Transgender Army veteran Diane Schroer

CNN News reports on transgender Army veteran Diane Schroer and her discrimination case against the Library of Congress (Jan. 5, 2008)

Signatures due to block gender bill

Senate bill 777 still creating buzz

RYAN ORR

January 5, 2008

SACRAMENTO — A group trying to block the Student Civil Rights Act — recently signed into law — has until Monday to gather 433,971 signatures.

Proposed by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, Senate Bill 777 bans school texts and activities that would exhibit any bias against homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality and cross-dressing.

Gender, for instance, would mean sex, and includes a person’s gender identity and gender-related appearance and behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.

It would also define sexual orientation as meaning heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality. . . .

Concerning "Susan Stanton's Lonely Transformation"

by Susan Ashley Stanton

Like many people in the transgender community, I was shocked and disappointed when I read the recent article in the St. Petersburg Times entitled “Susan Stanton’s Lonely Transformation”. The St. Petersburg Times is an excellent newspaper and I consider Ms. Lane DeGregory to be a gifted writer and a personal friend so I am not sure how my words could have been so terribly misunderstood. Since the publication of this story, I have received hundreds of email messages from people all over the nation expressing their disappointment and anger for the hurtful and insensitive statements that have been attributed to me. Simply stated, this article is not an accurate representation of my beliefs concerning the transgender community or my experiences as a transgender person.

Due to the very public nature of my job as a government official and the national attention my termination received by the national media, I have tried to represent the transgender community with honor, grace and dignity. Instead of engaging in litigation with my former employer or becoming angry and bitter over the circumstance that caused my very public termination, I have attempted to use my experiences to educate the public of the transgender journey.

Many people have expressed their strong belief that I am not qualified to be a spokesperson for the transgender community. Admittedly, prior to my own experience becoming public, I had very limited interaction with members from the transgender community due to the public nature of my job and the need to keep my private struggles from becoming disruptive to my city and community. Unfortunately, for better or for worse, today I am often perceived to be the face of the transgender community. This is not a role I ever sought or have particularly enjoyed. However, it is appropriate that I clearly address the concerns expressed by so many people concerning my position regarding ENDA and being a member of the transgender community. . . .

Long-Term Treatment of Transsexuals with Cross-Sex Hormones: Extensive Personal Experience

Louis J. Gooren, Erik J. Giltay and Mathijs C. Bunck

Department of Endocrinology (L.J.G., M.C.B.), Vrije Universiteit University Medical Center, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Leiden University Medical Center (E.J.G.), Department of Psychiatry, 2333 ZA Leiden, The Netherlands

Address all correspondence and requests for reprints to: Dr. L. J. Gooren, Department of Endocrinology, VU University Medical Center, De Boelelaan 1118, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: ljgooren@truemail.co.th.

Context: Transsexuals receive cross-sex hormone treatment. Its short-term use appears reasonably safe. Little is known about its long-term use. This report offers some perspectives.

Setting: The setting was a university hospital serving as the national referral center for The Netherlands (16 million people).

Patients: From the start of the gender clinic in 1975 up to 2006, 2236 male-to-female and 876 female-to-male transsexuals have received cross-sex hormone treatment. In principle, subjects are followed up lifelong.

Interventions: Male-to-female transsexuals receive treatment with the antiandrogen cyproterone acetate 100 mg/d plus estrogens (previously 100 µg ethinyl estradiol, now 2–4 mg oral estradiol valerate/d or 100 µg transdermal estradiol/d). Female-to-male transsexuals receive parenteral testosterone esters 250 mg/2 wk. After 18–36 months, surgical sex reassignment including gonadectomy follows, inducing a profound hypogonadal state.

Main Outcome Measures: Outcome measures included morbidity and mortality data and data assessing risks of osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. . . .

Gays, transgenders fight for legal protections in Utah

7 January 2008

Brock Vergakis - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SALT LAKE CITY -- Ariana Losco says she's just another suburban wife.

The Tooele woman drives a minivan, loves spending time with her family and shops at the local Wal-Mart. Her lifestyle, she says, is the epitome of ordinary.

But not everyone sees it that way. That's because Losco was a man until 1994.

When she took a job at a nursing home six months ago, she said she never imagined how hostile her work environment would become when co-workers learned she used to be male.

"It's been pure hell," Losco said, noting that her shifts have been cut as a result. "I've gone home many times crying, but I have to do it. I have to have a paycheck."

Under Utah law, discriminating against gay and transgender people is legal. Rep. Christine Johnson, D-Salt Lake City, wants that to change in one of the nation's most conservative states.

