2nd trans religious conference planned

Speakers to address inclusion, ordination

By REBECCA ARMENDARIZ | Jan 16, 2008

A group of activists have put together a conference set for next week to address the discrimation that transgender people face in faith communities.

"Transgender Religious Summit II: Freeing Faith Communities from Gender Conformity," will take place Jan. 20-21, in Berkeley, Calif.

Organizers held a news conference Jan. 16 to announce details of the event. Speakers included Bernard Schlager, director of national outreach for the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies in Religion & Ministry; Justin Tanis, graduate of Harvard Divinity School and San Francisco Theological Seminary and program director for the National Center for Transgender Equality; and Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The weekend summit will focus specifically on changing the policies of Christian and Jewish denominations to support transgender members and employees.

According to Tanis, religious communities have only recently begun to address the issues of transgender people. Issues related to policy in various churches affect whether transgender people can be ordained.

"What could denominations put into place to ensure the inclusion of trans people who are candidates for ordination?" Tanis asked.

Conferences like the one next week, Tanis said, will give religious organizations and churches an opportunity to network about the practices that are working in different communities of faith.

Transgender people are often lumped into the larger LGBT questions, Tanis explained, but there are specific differences with regard to gender identity and expression that need to be addressed separately. . . .

New Zealanders may be able to change their sex on passports

January 18, 2008

By Simon Collins

New Zealanders may soon be able to change their sex on their passports and birth certificates without having to have costly sex change surgery.

A two-year inquiry by the Human Rights Commission has found that transgender people, who identify as having a different gender than their physical bodies, are discriminated against at school, at work, in accessing health services and in the community.

"Forms of discrimination and harassment ranged from low-level (avoidance and insults) to very severe (violent physical and sexual assaults)," the commission says.

It recommends amending the Human Rights Act to make gender identity a specific ground of illegal discrimination, alongside sex, race and others.

It also recommends changing the criteria for altering a person's sex on birth certificates and other official documents from physical body structure to taking "decisive steps to live fully and permanently in the gender identity of the nominated sex".

This proposal would be even more liberal than in Britain, where the law was changed in 2004 to allow sex changes on birth certificates if people have lived in their new gender identity for at least two years. . . .

Flip Wilson Show with Geraldine and Muhammad Ali

My transgender husband and you

By Jacqueline White

October 2007

Try for a moment to imagine an America where equal opportunity really does mean everyone — even people who are transgender. That was the legislative vision the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was supposed to uphold. But then came the recent Congressional shenanigans that have threatened to leave transgender people in the lurch and out of the bill.

Here’s the deal: In 31 states it’s perfectly legal to fire someone just for being lesbian, gay or bisexual, and in 39 states for being transgender. So the need for an anti-discrimination bill is compelling. Today, it is illegal to discriminate against employees on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, and disability.

It’s time to add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to that list.

However, the most recent version of ENDA only adds sexual orientation; gender identity and expression have been stripped out.

That might seem like an insignificant detail. After all, aren’t transgender people just a tiny minority? Why should the rest of us care if they get fired from their jobs or don’t get hired at all?

Permit me to offer a personal perspective. My husband is a transgender man. We were married this past New Year’s Eve. When I first met Marcus, he was known as Margery. Not until he was 40 did he feel brave enough to face down the prejudice and act on what he had felt since childhood — that the female body he had been born into was the wrong sex. Thanks to modern medicine, Margery was able to medically transition and legally become Marcus.

Unlike many transgender people who get fired when they transition, Marcus did not have to worry about his job. His employer, a major New York Stock Exchange firm, was enlightened: The HR department even did a Transgender 101 seminar for his co-workers. His firm is one of the 152 Fortune 500 companies that recognize that giving transgender employees equal treatment simply makes good business sense, and have the written policies to back that conviction up. . . .

Conversations we need to have

January 16, 2008

David

There’s been a lot of chatter about race and gender in the last week amongst the chattering class, hasn’t there? Has this discourse even once risen above the level of competing interest groups and how their votes might be disbursed?

In contrast, here is a very thoughtful and thought-provoking article (hat tip to Ted - thanks for pointing this out). Becoming a Black Man is actually broader than the title implies. It explores the different ways in which racism is experienced by men and women, from the perspective of people who have personally experienced both. There is a deep knowledge in this community of the way race and gender work in our society, knowledge that no one else has. It’s extremely powerful. One man profiled by the author, Louis Mitchell

finds that he’s in a unique position now to mentor young Black men. As someone who came of age in the lesbian community and has feminist politics, Mitchell jokes with Black boys who talk about “fags” and refer to women as “bitches.” He pulls the teenagers aside and uses a bit of reverse psychology, telling them that it’s okay if they’re gay. When the teens protest that they’re not, Mitchell says, “You have no respect for women, and you’re fixated on gay men. What am I supposed to think?”

