Saturday, September 01, 2007
Lucy Parker: A short musical collage
Here's a video based on a BBC special about a teen's transition from MTF.
Transgender and Transsexual Autobiography
| For the last 75 years, transgender and Transsexual Autobiographies have told the stories of their authors' lives and appealed for greater acceptance of transgender people. | | |||
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 Kate Bornstein (b. 1948) is one of the best known transgender activists in America. Her book Gender Outlaw (1994), which is part autobiography, part manifesto, and part fashion guide, contributed to the political mobilization of transsexuals. | ||||
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| Roberta Close (b. 1964), a Brazilian model and entertainer, was proclaimed "The World's Most Beautiful Model" in a 1984 tabloid headline. Her autobiography, Much Pleasure, Roberta Close (1998), raised eyebrows because of her claim to have been involved with many internationally famous male celebrities. | ||||
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| Lili Elbe (1886-1931) was among the world's first post-operative male-to-female transsexuals. Her letters and diaries were compiled into Man Into Woman (1933), one of the first popular books to draw a distinction between homosexuality and transsexuality. | ||||
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 Leslie Feinberg (b. 1949) is a pioneering transgender activist, historian, and writer. The main character of Feinberg's novel Stone Butch Blues (1993) shares so many similarities with the book's author that many consider it semi-autobiographical. | ||||
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 Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) was the first person to undergo a a sex-change operation that was highly publicized in the United States. Her book Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography (1967) was adapted for a film released in 1970. | ||||
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| Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002) was an East German preservationist and museum founder. Her autobiography, I Am My Own Wife (1992), tells the story of her own life as well as that of a whole generation of East German homosexuals who faced persecution first from the Nazis and then from the Communists. | ||||
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| Jan Morris (b. 1926), a prolific Anglo-Welsh journalist, historian, and travel writer, was among the first transsexuals to tell her story publicly in a memoir. She dedicated Conundrum (1974) "to all who are suffering still in the same solitary and unsought cause." | ||||
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| Renee Richards (b. 1934), a transsexual tennis player, successfully sued the United States Tennis Association so that she could compete in the U.S. Women's Open. Her autobiography, Second Serve (1986), reveals the details of her troubled childhood as well as her adult successes in tennis and as an eye surgeon. | ||||
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| | Image Credits: Cover image of I am My Own Wife courtesy Cleis Press. Image of Kate Bornstein courtesy Kate Bornstein. Image of Leslie Feinberg is a detail from a portrait, courtesy www.transgenderwarrior.org. Image of Christine Jorgensen is a detail from a press photograph, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. | | ||
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A SEX SWAP OP..AT 18
EXCLUSIVE BRITAIN'S YOUNGEST-EVER TRANSSEXUAL
By Sarah Arnold - Sarah.Arnold@Sundaymirror.Co.Uk
IN her low-cut dress Lucy Parker smiles confidently at the camera. She couldn't be more different than the picture of the 11-year-old boy in his school uniform with the pudding-basin haircut.
Yet the pictures taken seven years apart are of the same person. Richard Parker, schoolboy, has become Lucy Parker, the teenage girl who loves make-up and wearing the highest of high heels.
At 18 Lucy is the youngest transsexual in Britain. She started hormone treatment at 16 and has had an operation to give her breasts. In a few months her transformation will be complete after a final operation.
"Some people will say I am too young to have made this decision, but for me becoming a true woman can't come soon enough," says Lucy. "I have spent 16 years trapped in a man's body, but my soul is a woman's."
At the beginning of the year Lucy, who's a Size 8 and 5ft 10in tall, had 34C breast implants - an 18th birthday present from her mum Allison, 41.
In the next few months Lucy will undergo £10,000 sex reassignment surgery, possibly in Thailand, to remove her manhood and build a vagina. "After the operation I will be finally who I was meant to be," says Lucy who lives in Middlesbrough on Teesside.
Lucy may be only 18 but she talks with a maturity beyond her years of the changes she has undergone in her life and how she has never, ever doubted it was the only way she could face the future.