"If I'm not shaking things up, I'm not doing my job," said Johnson, one of three openly gay lawmakers.

Johnson said it's time Utah's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community fights back against years of hostility, highlighted by a ban on gay marriages and attempts to eliminate gay-straight alliances in public schools.

"It's very clear that if the LGBT community does not begin to act in an offensive manner that we will continually end up playing defense," she said. "I think the statewide community is frustrated with this unapologetic discrimination."

Johnson is sponsoring House Bill 89, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to a list of protected classes in the Utah Antidiscrimination Act.

There are 20 states that include sexual orientation in their antidiscrimination laws, and 11 of those include gender identity.

Johnson acknowledged that her bill will be a tough sell in Utah. Most lawmakers are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which considers acting on homosexual feelings a sin. . . .

Is it a boy or a girl?

5 August 2006

Stockholm - A hen in southern Sweden that has grown a rooster comb, tail and wattle and begun to crow is wreaking havoc in its henhouse, where the rooster, Henry VIII, is hopping mad, Swedish media reported on Friday.

"Henry VIII is bloody angry. The other hens are mostly just surprised but they seem to increasingly accept him or her," the owner of the henhouse, Christel Hammar-Malmgren, told the online edition of regional daily Blekinge Laens Tidning. . . .

Boston's First Transgender Legal Clinic To Open

......With liberty and justice for all

TRANSGENDER PEOPLE .

We invite you to join our stride towards justice

Beginning with our January 16^th kick-off celebration of

Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates,

a new legal clinic serving transgender people in Massachusetts.

WHAT: Kick-off celebration for Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates with guest speaker Mara Kiesling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality

WHEN: Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 6-8pm.

WHERE: JRI Health, 25 West Street, Boston. Take the Orange or Red line to Downtown Crossing stop or the Green Line Park Street stop.

Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates is a joint project between Cambridge Cares about AIDS, AIDS Action Committee, and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.

For more information about the kick-off event or the legal clinic, please contact: 617.450.1353 or
TransgenderLegalAdvocates@gmail.com

Transgender student, SUU face dilemma

Appropriate housing debated; application remains incomplete

Samantha Arnold

1/7/08

Kourt Osborn, a sophomore sociology major from Kanab who has been living as a male, does not qualify to live in male on-campus housing because of failure to provide medical information defining him as a transgender person as well as his neglect to turn in the required application fee.

Born a female, Osborn previously attended SUU from fall 2004 to spring 2005 and lived in female on-campus housing.

Osborn then left SUU to start his transition in Philadelphia at a health center that specializes in transgender care, he said.

Upon his return to SUU, Osborn wanted to live in the male dorms, but said that after being open about his transgender situation, his housing application was denied by housing authorities because he was not able to fulfill certain medical criteria.

Dean O'Driscoll, SUU director of Marketing & Public Relations, said Osborn was not denied the right to live in male housing. His application was not considered because he failed to pay the required application fee.

However, Osborn said he did not turn in the money with his application because he did not want to be "promptly denied."

"I was afraid this would happen, and it did," he said. . . .

Storm Florez

"Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Storm Florez is an FTM, genderqueer singer/songwriter, poet, duct tape and performance artist, and live tranny porn producer who now lives in the Bay Area.

Storm has performed his music and spoken word across the US and co-produced and performed in the pornarific cabaret Trans as Fuck in San Francisco in 2004 and in West Hollywood in 2006.

Storm has featured at the National Queer Arts Festival: Intercourse (2001), Viva La Joteria (2004), Home Queer Home and Transforming Community (2007)."

A man in lipstick, high heels?

New county law says its OK

January 4th, 2008

By John Johnston

County Commissioners have unanimously approved new rules that prohibit discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations based on gender identity or expression.

The amendments to county ordinances add gender identity to a list of protected classes that include race, sex, color, religion, national origin, handicap, familial status, sexual orientation and marital status – in sum, so-called “transgendered” or “transsexual” persons are now protected.

Which would, according to Commissioner Mary McCarty, permit a man to come to work in high heels and lipstick, and not be subject to any official reprisals.

What will upset opponents is that the rules apply to both the public and private sectors. The new laws cover most real estate transactions, together with both public and private employers with 15 or more employees. And it went into effect New Year’s Day. . . .

Bolivia to protect gays in constitution

January 2008

by Rex Wockner

Bolivia is set to become the sixth nation to ban anti-gay discrimination in its constitution.

Article 14 of the finalized text of the planned new constitution states: "The State prohibits and punishes any form of discrimination based on sex, color, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, origin, culture, nationality, citizenship, language, religious creed, ideology, political affiliation or philosophical beliefs, marital status, economic or social status, type of occupation, level of education, disability, pregnancy, or other factors that have the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of the rights of everyone."

