Monday, June 18, 2007
A senior TS: Transitioning later in life, surgery at 72.
Robert Schwanhausser's life has two big chapters: one as a man and now one as a woman
 NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune Bobbi Swan today and, in inset, as Ryan Aeronautical Vice President Robert Schwanhausser. "What an experience to have had two" genders, Swan said during a recent visit to San Diego. "That is remarkable. That is quite a gift." |
At San Diego's Ryan Aeronautical, Vice President Schwanhausser cut a dashing figure. He launched spy drones over China in the '50s; slipped in and out of Saigon; sipped champagne at the Paris Air Show; briefed generals and presidents.
He led a team of the best and brightest, technical division. They are retired now, but they remember their chief as a beau ideal, the engineer as man of action.
“It was an exciting career,” said Erich Oemcke, who came to work on Ryan drones in 1960. “Bob Schwanhausser made it possible.”
Schwanhausser's own career was brilliant and turbulent. For Teledyne Ryan – the companies merged in 1970 – he led subsidiaries in Alabama and Ohio. He traveled a traditional executive career path, serving on local boards, joining the Navy League and the National Rifle Association, donating to Republican candidates.
But he never rose to the presidency, for reasons that may have seemed obvious. There was the bruising clash with a well-connected superior. The womanizing. The boozing. Swany did little to hide any of this; he focused on containing other, more damaging, secrets.
When he lived alone, which was often, he would draw the curtains in his condo and slip on women's clothing.
In January 2003, he flew to Thailand for surgery. When the three-hour gender reassignment operation concluded, Robert Schwanhausser no longer existed. In his place was a woman, Bobbi Swan. . . .
Pakistan: Taliban threaten Lakhtai boys and "eunuch" dancers
One Abdur Raziq contributes June 9 a brief account to the open-posting website Ground Report ("Where You Make the News") of the Taliban crackdown on elements of traditional Pashtun culture which are considered "un-Islamic" in Pakistan's Tribal Areas—Lakhtai dancing boys and "eunuchs." These latter are not necessarily literally castrated, but what we call "trans-gendered" in the West. However, an entry in the Things Asian website informs us that a eunuch caste known as the hijras survives in India. We have noted before Taliban intolerance of the region's indigenous gay culture and music.
"Lakhtai dancer boys in Laki Marwat and Tank are vanished now, because, of pressure from Taliban, dancer boys of tribal areas in NWFP Pakistan are called Lakhtai in Pashto language, it was an oldest institution in NWFP, young boys up to the age of 12 years were employed to dance before the audience, their family members used to accompany them as musicians and instrument players, each Lakhtai (dancer boy) ends his career as dancer when his beard and moustaches start growing on his face, it means his career as dancer starts from the age of 12 years and ends when he becomes 17 years old. These dancer boys of tribal areas are not Eunuchs, at the end of their career as dancer they got married and raise their children, boys among their children become dancer boys when they reach the age of twelve years, each dancer boy is taught drum (Tabla) or Harmonium," an orakzai tribesman Mr. Inayat Orakzai has said.
"A fifteen years old dancer boy Naseem was killed by his lover Waheed Afridi in Gul Abad area of Peshawar during the holy month of Muharam, Waheed was annoyed because dancer boy Naseem was not willing to do sex with him, now the accused killer has paid three hundred thousand rupees to the parents of Naseem, as compensation money for his crime, and compromise has reached between both parties," a Eunuch of Teera Bazaar Kohat Mr. Arshad has said. . . .
Why It Matters
Over the near-decade since I started to catalog anti-transgender murders, I've found it harder and harder to be shocked by what happens in these murders. Every one of them, it seems, is gruesome. Each has examples of poorly written media coverage. Many, if not most, include a police department or district attorney's office that does not know what to do with these cases.
It's wrong for me to grow callous, but after a while it becomes hard to be shocked. After you read about people being dismembered after being forced to drink dishwashing liquid, beaten with a hammer, and having their breasts burned with an iron, it's hard to feel. One's senses end up in a complete shut down at the hand of such barbarity.