"When I was still very young I felt I didn't fit in," says Lucy. "I was about four when I asked my mum, 'Why am I different?' She didn't understand what I meant and, unfortunately, I was too young to explain it to her."
At school Lucy hated the rough-and-tumble of boys' games, and would secretly dress up at home in girls' clothes with her cousin Rachel.
"At home I used to play with my cousin a lot, we were like siblings. As we got older, she started to experiment with make-up and dressing up. We used to pretend she owned a salon and get our hair done and nails, make-up applied... badly! I can remember putting on one of my cousin's dresses and her high heels and thinking... transformation complete!
"I was caught three times by members of the family dressed up as a girl. They would tell me to get changed and tell off my cousin for dressing me up like that."
Allison, who split from Richard's dad when he was four, says that as a little boy Richard was a loner who didn't have many friends. "He was a melancholy little boy," she says. "He always preferred playing with the girls, but after I split up with my husband I took him along to the Cubs and got him involved in a football team."
It's a time Lucy hated. "I would rather have pulled each of my eyelashes out singly than join the Cubs or play football," she says.
"Each week I was there, I pretended to have asthma attacks so I could go home. I only went to football twice. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed throwing out those ugly football boots."
Approaching puberty as Richard, Lucy says she sank into a dark depression. "Senior school was hell. I was bullied every day, called a gay or a wimp. I was 14 and I still felt different. My body was changing and with every change I felt less comfortable in my own skin.
"I began smoking because I had heard it could stunt your growth and I wanted my body to stop growing. I didn't want my body to be healthy, because a healthy body meant a male body." . . .
Translations: Seattle Transgender Film Festival
Gender Odyssey and Three Dollar Bill Cinema are pleased to present the second annual Translations: The Seattle Transgender Film Festival. Translations provides the Pacific NW with a venue for films for, by, and about transgendered and genderqueer people.
Advance tickets are available through Ticket Window.
Wednesday, August 29th
PORTRAITS: SHORT FILMS
FREE SCREENING FOR TRANS AWARENESS WEEK
7:30 PM, LGBT Community Center
This program of short films includes various portraits of trans individuals, including work by local filmmakers. (total running time: 1 hour)
EXPERT, dir. Aaron Raz Link, 2006, 3 min.
What is a "gender expert?" These people just might have the answer.
MONA, dir. Kathy Kiefer, 2007, 4 min.
Discover the heart of a Chicana transwoman living in rural Eastern Washington.
JUST CALL ME KADE, dir Sam Zolten
At fourteen, Kade began the initial stages of transition as an FTM. He and his family share their concerns, candidly express their feelings about the changes, and talk about the impact on everyone involved.
MUCH ADO ABOUT ONE, dir. Barbara Cole, 2007, 11 min.
A person wants to be single-gendered in a bi-gendered world.
FINDING PEACE, dir. Barbara Rosenthal, 2006, 15 min.
This is the story of Janice’s search for inner peace. In the 1970s, as John, she went to Vietnam to become a man. Only years after returning does she make the life-saving decision to transition.
Friday, August 31st
SOMETHING SPECIAL
FREE SCREENING FOR TRANS AWARENESS WEEK
7:00 PM, Northwest Film Forum
It goes without saying, 1986’s SOMETHING SPECIAL (whose original title, WILLY/MILLY, was thankfully changed) was a bit of an odd duck. In a way, this pint-sized TOOTSIE variation was part "After School Special" and part adolescent gross-out comedy, seemingly forgotten by audiences before it was even released.
The problem? Its plot concerning the magical overnight sex change of a 14-year-old girl into a 14-year-old boy was more than a little revolutionary and (sadly) would probably be considered ahead of its time even today. Sure the whole thing comes to a far-too pat (and safely heterosexual) conclusion, but Milly/Willy’s journey between genders is still handled with remarkable honesty, emotion, dexterity and care.
Two decades later the film still comes as a bit of a shock, and if it isn’t perfect it’s still an endearing curiosity, solid enough to warrant a second look. Pamela Adlon (then Seagall) makes an inspired debut while Patty Duke, John Glover and a pre-Buffy Seth Green all co-star.