Once ratified, the constitution will become the first in the world to protect transgender people. . . .

A Tale of Two Susans

January 4, 2008

(cross-posted at Pam’s House Blend)

I’m spending part of my winter break getting rid of piles of paper. Those in the trans community who have had the pleasure/misfortune of entering any place I’ve lived know how, umm……, out of hand my piles of research can get (ask Gwen Smith; she saw the original Casa de la Kat a decade ago - and none of the succeeding Kat Boxes have been less paper-laden.)

Well, I’m trying to get them out of the physical space of my office and into my computer - via scanner.

I am getting there….

Trust me.

Now - on with our regularly scheduled rant:

One of the scraps o’ paper I just ran across is an article about a transsexual named Susan - who had a rather public, political life prior to transition and who has had occasion to say some things trans since her transition that have rubbed some trans folks the wrong way.

Unlike Susan Stanton, however, Susan Kimberly earned the right to mouth off.

No, she doesn’t need my approval on that point - and I imagine I’ll get an e-mail to that effect at some point. However, I’ve earned - in my own way - the right to mouth off. . . .

OPINION: Educating our children

Dale O’Leary

January 2008


The state-funded Massachusetts Commission on Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Youth recently met in Brockton to plan how to present the gay activists’ view of sexual identity in public schools of the state.

Students will be exposed to pro-GLBT programs at every level from kindergarten to the graduate school. Since the programs challenge in various ways Catholic teaching, it is important for parents to be in possession of the facts necessary to answer their children’s inevitable questions.

First, persons with same-sex attraction may believe that they were born that way, but there is no scientific evidence that same-sex attraction is genetically pre-determined. If it were, one would expect that identical twins would virtually always have the same pattern of sexual attraction. In the largest study of sexual attraction patterns in identical twins (287 pairs of male identical twins), there were 24 pairs of men where only one had predominant same-sex attraction and only 3 pairs in which both did (11 percent). This precludes a purely genetic cause.

Each person with same-sex attraction has his or her own unique personal history. It is therefore unlikely that we will find a single cause for same-sex attraction. We do know that many, but not all, suffered from a gender identity disorder as children. This failure to identify with one’s own sex leads to loneliness and isolation. According to experts in the field Dr. Kenneth Zucker and Susan Bradley, these children have many other problems beside gender identity disorder. When gender identity disorder is identified early and treated, it can be resolved. . . .

Transgender woman sues hospital

CATHOLIC-OWNED SETON WON'T LET HER GET BREAST SURGERY

By Barbara Feder Ostrov
Mercury News

01/05/2008

"God made you a man."

That's what Charlene Hastings said she was told when she called to inquire about breast enlargement surgery at Seton Medical Center, a Catholic hospital in Daly City.

Now the San Franciscan is suing the hospital, claiming officials there discriminated against her because she had a sex-change operation.

Hastings, 57, had already had the major surgery she needed to become a woman. She had chosen a San Francisco plastic surgeon with privileges at Seton to perform the breast augmentation in October 2006. But the surgeon, Dr. Leonard Gray, told her that Seton no longer allowed him to operate on transgender patients, Hastings said.

When Hastings called Seton to learn more, a surgical coordinator said the hospital would not allow its facilities to be used for transgender surgery, according to the lawsuit, "She was saying, 'It's not God's will,' " Hastings said. "I couldn't believe it. It's a blatant case of discrimination."

The lawsuit, filed Dec. 21 in San Francisco Superior Court, pits the rights of transgendered people against the hospital's rights to operate according to its religious principles.

State law allows religiously affiliated hospitals to refuse to provide abortions, but there is no specific religious exemption allowing hospitals to deny elective surgery to transgender people. . . .

Susan Stryker

"Susan Stryker is a researcher, writer, queer historian, artist, and a filmmaker. She is the former executive director of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, and a former history columnist for Planet Out. She has written and co-authored books like Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and edited "The Transgender Issue" of The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol 4, No 2, 1998. She recently discovered and made a film about the Compton's Riot - riots by transpeople in San Francisco that pre-date Stonewall - and turned that discovery into a documentary film, Screaming Queens."

A desire for amputation?

By Paul Decelles

December 28, 2007

While traveling to Disney World the other week, I picked up a copy of Scientific American Mind to keep myself from being too bored on the flight. One by Sabine Miller called "Amputee Envy" concerns what she terms "Body Identity Disorder" (BID). People with this extremely rare disorder desire to have one or more of their appendages removed, and some actually have such discomfort that they request that the appendage be removed. A summary of the article is here.

