Changing Sex Documentary Transsexual Trans #5 of 8

"Changing Sex documentary" from the UK. changingsexuk

Dear Mr. President:

July 24, 2008


Family Equality Council sent letters to both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama about queer families. They promise to release any responses they receive. Follow the jump to read both letters. LETTER TO MCCAIN CAMPAIGN

(same letter sent to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign)

July 21, 2008

The Honorable John McCain
United States Senator
241 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator McCain:

In light of recent events, I want to be certain that our presidential candidates truly understand the great diversity of American families and how best to meet their needs.

As a lesbian mother and the executive director of Family Equality Council, the national organization working to ensure equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families by building community, changing hearts and minds and advancing social justice for all families, I know how hard parents work to raise happy, healthy children. Regardless of their sexual orientations and gender identities, regardless of how many parents or caregivers are present in a family, all parents begin each day with their children at the forefront of their thoughts. On behalf of diverse families, I present you with the following information on the variety of family types that exist in this country and ask for your plan to recognize, respect, protect and celebrate all of the loving families you seek to represent. . . .Read More

Celebrity Daughter Kathlyn Beatty Rumored to be Transgender

By Ann Turner | 7/24/2008


A not-so-blind item posted on gossip guru Perez Hilton’s website on Thursday has some speculating celebrity spawn Kathlyn Beatty may be living life as a transgender. Although Hilton does not name names in the gossip tidbit, investigation by other Hollywood bloggers has led some to believe the subject of the rumor is the daughter of movie stars Annette Bening and Warren Beatty.

According to a “Not So Blind Item” posted on PerezHilton.com, a teenage daughter of a superstar celebrity couple is now living life as a transgender boy. “Now going by the name Stephen, the teen’s parents pulled him out of the prestigious Buckley School in Los Angeles and are having him home-schooled to keep him out of the public eye,” Hilton states on his blog. . . .Read More

The Former 'Pregnant Man' Debuts His Baby

By Champ Clark

July 23, 2008


It's been three weeks since his blue-eyed baby debuted in this world, but Thomas Beatie – better known around the world as the Pregnant Man – can already say this about his daughter's personality: "She's easygoing and mellow and intelligent."

On June 29 at 8:55 p.m., Beatie, 34, a former female beauty pageant contestant, made cultural history as perhaps the first legally transgender male to give birth, bringing into the world a 9 lbs., 5 oz. baby girl named Susan Juliette.

"She's so precious, I just can't stop staring at her," Thomas tells PEOPLE in his first interview since he and wife Nancy returned with their bundle from Bend, Oregon's St. Charles Medical Center. "Just holding her is the best feeling in the world." . . .Read More

(. . .a very cute baby, IMO! R.A.)

Changing from Male to Female

"Slide show of a intersexed girl transitioning from her early days as a macho guy to a feminine, good-looking (not to mention a bit narcisstic) girl.

She's 23 going on 24, graduating from college in Indonesia. She's now an Assistant Brand Manager for P&G Bangkok." psastrowardoyo

A Clan, a Network, a Tribe, a Family

Queer, Isn't It?

Not only does the GLBT community view itself as one movement, society has mandated that the groups are linked -- if not intentionally, then through selective exclusion.


July 23, 2008

Michael Abernethy

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” —Author Jane Howard

“Remember, there are two things that keep us oppressed - them and us. We are half of the equation.”—U. S. Congresswoman and lesbian Tammy Baldwin

Now that Daniel has graduated college, he and his partner Chris have started talking about purchasing a home together. Two houses down from Chris live Susan and Casey, who are on and off girlfriends. Jason lives on the corner; he’s straight for the most part, but he doesn’t mind letting a guy take care of his sexual needs sometimes. One street over lives Andrew, “Anita” after he’s in full drag and the curtain goes up.

Gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. Transgendered. Welcome to my neighborhood, an extraordinarily diverse one with a much higher than normal percentage of GLBT people, especially considering it isn’t near a “gay mecca”. Incredibly diverse people within a few blocks of one another, each with his or her own challenges. Can one organization represent the legal and social needs of all these people? . . .Read More

No real advantage

July 22, 2008

Simon Wong


Thanks to television, viewers across the world have seen vivid images of the violent riots in the Olympic torch relay and the sexually explicit costumes in the gay parade.

Less publicized, but somewhat related and equally controversial, is transsexual athletes’ participation in the Olympics. Although transsexuals account for a small percentage among athletes, the controversy lays bare the huge erosion of the value of sports.

Central to the criticism against transsexual participation is the perceived disappearance of a level playing field. A female athlete who was born a male likely retains certain structural characteristics that might be beneficial in sports. . . .Read More

'One Damn Man': Transsexual pen pals pen play

Andrea Abney

July 23, 2008


It all started with a fan letter.

Gina Grahame e-mailed Aleshia Brevard in 2003 after reading her book, "The Woman I Was Not Born to Be," about Brevard's life as a transsexual. Grahame identified with Brevard's book, both because she knew the places Brevard described in "Woman" and because Grahame is also a transsexual.

Eighteen months and 1,500 e-mails after the women started corresponding, they decided to use their relationship as the basis for a play, which resulted in "Inside/Out." The two will perform a cutting from that play on Sunday at the San Francisco Theater Festival.

"We see this as a family relationship, extended family though it might be," says Brevard, 70, who lives in Santa Cruz. "It is a mother-daughter relationship, and that developed over that year and a half." . . .Read More

German court rules in favour of transsexual rights

July 23, 2008

thestar.com

BERLIN, July 23 (Reuters)–Germany's constitutional court ruled on Wednesday that a man seeking legal recognition as a woman will be allowed to stay married to his wife in a landmark decision that further strengthens the rights of transsexuals.

The Karlsruhe-based court ruled unconstitutional a requirement that married transsexuals first get divorced before their new gender could be legally recognised. The court said that law violated a person's basic rights. . . .Read More

TransSports - OutLoud Radio

"Here, I'm being interviewed about TransSports or being gender non-conforming while in sports at school. Also, my experiences were taken account of and this all done by Noah Miller and Elena Chin of San Fransico for OutLoud Radio." cheyanne2314

Queen Harish dances in drag

Sandip Roy, Special to The Chronicle

Tuesday, July 22, 20

"I like to copy the Bollywood actresses," Queen Harish says with a chuckle. "But not the new kinds with the very short, short clothes." She prefers the colorful, traditional full skirts of her native Rajasthan. After being featured in the musical documentary "When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan," Indian drag sensation Queen Harish has become quite the jet-setter. New York, London, Barcelona, Tokyo - "the dancing, whirling, desert drag queen," as she calls herself, is everywhere, flying in for celebrity weddings, giant outdoor concerts and gay parties. "They were hot," she says after performing at the packed Desilicious pride party in sweltering New York this year. "I have to make them more hot."

Harish is also married and a dad. He goes to his local Hindu temple twice a day. And he says he'd never even heard the term "drag queen" until he came to the West. . . .Read More

Transgender Information Network

Current Affairs #1
Posted in Current Affairs on July 22, 2008 by transgenderinfo


Current Affairs is a new initiative we are starting here at Version 3.0 of the site. The aim is to give brief overviews of those longer, more in-depth news and magazine pieces that bring transgender people and issues into focus. You know, those kind of human interest stories. Adding to each piece as a new piece comes to light.

