Transgender Prom Queen on Boston Public: A Drama

POV, Critique, Opinion: Gender As Neither/Nor

Kate Bornstein

July 30, 2007 | 02:22 PM (EST)

In the last four months or so, I've traveled to 10 or 12 states in the USA, followed by trips to Amsterdam, London, and a tiny village named Inderoy, just an hour's drive north of Trondheim, Norway. And no matter where I go, I can see that most people are convinced there are two kinds of people in the world: men and women. But I hang out with people who, mostly, are neither men nor women. I would call most Neither/Nor people my tribe. It's a difficult place to live, being neither/nor in an either/or world. Nah, it's not difficult... it sucks. Don't get me wrong, being neither/nor is GREAT in a neither/nor world, and thank heavens there are more and more spaces like that in the world. But there's not enough of those kind of spaces to keep up with the increasing number of people around the world who are calling themselves not-men and not-women.

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Just look at this email someone sent me through my website:

I am a [35-39] year old in [the Midwest, USA], born female. For many years I felt masculine. However; I don't believe I am male or female. I am so afraid to live the way I have [become] because I am living a lie, but I don't necessarily want to die. Is there such thing as being neither? How do I help the "professionals" understand that I am not a pathological freak? I just don't identify with either one of those genders. So what does it make me? I need to know how can I continue to live in this world now that I have come to this realization? [unsigned]

Ouch. I answered the email as best I could, but I realized that I could be of more help to this person and the rest of my tribe of neither/nor people if I started talking more directly about it on this blog. So that's what I'm gonna do. Gloves off. People who are not men and not women really live in the world, everywhere, and it's high time to stop ignoring that and insisting on some archaic binary system of genderfying people.

Just look at this poem sent to me by my righteous neither/nor friend, the M word, from Myspace.

Either/Or

I'm not either/or

this or that, I'm not

here nor there;

Shit, I'm everywhere

you care

not to look

I'm so much more

than Either/or

I won't pick and choose

Good or bad

Black or white

Single out or accept

Bitch or bombshell

Opt or decide for

Saint or sinner

Homo or hetero

Goddess or whore

I'm neither/nor

I won't let binary

beat me

into selection submission

I won't let one or the other

kill me

I won't name my desire

by sex/parts alone

man or woman

or in between,

or none of these

beings, my Self

I can't assign identity

through DNA or race;

You can't define, this face

simply won't give you simple

answers

The M word said I could include a link to her MySpace home page. Totally worth a visit.

Okay, that's enough for today. Over the next three weeks, I'm gonna be writing about some wonderful spaces for folks of the neither/nor persuasion, as I chronicle my visits to the 2007 Amsterdam Transgender Film Festival, London's Transfabulous '07, and Jafnaðr the 2007 Nordic Queer Youth Festival. All these events and places sure opened my eyes and my arms to a great many of my tribespeople.

Kiss kiss, and remember: we are everywhere.

Kate

POV, Critique, Opinion: The Prisoner of Gender

by David/Katie Solomon

One of my earliest memories is of being three years’ old and joyfully hurtling down a slide wearing a dress and a policeman’s helmet. I was going to have to stop that sort of thing at some stage and fortunately I did. After all, you can get into serious trouble for impersonating a police officer. Unfortunately, you can also get into serious trouble for wearing a dress, especially if you’re not female. Needless to say, I only grew out of the dress size and not the actual dress wearing.

For me, gender identity is more complicated than masculine and feminine or even transvestite and transsexual. I don’t want a gender reassignment/‘sex change’ yet at the same time my motivation to cross dress goes way too deep for an uncomplicated case of transvestism. Dressing ‘en femme’ now and again won’t satisfy me. I’d more readily describe myself as transgendered, or even third gendered - neither male nor female. Modern science may well have found physical evidence to explain why we’re like this. Meantime, we struggle under a bi-polar gender regime in which only two mutually exclusive gender options are recognized.

How does it feel to be transgendered/third gendered in an either/or society? It hurts. It’s suffocating. I’ve read pieces in which the pain of trans is described as being treated by others like a non-person, feeling invisible. Yet worse still is not merely having your identity disregarded by others but having no choice other than to endure their insistence on choosing a different one for you that they superimpose upon you without permission.