Who else could both understand the urgency of doing this kind of intervention, and be in a position to do it? Another transman I know tells people this: “When I was a woman, I was a feminist. Now that I’m a man, I’m a virulent feminist.” What he means is that he now understands much more clearly how unexamined and nearly invisible gender bias can be, bias that insidiously constricts and censors each of us. Ways in which other people interacted with him when they thought he was a woman only became visible and subject to analysis once he had the perspective of interacting with people as a man. So there is this entire universe of knowledge about gender that is only accessible through the experience of transgender people and the freedom of transgender people to share it.

Some of this knowledge is already available - for instance, we all “know” about Driving While Black - but becomes known in a much more decisive and enriched way:

“I always wear shoes I can run in,” Park says. She concedes she knew that Asian women were exoticized, but “it’s one thing reading about something in a book and another to be running down the street.”

The value of this knowledge goes far beyond the individual who attains it, too; we all collectively benefit from the articulation of experience that would otherwise remain invisible to us.

Listening to Monica Roberts, it’s hard to imagine a time when she wasn’t a leader. She’s adamant that Black trans people need their own spaces. For example, she says, there’s a lot of hostility in the white transgender community toward Christianity, and some of that is justified. But when it comes to Black trans folks, she says, it’s impossible to just walk away from the church. “You can’t leave out Christians if you want people of color” at a conference, she says. “We were all raised in a church.”

This truth, the need for this separate space, is also paradoxically laying the groundwork for Christian churches universally to become welcoming of all their children. The refusal of trans people of color to walk away from the church will require the church to grow. This isn’t something being “forced” on anyone through legislation or the courts. It simply is. . . .

America's NEVER Ready To Expand Rights

January 15. 2008

by Monica Roberts


Like many peeps in the transgender community I was incensed, but not surprised by Susan Stanton's unfortunate and ignorantly naive comments. She echoed crap that I've heard for over a decade from Barney Frank and HRC when she stated that America isn't ready for transgender civil rights.

It was ironic because her St. Pete Times interview came out literally 24 hours after I posted a commentary warning that she was being groomed by HRC to become the next spokessellout.

"I think we need to do a whole lot more educating before we’re going to be able to realistically have the support on the national level to get this passed. I personally don’t feel denying the rights of one group should be perpetuated unless everybody has those rights."

But in the spirit of Dr. King's birthday, instead of excoriating Susan for her less than enlightened comments, I'd rather 'ejumacate' Ms. Stanton.

Susan, since you're a newbie to living as a minority, let me hip you to something since you spent the past forty plus years basking in white male privilege.

America is NEVER ready to grant rights to people it despises.

The despised folks have to fight tooth and nail, claw, scratch, cajole, protest, write, march, shame, embarrass, vote, call out and educate until America does the right thing and finally has the moment of clarity that says, 'hey, they're right, it is wrong to discriminate against these people and we need to do the morally right thing and correct it." . . .

Transgender Health Priorities

January 15th, 2008

This resource identifies important health priorities for transgender people and was compiled by the National LGBT Health Coalition with the input of multiple individuals and organizations, including Philadelphia's Transgender Health Action Coalition (THAC) HealthPriorities_Trans.pdf

January 15th, 2008 | Providers, Trans Issues, PDFs .

Becoming a Black Man

Jan/Feb 2008

By Daisy Hernández

Louis Mitchell expected a lot of change when he began taking injections of hormones eight years ago to transition from a female body to a male one. He anticipated that he’d grow a beard, which he eventually did and enjoys now. He knew his voice would deepen and that his relationship with his partner, family and friends would change in subtle and, he hoped, good ways, all of which happened. What he had not counted on was changing the way he drove.

Within months of starting male hormones, “I got pulled over 300 percent more than I had in the previous 23 years of driving, almost immediately. It was astounding,” says Mitchell, who is Black and transitioned while living in the San Francisco area and now resides in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Targeted for “driving while Black” was not new to Mitchell, who is 46 years old. For example, a few years before transitioning, he had been questioned by a cop for simply sitting in his own car late at night. But “he didn’t really sweat me too much once he came up to the car and divined that I was female,” Mitchell recalls. . . .

