China: Father is now aunty

(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-03 14:56 After a sex-change operation, a 50-year-old farmer, Cheng, from Damintun, a town near Shenyang, Liaoning, returned to his family and continues to live with his former wife and daughter peacefully.

"I'm happy to live with her in the same family even though our relationship is now like that of sisters," his wife surnamed Li said.

"Although my dad is now aunty, he has treated me and my mama so kindly that none of us wants to part with him," their daughter, Ting, added.

Cheng realized his 20-year-long dream of living as a woman, after a series of free sex-change operations early this year.

(Beijing News )

Anya Anomaly - New Dawn Rising (2003)

Transgender Electronic Musician

Dignity for All: Transgender Activist Fights for Safe Schools

Dignity for All: Transgender Activist Fights for Safe Schools TransNation 07.05.07 By Jacob Anderson-Minshall Asian American transgender activist Pauline Park considers the push for gender-neutral pronouns in the U.S. “profoundly ahistorical.” “Gender-neutral pronouns are not native to the English language,” she argues. “And—unlike in Chinese, for example—[they] feel extremely artificial to speakers of English. And that is why I do not think artificial gender-neutral pronouns such as zie and hir will ever come into general use. Instead… I believe the way forward is to challenge the rigid use of pronouns based on sex assigned at birth.” Park says she’s come to understand that the historical roots of transgenderism differ in various cultures. While there isn’t a precedent in English for gender-neutral pronouns, Park argues, “There was a pre-modern trans identity in virtually every Asian society, and I think it's important for transgendered Asians to envision themselves in light of their precursors.” Co-founder of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in New York, Park’s work focuses on three primary areas: legislation and public policy, training and public education. She conducts sensitivity training and works with the media to educate the public. NYAGRA (www.nyagra.com) is best known for spearheading the successful campaign to pass the New York City transgender rights law enacted in 2002. After leading that campaign, Park (www.paulinepark.com) helped draft guidelines—adopted by the Commission on Human Rights two years later—for implementation of the statute. NYAGRA is also a founding member of a coalition that secured enactment of the New York City’s Dignity in All Schools Act, a law making schools safe for LGBT children. . . .

POV, Critique, Opinion: . . .about gender conformity

Getting Something off My Chest

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

We live in a society that is increasingly worried about gender conformity. Ours is a time when commercials push us to be more manly thanks to the type of hamburgers we eat, and where role models for women are often less than inspiring thanks to a litany of media-friendly party girls like Paris Hilton. As a result, the idea of talking about specific transgender issues gets broader and broader as the opposing societal poles of “man” and “woman” are set at increasing distances.

I know that most of my readers have a preconceived notion of what I might mean when I use the term. Many will think of transsexuals. Some will go broader, into the classic umbrella. Most will picture at least some cross-gender presentation or identity – and this is fine.

Yet consider too than many might be somehow crossing or blurring gender lines without having ever given a thought to being transgender and without any desire to do so. This is what I considered when I read a recent article on gynecomastia in The New York Times.

Gynecomastia, for the uninitiated, is the presence of enlarged breast tissue on otherwise male individuals. What some would crudely call “man boobs.” It’s caused by any number of issues but is usually linked to obesity or the unpredictable nature of adolescent hormones. . . .

POV, Critique, Opinion: G-Spot Magazine

posted by Carrie Wooten at 7:37 AM on Jul 6, 2007

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Transmen in Women-Only Spaces

The first transgender support group meeting that I've ever attended was about two months ago. It was after a board meeting I had been a part of, and so I decided to stick around for a bit and see how it operated. The support group is IndyBoyz, (for any transmen, transwomen or SOFFAS who are in the greater Indianapolis area and would like to know more). A conversation that began in that setting was from young college males talking about the issue of transitioning in a historically women only space, and what that means. The consensus seemed to lean towards it being a cop-out for someone to enter a women-only space as a transman because they knew that it would be a safe space for them to transition.

This reminded me of a series that I had watched several months earlier called TransGeneration, which followed four transgender college students in their daily lives to show the various struggles and dangers that come with realizing and actualizing who you really are in, at times, non-supportive spaces. One of the college students, Lucas, attended Smith College and during his senior year, decided to start testosterone therapy because he was becoming increasingly distressed that his body did not reflect who he knew himself to be. Lucas had entered Smith as Leah (the name given to him by his parents), but had presented as male, and started a transgender support group on campus during his time there.

