Va. says groom and 'bride' deceived officials

By DIONNE WALKER – June 24, 2008

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The couple walked into a Norfolk courthouse on a spring day, exchanged a few words, and within 10 minutes, were seemingly husband and wife. It was an unremarkable ceremony — except that several weeks later, officials realized the shapely bride might not have been a woman.

Now authorities in Virginia, where same-sex marriages are illegal, are weighing whether to file misdemeanor charges against the couple, Antonio E. Blount, 31, and Justin L. McCain, 18. An announcement is expected this week.

A prosecutor says the decision to press charges could turn on whether the pair knowingly misled officials when they applied for a license and later, traveled to a courthouse for a ceremony. If the bride was transgender, and identified as a woman, it is unclear whether the marriage would be considered illegal.

The pair went to Newport News Circuit Court on March 24 to obtain a marriage license — McCain appearing as a woman and saying the name "Justine" before a deputy, said Newport News Circuit Court clerk Rex Davis.

McCain produced a Virginia driver's license, but a design quirk — the 'm' or 'f' for male or female appears directly against a darkened state seal — meant nobody noticed McCain's gender, Davis said. . . .Read More

Transgender Teen

Ben Briscoe talks to former headline maker, Rochelle Evans.

Mom accepts transgender Manchester tween

By ASHLEY SMITH, Staff Writer

June 22, 2008


MANCHESTER – In the first grade, 6-year-old Nicholas stood up one day and told his teacher he had something important to say.

Not just to her. But to the whole class.

“My name is Nicholas, but I want to be called Nikki because I’m really a girl,” he told his classmates at Parker-Varney School in Manchester.

News of the incident did not come as a surprise to his mother, Diana. By the time Nicholas reached preschool, it had become obvious her foster son was never going to be “one of the boys.”

One early clue came the winter before kindergarten, when Nicholas relayed an unusual Christmas list to Santa Claus at the mall.

“I would like an Easy Bake Oven, some dresses, a wig, and a purple bra for me and my mother,” Diana said, recalling her son’s words. “I wanted to crawl over and die.”
And then there was the issue of the “two hearts” – a pink one and a blue one. A young Nicholas insisted he had both, and then woke up one night and said he dreamed a monster took the blue one away, Diana said. . . .Read More

New transgender policy at New York juvenile jails

By WILLIAM KATES – 22 June 2008

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Transgender youth in New York's juvenile detention centers are now allowed to wear whatever uniform they choose, be called by whatever name they want and ask for special housing under a new anti-discrimination policy drawing praise from advocacy groups.

"New York is way ahead of the curve," said Roberta Sklar, a spokeswoman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "When you have a system like the New York Office of Children and Family Services putting out a clear nondiscrimination policy, it should be seen as a model for similar kinds of agencies all over the country."

The policy went into effect March 17, the day Gov. David Paterson was sworn into office. Last month, Paterson directed all state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere as valid in New York.

Paterson spokesman Errol Cockfield said the policy reflects the state's intent to be "tolerant, responsive and respectful" of gender identity and gender expression issues. . . .Read More

Treatment of Young MTF Transsexuals

Introduction
This article discusses the treatment of transsexual boy-to-girl children. When allowed to, such children are almost always able to rapidly and successfully assimilate themselves in to society as a female, this alone is enough to differentiate them from the experience of most transsexual women who transition when an adult.

It is also perhaps necessary to distinguish between intersexed infants, which in some cases are assigned a gender contrary to their genetic sex, and gender identity dysphoric (GID, aka transsexual) children. While very young intersexed infants have no say in their sex assignment or reassignment, which is usually done before they are 24 months old, transsexual children consciously reject the gender in which they are being brought up at some point between two years old and puberty. . . .Read More