"Venus Xtravaganza (died 1989) was a transgendered Latina saving up money for sex reassignment surgery while earning a living as a prostitute in New York City. She appeared in Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning, a 1991 documentary film about New York City ball culture.
While her birth name and date of birth remain unknown, her last name was given to her because of her membership in the House of Xtravaganza. The house, like similar houses, is named in the style of European fashion houses (e.g. House of Chanel) and is an affiliation of young drag queens and transgendered youth who have come together around the Harlem drag ball scene.
During a 1987 interview in "Paris is Burning," she says she want to be "a spoiled, rich, white girl living in the suburbs." [1] She shares a story of her time as a prostitute where one of her clients became enraged upon the discovery that Venus was not a biological woman. Venus fled through a window and, fearing for her life, claims to have left the prostitution business as a result, opting instead to work as an escort.
According to her drag mother Anji Xtravaganza, Venus Xtravaganza was found strangled and stuffed under the bed in a New York hotel in 1989. [2] Her body was discovered by a stranger 4 days after her death.[3]"
Shannon Price Minter, who attended Cornell Law School as a woman, returned as a man Nov. 16 to speak about the future of gay and transgender rights.
"I remember my time here very vividly, and it's great to be back," said Minter, whose talk was sponsored by the Law School's Cyrus Mehri Public Interest Speakers Series. As a law student, Minter interned at the NCLR and helped start a legal aid program for young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) who had been forcibly hospitalized for psychological treatment to change their gender identity.
In a dozen years with the NCLR, Minter has become known for his tireless work on precedent-setting cases. "We litigate across quite a wide range of issues across the country," said Minter. "Our goal is to advance the human rights and safety of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, so we end up litigating in state and federal court across the country." His successes include helping to pass anti-discrimination laws protecting transgender people in employment and health care.
"A really wrenching aspect of our work, one that is very dear to my heart, is working on behalf of LGBT youth in foster care and juvenile justice systems," Minter said. "No one can work in this area without being struck, first and foremost, by the overwhelming racism of our current child welfare system. The vast majority of children who are taken out of their homes and put into foster care or incarcerated are youth of color. And their families are subject to a degree of state surveillance and intervention that is rarely if ever directed at middle-class or upper-class families.
"For youth who are dealing with being gay or transgender on top of that, it's really hard to describe the brutality they're facing currently. It's really, literally, a nightmare for those young people. They are subjected to sexual assault, physical assault from other youth and often from staff. There's been very little legal progress in this area. We're representing a young gay man from Tennessee who went into a foster family that forced him to undergo repeated exorcisms to cure him of being gay."
Minter has also brought national attention to transgender parents threatened with losing parental rights. In 2003 Minter represented Michael Kantaras, a transgender father, in a custody battle televised in its entirety on Court TV. "Whatever theories or philosophies any of us may have about gender or about child development, the reality is that, for whatever reason, there are children born into this world who have a very deep-seated internal conviction that their gender is different than the one assigned to them at birth," Minter noted in a 2002 speech. . . .
Scientists at the universities of Durham and St Andrews came to the conclusion by asking more than 400 British men and women to make judgments on character after looking at digitally-altered pictures of men's faces.
The web-based test asked participants to rate the face for traits such as dominance, ambition, wealth, faithfulness, commitment, parenting skills, and warmth.
Men with square jaws, larger noses and smaller eyes were classed as significantly more dominant, less faithful, worse parents and as having less warm personalities.
Those with finer facial features, fuller lips, wide eyes and thinner, more curved eyebrows on the other hand were viewed as a better bet for long-term relationships.
And healthier-looking faces, for example those with better complexions, were seen as more desirable in terms of all personality traits compared to those who looked unhealthy.
Older faces were also generally viewed more positively compared to younger ones.
The scientists said there was a "high amount of agreement" between women about what they see in terms of personality when seeing a man's face and they may well use their impression to decide whether or not to engage with him. . . .
When people claim their goal in life is to make the world a better place for children, it typically comes off as a painful cliché. But when Stephanie Brill says it, you believe her.