There are lots of nuances with this situation - questions of motive, questions of understanding oneself to a certain degree, questions of policing borders and identity politics, questions of who can participate in feminism and who cannot. Women-only spaces have often been sites of freedom for those who feel traumatized by male-centric cultures. However, I think there is a certain amount of "wolves in sheep's clothing" dogma going on that mirrors the conversations at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, whose entrance policy is that of "womyn-born womyn only," which seeks to pointedly deny entrance to transwomen. I think sometimes we get so caught up in what people look like that we forget to consider what they want to do and how they might help. If we are to believe Simone de Beauvoir who said, "One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman," then isn't male identity just as fluid and contextual, and shouldn't that be considered just as valid to the movement? Because when we start basing borders and spaces on who is concretely and absolutely excluded, we are only re-inscribing hierarchies that ultimately lead us down a path we do not want to tread.

Which is the chatty sex? Turns out both are

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science EditorThu Jul 5, 2:15 PM ET

Men talk every bit as much as women do, U.S. researchers said after painstakingly counting every word that 400 volunteers spoke.

Their study, published on Thursday in the journal Science, challenges the common wisdom that women are somehow biologically programmed to talk more -- but the researchers said people do often fulfill gender roles when it comes to subject matter.

"Women and men both use on average about 16,000 words per day, with very large individual differences around this mean," the researchers, led by psychologist Matthias Mehl of the University of Arizona, wrote.

Mehl and colleagues had been struck by widespread assertions that women talk more each day than men, and have a bigger vocabulary. "The 20,000-versus-7,000 word estimates appear to have achieved the status of a cultural myth," they wrote.

"So we generalize and say that women just talk all the time," Mehl added in a telephone interview.

Mehl's team tested this belief by recruiting 396 U.S. and Mexican college students who wore a personal digital assistant with a recorder for anywhere between two and 10 days. . . .

The visible man

Female-to-male transgender people find that supervised testosterone therapy can work wonders, although surgical choices are more complicated. Part 8 in our ongoing Transgender 101 series.

By Joanne Herman

An Advocate.com exclusive posted July 10, 2006

(Note: There are serious risks to any hormone therapy. It should not be undertaken in the absence of a knowledgeable doctor's ongoing supervision.)

If you have male gender identity and yet were born female-bodied, you may determine that testosterone therapy can be helpful in realizing your true physical self. Once on testosterone, my female-to-male friends report the same sense of well-being and harmony that my male-to-female friends experience on estrogen therapy. But the effects of the two hormones could not be more different.

For this column, to supplement my own observations, I have relied on the terrific book Becoming a Visible Man, written by one of the most visible FTM activists, Jamison Green.

As an FTM, within a few months of starting your testosterone therapy, your voice will drop irreversibly. In time you will also find hair growing in places where men normally have hair, both on your body and your face. And you may even find your hairline starting to recede. All of these are welcome developments—well, except for maybe the balding—that provide “gender clues” helpful to the general public in perceiving you as a male. You’re off to a good start. . . .

Trans prisoner settles landmark civil rights lawsuit

6th July 2007 12:30
PinkNews.co.uk writer

John Doe, a 2005 inmate of the Orange County Jail in California, today successfully settled a civil rights suit against the County resulting in significant policy changes and a settlement sum of close to $50,000 (£25,000).

Doe, represented by San Diego law firm Stock Stephens, LLP and the Transgender Law Center (TLC), alleged denial of medical care and gender identity harassment in the suit.

The resulting policy changes will formalise policies regarding provision of hormones to transgender inmates and training for medical and corrections staff.

"This settlement is a huge win for our client and for transgender people throughout Orange County," said Mattheus Stephens, Partner with Stock Stephens, LLP. . . .

Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like a Woman

. . .another approach to drag.

Brazil: La Transformacion de un Travesti

"Travesti" in Brazil, who for the most part have not had genital surgery, may be show girls, performers, sex workers or involved in several different lines of work. See anthropologist Don Kulick's book: Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes.

Gender reassignment and assisted reproduction

Present and future reproductive options for transsexual people

Paul De Sutter^,1

Infertility Centre, University Hospital Ghent, De Pintelaan 185, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.