Despite the influence of feminism encouraging greater overall awareness of gender as a patriarchal construct, in mainstream society it’s still virtually impossible to avoid being categorized as either female or male. Bi-gender apartheid pervades all; manifesting itself in male or female (either/or) tick boxes on application forms, airport security queues, public lavatories (naturally), car insurance, pub quiz teams, and of course, in how we’re expected, or even told, to dress – at least for those all-important job interviews. Strictly conforming to one of the two socially, legally legitimised genders is considered a prerequisite for respectability and treating women and men differently is seen as the height of good manners. They call it chivalry; I’d call it ‘respect a gender’. . . .

POV, Critique, Opinion: My trans mission

Julie Bindel

August 1, 2007 2:00 PM

There can be no doubt that transsexual people are often targets for abuse and cruelty. Good liberals should find this appalling, and add our voices to those within the transgender rights movement, calling for an end to discrimination towards this community. However, for many years I have felt uncomfortable accepting a diagnosis created by reactionary psychiatrists in the 1950s which claims that it is possible to be born "trapped in the wrong body".

Feminists want to rid the world of gender rules and regulations, so how is it possible to support a theory which has at its centre the notion that there is something essential and biological about the way boys and girls behave? As someone who spurned dolls and make-up as a child, I find it deeply troubling that, had I gone to one of the specialist psychiatrists while growing up and explained how I did not feel like a "real girl" (which I did not, because I wanted to be a lesbian), I could be writing this as a trans man.

In 2004 I wrote a column in the Guardian Weekend magazine complaining about the fact that a male-to-female transsexual had sued a rape crisis centre in Canada for refusing to let her counsel rape victims, on the grounds that it was a "women only" service. I had, in my piece, referred to one transsexual as a "man in a dress".

The then readers' editor, having received 200 letters of complaint, wrote, "[This column] abused an already abused minority that the Guardian might have been expected to protect."

In hindsight, the sarcasm I used in my column was misplaced and insensitive ("Imagine a world inhabited just by transsexuals," I wrote, complaining about the way many transsexuals parody traditional masculine and feminine styles of dress. "It would look like the set of Grease."). However, the hundreds of angry emails I received, and the levels of vitriol contained within them, made me realise just how much of a sacred cow - at least among us liberals - the issue had become.

As a result of the article I was firmly branded "transphobic" by the community. No other topic I have addressed in this newspaper has attracted such fury, even though I regularly express controversial opinions.

This realisation made me determined to further explore why any criticism of transsexuality seems to be deemed unacceptable outside of homophobic, rightwing circles. Which is why, when the producer of the Radio 4 debating series Hecklers approached me, asking if I would argue a controversial point in opposition to four leading experts, I chose the title, "Sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation".

My concerns about the increasing acceptance of "transsexuality" as a diagnosis are based upon my feminist belief that it arises from the strong stereotyping of girls and boys into strict gender roles. . . .

POV, Critique, Opinion: Are sex change operations justified?

By Innes Bowen Producer, Hecklers, BBC Radio 4

Julie Bindel believes sex change operations are wrong

Many people who have been through sex change operations say it was the only solution to a distressing condition.

But a leading feminist campaigner claims that sex reassignment surgery is based on unscientific ideas - and could be doing more harm than good.

"I should never have had sex change surgery," Claudia MacLean, a transsexual woman told the audience at a recent debate organised by the BBC Radio 4 programme Hecklers and the Royal Society of Medicine in London.

"As a result of the surgery, I am incapable of sex and I have lived a life apart."

Claudia was speaking out in support of Julie Bindel, a radical feminist and journalist, who was trying to persuade medics and trans people that sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation.

Threatening concept

Radical feminists have ideological reasons for opposing sex change surgery.

To them, the claim that someone can be "born into the wrong sex" is a deeply threatening concept.

Many feminists believe that the behaviours and feelings which are considered typically masculine or typically feminine are purely socially conditioned. . . .

Coming Out Issues for Spouses & Significant Others

(en) Gender: helen boyd’s journal of gender & trans issues

Trans Partner Advocacy

Posted in trans partners on July 30th, 2007

Recently on our message boards, the partner of someone who was transitioning posted about her very last day with her male husband. She was sad, she was mourning, and she was feeling both loss & resentment.

Sometimes the larger trans community seems to view feelings like that as anti-trans; that a partner isn’t throwing the big coming out party for her transitioning companion is seen as less than enthusiastic, and the difficult feelings are interpreted as saying ‘trans is bad.’

