Interview with Jamie Clayton

"Interview with Jamie Clayton, transgendered woman. . ." tsbutterfly14

Finland: Imatra Vicar Plans Gender Reassignment Surgery

11.11.2008

YLE


A local Imatra vicar's announcement that he plans to undergo gender reassignment surgery is forcing the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church to take a stance on sex change.

The minister, Olli Aalto, who is taking a temporary leave of absence, intends to begin hormone treatments. After this, he will undergo surgery and physically become a woman.

Voitto Huotari, the bishop of the local Mikkeli diocese, says Aalto can no longer continue in his job. Aalto considers this view to be blatantly discriminatory. . . .Read More

Opinion, Critique, POV: Will Federal Female Employees Be Safe from Cross-Dressing Men Using Ladies' Restrooms in the Obama Administration

'The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law.' -- Application for non-career federal jobs in an Obama Administration (http://change.gov/page/s/application)

Contact: Peter LaBarbera, 630-717-7631; americansfortruth@comcast.net

CHICAGO, November 11 /Christian Newswire/ -- Americans For Truth reacted to the news that an Obama Administration will likely enact "gender identity" as a nondiscrimination category by questioning whether federal female employees will be protected from transsexual men wearing dresses who demand to use ladies' restrooms on the basis of their self-perceived "female identity."

"Men who believe they are women, and vice versa, will be officially protected based under Obama on the basis of their 'gender identity' (read: gender confusion)," said Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality. "Cross-dressing, 'male-to-female' activists already demand the right to use female restrooms on the basis of this same notion of 'gender identity'-based rights. So will an Obama Administration allow these big-boned men in female clothing to use ladies' restrooms in federal buildings? . . . .Read More

Bisexual, transgender stereotypes discussed

By Caitlin Burnham

November 11, 2008

"Bi-now, gay later," "shim," "it" and "tranny" were some of the stereotypes of bisexuals and transgenders written on a white board in the Speak Out meeting Monday night.

Speak Out, a queer political activist group at Penn State, held their biweekly meeting in the HUB-Robeson Center to discuss "bi-phobia and trans-phobia," co-president Alex Yates said.

The meeting began by addressing the stereotypes written on the board and deconstructing them.

Yates (sophomore-secondary education) said the people being called these names are "obviously a person" and should be treated as such.

This brief discussion segued into an open forum addressing everything from bisexuals' acceptance in the LGBT community to asexuality. . . .Read More

Speaker sheds light on transgender life

By Joe Preiner

November 12th, 2008

Debra Davis is a hugger. She describes herself as a parent, grandmother, good friend and good neighbor. She’s also a transgender person.

Davis will be relating her experiences in her presentation “Transgender: The New Face on Campus” tonight at 7 at the Courtside Room in the Burge Union.

The presentation, of which Davis has given more than 1,000, has taken her to campuses across the Midwest, including previous visits to the University. Davis said she enjoyed speaking at each school because of the experiences she had at each one.

KANSAN

Davis focuses her presentations on her life as a transgender person. She said people often asked her what it was like to transition from male to female. Davis dedicates a portion of her time to tell stories about her life and the transition process, which started when she was a high school librarian. She also reserves time for questions from the audience. She said being led in new directions by the students’ curiosity was the most exciting part of her tours around the Midwest during the past several years. . . .Read More

America's First Transgender Mayor

HappyCityGirl

Oregon Town Elects Transgender Mayor

"This past Tuesday the small town of Silverton, Oregon elected Stu Rasmussen as its mayor.

Rasmussen is first openly transgender candidate elected mayor in the country.

This short video accompanied a 11/7/2008 news story ("Silverton gives its vote to transgendered mayor") (tinyurl.com/6mxd9h) in The Oregonian about Rasmussen. (11/8/2008)" StephanieKayStevens

Barbara Walters Exclusive: 'Journey of a Pregnant Man'

Thomas Beatie's First Interview Since Giving Birth as a Transgender Male

ABC News: 20/20

November 11, 2008


Last spring, the stunning announcement that Thomas Beatie, a transgender man, was pregnant sparked controversy and questions about traditional notions of what is a man and what is a woman.

In their first interview since the birth of their daughter, Susan, this past summer, Beatie and his wife, Nancy, speak candidly to Barbara Walters. . . .Read More

Nicole Kidman To Play World's First Post-Op Transgender Woman

By Christian Taylor

November 10, 2008

Nicole Kidman will play the world’s first post-op transsexual in the film The Danish Girl, opposite Charlize Theron.