Nevertheless, these cases continue to happen and continue at rate of roughly one anti-transgender violent murder every two weeks. To run the math, that's 26 a year, and 260 people a decade.
Our community is not as small as many might think it is, but one person every two weeks is still a significant number of people to lose no matter how big the community. Let us not forget, too, that each number is a person, someone's son or daughter, a child's mother or father, another's lover, or a trusted friend.
Also, when they suffer, and when they are disrespected, we all are. Any time a person is murdered simply because someone had a problem with their gender identity or expression, we all suffer. It could be any of us, after all, that might face the same consequences at the hand of another.
This is something I've given a lot of thought to lately, as I've looked over some of the recent cases and thought about those already chronicled. We as a community need to be aware of what we really face out there and those who would be plenty happy to see us dead.
On March 22, a 20-year-old African American transwoman in North Philadelphia named Erica Keel, was run over. Eyewitnesses saw Erica ejected from the car, and the driver of the vehicle – Allegedly a Mr. Roland Button – strike her a total of four times. The medical examiner's report agrees with those eyewitnesses.
This seems like a simple case to you or I. Vehicular homicide, they call it.
But the police seem to think otherwise. They are simply considering this nothing more than an accident and not worthy of investigation. Button is charged simply with a "hit and run" not a homicide. More than this, police have been more than resistant to pursue further in spite of pressure from the community.
I wish I could say this was somehow an anomaly, the police not wanting to study this case further, but I know better.
A female to male by the mane of Emmon Bodfish was found dead in his home in Orinda , Calif. , in 1999. He was struck repeatedly by a blunt object to the rear of his skull.
His case was declared a suicide.
Marsha P. Johnson, one of the instigators of the Stonewall Rebellion that helped lead to the modern LGBT rights movement, was also labeled a suicide by the NYPD. She was found floating in the Hudson River one morning after she was seen being harassed the night before. The police made three brief phone calls before closing the case,
Sherrif Charles Laux did not wish to investigate the rape of Brandon Teena, preferring instead to question the victim about why he "pretended" to be male. This reluctance may well have led to Brandon 's death. Laux also seemingly did not want to pursue the rapists who became murderers.
Perhaps most important in the case of Erica Keel is the "accidental" death of Roberta Nizah Morris, who died in 2002. Police claimed her death was an "accidental bludgeoning," in spite of the medical examiner's report listing her death as a homicide. Police in her case were also very reluctant to do any sort of investigation, in spite of community pressure. There was also the issue of another police officer having given Ms. Morris a "courtesy ride" shortly before she was found bleeding to death.
Like Ms. Keel, this happened in Philadelphia .
How does this happen? Why must we die due to anti-transgender violence, and why must we have a police force – those sworn to protect and serve us – treat us as disposable? Why must we be treated this way?
Or must we?
The community will rise up against those who call Erica's death an accident, just as the community rose up for Roberta, Brandon, and so many others. We will continue to do this, and fight on for our right to exist. We will strive for police and others who serve all the people, not just those they somehow feel more comfortable serving.
I, too, will continue to press on. Not for me, but for the Ericas, the Emmons, and the Marshas who have been killed — and for those who might come after them, who will also need people to stand up and never let them be forgotten.
It is not an easy job to do. Change never comes easy. Yet it must be done, and all of us need to play a part. We need change. We need a world where the police don't call our murders "hit and run." More than this, we need not be murdered.
Let's make a change, because it matters.
Gwen Smith feels that calluses only belong on feet, and usually after a Pride march. You can find her on the web at www.gwensmith.com.