But the thing is, it’s part of the gig. There’s a lot of change involved in transition, which every trans person with half a brain admits. I mean, that’s the point. Change is a difficult thing for most people - all people, really - and it is stressful even when the change is a good thing, like getting a better job or getting married or having a baby that you’ve long wanted.

But to miss the old, worse job, or thinking fondly about the time when you were single or childfree, doesn’t mean you don’t want the new change in your life. You do. But you can’t just tell your mind not to think about how it once was, either.

& Sometimes I think that’s what’s expected of partners, that we never have a time to say, “I did love him as a man.” We can’t admit that we liked the cocky or shy guy we first fell in love with, & the partners of FTMs aren’t supposed to mourn the loss of breasts and smooth cheeks that they loved to touch.

But the thing is, as any trans person should know, repressing a feeling of loss or sadness is really bad all around; repression poisons the groundwater, in effect, and everyone feels it. So while I don’t advise partners make themselves miserable longing for the past (just as I wouldn’t advise trans people to think the future will definitely be rosy simply because they’ll transition), expressing the more difficult feelings associated with transition is healthier, in my opinion, in the long run. Not easy to hear as the trans person, for sure, but from what I hear from same trans people, they too may need some time to mourn the loss of their own former self.

What book publisher says

GROWING up in a traditional Chinese middle-class family meant that Ms Leona Lo had to suppress her gender identity conflict throughout her adolescent years.

From Leonard To Leona: A working cover of the book. The final version is being decided upon.

One of the reasons Select Publishing decided to publish MsLo's book is to foster better understanding of such issues.

Said its managing director, Ms Lee Wen Fen: 'Select Publishing, a subsidiary of Select Books, publishes a wide range of books on Asia, ranging from literature to works on Asian history, society, politics and culture.'

It includes within its publishing portfolio each year a few works on niche subjects that are under-represented on book shelves or in public discourse, such as books on migrant worker issues or civil society.

'When the subject of transsexualism is publicly discussed at all, usually it is treated with derision or, at best, as a subject of ribald humour,' said Ms Lee.

This book contributes to the raising of gender awareness, she said.

Co-worker's sex change is upsetting

LYNNE CURRY
MANAGEMENT

(Published: July 30, 2007)

Q. I work for a large federal organization, and for three years I've worked with a man who's a bit of an odd duck. "Frank" is moody and indecisive. When you talk with him, he often doesn't finish a thought or even a sentence, and so when you and he discuss something, you're left hanging. He also has a strange appearance for a man, with obviously manicured fingernails and plucked eyebrows.

Two months ago, the situation changed from odd to surreal. We were told Frank was undergoing surgery to change into a woman. We all left the meeting shaking our heads. I consider this sort of behavior immoral, and I decided I would interact with Frank only when I absolutely had to.

Two weeks ago, Frank returned from surgery. Management informed us by e-mail we were to call him "Frances." Last week, things got worse. Frances and I got assigned to the same business process improvement committee, and so I have to work with him daily. Yesterday, I was en route to the restroom when I noticed Frank behind me in the hallway. I stopped just short of the restroom door and then he went in. This makes me nauseous.

I went to see my manager, who sent me to HR, who told me that Frances can use the women's restroom as he's now a she and has the right. What happened to my rights?

A. You have rights -- but not the right to tell Frances what sex she is or what restroom she uses.

In the last two decades, about 200,000 individuals have elected surgery to change from male to female or female to male. Nine states, among them Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Hawaii, New Mexico, Maine and California, ban gender-identity discrimination.

Although no Alaska law addresses this issue, the U.S. Supreme Court set a partial precedent in its landmark 1989 Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins decision. When the accounting firm denied Ann Hopkins the right to become a partner because she dressed and acted in a masculine manner, the Supreme Court ruled in Hopkins' favor and against sexual stereotyping.

Since then, multiple employers such as American Airlines, IBM, Xerox, Walgreens, Nike, Apple, Kodak and Aetna have created specific policies so that transsexuals -- those who choose sexual identities different from the one in which they were born and raised -- can work without facing discrimination from co-workers.

Meanwhile, your employer can support you as well as Frances. No-cost arrangements, such as asking Frances to use a single stall bathroom with a locked door or inexpensive modifications such as ensuring that restroom stalls provide adequate privacy can go a long way in making this situation more palatable.