Our first current affair is to do with Transgender Children. Recently in the media there has been lots of talk about issues surrounding transgender children and debate about what age is too young to make such a decision. In an article entitled Should I help my 12-year-old get a sex change? that was published in the TImes Online - a mother of a transgendered child and a doctor from Amsterdam discuss the issues. . . .Read More

Newsweek Gets It Backwards

July 22, 2008

by Beth Reis


Newsweek's cover story this month is entitled "Young, Gay and Murdered: Kids are coming out younger, but are schools ready to handle the complex issues of identity and sexuality? For Larry King, the question had tragic implications." [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/147790/page/1 ]

The reporter, Ramin Setoodeh seems to me to have concluded that it was because Larry came out and because he dressed in a vampy way and directed sexual and romantic comments toward boys at school that he was gossiped about, harassed and finally murdered. I would question the chronology. I am totally skeptical about the assumption that his behavior led to the other boys' hostility rather than their hostility fueling his behavior. Because it’s the latter that I have seen so often. A little kid starts out gender variant by nature, even in pre-kindergarten. But often subtly so. Then other kids' discomfort and grown-ups refusal to address their discomfort or teach about stereotypes leads to their excluding that child from play and refusing to sit with the child at lunch. The teachers continue to hope the problem will go away. . . .Read More

Young, Gay and Murdered

Kids are coming out younger, but are schools ready to handle the complex issues of identity and sexuality? For Larry King, the question had tragic implications.

By Ramin Setoodeh | NEWSWEEK

July 19, 2008


At 15, Lawrence King was small—5 feet 1 inch—but very hard to miss. In January, he started to show up for class at Oxnard, Calif.'s E. O. Green Junior High School decked out in women's accessories. On some days, he would slick up his curly hair in a Prince-like bouffant. Sometimes he'd paint his fingernails hot pink and dab glitter or white foundation on his cheeks. "He wore makeup better than I did," says Marissa Moreno, 13, one of his classmates. He bought a pair of stilettos at Target, and he couldn't have been prouder if he had on a varsity football jersey. He thought nothing of chasing the boys around the school in them, teetering as he ran. . . .Read More

Critique, Opinion, POV: Transgender opponent seeks common ground

July 22, 2008

Jeffrey Winslow
Hudson


This letter is in response to the "Why are some people so anti-transgender?" letter of June 4.

Dr. Jennifer Madden makes an interesting use of what I call "semantic sleight of hand" in that she shuffles attention away from the arguments of my previous letters and instead debates character: my petty character and Dr. Madden's sterling spiritual character. I believe the terms "insecure" and "self-righteous" are part of my description.

Dr. Madden spoke of interconnectedness in her letter. What do Jennifer Madden and I have in common? We were not born with female biological parts.

What does this mean? . . .Read More

Gender Switch

"Chase McCown and Heather Rushworth improv a scene based on the suggestion "Gender Switch" at The Second City in Hollywood, 2007."

. . .a caricature of verbal and nonverbal difference between men and women. How does it correspond to what you see now and then in your family, friends, and associates?

Should I help my 12-year-old get a sex change?

July 21, 2008

When children are adamant that they are trapped in the wrong body, is it ethical to offer them hormone treatment? A concerned mother and a Dutch psychologist believe the answer is 'yes'

by Catherine Bruton


Last year Sharon Lane* found her 12-year-old son Nick* trying to cut off his penis. Since he was a toddler, Nick has been adamant that he is really a girl. Aged 5, he declared: “God has made a mistake. I should have been born a girl.” A year later he asked, “When can I have the operation to chop off my willy and give me a fanny?”

Nicky - who suffers from a rare condition called Gender Variance (GV), sometimes referred to clinically as Gender Identity Disorder (GID) - started attending school dressed as a girl at the age of 9, unable to “pretend” any longer. She was the subject of constant bullying and harassment so severe that she now attends a special school for “at risk” children.

When Nicky hit adolescence, things just got worse. “She felt like an alien in her own body,” explains Sharon, who describes Nicky as her “daughter”. “When she started experiencing erections, she would scratch her skin raw.”

Nicky has twice attempted to cut off her penis and taken several overdoses. “Sometimes I felt like I was on suicide watch,” Sharon says. . . .Read More

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