Brill at home
The Orinda mother of four isn't dedicated to reversing global warming or raising awareness of Darfur's plight. She merely wants to help people understand gender. In particular, to help parents and educators realize that kids don't automatically identify as the gender their chromosomes dictate. And that if your son adores dresses or your daughter considers herself more "boy" than "tomboy," that's okay. Or at least it should be.
That's also the essential mission of Gender Spectrum Education and Training, the Orinda pending nonprofitBrill cofounded and directs. In some ways, it's a natural extension of Maia Midwifery & Preconception Services, Brill's longtime practicecatering primarily to queer couples. Through Maia, she helps clients understand that conceiving a child does not require a traditional partnership. And through Gender Spectrum, she spreads the gospel that being a child does not require being traditionally male or female: "If we were just to honor each child and each person as, hmm ... who are you? What are you interested in? How do you like to play? What colors do you like? What kind of clothes do you like? How do you like to wear your hair?" she says. . . .
BOISE, ID -- A federal judge has ruled a Boise transgender inmate will receive female hormone therapy, paid for by the state of Idaho.
Jenniffer Spencer, who changed her name from Randall Gammett, castrated herself with a disposable razor blade after she was refused female hormone therapy for her gender identity disorder during her time in prison.
The Idaho Department of Corrections, funded by the state and taxpayer dollars, must provide psychotherapy and estrogen to Spencer for the duration of her time in prison, which is two more years.
Spencer was biologically born a man. She sued the Idaho Department of Corrections, and the physicians there, for failing to diagnose Gender Identity Disorder and treating it using female hormones.
Instead, doctors diagnoseda non-specific gender disorder as well as bi-polar disorder and offered her the male hormone, testosterone, not estrogen which she says she needed.
In the suit, Spencer claims her constitutional rights were violated and that she was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment with the state's failed diagnosis. . . .
You've stumbled upon the domain of an 18 year old Transman residing in Australia.
Friday, February 16, 2007
I am whole.
I'm on the flip side, my chest is amazing.
My surgeon, Dr. Hassall of Sydney, did an amazing job.
She is well known within the ftm community as a reputable chest reconstruction surgeon in Australia, and had performed the operation countless times with sucess prior to operating on me, which was my main reason in choosing her. As well as the convenient location.
Surgery was uneventful, which is a good thing. I woke up and all I cared about was peeing, because I thought I'd piss myself. After that, I looked down and realised that although I was bound with a surgical binder and cotton; my chest was far flatter than I had even been able to get it whilst binding at home.
I first saw my chest a couple of hours after the surgery was over, when my Dr. came in to check on it. I cried.
I can't even write down here what it meant to have those...things...off my chest for good. What it means now, even though I have to bind for 4 more weeks, is that now when I shower and look down, I don't feel disgusted.
I feel proud. About my own body. Who would have thought? . . .
NO TRANS PERSON LEFT BEHIND Actress and activist Calpernia Addams sheds light on how trans Americans get shut out of the system, and what needs to change.
As George W. Bush’s eight years in the office of President come to a close, we can survey the damage done and see why the upcoming election is profoundly important to the GLBT community. While many may make easy snipes at his seeming difficulty with expressing coherent ideas and his confidence-shattering permanent facial expression of bewildered petulance, the larger view shows a nation entangled in war, manipulated by fear and shaped by often hypocritical religious ideals that mostly benefit a conservative herteronormative Christian upper class.
If we allow conservatives to enthrone another President, there might very well come a day when we are all swiping our National ID card to buy a ten dollar gallon of dirty gasoline on the way to cover for the hetero office-mate who left for the work-sanctioned honeymoon vacation we will never have.
On a deeper level, most of the rights and provisions that gay and lesbian people want are tied to legal identity in fundamental ways which they never have to consider. Jane Smith will most likely always be Jane Smith, so the marriage issue is a matter of securing equal access to marriage’s legal privileges for same-gendered partners and preventing heterocentric language like “one man and one woman” from being amended to the Constitution.
For trans people, our right to legally claim even our basic gender identity is barricaded behind an often unhelpful, unaccepting bureaucracy of heterosexual faces, and frequently at the whim of a particular clerk or presiding judge.