Transgender Challenges
Is a woman a woman because she defines herself as a woman, or because she was born and raised as a woman? This pivotal issue, centered on the definition of a "woman" became the subject of an intense controversy within the Canadian women's movement. And the controversy occurred in connection with the struggle for the rights of transgender women - or men who have changed their sex to that of a woman.Kimberly Nixon is a male-to-female transsexual whose volunteer peer counseling work at the Vancouver Rape Relief Society was terminated. The organization decided that since she had not been raised as a female she could not fully understand women's oppression, and therefore could not work at a feminist, woman-only service. Nixon had been living as a woman for 16 years and had undergone surgery five years prior to this incident.
Many women's organizations took opposing sides. And both sides claimed they were standing up for "women only" spaces, a hard won concept emanating from the earlier days of the women's movement.
The case led to some interesting discussion of issues among the women-serving and victim-serving communities in British Columbia. Vancouver Rape Relief, a pioneer women's organization in Canada, serving victims of sexual assault, argued that women have to have a life-long experience of being a woman in order to understand women's oppression and women's needs.
The argument was taken one step further by at least one representative of the organization, who asserted, "If the situation had involved a female-to-male transsexual, it would have been different, because the individual would have that shared life experience with women." One is led to question the logic of such an argument, which would have people currently identifying and presenting as men, providing services to women victims in an all-women organization.
Similarly, Rape Relief argues on its web site that "...sexism, racism and classism are oppressions experienced from birth, and in that way differ from other disadvantages, such as those relating to disability and sexual orientation." Rape Relief appears to be arguing that a person born with a disability can effectively understand and serve others with disabilities, but that a person who acquires a disability later in life cannot.
The implications of such an argument are enormous, particularly when one considers the intersectionality of oppressions which many individuals and organizations are now struggling to address. Can only the poor serve the poor? Can middle class professionals effectively serve only other members of the middle class? How early in one's life does one have to experience an oppression in order to be able to help others address its impact? Can victim service workers who have never experienced a serious crime be effective in supporting victims?. . .
Sunday, June 17, 2007
San Francisco Chronicle: Transsexual finds sexism in feminism
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Whipping Girl
A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
By Julia Serano
SEAL PRESS; 390 PAGES; $15.95 PAPERBACK
Femininity is under attack, and not just from the usual culprits. According to writer, biologist and spoken-word artist Julia Serano, in our society being feminine is still second rate. And in her erudite and entertaining analysis of the issue, nobody gets away without a "shame on you" for perpetrating these calcified notions of womanhood.
"This scapegoating of those who express femininity can be seen not only in the male-centered mainstream, but in the queer community, where 'effeminate' gay men have been accused of holding back the gay rights movement, and where femme dykes have been accused of being the 'Uncle Toms' of the lesbian movement. Even many feminists buy into traditionally sexist notions about femininity."
The seed for this noteworthy collection of essays, "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity," took root after Serano attended Camp Trans in 2003. Serano, who lives in Oakland, explains that she had the good fortune to have transitioned in one of the "trans-friendliest places on the planet." Though the process wasn't easy, Serano was able to keep her wife, her friends, her housing and her job. Still, she was cognizant of the prejudice toward transsexual women. . . .
Interview with an Iranian transgender
by Arsham Parsi
translated by Morteza
How would you like to introduce yourself?
My name on my ID is of no importance, but I'm known as Sayeh. I'm 26 years old and I'm a transsexual. I left Iran a year ago and I now live in Turkey. Could you please give me a tranquilizer please? I can't think clearly. I am angry, I'm confused.
Why are you angry?
I'm in a country which does not support me. It has attached the term 'refugee'on me. I neither know its language nor can understand its people and they can't understand me either. Being a trans here is similar to being a trans in Iran. Although its government might be free (democratic) but its people are the same sort of people (as in Iran). They do not care at all.
What is your problem at the moment?