Although many share with you the strongly held belief that changing one's sexual identity is a moral issue, three thoughts may help you come to terms with the fact that you work with Frances.

First, those who feel at home in their own skin ordinarily perform better than those who always feel not quite right. Some of Frances' former odd behaviors may fall away now that she has the chance to present herself to the world in the sexual identity that she feels is hers.

Second, although you feel put out by Frances' transformation, can you imagine what it must have been like for her to have felt in the wrong body and sexual identity since birth? No one elects the painful and rigorous surgery needed to change sexual identity without having experienced severe anguish over the situation.

Finally, as you employer apparently feels, Frances and Frank possess the same skills. In the workplace, that's what matters.

Female impersonator is a Rehoboth 'Eyecon'

Zoom Photo

Female impersonator Christopher Peterson performs at the Atlantic Sands Hotel & Conference Center on the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Labor Day.

By Roger Hillis
Staff Writer

Television viewers may enjoy watching ABC's new celebrity impersonators show, "The Next Big Thing," but Rehoboth Beach has hosted a master of the craft for close to a decade now.

Christopher Peterson takes the stage of the ballroom at the Atlantic Sands Hotel & Conference Center on the boardwalk every Friday though Sunday. For approximately 70 minutes per evening, he portrays the likes of Liza Minelli, Bette Davis and Cher. Instead of taking breaks or intermissions, he changes wigs between songs right in front of the audience.

This is his third, and possibly final, season at the hotel. It booked him in 2005 after his former venue, the gay nightclub the Renegade, was torn down by developers. That club's owners had discovered him in Key West, Fla., where he still performs each winter with the help of his stage manager (and partner of 23 years), James Mill. Peterson's career got a national boost in 2001 when he landed a scene-stealing cameo opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the comedy movie "Rat Race."

Peterson, 44, is in fine form. A recent show found him kicking off the evening with a Cher impersonation. And yes, folks, those are his real, uh, vocals. He kept the crowd in stitches between songs with jokes about national topics and also local references geared to the coastal Sussex Countians in the house. While the crowd at that particular show was predominantly gay, more and more straight people have been attending the show to see what all the fuss is about.

We caught up with him Monday for a chat.

Q: Is this really "farewell"?

A: We only signed up for three seasons (at the hotel). Neither side has decided yet whether we'll continue or not. I'd certainly like to continue to perform in Rehoboth. This is my home in the summertime. The ballroom at the Sands is great because it almost has a Vegas feel to it.

Q: Your Bette Davis and Liza Minelli impressions stole the show when I saw you.

A: I always save the best for last. And I opened with Cher because that wig takes a lot longer to put on than the others. It's a fun opening.

Q: You also have two other shows which are completely different?

A: Yes. I have one where Marilyn Monroe opens the show wearing the "Happy Birthday, JFK" gown. That gown sold for $1.3 million at Christie's; mine cost about 1-one-hundredth of that.

Q: What was it like working with Cuba Gooding Jr. in "Rat Race"?

A: He was a total professional and a very nice man. He was very funny between takes. I was paid a flat sum for that movie and had to sign away my rights for six years, but now the contract is up so I just received my first residual check.

Q: Have the crowds changed over the years?

A: I'm 44 and they're getting older along with me. But there is a lot of nostalgia going on these days. Even the rock bands who come to Dewey are old bands from the '70s and '80s. And look at the biggest band in the world (the Rolling Stones). They're fossils! I always say my audience consists of gay men and women and their mothers. But we're getting a lot of straight people who come to enjoy a good cabaret show.

Q: Will you ever retire for real?

A: The promoters say I'll be able to do this into my sixties because some of the people I'm portraying are that old anyway. Every performer wishes they could take their final accolades and then the curtain closes and you drop dead. It doesn't always happen that way, unfortunately. But that's what I want.

Transgender inmate wins hormone therapy

By REBECCA BOONE

Associated Press Writer

BOISE, Idaho --

An inmate who castrated herself with a disposable razor blade after prison officials refused to treat her for gender identity disorder should have female hormone therapy paid for by the state, a federal judge said.

Jenniffer Spencer, who was born biologically male, sued the Idaho Department of Correction and its physicians, claiming that her constitutional rights were violated and that she was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment when the doctors failed to diagnose gender identity disorder and treat her with female hormones. Instead, the department and its doctors repeatedly offered Spencer the male hormone testosterone.