When a person’s legal gender identity does not match their gender presentation, even accessing justice normally accorded to “everyone” becomes difficult at times, much less the advances being sought by the larger gay and lesbian community. This fact highlights the looming danger to trans people from conservative pet ideas like a “National ID card,” which would tie a trans person’s history of governmentally determined identification into a central national database available to unspecified agencies and businesses. Once identification is codified and centralized into this Big Brother system, a single governmental decision along the lines of “a transsexual woman is not really a woman” could expand into every instance of a trans person’s interaction with government, work and commerce.
For trans people, before even issues like equal marriage rights are considered, I believe we must attain full and protected legal rights as our gender. This will not happen under a Republican controlled government.
Voting in a Presidential election is a simple process for most people, but registration and contact with governmental agencies is required. Many trans people have dealt with rejection by crucial support systems such as family, school and the medical establishment beginning at an early age. They shift to living off the government’s radar by abandoning their incongruent legal identity and earning their living in parallel economies of grey market employment and under-the-table payments. They lack the mentoring necessary to learn basic civic procedures like voter registration, and often are reluctant to reveal or reactivate their abandoned, wrong-gendered identities in order to perform these procedures. The GLBT community, and specifically those in the trans community with the time and ability, could add crucial voters to their rosters by helping trans people accustomed to living outside of the legal system register to vote.
A significant section of the trans population is occupied with simple survival, and another section lives hidden in precarious stealth to avoid society’s prejudice. But there are many trans people who are out and active in the GLBT community, and they can bridge to the larger trans community with some help.
Trans people are often among the most visible representatives to outsiders, so involving, helping and mobilizing this “face of the community” serves to disarm some of the favorite conservative criticisms and empower an inspiring part of our group. I hope that the GLB community will continue to grow their appreciation of the T, and make sure no one is left behind as we marshal our forces in this upcoming push to elect a President who will consider our needs along with those of every other American.
Achieving our goal of transgender equality requires activism at the local, state and national levels. While NCTE focuses on federal policies, we strongly support and encourage the vital work of grassroots activists. Each week during 2006, we featured an idea for action that you can take at a local level. Some are challenging, while others are relatively simple; all are effective ideas and include links, resources and thoughts to help you get started. Some are things you can do on your own, while others are ideas for local groups to work on. We hope that you will take on projects that spark your interest and that meet a need in your community as we work together for equality for all people.
You can print out our free poster of 52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality and put it on your wall where other people can see it and get inspired to take action of their own. Or, click on an idea here to read more details and find resources on how to accomplish each of these things.
Women who receive implants for breast enhancement are three times more likely to commit suicide, according to a new report that offered a sobering view of an increasingly popular surgery.
Deaths related to mental disorders, including alcohol or drug dependence, also were three times higher among women who had the cosmetic procedure, researchers said.
The report in the Annals of Plastic Surgery's August issue was the most recent to detect a higher suicide rate among women who had their breasts enlarged, providing a gloomy counterpoint to studies that showed women felt better about themselves after getting implants.
Though the study did not look at the reasons behind the suicides, senior author Joseph McLaughlin, a professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said he believed that many had psychological problems before getting implants and that their conditions did not improve afterward.
Previous studies have shown that as many as 15% of plastic surgery patients have body dysmorphic disorder, a condition marked by severe distress over minor physical flaws. People with the disorder have a higher rate of suicidal thoughts and rarely improve after surgery.
Breast augmentation is the most popular cosmetic surgery in the U.S., followed by liposuction and eyelid surgery. Last year, 329,396 enlargements were performed, up 13% from 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. . . .
Meet the cross-dresser professor: he's married, he's straight, and he no longer fits into his tennis skirt. We introduce you to Professor Michael Gilbert, a tenured professor who teaches philosophy and gender studies at York University, and ask: is it really all fun and games when you live as the opposite gender?
I liked the interview with Professor Gilbert. I'm a woman who wears men-styled clothing for outdoor work, but I find it hard to imagine most men being comfortable in women-styled clothes. If it makes Mickey feel good to dress as a woman, more power to him.
As an aside, much of women-styled clothing is miserably uncomfortable, and my only to him question would be: Why wear panty hose and high heels????
