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Protect transgenders against discrimination

Monday, June 30, 2008

Deb Price

When David Schroer applied to be a specialist on terrorism at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, his stellar resume led to a job offer.

The highly decorated, retired Army colonel had served 16 years in Special Forces with combat experience in Panama and Haiti. Following Sept. 11, Schroer directed a classified 120-person Pentagon group involved in the war on terror.

But after telling his prospective boss over lunch that he was gender transitioning to Diane, Schroer recalls being told, "I was not a good fit for the library."

To transgender Americans, Diane Schroer's story is all too familiar. No federal law prohibits firing or not hiring someone who bravely decides to transition away from their birth gender.

But, in an historic first, Congress heard last week from Schroer and other transgender Americans about how honesty often leads to a lost career, homelessness and even suicide. "Hero to zero," Schroer aptly calls her experience. . . .Read More

Gay pride march debuts in Delhi

30 June 2008

Homosexuality is illegal in India

Hundreds of gay rights supporters have marched in the Indian capital, Delhi, for the first time.

Gays, lesbians and transgender people gathered in the central Connaught Place area in what was the country's largest ever display of gay pride.

Activists also marched in the cities of Calcutta, which has seen similar events in the past, and Bangalore.

The marchers were demanding an end to discrimination in a society where homosexuality is still illegal.

The gay pride marches are a global event held in the last week of June every year.

They commemorate the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York which broke out after police raided a gay bar. . . .Read More

Congress holds first hearing on transgender discrimination

By Tony Grew • June 30, 2008

The United States Congress held its first ever hearings on transgender issues last week.

The two openly gay members of the House of Representatives testified alongside transgender professionals who experienced employment discrimination, representatives of trans groups and business and legal experts.

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin told the House Education and Labour Committee's Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labour and Pensions:

"Corporate America and the American people are way ahead of the Congress in acknowledging the basic truth we hold to be self-evident.

"That all of us are created equal, and the laws of the land should reflect that equality.

"The importance of non-discrimination laws cannot be overstated.

"Substantively, they provide real remedies and a chance to seek justice.

"Symbolically, they say to America, judge your fellow citizens by their integrity, character, and talents, not their sexual orientation, or gender identity, or their race or religion, for that matter. . . .Read More

How do Bugis divas grow old?

The writer is a freelance correspondent.

The New Paper, June 29, 2008

IN the mid-1980s, she was a model, and then a fashion coordinator, and later, she took the stage as a performer at the Boom Boom Room.

Now, at 42, she says: 'Darling, those days are over.'

Miss Amy Tashiana, a transsexual, looks you in the eye and is perfectly open about discussing her life.

She said: 'We have gone through the extremes to get to who we are, fight to live as who we feel we should be. So it is natural that we grow over the years to become very tough and fiercely independent.

'In order for a man to come along to match that and share companionship, you need someone who is really, really big.'

Does that mean loneliness as they grow older?

Some of the first generation Bugis street transsexuals and transvestites are in their 60s today, like Mr Abdul Khalid Othman, the 61-year-old who was murdered, allegedly by a lover less than half his age.

One transsexual in her mid-50s said: 'When you grow older, sex is no longer important. Like normal people, we seek companionship.'. . .Read More

Facing Rejection

Social worker Caitlin Ryan, Ph.D. on how rejection affects transgender children.

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'I'm a Girl' -- Understanding Transgender Children

Parents of Transgender Child Support Her Choice

By ALAN B. GOLDBERG and JONEIL ADRIANO

June 27, 2008

Last year Barbara Walters spoke with the families of three transgender children who agreed to share their story. Now, one year later, "20/20" has reached out to the families again to learn what's happened since the original episode aired. All three families said that the story helped change their world for the better. Advocacy groups also report a significant surge in young transgenders coming out. Read below to find out more about a transgender youth called Jazz.

Jazz, seen here at six years old, is a transgender girl. (ABC)

From the moment we're born, our gender identity is no secret. We're either a boy or a girl. Gender organizes our world into pink or blue. As we grow up, most of us naturally fit into our gender roles. Girls wear dresses and play with dolls. For boys, it's pants and trucks.

But for some children, what's between their legs doesn't match what's between their ears — they insist they were born into the wrong body. They are transgender children, diagnosed with gender identity disorder, and their parents insist this is not a phase.

Watch the story Friday on "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET

"A phase is called a phase because it is just that. It ends. And this is not ending. This is just getting stronger," Renee Jennings told ABC News' Barbara Walters. . . .Read More

Police Beating of Transgender Woman Ignites Controversy

by Renee Baker
EDGE Contributor
Jun 27, 2008

Grainy security camera footage at Memphis police station shows police officers brutally beating Duana Johnson (Source:WMC-TV Memphis, Tennessee)

It’s been over forty years since Martin Luther King Jr.’s embarked on his impassioned civil rights crusade, battled with police forces and ultimately was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The recent beating of an African American transgender woman, Duanna Johnson, suggests that discriminatory police brutality in Memphis has not ended. WMC-TV in Memphis recently obtained surveillance footage from the reception room of a local police station, where Johnson was beaten and maced by two police officers.

It’s "every trans-person’s nightmare come true," says Donna Rose, transgender woman and a leader in several national GLBT organizations.

Johnson was booked on prostitution charges Feb. 12 at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center in Memphis - charges that have now been dropped because the district attorney’s office found no probable cause for arrest. Video footage shows Johnson being brutally beaten by officer Bridges McRae, while probationary officer James Swain holds her down. Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund says the outburst was not only unconscionable, but extreme and disproportionate to the case. Silverman says they receive many complaints of mistreatment by police, but none on this scale of brutality. . . .Read More

Transgender Woman Barred From Women's Restroom At Gym

June 27, 2008

ORLANDO -- Controversy surrounds a local gym that told a transgender who is undergoing treatment to become a woman she cannot use the women's bathroom.

Stacy Scott, 18, was on a trial membership at the Bally Total Fitness Center on West Colonial Drive.

Scott said last week management told her she could not use the women's bathroom, and had to use the men's room instead.

Scott, who is undergoing transgender therapy hormone treatments, already considers herself a female. . . .Read More

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Awesome dude

Sean Dorsey's 'Fresh Meat Festival

6/26/2008

by Paul Parish

It could have been predicted that the transgender community might toss up the most imaginative and intriguing dance artist in the Bay Area. Who has a more complex perspective on life than a person who feels he's in the wrong body? In any case, there may not be a more generous-spirited, imaginative choreographer-storyteller than Sean Dorsey, a 20-something child of two lesbians who's making dance-theater out of his life as a female who sincerely feels like he's a guy, though he doesn't need any surgery to ratify it. His dance-stories reveal great powers of imagination, presence of mind, and compassion for all concerned, including (thank God) the audience.

Dorsey has certainly won the allegiance of the dance community and the critics, who've given him two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and a Goldie (from a rival paper), a large audience outside the gay community, and a big mention in European dance mags. . . .Read More

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.