The film is based on the true story of married Danish artists Einar and Greta Wegener. Kidman plays Einar, who stands in for a female model that his wife Greta (Theron) was to paint.

When the portraits become hugely popular Greta encourages her husband to adopt the female identity, which he does, which leads to a complete metamorphosis and a landmark 1931 sex change operation that “shocked the world” and put their love on the line. . . .Read More

Stu Rasmussen is Transgendered Mayor

By Cathryn Friar

November 9, 2008

This is Stu Rasmussen. He was recently elected as mayor of Silverton, Oregon - population 9,600 - for the third time. And yes, he is a man who enjoys dressing as a woman - he’s transgendered. Read more about him, see photos and a video below.

Stu Rasmussen

Silverton is a Willamette Valley farming community about 15 miles northeast of Salem, Oregon our state’s capital. Some in Silverton say Stu Rasmussen is the kind of woman who could stop traffic—and he knows it. From mini-skirts to black boots, Stu likes to dress for looks! Now Stu becomes our country’s first transgendered mayor. . . .Read More

TRANSparenting

"My take on being a trans-identified parent." LaMuerta27

Deconstructing Gender: Diversity and Exclusion

October 31, 2008 by Radha Smith, MSW

The weekend has arrived, or will at about 1:30 p.m. today. Catherine and I are going to a wedding in Massachusetts. Not our own, the wedding of a very good friend with whom we both once worked. She quit work a few years ago to go to Massachusetts in order to gather

a Master’s degree and now works on a PhD in Sports Psychology.

A couple of years prior to her stopping work she met the love of her life, a man who enjoys very often the wearing of “women’s” clothing. To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what that means. The range of human couture and fashion being such that if he wears a pair of slacks and a sweater, what makes it, exactly, a “women’s” pair of slacks and sweater. If he wears a scarf, what makes it a “women’s” scarf?

Does the notion that the clothes might be bought in a department of Nordstrom that’s labelled “women’s” make all of the clothing there female? What if he’s bought the same items at Old Navy? Unlabelled would the clothes then become “androgynous?”

I think we all have this tendency to “gender” pretty much everything in our world: our bodies, our clothing, our habits of action or inaction, our animals, our trees, flowers, the very ground of Earth and the moon, stars and Sun. I cannot think, just this moment, what gender clouds and watches, necklaces, gourds, wreaths and penicillin happen to be. Perhaps some reader would be kind enough to let me know. A note would be fine, please just try not to show forth your disdain when you inform me. I sometimes have this space in my brain that shows itself when I consider gender and gendering. . . .Read More

The Sea Horse, Our Family Mascot

By KATE ROOD

November 1, 2008

MY twin brother, Eli, is jealous of sea horses. They are the only animal species in which the male gives birth to the offspring. Male sea horses have brood pouches where the female deposits her eggs. The eggs then hatch in the father’s pouch, where the young continue to live until they are expelled into the ocean after strenuous labor that can last several days.

Eli is a transgender man, and lived the first 20 years of our lives as my fraternal twin sister. I have plenty of memories of my twin as a little girl, as Emma, not Eli. More often, though, my memories adjust to represent Eli as I know him now, as my brother.

When we were 5, living in a small apartment in Portland, Ore., my mother made our favorite breakfast of buckwheat pancakes on weekends, shaping the batter into K’s and E’s, for Kate and Emma. One morning as my mother assembled the ingredients, Emma, pretending she was a chicken, took two eggs from the counter and placed them next to each other on the carpet. I remember it was a pair of eggs, because even at our young age we knew what it meant to be twins, and whenever we played house, babies came in twos. . . .Read More

This is the woman who played the man who became a transsexual and fooled the world for six years

Between 1999 and 2005, Savannah Knoop lived an audacious double life as Jeremiah 'Terminator' LeRoy - a sex-change Aids sufferer whose stories, based around his white-trash upbringing and life on the streets, turned him into an overnight literary sensation. Polly Vernon unravels a twisted tale

Polly Vernon

November 2, 2008

The trunk show for Tinc - the tiny San Francisco-based fashion label - is New York Fashion Week's most achingly hip, most secretive event. It is held on a sticky day in early September, on the sixth floor of an anonymous warehouse building located 20 blocks down from the big tents and the main action of Bryant Park. Its designer, Savannah Knoop, greets a handful of fashion-week hipsters - the edgiest stylists, the most fashion-forward fashion editors - oh, and me. She rolls out her clothes on two chrome rails, so that we can cop a feel. She encourages us to try her creations on in the loos located halfway down a darkened corridor; she feeds us with farmers'-market brownies and a wine-punch concoction. There is no runway show, no models, no music, no scary clipboard ladies, and no reverence.