Posted by: Meribeth | Apr 22, 07 10:31 AM
Without a doubt we are conditioned by everyone/everything in our society to act in accordance with the role assigned to our gender. As Carol pointed out it is not a problem for women to wear men's clothing. Why? It is my experience that it is empowering. In the reverse, however, there is no empowering component for a man to dress as a woman. The cross-dressing man only realizes how disempowering it is to be a woman. Great segment.
I think most of us are familiar with the sex/gender divide. For those who aren’t, briefly, it’s the idea that we’re all born with a biological sex (eg male or female), and we’re all born with (and/or socialised into) a gender (eg boy or girl), and the two don’t always match. This is where transsexualism comes into play - a biological man may feel like he’s actually a woman, and vice versa.
The idea fascinates me, and I’ve known enough transexual individuals to believe that gender is a very complex thing indeed. I have no problem referring to a biological man who presents herself to the world as a woman with the feminine pronouns “her” and “she”. For all intents and purposes I would consider her a woman. If she was in the restroom with me I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.
At the same time, though, we’re taught that being Man and Woman is an eternal and essential part of who we are. So what does that mean?
What does it mean to be a woman? I think we can pretty quickly dismiss the “sex” part of the sex/gender divide - breasts, ovaries, fertility, etc. Lots of women don’t have those things. I think we can also dismiss the XX chromosone pairing. There are women who have a Y chromosone who are still considered biological women. But if we confine our discussion to gender, are there any truly “male” or “female” traits?
If being a woman is an essential and eternal part of who we are, what part is essential and eternal to defining woman?
(The same question could be asked about men, and I hope men will chime in with their experiences, but since this is a feminist blog and we’re mostly women, I used the female experience.)
Blurring the lines with Kendra Kuliga and the D.C. Kings
by Sean Bugg Photography by Todd Franson Published on April 22, 2004
"What is a drag king?" muses Kendra Kuliga. "You could say male impersonator, but that's so the tip of the iceberg. I've seen drag kings go between being a woman and being a guy all in the same performance. I'm both a male and a female while I'm performing."
As her well-known alter ego Ken Las Vegas, Kuliga has been blending the masculine and feminine on stages from D.C.'s own Chaos nightclub to venues across the nation and the Atlantic Ocean. As one of the organizing forces behind the D.C. Kings, she's helped shape Washington into one of the hottest spots in the internationally burgeoning drag king scene.
Kuliga
It's an appropriate ethos for a performance art that's based around mutual support and family-like bonding. While a prominent member of the D.C. Kings and one of the most recognizable drag kings in town, Kuliga is adamant that D.C. Kings is a group effort that wouldn't work if it were boiled down to just one person.
That's why this weekend at the Great Big International Drag King Show at D.C.'s 9:30 Club you won't see drag kings competing for a crown -- you'll be seeing a collection of performers doing what they love, entertaining a crowd. In this case, they'll be entertaining as part of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition annual Conference on Gender.
Kuliga lauds the work that GenderPAC is doing on behalf of everyone who blurs and blends the gender lines society expects, issues of particular importance to GLBT persons, but also to straight men and women who don't conform to traditional roles.
"These are very real people, and they need the respect that they deserve," she says. "G-PAC's got their back."
The daughter of a Brazilian mother whose family was part of the famed Gracie school of jujitsu, Kuliga has had her fair share of exposure to how masculinity and femininity play out in day-to-day lives. The recently-thirty photographer and artist -- and former Metro Weekly employee -- uses those roles and expectations to create a character different than her, but still her own.
METRO WEEKLY:So how does it feel being thirty?
KENDRA KULIGA: I had a rough time turning thirty. I don't feel like that. I feel like a kid, you know? I'm not ready to cash in my chips and be a grown up. I think thirty-one might be easier. But being thirty, I own myself much more than I ever have in how I feel about myself and my body. Women in their thirties are much more okay with themselves than women in their twenties, because you just kind of get over it -- it doesn't matter if I'm thin, it doesn't matter what I do, it's not going to affect the way people treat you at the end of the day. But it's not easy. I'm still working through it.
MW:Were you unhappy with your body and appearance in your twenties? . . .
Scientists have found a way to turn female mice into aggressive, pelvic-thrusting masculine lotharios in an experiment that challenges established dogma.
For years, scientists have searched in vain for the bits of the brain that underpin the dramatic differences between males and females.