'Looking for Normal' finds good staging

By DOMINIC P. PAPATOLA

01/14/2008

You've got to have a sense of cosmic patience with a play like "Looking for Normal," a flawed script receiving a pretty good staging by a new company called Artisphere Theatre.

Jane Anderson's 2001 comedy-tinged-drama about a husband who, after 25 years of marriage, finally admits to and acts on his long-buried belief that he should have been born a woman is a pioneer in the nascent world of transgender theater. Vanguard plays like this generally aren't very good pieces of mainstream drama - they tend toward the preachy and the pedantic, the histrionic and the terribly, terribly earnest.

Anderson's effort is more accomplished than many of the scripts that characterized, say, the early stages of the national gay theater movement or the local beginnings of Asian-American drama. With a background in television writing, Anderson has a good ear for the witty line. But she has a terrible eye for structure.

Setting the story in present-day smalltown Ohio, she makes Roy, the protagonist, a regular, church-going guy who works at the John Deere plant. He's not too free with his emotions and he has some garden-variety dysfunction in his family. When the knowledge of his inner self becomes too powerful, he's compelled to spill the beans during what his wife, Irma, thinks is a routine "tune-up" of their marriage with their family pastor. . . .

My transition so far - Picture version

wikiHow: How to Respect a Transgender Person

If you have recently learned of a transgender person in your life, you might not understand their identity and you may be unsure of how to act around them without offending or hurting their feelings. The term "transgender person" in this article means a person who does not fully identify with the gender they were assigned with at birth. There are transgender people all over the world (e.g. US, Mexico,^[1] India^[2]) and in a wide variety of cultures (e.g. Native American,^[3] Thai^[4]). For such people, it is not always easy to explain their gender situation in today's society. Here's how to understand and respect someone who challenges your ideas about gender, and who does not easily fall within the category of "male" or "female". . .

OPINION: Not peace, but a sword

Why we are not civil

Notes from a Cultural Madhouse

By Christopher Zehnder

13 January 2008


I am often a little amused, and more often bemused, by some of the comments California Catholic Daily receives on its stories. Having engaged in Internet discourse on a few sites, I have long come to expect little from it; for it mostly seems a screaming match across an abyss. It’s not that Internet discussions are vehement (I do not object to vehemence), or that they are uncivil or downright rude, but that they are so cliché. One feels, at times, that he is being assailed by hurled bumper-sticker slogans. And then there are the inapt responses, made without regard to the obvious opinions of the other party in the discussion.

We received one such response to an article we published about a man who claims he is a woman, has received treatments to become a woman, and is suing a Catholic hospital because it wouldn’t accommodate him in his continuing transformation. (See “God made you a man,” Jan. 8, 2008.) In response to the article’s insistence on using male pronouns when referring to the “transsexual” Charlene Hastings, one commentator wrote the following: “Regardless of your religious beliefs, Ms. Hastings deserves the simple courtesy of referring to her as the woman she is, legally, emotionally and psychologically, not as ‘he’ and ‘him.’ I am appalled at such blatant disrespect by this supposedly Christian publication.”

I fully understand why the commentator might be offended by what she deems our discourtesy. I fail to understand, however, why she would think it discourtesy – at least, why she would think that we intended any discourtesy by referring to the putative female Hastings as a he. It would certainly be discourteous if we thought that Hastings had a claim to a female identity and refused to grant it to him. But the fact is, we don’t think Hastings can justly make that claim. What’s more, we think calling Hastings a she would be tantamount to a lie; and no one should expect someone to speak what he thinks is a lie. . . .

Student alleges bias over locker

College confronts transgender issue

By Erin Ailworth Globe Staff / January 13, 2008

Ethan Santiago, a physical education major in his first semester at Northern Essex Community College, had been using the men's locker room for weeks when he decided he needed a spot to stash his gym bag. So, he applied for a locker.

He said a school administrator denied his request, citing safety reasons. Santiago, a transgendered student, still has some female anatomy.

The rejection spurred the 20-year-old to file an affirmative action grievance against the school in October, alleging that he was discriminated against because of his gender identity.

Santiago said he just wants to be treated like other male students on campus. Instead, he said, the college offered him the use of a locker room generally reserved for athletes from visiting schools, as well as use of a handicap-accessible bathroom near the NECC men's locker room. He said both options made him feel like a second-class citizen.