Tinc is brilliant. Androgynous, sharp, well-structured, well-fitting, cooler than Christmas. I don't care that 'Tinc' means 'throwaway' in Thai; that it's as green, as a company, as it possibly can be; that the pieces are spiritual one-offs, individually numbered and fashioned from unusual fabrics. I don't care that the logo is a visual representation of the soundwaves created whenever anyone says 'I love you'. I just care that it's good. . . .Read More

Feminine Mystique - CNS News

"Five-minute magazine piece" katyakumk

Looking Back: A gender for success

Rachael Padman underwent genital surgery in 1982 to become a woman. But, as she tells David Batty, she chooses to define herself by her successful academic career, rather than her transsexualism

August 4, 2004

Rachael Padman says that changing sex did not make her a woman. The Cambridge University lecturer believes that the genital surgery she underwent in 1982 was just another step towards living as the woman she always felt she was, rather than the point at which she became female.

By any measure Padman, the director of studies in physical sciences at the university's Newnham college, is a successful woman. Within the transsexual community her story is widely viewed as challenging negative stereotypes of transsexuals being unhappy and dysfunctional.

Padman, 50, underwent gender reassignment after moving to England from her home country of Australia in 1977. She was assessed and treated with female hormones at the Charing Cross NHS gender identity clinic in north-west London while pursuing a PhD at the then all-male St John's college, Cambridge.

But she encountered no hostility from her peers or tutors when in 1981 she started to live full-time as a woman in preparation for genital surgery. She gained her doctorate just after undergoing a sex change operation, paid for privately, in October 1982.

Although she had an overwhelming desire to change gender from early childhood, Padman believes the main reason for her post-operative success is that her identity is not solely based on her being transsexual. . . .Read More

Book Review - How to Help Children Along the Transgender Journey

October 29, 2008

by Terry Schlichenmeyer


The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals,
by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper. Cleis Press. 252 pages, $16.95.

Did you play dress-up when you were a kid? A box of old clothes, a few nearly tattered hats, some shoes that were way too big for you and a rainy day were the recipe for trying on all sorts of new selves and pretending you were something other than what you were.

But for some kids, there is no pretending. They strongly feel they were born as the wrong gender or they feel they are neither gender. For some of them, the feeling starts almost before they learn to walk. In this new book, you’ll learn about gender, biology and understanding.

In the process of growing up and learning about the world, children naturally try on different identities, “becoming” boy or girl as easily as they become a princess or a pirate. Brill and Pepper say that our society perpetuates acknowledgement of only two genders but that to understand transgender children, we need to throw those old ideas out. Gender is fluid, and many of us are, biologically speaking, a blend of sexes. . . .Read More

Transsexual beauty queen crowned in Philippines

10.28.2008

Pravda.Ru


An unusual beauty pageant took place in the capital of the Philippines, Manila, last week. The pageant, Amazing Philippines Beauties 2008, was held to choose the beauty queen among transsexuals and transvestites.

Angelika Santillan, 27, won the title of the most beautiful contestant from 25 other ‘women.’ Santillan stole her crown from her major rival, Rosa Garcia, 19, who came in as the first runner-up. Rianne Barrameda, the 2007 winner of the contest, awarded the crown to the most beautiful and amazing beauty in the Philippines.

Angelika was supposed to fly to Thailand on October 26, where so-called lady-boys are categorized as a separate sex, to represent her country at the international pageant Miss International Queen 2008. However, the visit was later delayed indefinitely due to ongoing riots in the country. . . .Read More

halloween memories

". . .a memory long, long ago of a halloween. . ." aire420

Gender Confused Kids

Airs Wednesday - October 29, 2008

Dr. Phil tackles the sensitive topic of children who identify more with the opposite sex. What do you do if your son wants to wear dresses and play with dolls? Or if your daughter tells you she wants to be a boy? Should parents chock it up to be a phase that their children will grow out of, or should they intervene right away? Meet Melissa and Tim, whose 8-year-old son declared himself to be a girl when he was just 3 years old. Now, they allow their child to live as a girl, and wonder if and when they should begin hormone therapy. . . .Read More