The female mouse (right) attempting to mount the male
Now biologist say that all these efforts may have been in vain because such differences may not arise in the brain at all, thanks to a study that could may help provide profound new insights into the differences between the sexes.
The work comes up with the startling suggestion that both male and female brains contain the circuits for male and female behaviour but the ones that are actually used depend on signals from the body, which may turn one circuit on and the other one off.
The focus of sex specific behaviour in many species - though not humans - now shifts to a small sensory organ found in the noses of of most backboned creatures, except higher primates and birds.
The new work of the Harvard University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute team, published in the journal Nature, indicates that defects in this organ, known as the vomeronasal organ, lead female mice to act like males, solicting them, mounting them and thrusting them while abandoning nesting and nursing.
"These results are flabbergasting," says Prof Catherine Dulac. "Nobody had imagined that a simple mutation like this could induce females to behave so thoroughly like males."
It is as dramatic as showing a man could be made to behave like a woman at the flick of a switch, though the results do not apply directly to humans, which lack a vomeronasal organ. . . .
By the time the 23-year-old is ready for breakfast, his skin is soft and shimmery, his hair trimmed, pomaded and bobby-pinned into an elaborate pompadour.
The daily regimen takes an hour and costs more than 10,000 yen ($84), but Sango says it's essential to maintain his style.
Sango may spend more cash on his looks than most, but he is far from unusual among Japanese men his age.
In a society that in many ways remains sharply defined by traditional gender roles and expectations, fashion-conscious young men are one-upping their metrosexual counterparts in the West -- it is not only acceptable for them to obsess over their hair, face and clothes, it's sexy too.
Japan's latest heartthrobs are a far cry from the American masculine ideal of stoic, stubble-cheeked muscle men. Slender, smooth-faced and androgynous stars such as singer-actor Takuya Kimura, or Kimutaku as he's affectionately known, routinely top popularity polls among women, and men in Japan are taking note. . . .
I am a complete gender nerd. Show me a culture that's got some basis in gender, and I wanna know more. Wells College is a lovely liberal arts college in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region. For 136 years, it had been a women-only institution. On October 2, 2004, Wells College announced that it would admit men in autumn 2005. Ms. magazine covered it well. Sociologically speaking, Wells is a goldmine of information and politically speaking. Wells could become the earth-shaking epicenter of a consciously gendered culture. There's never been one of those before, ever
Last February, I spoke at Wells and I learned that a sisterhood had grown up within the college over those 136 years. It wasn't quite family, and it wasn't quite academic community. It was a little corner of the world where patriarchal values didn't hold sway. It was sweet, powerful, and empowering. In response to the co-ed announcement, one student was quoted as saying, "I was crushed. I was crying, and I don't cry very often."
There was an immediate takeover protest at the administration building that lasted over a week and a half. The administration and board of directors claimed they'd done their best to maintain the women-only status of the college. They'd dropped tuition by 30 percent, they'd tried all sorts of new market ploys to get the student enrollment up to the minimum 450 it would take to keep the college from going under completely. Surveys of the day showed that only 3 percent of college-bound women actively sought a women's only institution. Like most things in America these days, money talks. The men were admitted, and here we are a year or so later and there are twenty more students on campus than before, and there are a lot of angry juniors, seniors, and alumna. So, from the focal point of the gendered culture that was and the gendered culture that is now, it remains to be discovered:
1. What's been lost? 2. What's been gained? 3. What can be learned from this? 4. What opportunities exist that would make the most people happier.
Before I presume to address these issues and propose an interesting path for the college to take, you deserve to know who's talking to you. I'm a transsexual femme dyke nerd girl atheist and anarchist. I write books on postmodern gender theory, and I just finished a book of alternatives to suicide for teens, freaks, and other outlaws. I'm also a chronic binge-eater who's been diagnosed with anorexia. I'm 59 years old, a double Pisces with a Taurus Moon. I'm a fan of anything Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman, and Shirley Manson. I'm a performance artist, a classical Shakespearean actor and I write award-winning pornography. But for purposes of this blog entry, and all my future posts, what really matters is this:
I am not a man.
I am not a woman.
In the battle of the sexes, I'm neutral territory.