I have a lot of problems. The day I got here, the Turkish police told me that I should not leave this place frequently because if people realize my problem they will beat me. Initially, I listened to their advice and did not go out. I did not have a job. I did not have a home. I suffered so much. Now they are asking me for a residency fee. Everything about Turkey is difficult. You are a refugee. Nobody supports you financially and you frequently need to go to the police and give signatures. You are not a citizen and you can't even make (official) complaints about anyone. I was beaten severely by some drunk Iranian men. I went to the police to file a complaint about them. I was told that we (the men and I) are all Iranians and if I file a complaint there will be headaches (complications) for all of us. I was threatened to death and was beaten but I couldn't complain about the incident. They told me that they will cut my throat.
The Iranian refugees did?
Yes. The police can not do anything to them because they are refugees here.They told me that they will cut my throat and kill me. I can't leave the house. I have financial problems. I don't have money to buy hormones. My body needs hormones. I don't have male hormones. When I get sick I can't go to the hospital. I don't have money to go to Ankara. I had problems finding a place to live and I didn't know where to sleep. Everyone says that it is not their problem. Then for what reason am I here? The Iranian government is very similar to you (the Turkish government). They restrict the places you can go. Even when you have your identification card on you, they still don't let you go to certain places. It is true that I'm a refugee but I need people/the society to understand me. Is it possible for one to not leave his/her living place just because she has been informed by the police that she might get beaten? A person needs to feel that there are people who might be willing to help her/him. There were certain constraints in Iran and there are some different constraints here. I believe that a fundamentalist or a Muslim country will never be able to deal with issues like this (transsexuality). . . .
SAN FRANCISCO: Ouster of researcher may imperil HIV (transgender related) work
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Four years after UCSF officials successfully defended the controversial work of an AIDS researcher under attack by a Republican-controlled Congress, the university is ousting the veteran professor, leaving up to $1 million in his grant money unspent and the future of HIV prevention programs for transgender people in doubt.
Tooru Nemoto, 56, is a Japanese citizen and longtime U.S. resident. He has been studying Asian and transgender AIDS issues for much of his 16-year career at UCSF, and he charges that the university's decision not to renew his contract is motivated by racial prejudice, and lack of concern about his transgender clientele. . . .
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Mothers (and transsexuals) now allowed to compete for beauty queen title in Spain
Saturday, June 16, 2007
MADRID, Spain (AP) - The Miss Spain beauty contest has changed its rules to allow mothers to compete for the title after its decision to dethrone a 22-year-old beauty queen because she had a child.
Angela Bustillo, 22 and mother of a three-year-old boy, had won the title of Miss Cantabria - a region of northern Spain - in January, making her eligible to go on for Miss Spain. But on Feb. 13 organizers took the crown away, citing a clause in the regional contest that says contestants cannot have children or be pregnant.
The decision sparked criticism in the Spanish media and Bustillo filed a lawsuit against Miss Spain organizers citing discrimination as male contestants in beauty pageants are not excluded because of paternity.
Even the Spanish government rallied to her side demanding that organizers give her back her crown, saying that motherhood could not be used as grounds for discrimination.
On Thursday, Miss Espana organizers said they were changing the rules for mothers and transsexuals with the aim of avoiding any discrimination among candidates.
New Fix To The Pronoun Problem
By WILLIAM WEIR
Courant Staff Writer
June 15 2007
For at least 150 years, people have been trying to solve the pronoun dilemma.
That would be the dilemma that causes ungainly formations out of fairness to both sexes: "he or she," "him or her," or "s/he." Some avoid the gender question altogether by speaking in the plural, as in "If anyone asks, tell them what they need to know."
Some have taken the more extreme approach of devising entirely new pronouns that specify no gender. "Ne," "hizer," "thon" "shem" and "herm" are just a few that have come along, and faded almost as quickly. They're known as gender-neutral, or epicene, pronouns.
The latest such pronoun comes from DeAnn DeLuna, who teaches literature at Johns Hopkins University. Her creation, "hu," would replace he, she, him, her and his. Because it's just one word, unlike an entire set of pronouns, DeLuna says its easier to use than other gender-neutral pronouns. And the word (pronounced "huh"), trips off the tongue easily.