"Let's put you where people won't see you, where people won't find out . . . like I'm some kind of dirty little secret," Santiago said, describing administrators' reaction to his gender identity. "I'm not in the closet. I'm not afraid." . . .

. . .East German Medals. . .

Monday, January 14, 2008

Yo IOC, When Y'all Gonna Take The East German Medals Back?

I watched during my teen and young adult years the meteoric rise of East Germany into an international sports powerhouse. It began after the then two Germanys split into separate Olympic teams starting in 1968.

On the surface it was an amazing story. Here was a nation of 17 million people that from 1972-1988 not only challenged the Soviet Union and the United States for Olympic medal supremacy, but dominated in the international competition arenas in summer and winter sports championships as well.

In the 1976, 1980 and 1988 Summer Games the East Germans were second in the gold medal count only to the Soviet Union (the US was third and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). The 1976 Montreal Games were even more galling for the United States because the East Germans took 11 out of 13 gold medals in women's swimming events, led by Kornelia Ender's four gold medals.

In the 1976, 1980 and 1988 Winter Games they finished second to the Soviet Union and led all nations at the 1984 Sarajevo Games.

I'm reminiscing about this in the wake of the news that Marion Jones is headed to Club Fed for six months and has had her Sydney medals taken away from her.

Ben Johnson's gold medal and 100 meter world record was snatched in 1988 and handed to Carl Lewis after he failed a post race drug test in Seoul. Kelli White had 100 and 200 meter international track championship gold medals taken away in 2003 and lost a chance to compete in the 2004 Athens Games when she was banned for two years after testing positive.

I'm not saying this just because these peeps share my ethnic heritage. They failed tests, admitted to it and will now (or have in Ben Johnson's and Kelli White's cases) face the music. It's simply a question of fairness to me. I'm more pissed at both Marion and Kelli because they not only let us down as a people, they saw the drama that Florence Griffith-Joyner went through after she won her medals during the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

FloJo won her medals in times that STILL haven't been matched to this day, never failed a post race drug test, busted her glamorous behind to get to that point in her sport, but was dogged to her grave by allegations of cheating. . . .

OPINION: Stanton’s betrayal

Our ‘Uncle Toms’ are ‘Aunt Trannies’ and Susan is their ringleader.

MONICA HELMS

January 11, 2008

IN 1852, HARRIET Beecher Stowe wrote her famous novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which had a major effect on the attitudes toward slavery and African Americans. The main character was a dutiful servant by the name of Uncle Tom, who remained faithful to his masters, regardless of what they did to him.

The name “Uncle Tom” has come to describe any African American whose actions are counterproductive to the welfare of the African-American community. It has become so descriptive that Native Americans use the name “Uncle Tomahawk,” and the Latino community use the Spanish name, “Tia Taco.” Tia is Spanish for uncle.

In the new “Dark Ages” for the transgender community, we are quickly discovering our own Uncle Toms, but in order to distinguish them from the African-American Uncle Toms, I have coined the name, “Aunt Trannies.” The transgender community’s Aunt Trannies are those transgender people who are still working for “The Man,” in spite of the vicious manner in which we were stripped from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in October of 2007. “The Man,” in this case, is HRC and Barney Frank.

The reason for going with the word “Aunt” instead of “Uncle” is that the majority of those working with HRC and Frank are male-to-female transsexuals. The most visible of these Aunt Trannies is Susan Stanton, the trans woman fired last year from her job as the city manager of Largo, Fla. . . .

Transgender woman fired after complaining about workplace

11 Jan 2008

SALT LAKE CITY --
By BROCK VERGAKIS


A woman who said she suffered discrimination at work because she is transgender has been fired as a nursing assistant.

Ariana Losco, a man before a sex-change operation in 1994, was quoted in a recent Associated Press story about a Utah lawmaker's effort to ban discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Losco said her transgender status led to verbal abuse and fewer work hours at Rocky Mountain Care, a nursing home in Tooele.

"I spoke out about my treatment and got fired because of it," she said Friday. "Management is the one who should be embarrassed."

Personnel manager Don Huntley denied Losco's accusation that her sexual identity is the reason her hours were cut while she worked there. He said she was fired Thursday because she had disparaged the company, although Rocky Mountain Care was not named in the AP story. . . .

Sex Change Surgery Regret

YouTube Video: Alan Finch speaks of his regret now after having undergone gender transition and sex change surgery when he was 21.