Wells College and I have both gone through a gender change, and I've been a tranny a lot longer than the college has. Weird fuck that I am, I've got some experience, strength and hope to share with them. Wells and I have got a great deal in common at this moment in history: We have a heightened awareness of gender as a factor of identity, desire, and power. What's more, each one of us has grown up encultured by our birth-assigned genders into perpetuating a world that lets people get away with controlling people's lives on the basis of their one of only two genders. It's a self-perpetuating system, and Wells College has the opportunity to blow the bipolar gender system wide open and expose it for the fraud it is. Honestly, each of us has far more control over gender than we'd been led to believe.
Gender impacts our identity, our desires, and our power; and the gender change at Wells College has impacted its identity as well as the identity of all its students, staff, administrators and faculty. Furthermore, the desires, dreams, and goals of everyone at Wells has been impacted by the gender change, as well as the power of everyone on campus. But the gender change of Wells College isn't over yet. It's still happening, just like my gender change is still happening.
A gender change is not genital surgery. They don't just cut it off or stick one on and voila, you're another gender. Just so, the admission of male students after 136 years is not the only factor of the gender change at Wells. Gender norms change with time. What makes a "real man" or a "real woman" gets modified by ideas of race, class, age, sexuality, religion, body type and even legal status as a citizen. So, who's to say that for those 136 years there's only been one gender at Wells College anyway, or even one gender at a time?
Any personal or cultural gender change is constantly in flux, and my gender journey over the last two decades has been a process of throwing out what I don't like about myself and keeping what I do like. And that's what Wells College gets to do. They get to direct the evolution of a new gender identity for Wells College: ne that includes everyone without privileging anyone, under any circumstances, because gender is only one of a number of interlocking hierarchical systems of oppression. This goes way beyond any previous struggle for equal gender rights. This would move gender-based politics beyond genitally-assigned gender as an isolated factor of identity, desire or power. . . .
IT gives Bra Boys a whole new meaning. As foreshadowed in television's Seinfeld, the obesity epidemic is fuelling a storm in a he-cup with the arrival of a compression bra for males suffering the indignity of man boobs.
The creators of the Male Support Vest promise it will flatten the chest, make breasts less noticeable and reduce bounce during physical activity.
It comes at a time when figures show Australian waistbands are expanding at a furious rate, with more than two-thirds of NSW men aged 35 to 64 officially classified as overweight or obese.
The crisis has generated a rise in the number of males with enlarged breast tissue, which are often the subject of ridicule and dubbed "moobs''.
Celebrities observed with wobbly pectorals have included Mark Latham, James Packer and Tom Cruise.
The Male Support Vest is made by bra company Enell and is reminiscent of an episode of the US sitcom Seinfeld, in which Kramer and Frank Costanza try to start a business selling bras for men.
They argue over whether to name the product a "manssiere'' or a "bro''. In an episode of The Simpsons, Marge reveals Homer sometimes wears a sports bra too. . . .
Sydney actor Michael Quicke, 38, road tested the Male Support Vest for The Sunday Telegraph last week. He doubted the average Australian bloke would wear the garment.
Last summer, when my cholesterol count came back high, my wife signed me up with a personal trainer. "You'll like him," she said. "He's got an interesting story."
Off I went to Bodies Under Construction, a fitness studio in Hollywood run by Mark Angelo Cummings and his wife Violet.
Mark was short, balding and had a beard. He had a big smile and a quick wit.
During my first workout, Mark told me he was born with a "birth defect."
"Really," I said. "You look perfectly healthy to me."
He explained that he was, after surgery and years of therapy.
"I was born the wrong sex," he said. "I was born Maritza."
I looked at his hairy arms and chest and did a double-take. He showed me pictures from when he was a little girl and a competitive female body-builder.
Cummings, 43, has taught me a lot about gender dysphoria and transsexuals over the past year. As gender identity has come up in the headlines — a Largo city manager was fired after he announced his transition to Susan, a Los Angeles Times sportswriter I used to drink beers with at the Olympics caused a stir when he became Christine — Mark gave me a first-hand account of the desperation that led them there.
"This is not a choice," he said Friday. "It's something you try to deny and hide, but as time goes on, as you become more miserable in your own skin, you just can't take it anymore."