Gender and pronouns have vexed language watchers for some time. At one point, the English language had no clear female pronoun, so it was a monumental shift when "she" emerged in the 12th century. In 2000, the American Dialect Society chose "she" as its Word of the Millennium.
The matter doesn't prey too heavily on most people's minds, but it sticks in enough people's craws that the debate hasn't gone away.
The most common solution, using "they" or "them," irks grammarians when the subject is singular. "One" is another pronoun substitute, and one that falls short. "When one opens one's book, one will read from it." That's kind of awkward.
Beyond grammatic and aesthetic concerns are the sociopolitical. Folks in the transgender community have long charged that "he" or "she" force them into categories they don't necessarily identify with.
DeLuna says "hu" has been well-received within the transgender community. And she has given her creation a jump-start of sorts: She recently edited a book of essays about the historian J.G.A. Pocock and insisted that the book's writers use the pronoun. "I had to be very tactful," she says, but added that all the contributors went along with it.
It's an uphill battle, DeLuna knows, but she holds out hopes that "hu" will enter everyday speech.
Good luck with that, says Dennis Baron, author of "Grammar and Gender."
"It's hard to say `I gotta a great idea' and get other people to say `let's do it,'" he says. "There's the `you're not the boss of me' response. People want to be correct, but they don't want to be corrected."
Baron says more than 100 different alternative pronouns have been suggested since the mid-19th century. Some are combinations of male and female pronouns, like "heesh." Others borrow from other languages, such as "ta" from the Mandarin. None have taken hold. . . .
New Jersey becomes 9th US state to protect against transgender discrimination
MOUNT LAUREL, New Jersey: Starting Sunday, New Jersey joins eight other U.S. states in making it illegal for employers and landlords to discriminate against transgendered people.
The law, which sailed through the Legislature in December, has received little attention in a state that is gaining a reputation for being welcoming to lesbian, gay and transgendered people. Earlier this year, New Jersey began allowing same-sex couples to unite in civil unions.
Advocates hope the new law will lead to more acceptance and awareness of people who are born one gender but live as the opposite gender. Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center of Transgender Equality in Washington, said she expects more states to follow, including a handful in 2007 and 2008.
"It's really simply a reaction to there being more (transgender) people who are out," Keisling said. "As more people transition, it becomes safer to transition."
The law makes it illegal for a landlord to evict a tenant because of his or her gender status, and companies cannot refuse to hire people because they are transsexual, cross-dressers, asexual, of ambiguous gender or simply not traditionally feminine or masculine. The law also bans discrimination in credit, business contracts and public accommodations such as stores or restaurants. . . .
Identical twins walked divergent paths
Pair's tough teen years, one brother's sex change chronicled in documentary at gay film fest
Saturday, June 16, 2007
When Alex and Mark Farley were growing up in Missoula, Mont., in the 1980s and '90s, they were inseparable. The crew-cut identical twins played together, attended school in the same classrooms, swam in Flathead Lake together at the family's vacation home.
"They had always been perfect children," their mother said. Then things started to happen -- lots of things, most of which are revealed in a documentary to be screened Sunday at the Frameline gay film festival.
The boys were 11 years old when their parents, Scott and Jenny, divorced. That followed a six-month period when Scott had lost his real estate job but continued dressing for work, driving off somewhere in the car every day and pretending that nothing had changed. Within a year of the divorce, Jenny was living with another woman. Their mother's relationship, which continues to the present day, is "a life partnership" but not a sexual one, according to the Farley twins, who now live in San Francisco.
Alex came out as gay in seventh grade. His brother acknowledged his own homosexuality later on. By then, the boys often fought with each other and their father, sometimes violently. Alex and Mark fell under the sway of a 17-year-old gay disc jockey, who once raped a 10-year-old boy in their presence. The twins used drugs, all kinds of drugs. One night they drove up to a bluff above Missoula, fitted a rubber hose over the car's exhaust pipe, and tried to breathe in enough carbon monoxide to die together.