Transsexual people who want transition to their desired gender have to undergo hormonal and surgical treatments, which lead to irreversible loss of their reproductive potential. This paper argues that transsexual people should be offered the same options as any person that risks losing their germ cells because of treatment for a malignant disease. Indeed, transsexual women (male-to-female transsexual patients) may be given the option to store spermatozoa before they start hormonal therapy, so that their gametes may be used in future relationships. This may be especially important for the many transsexual women who identify as lesbians after their transition. Conversely, transsexual men (female-to-male transsexual patients) may be offered storage of oocytes or ovarian tissue, possibly obtained at the time of their oophorectomy. Current technology offers transsexual people the possibility to obtain children who are genetically their own in their future relationships and the option of gamete banking should therefore be discussed before starting hormonal and surgical reassignment treatment. This is particularly important for transsexual people who are diagnosed and treated at a young age.

Key words: gamete preservation/reproduction/sperm freezing/transsexual/transgender

¹ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: paul.desutter@rug.ac.be

Saturn's moon Hyperion. . .a giant genderless space sponge

Pakistan: Shahzina Tariq has reiterated her stance to spend life with Shumail Raj (a transsexual person and bridegroom)

FAISALABAD, July 3: Shahzina Tariq has reiterated her stance to spend life with Shumail Raj (a transsexual person and bridegroom) despite all hardships both have been facing after a court trial.

On the orders of civil judge Syed Hassan Abbas Rizvi, the Jhang Bazaar police produced her before the judge where she recorded her statement under section 164 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Shahzina said she was not abducted by anyone and that Shumail did nothing wrong with her.

"I called Shumail and wished to be his life partner and he responded to my proposal positively," she said.

Couple Shumail, 36, and Shehzina, 25, are cousins and friends since childhood.

She said after release she would not join her parents owing to life threats and would prefer to stay with Shumail anywhere. . . .

UK: DANCE school students took part in a controversial stunt by TV's Trinny and Suzannah.

Dance tutor defends role in Long Man Sex change

The Longman...now a Longwoman

The ITV programme sparked fury amongst Pagans when they gave the Long Man of Wilmington a sex change adding breasts and pigtails to the landmark which many consider sacred.

Twenty members of the Norcross Dance Centre in Denton, Newhaven, took part in the massive cross dressing task.

They had to lie down wearing white boiler suits to create different shapes of women such as pear shaped and hourglass.

Pictures of the transformation were taken from a helicopter. . . .

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, 60s San Francisco

Here's another clip from the excellent documentary by Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman about "transgenders and transvestites fighting police harassment at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin in 1966, three years before the famous riot at Stonewall Inn bar in NYC."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464189/

A call for peer commentary

via WPATH. . .


Dear Colleagues:

This message is a call for peer commentary on the following target article that will appear in the Archives of Sexual Behavior:

Dreger, A. D. (in press). The controversy surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A case history of the politics of science, identity, and sex in the internet age. Archives of Sexual Behavior.

ABSTRACT

In 2003, psychology professor and sex researcher J. Michael Bailey published a book entitled The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. The book’s portrayal of male-to-female (MTF) transsexualism, based on a theory developed by sexologist Ray Blanchard, outraged some transgender activists. They believed the book to be typical of much of the biomedical literature on transsexuality—oppressive in both tone and claims, insulting to their senses of self, and damaging to their public identities. Some saw the book as especially dangerous because it claimed to be based on rigorous science, was published by an imprint of the National Academies of Science, and argued that MTF sex changes are motivated primarily by erotic interests and not by the problem of having the gender identity common to one sex in the body of the other. Dissatisfied with the option of merely criticizing the book, a small number of transwomen (particularly Lynn Conway, Andrea James, and Deirdre McCloskey) worked to try to ruin Bailey. Using published and unpublished sources as well as original interviews, this essay traces the history of the backlash against Bailey and his book. It also provides a thorough exegesis of the book’s treatment of transsexuality and includes a comprehensive investigation of the merits of the charges made against Bailey that he had behaved unethically, immorally, and illegally in the production of his book. The essay closes with an epilogue that explores what has happened since 2003 to the central ideas and major players in the controversy.

KEY WORDS: transsexualism; transgenderism; gender identity disorder; autogynephilia; identity politics; institutional review board; human subjects research.

If you would like to write a commentary, please email: Ken_Zucker@camh.net. You will then receive an e-mail attachment of the entire ms in WORD. The commentary is due no later than September 30, 2007. Here are the instructions:

1. It should be no more than 10 double-spaced pages, with a maximum of 10 references. References should be prepared using the style of the American Psychological Association (see the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). It is the responsibility of the commentator to prepare references properly. If they are not, the commentary will be returned to you for correction.