Cummings said he was 3 when he realized he was born in the wrong body. His parents didn't understand. After they came to South Florida from Cuba, Maritza gravitated to boys' activities, like weightlifting, and she joined the Army. It didn't help. She abused drugs and alcohol, attempted suicide in her 20s.
Then she found out that there was a medical explanation and there was something she could do about it. Maritza became Mark. . . .
A guy needed money to buy a motorbike. He saw a lady boy wore a gold necklace. From behind he thought the lady boy was a girl, then snatched the necklace. The lady in a boy body started chasing him and also screamed for help. The thief guy was caught by a hotel security and patrolled police.
On the 4 August 2007, at 02.30 AM, Pol.Capt. Grieng-Grai-Wut Bua-Gla, Pattaya, was notified that there was a snatch and run case near Pattaya Memorial hospital. The thief was detained at the front of Queen Hotel, Central Pattaya which is about 300 meters from the
Police rushed to the Queen hotel where the thief had been caught. His name is Mr. Sarayut Dejwat (28) from Surathani province. The evidence was 30 gram gold necklace that he snatched from a lady boy, Mr. Sombat Janjam (18), a Cabaret dancer from a beer bar in Central Pattaya.
Mr. Sarayut confessed that he is working at a gay bar in South Pattaya. He needed money to pay the down payment to buy a motorbike to use for work. He saw Mr. Sombat who is a lady boy walking alone. From behind he thought he was a girl. He then snatched his gold necklace and ran. But the girl in a man body was chasing him and also screaming for help. Unfortunately, he was caught by a security of Queen hotel and patrolled police. Mr. Sarayut was charged for snatch and run at night time.
Gender variance or nonconformity is found wherever one finds people.
A closer view reveals many variations in gender expression. Note “sex” refers to biology, genes, hormones, body development, whereas “gender” is social role, cultural expectations for appearance and behavior. Gender expression varies over time and throughout cultures and may vary in the lifetimes of individuals. We sometimes hear “male or female”, “masculine or feminine”, as defining “the binary”. Typically, many want males masculine and females feminine, in a world where being androgenous or a hybrid may actually work better. Yet many individuals, for example, parents, teachers, and friends, including some with gender issues, crave the binary. In the case of a significantly gender variant person, gender expression often does not match thesocial or binary gender roleassigned at birth. Nevertheless, the person's expressed gender may feel correct or natural. Thus a gender nonconforming person, maybe someone who even sees themselves as “non-binary”, may feel very uncomfortable with the gender expressionexpected by parents and significant others. Fortunately, there are a growing number of resources to help those interested understand gender, development, changeand adaptation. And there are creative paths one may explore to hopefully find comfort, experience a measure of peace and happiness, and in the process find the gender expression that works best. Here I offer some news, information, resources, opinions and POVs to help you learn more about gender expression and life situations. We now know there are a variety of paths individuals discover that may contribute to positive life changes.
Although I once planned to be an astronomer, my graduate education is in experimental, developmental and clinical psychology. I have doctoral level specialties in experimental and clinical psychology. Before my clinical work I was a college professor. I did my clinical internship in San Francisco in the late seventies. I'm a licensed psychologist in the State of California with a specialty in clinical psychology. I've been in the private practice of clinical and consulting psychology since 1981. In addition to individual, couples and relationship therapy, I also consult with employers and other professionals regarding gender issues and gender role transition.
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Benjamin, Harry. (1966). The Transsexual Phenomenon. New York: The Julian Press, Inc. Full text and photographs available as an electronic book: http://www.symposium.com/ijt/benjamin/
Blanchard, Ray and Steiner, Betty W. (1990). Clinical Management of Gender Identity Disorders in Children and Adults. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, Inc.
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NO TRANS PERSON LEFT BEHIND
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I liked the interview with Professor Gilbert. I'm a woman who wears men-styled clothing for outdoor work, but I find it hard to imagine most men being comfortable in women-styled clothes. If it makes Mickey feel good to dress as a woman, more power to him.
As an aside, much of women-styled clothing is miserably uncomfortable, and my only to him question would be: Why wear panty hose and high heels????
Posted by: Meribeth | Apr 22, 07 10:31 AM