"I thought no one loved us," Mark says in the half-dreamy, half-disarmingly blunt documentary "Red Without Blue." The title refers to the color-coding the twins' parents imposed on the boys' clothes when they were young.
After the suicide attempt, the boys were sent first to drug rehab and then to separate boarding schools and had virtually no contact with each other for two years. When they graduated, Mark returned to Missoula to start school at the University of Montana. His brother moved to Colorado to attend Naropa University. That's when Alex began morphing into Clair, dressing and self-identifying as female. The sex-change surgery took place five years later, in October 2006.
"During those two years I was away from him," Clair said of her twin brother in a recent interview, "I started to create an identity that wasn't connected to Mark. It was a fight to do it, but once I'd set my mind on it, I knew it was something I had to do, something very positive."
Clair, sporting a long, slender necklace and electric-blue tights under a pale blue dress, sat in the living room of her brother's San Francisco apartment, an airy space on a quiet street near Duboce Park. Mark, whose artwork adorns the apartment's white walls, sat nearby on an adjacent couch, dressed in a maroon velour top. Red and blue.
The twins get on well these days. They see each other several times a week -- "more than that," insisted Mark -- and speak by phone almost every day. Both are soft-spoken and reserved, almost demure in their becalmed physical presence and concise gestures. The family resemblance is strong. So is the sense of their having survived a stormy passage in their lives and made it safely to the far shore. . . .
Friday, June 15, 2007
Korea: Adoption by Transgenders?
The Dong-A Ilbo found that some transgender couples have unofficially adopted children in Korea. The country’s transgender population is estimated at 1,200 to 4,500. But none of them have adopted a child through an official channel.
Opposition from Adoption Agencies-
Adoption by transgender couples is totally legal in Korea. There are no regulations on sexual orientation in the qualifications for adoptive parents. Also, a single can adopt a child, as the government eased regulations on adoption last year in an attempt to facilitate domestic adoption.
However, all of some 20 domestic adoption agencies that the Dong-A Ilbo talked to said, “Transgender couples have difficulty adopting a child, even if their qualifications are perfect.” They added that they can offer explanations about qualifications to inquiring transgender couples but cannot agree on their adoption. . . .
Punk comes wrapped in stockings and eyeliner from Japan's only transgender band
By Dan Grunebaum
 |
TOKYO — Imagine how you would feel if the lead singer of your rock band suddenly told you that he was going to quit the group and become a she. This is exactly what bass player Minato Kota experienced seven years ago when a former high school mate, now known as Sasori (scorpion) Chikako, announced that he was quitting to undergo sex change procedures to transform himself into what in Japan is known as a “nyu hafu” (new half).
“At the time the last band ended, he told me that he wanted to become a woman, which as you can imagine was a huge surprise,” Kota says with a chuckle at a noisy family restaurant around the corner from the Shinjuku basement bar where Ikochi have just finished playing. “He said that he would be busy with his new quest, and wouldn’t have time for the band anymore.”
But an even bigger surprise was to come a few years later. Chikako decided that, after cementing her transgender status with a stint at a new-half bar in Shinjuku’s infamous Nichome gay district, she wanted to get the band back together. Kota agreed. “Something attracted me to the idea of playing with her now that she was a woman, so we got back together three years ago.” . . .
London: It's Doll good
The nine-piece outfit - which includes members from the UK, Holland, Brazil, The Philippines and Thailand - is the world's first transgendered girl band - which means all of the girls were born boys!
The ladies made quite an impression on our hard-to-shock judges. Amanda told them "I knew I was going to like you", while Simon questioned "are you sure you're really all men?"
In the end the decision was taken "we're a bit nervous about you performing for the Queen but we like you and we're going to take the risk".
While the judges were nervous, most of the girls in the hall were just jealous - and in keeping with the band's chosen song of the evening, the question Don't Cha (wish your girlfriend had legs like that...) was on audience minds!
