Recently, an employee of an East Coast LGBT health organization was asked to assist in preparing one of the organization's trans-related grant proposals. Just weeks before, he said, a male co-worker was denied insurance coverage for a medically necessary procedure that is routinely covered for other subscribers. The reason for the denial was that the man has a transsexual history, and the insurance policy excluded anything that could be construed as related to sexual reassignment – in this case, a hysterectomy, a procedure often sought by transsexual men for nonfunctioning organs and related pelvic pain, and typically covered for women without question.
The man, who was in dire need of the procedure, eventually had to hire an attorney to help him secure proper care. But the irony of such an exclusion was not lost on the man's co-workers, whose organization is known for providing healthcare to the transgender community.
"I had to write back to my organization and say I was sorry, but I could not help to bring in more funds for a place that makes a lot of its money on the perception that it's trans-inclusive,� said John, an HIV prevention worker for the organization. "I would hate to have to find a lawyer before I found a doctor."
John was one of several people who declined to give his last name and asked that his organization not be identified for this article. Many LGBT organizations are currently grappling with how to handle transgender health benefits, and identifying these groups could upset the delicate nature of negotiations, advocates said.
Six years after the city of San Francisco passed its groundbreaking transgender healthcare benefits package, progress across the country has been somewhat slow to follow. As a result of the 2001 legislation – which mandated trans healthcare and sexual reassignment coverage for all transgender city employees in need – regional private insurance companies such as HealthNet, Blue Cross, and Kaiser developed the infrastructure that would allow them to offer such benefits to other employers' healthcare plans, and some employers – like the entire University of California system – quickly adopted packages with full coverage. Other employers – from the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign to corporate entities like Microsoft have offered full hormonal and surgery coverage to their employees through "self-insuring," or what amounts to a separate fund for employee health costs.
But unlike the surge in domestic partner benefits that was seen nationwide after San Francisco passed its landmark 1996 equal benefits ordinance – which mandated that companies doing business with the city provide equal health benefits to their employees with same-sex partners – the issue of transgender healthcare remains misunderstood – both in terms of medical necessity and potential cost. And even employees who do have trans-related healthcare may find that adequate care remains difficult to secure.
The biggest problem, according to Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who authored San Francisco's legislation when he was a city supervisor, is that the insurance industry itself remains broken. Discriminatory exclusions and exorbitant costs mean "so many small employers have a problem trying to give any of their employees coverage," though he added that San Francisco has proved that transgender benefits as part of an existing health plan need not be cost-prohibitive. . . .
| Posted on Thu, Jun. 21, 2007 |  | ||||||
| Hartford Courant
A disgruntled playboy becomes a female fashion magazine editor. A rock star born biologically male finds her true self. A boy is scripted freely adding a pair of girl’s shoes to accessorize his outfit. Transgender people have become the new go-to characters on TV shows including “Ugly Betty” (on which supermodel Rebecca Romijn plays an erstwhile man), “All My Children” and the “The Riches.” They also have become the topic of more news reports in recent months. A Florida city manager is fired seemingly for disclosing his plans to have a sex-change operation. A male sports reporter in Los Angeles decides it’s time everyone learns who she really is. A sibling in the famous Arquette family has brought the struggles that a transgender person faces to the big screen in the documentary “Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother,” which made its debut this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. The documentary follows other indie favorites, such as “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Transamerica,” to bring lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender stories to the forefront. Fiction and reality have brought an increasing presence in the media of transgender people in the past six months. This is all positive for transgender people and society, say those who are active in the transgender community. Mara Keisling, executive director of National Center for Transgender Equality, partly credits the Web and medical advancements with allowing people to express themselves physically. That outlet, she says, has created a domino effect. “There’s so many trans people out that more and more people do have trans people in their lives, and that’s going to cause more trans people in the media,” she says. “... When the entertainment media stories happen, they really have a dramatic impact. When they’re done sympathetically, they make people feel safe and more willing to come out. When they’re done maliciously, that has a chilling effect, makes people feel less willing. It’s really that simple.” The country saw both sides in recent months when, in February and March, the Largo, Fla., city commission voted to fire Steve Stanton as the city manager after 14 years on the job. Commissioners have said it was Stanton’s judgment and not his decision to have a sex-change operation to become Susan Ashley Stanton that cost him his job. When Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner wrote a first-person