2. Page numbers go in the upper right-hand corner.

3. The commentary should have a title.

4. Underneath the title should be the name of the commentator and his or her institutional (or private) mailing address, including an e-mail address.

5. The commentary should be sent to me as an e-mail attachment, either in WORD or WORDPERFECT.

An expression of interest in providing a commentary is not a guarantee that the manuscript will be sent to you as there will be a cap on the number of commentaries.

The commentaries will be published in the same issue as the target article, with a reply to the commentaries by the author.

Best regards

Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D.

Editor, Archives of Sexual Behavior

e-mail: Ken_Zucker@camh.net

AMA's Adoption of Transgender Nondiscrimination Policies

GLMA Lauds AMA's Adoption of Transgender Nondiscrimination Policies
07.03.07

The American Medical Association voted last week to amend its nondiscrimination policies to include transgender people. AMA nondiscrimination policies already included sexual orientation.

“Transgender patients, physicians and medical students continue to face discrimination around the country,” Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), said in a release.

“The AMA has said it’s time for this to stop.” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, called the new AMA policies "a great step in moving the American healthcare system in a direction of more fairness for transgender people."

The AMA has taken an increasingly high-profile stance in the past few years on issues of concern to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) patients and physicians. In 2005, a sitting AMA president for the first time addressed GLMA’s Annual Conference. Also that year, the AMA formed an Advisory Committee on GLBT Issues, with one of the seven seats reserved for a GLMA representative.

The new policies address a wide range of scenarios, including discrimination against patients, medical students and physicians. . . .

|| Commentary ||

Empires that won't fall

A short film was recently pulled from San Francisco's Frameline film festival because it was said to reinforce transphobic stereotypes articulated in Janice Raymond's 1979 book Transsexual Empire. The question is, How has her oversimplified thinking survived?

By Joanne Herman

An Advocate.com exclusive posted July 3, 2007

Janice Raymond is a non-transgender lesbian feminist who was a professor of women's studies at Hampshire College when she wrote the 1979 book Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. In her book Raymond completely dismissed the notion that an individual could have a valid belief of being a different gender from the one assigned at birth. And with that as a foundation, Empire advanced the following two stereotypes:

(1) Male-to-female transsexuals are merely male agents of the patriarchy, reinforcing feminine stereotypes; and MTF lesbian feminists are really men masquerading as women so they can invade and dominate women's space.

(2) Female-to-male transsexuals are merely women who have copped out of the women's movement by changing themselves rather than changing society.

The first stereotype is no doubt one reason why the long-running Michigan Womyn's Music Festival maintains a policy, reiterated just last year, of limiting the festival to “womyn-born-womyn.” The second stereotype, say detractors, is perpetuated in director Catherine Crouch's short film The Gendercator, which was recently spurned by the San Francisco LGBT film festival Frameline. . . .

First Person: Vice Versa

by Julia Serano

I almost forgot about her, buried alive in the back of my mind. At the time, I was a 26-year-old closet case, a self-described occasional crossdresser. And she was just like me only vice versa.

I met her in Kansas City at my first transgender support group meeting. The chairs were set up in a circle and most of the seats were filled with middle-aged transvestites in their 40s and 50s. They were painstakingly dressed, wearing Sunday’s best, floral prints and muted pinks with just a hint of five o’clock shadow. Looking strangely sweet, almost equal parts aunt and uncle. And she seemed so out of place there, the only one in t-shirt and jeans. And genetically speaking, she was the only girl in the room. And chronologically we were the only two in our twenties.

After the meeting’s minutes and a guest speaker from Mary Kay offering make-up tips, she introduced herself to me. She told me her name was Joan; I told her mine was Tom. And after a bit of random chitchat, she asked if I wanted to hang out some time. I said “sure,” and a week later we did. . . .

____________

Julia Serano is a trans-activist, writer, a poetry slam champion, guitarist/vocalist for the noisy-pop band Bitesize, and the host of the music and spoken word show GenderEnders. She is the author of a powerful new book, "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism And The Scapegoating of Femininity." Highly recommended! Check out her various creative endeavors at www.juliaserano.com.

Transsexual Thai kickboxer Nong Toom (from 2004)