First Transgendered Mayor

CatholicNationalist

Tasmanian take on transgender issues

May 12, 2009

by Şafak Timur


ISTANBUL -They are often in the media when they are arrested for prostitution, beaten by a client or police, or worst of all when they are victims of a hate crime. But this time transgender people living in Istanbul are on camera to talk about themselves and their lives to an independent filmmaker from Australia’s Tasmania.

"I just saw two transvestites waiting in the street near two police who were heavily armed standing in front of a police station," said Julien Poulson as he told the Hürriyet Dailiy News & Economic Review about one of the many moments that impressed and inspired him to make a documentary about the transgender community in Istanbul.

Born to a family with Irish roots who were deported to Tasmania Island by Britain, Poulson is familiar with Turkey through his ancestors as well, who battled against Ottoman armies at Gallipoli. Poulson said he would like to see "what is under the carpet" rather than just the nice palaces in the city like a tourist. He said he first encountered the transgender community "accidentally."

"We were sitting in a café in Taksim when an acquaintance asked me whether I had seen the transvestite’s street in Taksim and I went to see," he said. There are places in cities where nightclubs in one area make a "red light district," but Istanbul’s transvestite street is not like that, Poulson said. "It is just an ordinary street with a couple of buildings and people from the windows calling out [for clients]," he said. . . .Read More

Is My Marriage Gay?

By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

May 11, 2009

Belgrade Lakes, ME

AS many Americans know, last week Gov. John Baldacci of Maine signed a law that made this state the fifth in the nation to legalize gay marriage. It’s worth pointing out, however, that there were some legal same-sex marriages in Maine already, just as there probably are in all 50 states. These are marriages in which at least one member of the couple has changed genders since the wedding.

I’m in such a marriage myself and, quite frankly, my spouse and I forget most of the time that there is anything particularly unique about our family, even if we are — what is the phrase? — “differently married.”

Deirdre Finney and I were wed in 1988 at the National Cathedral in Washington. In 2000, I started the long and complex process of changing from male to female. Deedie stood by me, deciding that her life was better with me than without me. Maybe she was crazy for doing so; lots of people have generously offered her this unsolicited opinion over the years. But what she would tell you, were you to ask, is that the things that she loved in me have mostly remained the same, and that our marriage, in the end, is about a lot more than what genders we are, or were. . . .Read More

Texting Trolley Driver Is Transgendered Male

Driver Tied to Boston Crash Cited Transgender Status Before Hiring

by Michele McPhee

BOSTON, May 11, 2009


The Boston-area transit authority trolley driver who allegedly slammed into another train while text-messaging his girlfriend Friday was hired as a minority because of his transgendered "female-to-male" status and had three speeding tickets on his driving record in recent years, ABC News has learned. . . .Read More

Gender change 'priceless'

Local transsexual woman beginning PhD on the topic

By ALYSSA NOEL, SUN MEDIA

May 11, 2009


The approximate cost of surgery to transition from a man to a woman? Around $20,000.

The cost for a woman to become a man? Roughly $80,000.

The peace of mind that comes after years of hoping, dreaming and planning to make the gender you feel match the sex you are? Priceless, according to Carol Allan, a local transsexual woman who made her transition nearly two decades ago and is now beginning a PhD on the topic.

Transsexual people, both pre- and post-surgery, have been in the media across Alberta since the provincial government announced in April that it would no longer fund sexual reassignment surgery.

But while Allan fully disagrees with that move, she says transsexuals have been portrayed as needy people lapping up welfare money, unable to stand on their own feet.

Transsexual people, like the rest of the residents in the province, run the gamut when it comes to socio-economic status, she said. And it's the ones at the bottom of that heap that she's worried will suffer from the slashed health-care spending. . . .Read More