Thai teens seeking sex changes grapple with new rules

20 July 2008

by Elizabeth Gibson

BANGKOK (AFP) — Valee Pancharoen watched her son transform as he became a teenager, first painting his nails, then wearing a wig and, finally, the dresses he had been wearing for years but hiding from his parents.

Now 18, Ponchalearm's changes are all the more striking as he sits, slim and ladylike in a top of white satin and black lace, next to his stern and athletic twin brother.

Ponchalearm's aunt absent-mindedly runs her fingers through his waist-length auburn hair extensions as the family quietly discusses whether Ponchalearm is ready for a sex change operation.

"It's my life and I've decided that I must do it before university," Ponchalearm says. "I feel happy, it's fun, I can express myself as I want. I'm lucky I have friends who understand me."

As he speaks, his mother softly cuts in to express her concern that he is too young to understand the long-term consequences of his decision. . . .Read More

Questioning Transphobia. . .

Transphobic Tropes #3 – “Reifying Gender”

July 21, 2008

by Lisa Harney


Moving on steadily. Hope you’re all enjoying these posts, though it feels a bit weird to not have an accompanying rabbit picture. Here’s another one that gets regular thrown at trans people, particularly by radical feminists.

Basically, it’s the notion that, by medically transitioning, we reify gender—which is something that feminism is supposed to be destroying.

This is a particularly stupid line of argument, that it nevertheless has had enough traction to convince enough people it’s worthy of repeating. And repeating. Usually, it’s tied to an argument that trans people have the most retrogressive of personal presentations. . . .Read More

Transgender Candidate For Hastings City Council

July 21, 2008

by Liz Collin

HASTINGS, Minn. (WCCO) ― A candidate for city council in Hastings is getting a lot of attention, even before the fall election push gets going. Lara Estes is a woman who used to be a man. Now, she's the first transgendered person to run for a city office in Hastings.

"The third ward was going to come up vacant and I thought, why not, it's time for a little change," said Estes.

Change is something she has more experience in then most. Lara used to be Lawrence. She said when she was young, she never felt like she fit in with the other boys. . . .Read More

Charles' Take on STP Devices

"July 6, 2008. AccompliceXX did a great vlog on how to make an STP device, so I thought I would add my take on STP devices to put out there." charlesasher

Kate Bornstein Interview

3.6.2007



Kate Bornstein is America's most storied gender outlaw, an outsider's outsider. She has been a genderqueer activist for many years, exploring gender identity literally, figuratively and theatrically. In this Eros Zine interview, she touches on a wide variety of topics, from trans sexual orientation to transgender porn of the past, from baring her soul onstage to her latest book. . . .Read More

Activist: Transgender lot needs help as they can’t get jobs

20 July 2008

By FASLIKA DAS

KUALA LUMPUR: The Government’s offer of welfare aid to homosexuals should be extended to the Mak Nyah (transgender) instead.

Pink Triangle Foundation programme director Raymond Tai said most homosexuals were “well-to-do” as they were employed just like “normal people” and would only face discrimination if they were open about their status.

“They are not like the Mak Nyah who are physically different. The Mak Nyah do not get employed and this results in them prostituting themselves,” he said.

“They are the ones deprived of basic privileges such as education and employment, not homosexuals.” . . .Read More

Interview and New Book. . .

WCQ221 The Transgender Child

Host Alexandra Billings

This is a very special and personal show. Alex shares many aspects of her life with Amy on this Queercast, including this sweet baby pic. From quitting smoking, to living in her Republican town, but most importantly she shares her transgender story.

Guest: Author Stephanie Brill joins Amy to discuss her new book, The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals. . . .Read More

China: Television programme calls transgender people "human monsters"

July 20, 2008

News Agency: TREND News

Television watchdogs were investigating after transgender people were described as "human monsters" in a Chinese language television programme, a media report said Sunday, the dpa reported.

The expression "yan yiu," which translates as "human monster," was used 23 times during a report on transgender people in Thailand broadcast by the ATV television station, the South China Morning Post said.

The expression also appeared in subtitles 28 times in the segment which lasted 11 minutes and 45 seconds.