story in April, formally coming out to readers and co-workers about what his life had been like and what it would turn into by becoming Christine Daniels, the reaction was mostly favorable, says Daniels. Since coming out in the article headlined “Old Mike, New Christine,” Daniels has been inundated with supportive e-mails and phone calls, received a promotion and keeps a blog at latimesblogs.latimes.com/womaninprogress/. “For some reason there’s an acceptance or openness right now that wasn’t there a year ago,” Daniels says. During the years that Daniels, 49, waited to come out, the Jerry Springer phenomenon – as she refers to it, where transgender people are portrayed as freak shows – caused her to grind her teeth in frustration. Daniels says so many people are closeted because of years of that kind of media portrayal. But high-profile outings and more positively portrayed characters on television are all beginning to push the stigma aside, she says. “It’s just created a lot of discussion. There’s a curiosity right now; it’s opened the door for people. Between the e-mails I’m getting and the interview requests I’m getting, people want to know about this. I think that’s what people can take away from 2007,” Daniels says. Damon Romine, the entertainment media director for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, agrees that increased visibility creates an increased acceptance, he said, of “a community which has been misunderstood and misrepresented for far too long.”. . . | |||||||
Intolerant film "The Gendercator" brought out the best in community response
By Zak Szymanski
OPINION What I love about the queers in this town is just how messy and offensive we allow one another to be in our unified goal of relentlessly trying to strengthen our community. In some circles, the evolution of dyke space into a multigender population of transsexuals, genderqueers, femmes, tg-butches, bisexuals, lesbians, and men of all birth sexes has led to tension about queer visibility and discussions about misogyny, privilege, and appropriation. I am frequently pissed but never lacking for a group of people who will continue to engage the issues and attempt imperfect solutions no matter how hurt they have become in the process.
And yet, during Pride season there will be countless potentially offensive voices we will not hear. The ex-gay and right-wing Christian movements — arguably homosexual communities in their own right — will not be given unchallenged space at our events, and there won't be an uproar that these views should be included for the purpose of "fostering dialogue." As many journalists and artists can attest, ensuring the free exchange of ideas often means knowing what to leave out.
Still, it was predictable that supporters of lesbian director Catherine Crouch's film The Gendercator would claim censorship and blame transgender community allies for "silencing dialogue" when the Frameline International LGBT Film Festival decided last month to pull this film from its June schedule. It was a setup; victims could either remain silent during an attack or speak up and "prove" that they have malicious intentions to take over the world.
For those unfamiliar with The Gendercator, a quick look at Crouch's film summary and deliberately defamatory director's note says it all: Trans people are the product of "distorted cultural norms" who uphold antigay values and change their sex "instead of working to change the world." Male-identified trans people are altered lesbians, despite the fact that many have never held that identity. And not even the femme dykes are safe, considering Crouch's tomboy-or-else definition of acceptable queerdom.
Crouch says the film comes from her anxiety about what she perceives as the loss of gender-variant women and the rise of binary gender norms. But the film itself strikes a different note, depicting trans bodies as sci-fi horrors and trans characters as coercive perpetrators of nonconsensual body invasions — all the familiar rhetoric used to justify antitrans violence and deny basic civil rights. . . .
By Howard Gensler
At least they were the front-runners until Friday. That's when the Dolls got the boot after News of the World reported three of them actually were prostitutes. The problem arose when the group's transvestite lead singer Vanilla Lush (aka Cindy) invited a News of the World reporter up to the group's hotel room for a little pay-for-play. "I can only see you for a short time," "Cindy" said. "It's going to cost you £1,000 in cash if you want to (bleep) me tonight darling. I have to be up early because I'm performing live tomorrow . . . in the semis of 'Britain's Got Talent.'
Who knew the talent?
News of the World also reported transvestite band mate Alekssandra offered "her"-self for spanking and whipping and band mate Toni (aka Eva) claimed on the Internet to be an "active pre-op transsexual with very soft skin and natural pert breasts."
The Kit Kat Dolls last wowed the nation and judges Simon "the Scowl" Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden with their version of "Don't Cha" by The Pussycat Dolls, who merely writhe like prostitutes. After that performance, Cowell said, "Great act. Love the attitude!"
He was not so happy when he learned of the Dolls' second jobs.
"[Simon] considers it a serious blow to the integrity of the contest," said an insider. It was the show's second scandal. Earlier an impressionist quit after he was found to be on Britain's Sex Offenders' Register.
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Transgender people in Brazil are the country's single most marginalized group. Fear, ignorance, and hypocrisy lead to discrimination and lack of education, which in turn render transgender people--more specifically, people who were born male but present themselves as female--subject to violence, social exclusion, drug abuse, crime, prostitution, exploitation, and severe health risks, each of which results in further discrimination.