SOMETHING SPECIAL, dir. Paul Schneider, 1986, 86 min.
GENDER REDESIGNER
9:00 PM, Northwest Film Forum
fAe always knew he was different - at the age of three, he dreamt of creating a penis that would allow him to pee like a boy even though he had been "born with girl parts," and on the first day of school he screamed when they tried to force him to use the girls’ room. Years of introspection led to the conclusion that fAe was transgendered. Supported — though not always understood — by friends and family, fAe begins his transition in his early 20s, encountering a host of difficulties to navigate: How will he afford his expensive, "optional" chest surgery? Will he find acceptance and community as he transitions in conservative rural Pennsylvania? How can he reconcile his now-male appearance with the female characteristics he wants to retain? Will his mom learn to love and approve of the son she raised as a daughter? Ironically, what started as a film about exploring queer America became a documentary about a transman’s self discovery.
GENDER REDESIGNER, dir. Johnny Bergmann, 2007, 72 min.
Saturday, September 1st
TRANSPARENT
3:55 PM, WA State Convention Center
Categories often taken for granted are broken apart in TRANSPARENT, a documentary about 19 FTM parents who have given birth and, in all but a few stories, gone on to raise their biological children.
TRANSPARENT focuses on its subjects’ lives as parents, revealing the diverse ways in which each person reconciles being a biological mother with a masculine identity. Traditional views of gender are further re-examined through the variety of ways the children refer to and understand their parents’ gender.
TRANSPARENT, dir. Jules Rosskam, 2005, 80 min.
This screening is sponsored by Frameline, which provided TRANSPARENT and five other films playing as part of Translations: The Seattle Transgender Film Festival. Frameline has been the leading distributor of LGBT media since 1981. Their collection has more than 200 titles, which can be seen online, on-air and in theatres as well as purchased for institutional or home use. Visit www.frameline.org/distribution.
UNIQUE JOURNEYS: SHORT FILMS
5:00 PM, Northwest Film Forum
How do we get to the life we want to lead? How many struggles and triumphs are along the way? These films chronicle this process in a variety of ways.
TRANNYMALS GO TO COURT, dirs. Dylan Vade & Abe Bernard, 2007, 12 min.
Eight fierce and fiery-talking genitals expose harmful legal practices and spread unapologetic tranny pride.
CASTING PEARLS, dir. Andrea James, 2006, 7 min.
Transsexual actress Cassandra (Calpernia Addams) endures a series of Hollywood auditions.
MAGGOTS AND MEN, dir. Oakie Treadwell, 2006, 5 min.
A trailer for a historical drama set in post-revolutionary Russia, shot by a cast and crew rampant with gender anarchy.
TASK/IN-PROGRESS, dir. K. Terumi Shorb, 2004, 6 min.
An experimental exploration of race, masculinity, and gender identity.
STRANGE OBJECTS, dir. Jude Mahan, 2004, 4 min.
A high-schooler’s response to the filmmaker's self-portrait sparks this exploration of appearance in the context of gender, class, and ethnicity.
QUEERING GENDER, dir. Kalil Cohen, 2005, 25 min.
A documentary exploring an array of gender identities, including genderqueer and trans identities, disrupting the notion of "binary" gender.
Festival Centerpiece:
RED WITHOUT BLUE
FREE SCREENING FOR TRANS AWARENESS WEEK
8:45 PM, WA State Convention Center, 6th Floor Ballroom
RED WITHOUT BLUE is an artistic and groundbreaking portrayal of gender, identity, and the unswerving bond of twins, despite transformation. An honest portrayal of a family in turmoil, the film follows a pair of identical twins as one transitions from male to female and both, along with their parents, struggle to redefine their family.
The twins’ early lives were quintessentially all-American: picture-perfect holidays, and supportive parents who cheered them on every step of the way. By the time they were 14, their parents had divorced, they had come out as gay, and a joint suicide attempt precipitated a forced separation of the siblings for two and half years.