I had heard about this sort of thing and chalked it up to being a sexual fetish. The reality appears to be much more complex. Some appear to be seeking attention rather than any sort of sexual gratification. But most interesting to me is that at about two thirds of the disorder report that amputation will enable them to express their "true" identity. Thus, there may be a parallel between this disorder and Gender Identity Disorder (GID), which is of personal interest to me. Indeed there are some interesting parallels-both disorders arise early in life, and sometimes the discomfort (which can be extreme) is only resolved through surgery. . . .

Queen Biggins: 'I was insulted when they first asked me to do panto!'

27th December 2007


Nobody knows more about the magical ingredients that make a successful panto-mime than Christopher Biggins.

For almost 40 years, this happy-golucky I'm A Celebrity . . .winner has starred as one of the most popular panto dames up and down the country, playing such famous characters as Widow Twankey, Sarah the Cook and Baroness Hard-up.

He would have been strutting about the panto stage once again this year in one of those over-thetop disguises if it hadn't been for his decision to accept an invitation to go into the jungle. . . .

Willard: The buildings they left behind

January 3, 2008

State hospital near Ithaca has ties to Binghamton asylum

For a column that covers buildings of historic interest in the Southern Tier, Willard State Hospital is a stretch. OK, more than a stretch -- not in the Tier at all, Willard is on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake, about 25 miles from Ithaca.

But an article on Willard seems appropriate for a couple of reasons. For one, there are some parallels to our Binghamton asylum. Both facilities were constructed in the 1860s. Similar in purpose, construction and operation, over the years they would respond identically to changing societal attitudes toward mental health. They would grow fast to keep pace with increasing demand, reach their peak in the late 1950s, then experience a steady decline in population. Twenty years ago many of their buildings were closed and abandoned.

Over recent years, several of Willard's buildings have been rehabilitated and reused. Today, the campus is operated by the New York State Department of Corrections as a drug treatment center, correctional facility and training academy. Unfortunately, like the Binghamton campus, many of the original buildings have been demolished. The few that remain vacant are deteriorating; some are unsalvageable.

There are other local connections: After Binghamton's short-lived New York State Inebriate Asylum was converted to an "asylum for the chronic insane," many patients were transferred from Willard to the Binghamton facility.

One of those was Lucy. In today's terms, Lucy would be described as a transgender individual. But in 1879, because she chose to dress and behave as a man, Lucy was committed to the Willard asylum for the insane. Shortly after that, she was transferred to the asylum at Binghamton, where she remained for more than 30 years until her death. Lucy was buried here in the asylum cemetery, and as is the case with most graves at both the Binghamton and Willard cemeteries, her nameless, numbered grave marker has long since been lost. . . .

Treasures of the Tier is a monthly column covering historic preservation issues in the Southern Tier. Luther may be contacted at rluther@nysLandmarks.com.

Losing Male Privilege

Jan 3, 2008

Pam's House Blend. . .always steamin'

As a WBT who came out at 21 in 1969 my first awareness was that when I looked for work now I was going to have to look under the "Help Wanted _ Women" ads. For jobs that paid less than those offered to men.

I didn't protest that this was treating me as a lesser human because I was in transition. I was in SDS and I developed a feminist consciousness. So I marched on the SF Chronicle and Examiner offices with several hundred other women to demand the end to sex segregated ads.

In her book "Whipping Girl" Julia Serano points out that much of what TG/TS people think is transphobia is actually misogyny.

The goal of the process of transition is to become female or male and to live in society as a member of the sex to which one is being surgically reassigned. It isn't to move to some sort of third status of "Transgender". Most of us who enter treatment for TS/HBS recognize that. For us transition is a period of life transformation during which time we come to realized "Hey, this is the way women are treated in society". We then either embrace the feminine mystique or we become feminists even if we are the sort that say, "I'm not a feminist but I believe in equal pay."

Embracing the identity politics of transgender is a way of saying, "I want to dress as a woman, not get SRS and keep all my male privilege but be treated like a woman." . . .

Drunken flies get hypersexual

Chronic boozing sends male flies chasing after any and every potential mate.

Heidi Ledford

Fruit flies get amorous under the influence of constant booze.GETTY

From the annals of insect biology comes a cautionary tale for those recovering from their post-New Year’s celebration: heavy boozing has been shown to send male fruitflies, like their human counterparts, into a lusty fog.

In the flies, hypersexuality caused by chronic alcohol exposure has the effect of making the males chase anything with wings — other males included. Although sexual preference in humans is obviously a complex phenomenon not replicated by the fly work, the findings could be used to further establish a fly model system for the study of alcoholism, observers say. . . .