A trial over the lawsuit has not been scheduled, but U.S. District Judge Mikel Williams ruled Friday that the state must provide Spencer with psychotherapy and estrogen pending trial. Williams also noted that Spencer is scheduled for release in two years, and that getting the lawsuit to trial could take that long or longer.

The state's attorneys contend that prison doctors did not find conclusive evidence that Spencer, 27, has gender identity disorder. It would be unethical for the doctors to prescribe a drug that wasn't needed and that could do harm, attorney John Burke said.

The judge disagreed.

"There is no evidence before the court that female hormones have, in fact, proved harmful to male subjects who are no longer producing testosterone," Williams said.

Other transgender inmates are already receiving female hormone therapy, the judge said, and so the state is able to handle any special concerns that might arise if Spencer were given estrogen. . . .

That was then this is now

Alice’s Alias

Review by DAVE ITZKOFF

Published: August 20, 2006

Even in a science fiction writer’s most inaccurate predictions, there are sometimes valuable truths to be gleaned. In an introduction to “Warm Worlds and Otherwise,” a 1975 collection of short stories by the elusive and enigmatic James Tiptree Jr., his editor and fellow author Robert Silverberg attempted to sketch a portrait of a cult figure who had never been seen in public, and whose only tangible connection to the known universe was a steady stream of letters originating from a post office box in McLean, Va. Though some fans believed that the mysterious Tiptree was actually J.D. Salinger or Henry Kissinger, Silverberg speculated that the writer was probably employed as a federal bureaucrat, around 50 or 55 years old, and enjoyed the outdoors. Furthermore, Silverberg wrote: “It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male.” . . .

The New York Times: Paperback Row

By IHSAN TAYLOR

Published: July 29, 2007

JAMES TIPTREE, JR.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips. (Picador, $18. ) By the early 1970s, James Tiptree Jr. was one of the brightest-burning talents in science fiction, conjuring interplanetary gender-bending fantasies that rev olutionized the genre. But in 1976, Tiptree was revealed to be Alice Sheldon, an enigmatic woman who had also been, in her colorful career, a psychologist, a C.I.A. counterintelligence analyst and a chicken farmer. This fascinating portrait by Phillips (inset) traces the life and work of a woman who found in her invented persona a partial resolution to the conflicts that plagued her throughout her life. (Sheldon committed suicide in 1987.) In the Book Review, Dave Itzkoff called this biography “engrossing and endlessly revelatory.”

Mary Hastings Bradley Papers, University of Illinois, Chicago

Alice Sheldon

Scottsdale official to fight 'transgender' bar ban

Jul 30, 2007 9:22 AM

A bar fight is brewing between one Scottsdale establishment and the chairwoman of the city's Human Relations Commission.

At issue, a ban on transgendered people at Anderson's Fifth Estate nightclub.

Michele deLaFreniere believes its wrong to treat gay and transgendered people differently in the City of Scottsdale. DeLaFreniere, 52, has lived as a woman since 2004.

DeLaFreniere filed a discrimination complaint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office against the Old Town Scottsdale night spot.

Owner Tom Anderson acknowledges banning transgendered people from the club, but he said it was the best solution he could come up after female customers objected to having "men in dresses" using the women's restroom.

Anderson said he couldn't have them using the men's restroom, because men harassed them and took their pictures.

Since he's liable for his customer's safety, Anderson said he had no choice but to ban transgendered people from the bar. "There was no place I could put these people," Anderson said.

While deLaFreniere charged Anderson with bigotry, Anderson said that deLaFreniere threatened to use her position with the city against him, an accusation she denies.

DeLaFreniere said Anderson rudely refused her and one of her friends entry into the club a couple of days after Thanksgiving. "He grabbed the money from my hand and said, 'I don't want your business or your kind here," she said. "That, to me, is discrimination."

Anderson said he never told deLaFreniere that "her kind" were not welcome in his club. "That's a dramatization she wants to make to further her cause. I don't use that kind of language," he said. "I don't have a problem with (the transgendered). If that's the way your life is going, so be it. It doesn't bother me in the slightest."

Anderson said his customers "felt totally threatened. I believe I made the right move to protect the women that frequent this club." He said.