Testosterone's role in the body

by Harvard Health Publications

January 08, 2008


Testosterone is produced by the Leydig cells of the testicles. The starting point is cholesterol, notorious for its effects on the heart but critical for its role as the building block of all sex hormones, both male and female. After several intermediate steps, cholesterol is converted into androstenedione, the hormone made infamous by Mark McGwire as the unregulated "dietary supplement" andro. Whether androstenedione comes from the body or a bottle, it is rapidly converted into testosterone.

Testosterone has many direct effects on the male anatomy and metabolism. It is responsible for the deep voice, increased muscle mass, and strong bones that characterize the gender. It stimulates the production of red blood cells by the bone marrow. The hormone also has crucial, if incompletely understood, effects on male behavior: It contributes to aggressiveness, and it is essential for the libido (sex drive), as well as for normal erections and sexual performance. Testosterone stimulates the growth of the genitals at puberty, and it is responsible for sperm production throughout adult life. Finally, it influences cholesterol metabolism, but scientists are still not sure how that affects health. . . .

"Teenage boy" in Norway was adult woman on the run

Jan 10, 2008

OSLO (Reuters) - A student in Norway who posed as a 13-year-old boy turned out to be a 33-year-old woman on the run from police investigating a child abuse case in the Czech Republic, Norwegian media reported on Thursday.

Barbora Skrlova duped Norwegian police, classmates, child care workers and teachers for four months into believing she was a teenage boy named "Adam", daily Dagbladet reported.

"Looking back, we can say that we wondered about "Adam's" behaviour. But this is not easy to know. Children at this age are very different, and can be masculine or feminine," Ingjerd Eriksen, principal at Marienlyst school in Oslo where the woman was a student, told Dagbladet.

The case, involving a sect suspected of abusing children, came to light in the Czech Republic last year and has been front-page material for the country's media for eight months.

Skrlova, alias "Adam", is a key figure in the case and has been on the run since, though Czech police have said it is not clear whether she is an accomplice, a witness or a victim. . . .

(Reporting by Aasa Christine Stoltz; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Eat, drink, and think about gender

10 January 2008


1. Whisk together two gender-conscious chefs. 2. Gradually fold in Kate Bornstein. 3. Add a pinch of inspiration, and ambition to taste. 4. Insert mixture into an academic environment, and let bake for a couple of years.

That’s the recipe for My Gender Cookbook, a work-in-progress co-edited by McGill undergrad Chiara Klaiman and University of Victoria student Nisa Malli. Each recipe in the cookbook will appear alongside a corresponding essay, which will discuss the contributor’s personal gender identity. In this unconventional format, the cookbook will explore the relatively uncharted territory where gender issues and cooking intersect. The Daily met with Klaiman, a U3 Anthropology and Sexual Diversity Studies student, to discuss the project.

The McGill Daily: What is the basic premise of My Gender Cookbook?
Chiara Klaiman: The construction of gender identity is a process, like cooking. Many things come together to affect the way someone will represent or perceive their gender. These things include external factors like a person’s cultural background, their family situation, or even their location. It also includes internal factors, like how a person feels about their gender. I think of all of these factors as ingredients, like in a recipe: you bring together a bunch of ingredients, and through the process of cooking you end up with a dish. I like to think of the two processes as parallel.
This book is about representing one’s gender through food. It hopefully will encourage people to think about how gender and expectations affect what we cook, whether we’ve been taught to cook by our parents or we’ve learned to cook on our own. Cooking is different for everyone, and it’s personal, and I really want the book to represent a whole breadth of experience.

MD: How did you arrive at this idea? Were there any particular theorists that inspired you?
CK: In first year, I went to a lecture and a workshop by Kate Bornstein organized by Queer McGill. Kate made me realize the possibility of existing outside the binary male-female conception of gender. The [gender-neutral] word “ze” [rather than “he” or “she”] is a good pronoun to use for her: Kate was born male, had sex reassignment surgery to be female, decided that that didn’t really work either, and now lives somewhere in between. Although Kate encounters obstacles, she still refuses to identify either way. Kate has written a book, My Gender Workbook, which offers a way to think about these issues that is not threatening, and that’s fun and interactive. . . .

Klaiman and Malli are currently accepting submissions for My Gender Cookbook. Here is your opportunity to unite a passion for cooking and an interest in gender issues. Do not hesitate! All interested individuals should contact Klaiman and Malli at mygendercookbook@gmail.com.

– complied by Rosie Aiello