Sam Winter, a professor at the University of Hong Kong's faculty of education and also director of Transgender ASIA Research Centre, said the use of the expression would damage Hong Kong's reputation as a cosmopolitan city.

He filed a complaint with the Broadcasting Authority and asked the television station and producers of the programme to apologize publicly to the local transgender community.

"It is unimaginable to call transgender people freaks on TV in other developed sections of the world - you won't hear the word 'nigger' on television in the US," Winter said. . . .Read More

Transgender characters from the Bible

July 19, 2008

TIMESOFMALTA.COM


Peterson Toscano, an American theatrical performance activist, will tonight present a piece on transgender characters un-earthed from the Bible.

Aptly named Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender In The Bible, the one-man show is about people who do not fit in the gender binary and who, in transgressing and transcending gender, find themselves at the centre of some the Bible's most important stories.

Drawing inspiration from one-on-one interviews with transgender and gender-queer individuals, Mr Toscano weaves their experiences with the stories and lives of transgender people right on the pages of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Hilarious and deeply moving, he deepens well-known, and lesser-known, Bible stories as he presents an array of characters with an array of genders. . . .Read More

Police Officers Finally On Trial For Beating Transsexual Esmeray

The police officers who beat up and insulted transsexual Esmeray in June 2007 for passing by the front of the station will be tried for the crime of “simple bashing and insulting.”

Bia news center - İstanbul

18-07-2008

Tolga KORKUT

The two police officers who beat up and insulted transsexual Esmeray will be tried a little more than a year later. Beyoğlu 2^nd Criminal Court of Peace, where the case will be tried, has not set the hearing date yet.

According to the information Esmeray’s lawyer Meriç Eyüboğlu supplied to Bianet, the prosecutor accuses the police officers Mustafa Muhammet Çırakoğlu and Ceyhan Göven with “simple bashing and insulting.” . . .Read More

Bill O'Reilly : President Of LGBT CMTE on Fox News

Sex change treatment should start in adolescence - Czech experts

CTK

17 July 2008


Prague- The government working group for sexual minorities wants the bill on special medical services to enable sex-change treatment to start being applied to people under 18, Minister for human rights and ethnic minorities Dzamila Stehlikova (Greens, SZ) told CTK today.

The Health Ministry is to submit the respective bill to the government in August.

The bill regulates the rules for sterilisation, castration, and sex-change operations as well as artificial fertilisation and abortion.

The Czech Sexological Association is pushing for changes in the treatment of adolescent transsexuals.

Its member Ivo Prochazka said this treatment would only be applied to the clear cases of transsexuals. The children's parents would have to approve the treatment.

Prochazka added that the treatment is based on the administration of medicines to inhibit the development of sexual organs. However, the process is still reversible.

Then sexual hormones are being administered before the sex-change operation that can be performed only on patients over 18. . . .Read More

Universities see rising amount of co-ed dorms

Jack and Jill aren’t allowed to live together at the University of Kansas yet, but more and more school are allowing members of the opposite sex to live together.

By Case Keefer

16 July 2008

Most colleges didn’t allow students of different genders to live in the same dormitory 40 years ago.

After gender-neutral buildings were opened, universities began to allow members of the opposite sex to live on the same floor. Now, there’s a new gender-based issue to debate in student housing.

“We’re at the next phase in the evolution,” Jeffrey Chang, co-founder of the National Student Genderblind Campaign, said. “Why can’t men and women take the next step and live together?”

Chang, a senior at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., started the national campaign for gender-neutral dorm rooms after he was not allowed to share a room with one of his close female friends his freshman year.

It caught on. National news organizations such as USA Today and CNN featured the National Student Genderblind Campaign in stories. Students experiencing rejection like Chang began reaching out to the organization. And Chang said the number of schools allowing gender-neutral rooms doubled, from 15 to 30.

“Whether or not schools are actually doing this is one thing,” Chang said. “But schools are actually talking about it. Students are talking about it. That’s the thing I’m most happy about.” . . .Read More

Transgender People Need Advocacy At Work

Written by Rob Mathias in Gay News Worldwide

July 17, 2008

Two University of Oregon doctoral students dove into issues of transgender identities — in the workplace and professional counseling — and surfaced with a call for psychologists and vocational counselors to not only treat but to act as advocates for their clients — and to help end discrimination in the workplace.