Brazilian sexual culture contains deep and severely repressed androgynous elements. Transvestites, as many male-to-female transsexuals prefer to be called, are the personification of this cultural equivocation. . . .
ONE SATURDAY MORNING in January 1989, an emergency call summoned paramedics to a trailer park on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington, the home of Billy Tipton, an aging white jazz musician. Tipton had been very ill, too weak to leave his bed, but had resisted all attempts to get him to a doctor. His adopted teenage son, William, had been looking after him. That morning, after carrying Billy to the bathroom, William had closed the door and, out of earshot, telephoned his mother, Kitty. They hadn't spoken for nearly a year. Divorce had dispersed the family almost a decade earlier, and Kitty had remarried, but she could still be counted on in a crisis. She advised William to dial 911 and have Billy moved to a hospital. William made the call, then went to carry his father to the breakfast table. Billy Tipton gave a deep sigh and slumped against his son, unconscious.
That sigh was a secret escaping. The medics arrived almost immediately, lay Tipton on the floor of the trailer, squatted over him, and opened his pajamas to feel for a heartbeat. One of them turned to William and asked, "Son, did your father have a sex change?" William stepped forward and caught a glimpse of his father's upper body, then stumbled back against the screen door and down the trailer's steps. What had he seen? "I was in awe. I had no thoughts--just looked up at the sky, thinking it was some hallucination from drugs. If my father had lived as a woman, she would have had big breasts."
Nobody but Billy had seen that nude torso for about forty years, not even the women who had lived with him as wives. Billy was a very private person, they explained later. He invariably locked the bathroom, where he washed and dressed. People who knew his habits knew that he always wore binding on his chest to support the ribs that had been fractured when the front end of a Buick had plowed into his body--or so he said.
And many, many people knew Billy Tipton. Spokane had been one of the regular stops on his trio's circuit in the early 1950s, during the brief heyday of legal gambling in private clubs in Washington State, when a band could make a good living backing strippers, magicians, jugglers, tap dancers, any sort of variety act that would draw customers into the clubs to drink and play the slot machines. In 1958, Billy settled in Spokane, and the Billy Tipton Trio became the house band at a downtown nightclub called Allen's Tin Pan Alley. Billy bought a house in the Spokane Valley and started earning a second income as an agent in the Dave Sobol Theatrical Agency, booking the musicians.
In Spokane, out of professional respect, Billy Tipton was referred to as a jazz musician. He referred to himself as an entertainer, for he had long before given up trying to make a living at jazz, though he smuggled it into floorshows he worked up with other members of his trio, playing a repertory of swing standards on saxophone and piano. Oklahoman by birth, he was attuned to the stingy provincial audiences he had to please in Spokane, and he had a flair for showmanship. As an emcee, he adopted the gregarious style of the businessmen who were regular customers at the clubs, and female fans were attracted by his boyish good looks and his meticulous style of dress. . . .
How having a twin brother can leave a girl single
By FIONA MACRAE
Girls with a twin brother tend to be only too aware that their sibling can be an occasional pain in the neck.
But it seems that having a male twin may have far more serious and long-lasting consequences - harming a girl's chances of settling down and having children.
A study has shown that women who have a twin brother are 15 per cent less likely to marry and 25 per cent less likely to give birth.
Even when they do become mothers, they tend to have fewer children than other women.
Sheffield University researchers explain the pattern - discerned from studying the lives of almost 400 sets of twins - on exposure to the male hormone testosterone in the womb.
They say this masculinises the developing girl, affecting not only her appearance but her personality, attitudes and behaviour. . . .
After retiring, Arf returned to her hometown in Tambon Tai Talad in Muang Lop Buri and raised some 100 Brahman cattle, on which she also conducted artificial insemination without help from veterinarians.
Arf said she spent her prize money - and donations from fellow transvestite contestants - to save 50 buffaloes and cows bound for the slaughterhouse and gave 30 of them to the locals and let them sell the calves. . . .
 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. . . .
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. . . .
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.
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.
Do you have questions about the coming out journey? The Human Rights Campaign has a set of resources to help you along the way. Download a copy of our newly released Resource Guide to Coming Out, or read it online. Or download our Resource Guide to Coming Out for African Americans, the Spanish-language GuÃa de Recursos Para Salir Del Clóset or our guide to Living Openly in Your Place of Worship.