Singapore: ACCEPTING ME AS PERSON= OPENING UNACCEPTABLE GATE?

Singaporean transsexual mulls over tough question

by Ng Wan Ching

July 30, 2007

FOR years, Ms Leono Lo knew it was not going to be easy. Asking to be accepted on a personal and human level is in sync with Singapore's vision of an all-inclusive society. But somehow things are different for a sex-change individual.

Once she was Leonard, now she's Leona: Leonard (above) in a 1990 picture taken with the late MrDavid Marshall, lawyer, politician and Singapore's one-time ambassador to France. Now, as Leona (below), she is a happy and confident woman.

The gay debate might have had some airing but what about the Third Gender? Transsexuals cause discomfort because they challenge conventional notions of male and female bodies.

Part man and part woman.

Fear of the unfamiliar spawns fear of such fringe groups and their lifestyles multiplying. Will it destabilise the traditional structure of family here?

Ms Leono Lo is aware of social prejudices and has no antidote to offer.

So she's doing the only thing she can think of - opening up and telling her story so others might see her as a human being.

Ms Lo had known something was different about her since she was 12years old and went by the name Leonard.

She knew she was not a homosexual.

But what was she then?

At 15, she chanced upon a book at the Jurong East Community Library called Cries From Within, co-written by the late Professor SSRatnam who performed Asia's first sexual re-assignment surgery here in 1971.

Said Ms Lo, 32: 'Every word in that book made sense to me. Finally, I had the words to describe how I felt. I read it from start to finish in one sitting.'

Today, she has not only written a book chronicling the stories of 13 transsexuals, My Sisters, Their Stories, but also her autobiography.

HER JOURNEY

The book, From Leonard To Leona, details incidents which marked her journey from manhood to womanhood.

It is published by Select Books and will be out in the first week of September.

She started giving talks this year to help others understand.

'I do this so others may feel that they can live openly too,' MsLo said in an interview with The New Paper on Sunday.

She strikes you as just another woman, from the top of her coiffed head to her slinky outfits, attitude, outlook and slingback heels.

Her life took a turn at 21, while at university in the UK. She threw all caution to the wind and flew to Bangkok alone for the gender-changing operation which turned her physically into the woman she knew she had always been inside.

Her parents had no idea that she was going to have the operation. . . .

To Serve, Protect and Mind Their Manners

James Estrin/The New York Times

New York Police Officer Paul Daly gave directions in Times Square, where he’s in his 16th year on foot patrol. People often ask for help, he says, but aren’t always happy with it.

By THOMAS J. LUECK

Published: July 29, 2007

If the New York Police Department had a model of a polite policeman, it might be Paul Daly, now in his 16th year on foot patrol in Times Square. “ ‘The Color Purple’? Eight blocks north,” he called out the other day, directing a warm smile toward a woman who appeared lost.

She glared back.

“People ask for help, then they argue,” Officer Daly said with a laugh. It was impossible to tell what had offended the woman. Officer Daly’s tone of voice? His demeanor? His uniform? Whatever it was, she went away unhappy.

For most people, direct encounters with the police are rare occurrences. The vast majority of New Yorkers will never be arrested, and the vast majority of officers will never draw their guns.

But when passing encounters with the police go wrong, they can leave a lasting impression and can do as much damage over time to police-public relations as a highly publicized case of police brutality.

A decade after adopting the motto “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect” and holding precinct commanders accountable for civilian complaints, allegations of discourtesy by the police are on the rise: up 47 percent in five years, to 3,807 in 2006.

And so the department has started a new effort to make sure officers are, quite simply, more polite. It includes role playing — at one recent session, cadets had to deal with actors playing out an interracial dispute, and a transgender robbery victim who was becoming hysterical — and one new but simple tactic: officers are going to start introducing themselves to people on the street. . . .

Looking Back: Stanley Biber, M.D., surgeon

Sex Machine

Dr. Stanley Biber has made 3,500 women--and 300 men.

By Harrison Fletcher

Published: August 27, 1998

The surgical team gathers early one Saturday morning, not exactly hiding what they're doing, but not advertising it, either. The procedure is still in its experimental stages, and who knows how people will react.

Dr. Stanley Biber stands beside the operating table, white light shining down, the patient's chest rising and falling with each breath of anesthetic.