“One of the main points of our paper is that not only do we need to be, as vocational psychologists or career counselors, working with transgender people at an individual level to help them get hired, but we also need to be doing a lot of social advocacy work — working with employers and workplaces — improving antidiscrimination policies and doing legal advocacy,” said lead author Maya Elin O’Neil. . . .Read More

City forces TG woman to dress in men's room

by Eric Resnick

July 18, 2008

Cleveland--A city swimming pool has told a transgender woman that she must sign in as a man and use the men’s locker room to change into her swimsuit.

Karen Deamons of Cleveland has been swimming at the Cudell Recreation Center on the city’s west side since 2005. She swims there three times a week as part of her rehabilitation from a stroke that year.

Deamons says that there has been tension between her and Cudell management since she started swimming at the facility. But it has escalated in the last month, resulting in her being barred for a week, then being required to sign the men’s registry when she arrives.

She has filed a sex stereotyping complaint against the city of Cleveland. The complaint, filed June 24 with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, will be investigated by Gina Curry of the commission.

Deamons says she complied last year when Cudell told her to use the men’s changing room, but “it’s getting harder and harder” mostly because of the children at the facility. . . .Read More

TRINIDAD

"Sample clip from the upcoming feature documentary TRINIDAD directed by PJ Raval and Jay Hodges."

See: http://trinidadthemovie.com/

'I'm mistaken for a man every day'

The beguiling combination of kd lang's androgynous looks and sensuous voice propelled her to fame in the 90s but, asks Emine Saner, does she want her first collection of new songs in eight years to put her back at the top of the charts?

Wednesday July 16, 2008
The Guardian


kd lang ... 'I love getting older'. Photograph: Sean Smith


For a while, in the 90s, it felt as if kd lang was everywhere. Then she was nowhere. Today, she's here, in a hotel room in Cologne, halfway through a European tour of her first album of original songs in eight years. Gone are the model groupies, celebrity friends and media circus. She is older, wiser, more settled. A reincarnation, if you like. . . .Read More

Young Teens Openly Express Sexuality; LGBT Pre-Teens Proud, Not Safe

Many Middle Schools Don't Have Policies to Safeguard Against Anti-Gay Bullies

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES

July 16, 2008


Sean has felt since the age of 2 or 3 that he was a boy in a girl's body. Telling his parents at age 11 was difficult but coming out as transgender among his seventh-grade classmates was like walking into a lion's den.

When Sean first shared his sexuality with his mother, "She didn't take it well," he said. "She cried for about a week, but then went on the Internet and understood it better."

About a month before Sarah's "transition" to Sean, his mother informed school officials, but no one told teachers or students.

"One day I was Sarah with female pronouns and Monday I was Sean with male pronouns, without any explanation," said Sean, a pseudonym for the central New Jersey teen who wants a fresh start in high school this fall.

"I was bullied every day, shoved into lockers, beaten up and made fun of," said the 14-year-old. "The teachers were standing right there, saying nothing or just not aware of it." . . .Read More

Transsexual Tilapia?

By Ylan Mui | July 16, 2008

I know what you're thinking already. It sounds totally insane. But the tilapia you eat very likely has gone through a sex change.

Let me explain: When we began working on our story about Whole Foods' new farmed seafood standards, one bullet point caught our eye: No Methyl testosterone for sex reversal.

As it turns out, farm-raised tilapia is typically given testosterone in their food when they're very small, for the first 35-40 days of feeding, Whole Foods seafood quality standards coordinator Carrie Brownstein told me. Any fish that were on the path to a womanly fishhood change course to become strapping male tilapia instead, turning the pond into one big fishy frat party. . . .Read More

Looking Back: Tula Interviewed, Part 1

"CAROLINE COSSEY, KNOWN AS TULA, A TRANSITIONED FEMALE, AUTHOR AND ACTRESS ON THE DONAHUE SHOW IN 1991."

View video here.