A few weeks before, Ann had come to him, sitting in the same chair as thousands of other patients and putting the question to him directly. She is a friend, a social worker who has brought him harelip and cleft palate cases from around Las Animas County. Ann is impressed with his work.

"Can you do my surgery?"
"Sure," Biber says. "There's not a surgery I can't do."
He has no humility. He's 46 years old and still a rising star.
"What kind of surgery is it?"
"I'm a transsexual," Ann says.
"A transsexual? What in hell's name is that?"

It's 1969. Most people don't know a transsexual from a transvestite, and Biber himself is a little sketchy. To him, this person sitting across his desk is a woman. Reddish hair. Medium build. Not bad-looking.

As it turns out, Ann is one of the first patients to receive hormone therapy from Dr. Harry Benjamin, the father of transsexual research. Ann has passed Benjamin's psychological criteria, lived as a woman for a year and is ready for the final step.

That afternoon, Biber calls New York and asks Benjamin's advice. He then contacts surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where the early sex-change operations have been performed, and arranges for the hospital to send hand-drawn diagrams that detail transforming a man's genitals into a woman's. The technique is basic--crude, even--but similar to the procedure for prostate cancer.

"Okay," he says. "We can do it."
So Biber stands in the operating room of Trinidad's Mt. San Rafael Hospital on this Saturday morning. His team is ready. His patient is prepped. Biber selects a scalpel and steadies his hand. . . .

Dr. Nick Gorton discusses the DSM

A Transgender Talk show

July 29, 2007 08:39AM

Nick Gorton was born in 1970. He graduated NCSSM in 1988, NCSU in 1991, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine in 1998. He completed his residency and chief residency in emergency medicine at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY in 2002, and became a Diplomate of the American College of Emergency Physicians in 2003.

He is an out gay transsexual man, and lives with his partner, Dan Gonsalves, in Davis, CA. In addition to his day job in the ER, he volunteers with Lyon-Martin Women's Health Services and has clinic there every Wednesday with a special focus on providing care for transgender people. He also provides pro bono medical consulting for a number of transgender-rights organizations - most notably the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

http://www.Nickgorton.org

India: Their space in the cyberworld

Leisure A growing army of Tamil bloggers has ensured that regional language users have their say on the Web, writes Subha J Rao

Photos: K. Ananthan

A new world beckons Tamil blogs

Demure-looking Vidya, a transgender, has had a tough life. Despite being a postgraduate, she ended up begging on trains and public places to keep herself going. All this, before a blog changed her life. Balabharathi, an acquaintance who regularly blo gged in Tamil, helped her post her first message a year ago.

Those lines helped her break free of the shackles that bound her. And, in the process, aided hundreds of Tamil bloggers to open their minds to the plight of transgenders.

Talking to the world

Vidya knew English, but not enough to express herself. And, till Tamil blogs happened, she did not know how to tell the world stories about people like her.

The very vocal Balabharathi, who had studied till Class X, has an opinion on every issue but cannot write fluently in English. “But, I need to express myself. My Tamil is good. Should I not be given an opportunity to let the world know what I think?” This, coupled with the relative ease with which it is possible to type in Tamil, is driving a growing number of people, age no bar, to Tamil blogs. “That’s true,” agrees S. Muguntharaj, creator of eKalappai, one of the free softwares that makes typing in Tamil a breeze.

The opportunity to write in Tamil helps many people fulfil their desire to express themselves in their mother tongue. ‘Osai’ Chella, motivator and long-time blogger, is a regular in English blogs. A year ago, he started writing in Tamil ( www.osaichella.blogspot.com). “Since it is my mother tongue, the feelings are more genuine. And, this is a wonderful opportunity to write Tamil in day-to-day life. It vastly improves vocabulary and spellings. And, the responses are often moving.” Recently, he launched his audio blog www.osai.tamil.net). “Audio lends a personal touch. Moreover, a lot of NRI children face difficulty reading Tamil texts. And, with a speaker or amplifier, the whole family can hear the blog,” he remarks.

For Vidya, blogs provide the space she so badly craves for in the real world. “This is my platform. I have learnt a lot here. Like people write about politics and cinema, I write about the third gender,” she says. In her space, www.livingsmile.blogspot.com, she has conducted campaigns against the wrong portrayal of transgenders in films. And, thanks to the courage she derived from her writings, Vidya, who has undergone a sex change surgery, moved the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court to change her name and gender. . . .