Through its portrayal of these articulate and independent twins, each haunted by the painful experiences of their adolescence, the film questions normative standards of gender and identity — as Mark and Clair reassert their indescribable bond as identical twins. Through the power of the Farleys’ voices, we hear the story of a family’s redemption from a dark past, and ultimately, its revival to the present.
RED WITHOUT BLUE, dirs. Brooke Sebold, Benita Sills, & Todd Sills, 2007, 74 min.
Sunday, September 2nd
TWO SPIRIT PEOPLE/ HOTEL GONDOLIN
5:00 PM, Northwest Film Forum
TWO SPIRIT PEOPLE is an overview of historical and contemporary Native American concepts of gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation. This documentary explores the berdache tradition in Native American culture, in which individuals who embody feminine and masculine qualities act as a conduit between the physical and spiritual world, and because of this are placed in positions of power within the community.
HOTEL GONDOLIN is a portrait of transvestites and transsexuals in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Often rejected by their families and society at large, they have a found a refuge and place of empowerment and community in the Hotel Gondolin.
TWO SPIRIT PEOPLE, dirs. Michel Beauchemin, Lori Levy & Gretchen Vogel, 1991, 20 min.
HOTEL GONDOLIN, dir. Fernando Lopez Escriva, 2005, 25 min. (subtitled in English)
ANOTHER WOMAN (Une Autre Femme)
7:00 PM, Northwest Film Forum
Heartbreaking and inspiring, ANOTHER WOMAN is a journey crossing both familial and gender barriers with dexterously emotional ease. It is TRANSAMERICA meets Desperate Housewives without unnecessary porn sideshows or slapstick. The film is a straight-to-the-heart winner guaranteed to give audiences something to think about.
After a decade away, Léa (Nathalie Mann) returns to Paris and rediscovers a family she felt forced to abandon. None of them recognize her, since during that time Nicolas transitioned to her current gender. Now a woman and a stranger, Léa decides to be honest about her true identity and try to reclaim parental privileges she once forsook.
Mann (Patrice Leconte’s RIDICULE) is a revelation, while French television star Micky Sébastian is fantastic as Léa’s angry, bewildered, and confused former wife Anne. ANOTHER WOMAN is a harrowing and unforgettable saga of struggle and resilience, Foulon crafting an honest and empowering tale which resonates long after the final credits roll.
ANOTHER WOMAN, Dir. Jerome Foulon, 2004, 106 min. (subtitled in English)
THE BELIEVERS
9:15 PM, Northwest Film Forum
THE BELIEVERS is an unprecedented documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, gender, and religion. Built around the world’s first transgender gospel choir, the film portrays the choir members’ dilemma — how to reconcile their gender identity with the widespread belief that changing one’s gender goes against the word of God.
The film takes us from the Transcendence Gospel Choir's shaky beginnings — a heartwarmingly chaotic, cacophonous group unable to agree on much of anything, and learning to sing with transitioning voices — through their transformation into the polished, award-winning choir and close-knit family they are today, garnering major performances and winning an Outmusic Award in 2004 for the album "Whosoever Believes."
The intimate personal stories shed light on the complexity of balancing social change, family history, religion and identity. As one of the film’s subjects eloquently says, "I'm living in a window. I get to see both sides."
THE BELIEVERS, Dir. Todd Holland, 2006, 80 min.
Festival Program Director — Jason Plourde
Festival Program Assistants — Sara Michelle Fetters, Marek Falk
Three Dollar Bill Cinema are the folks who have brought you the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival for the past eleven years.
Friday, August 31, 2007
"Whoever he becomes, that's OK because that's who he is"
Special to The Seattle Times
Zach likes his fancy gloves with a ruffled trim. He first asked his mother if he could have a dress last summer, when he was 4½. "After the third request, I thought, 'I'm not going to put him off anymore,' " says his mother, Rebecca.
Information on the Web
Children's National Medical Center: www.dcchildrens.com
Gender Odyssey Family: www.genderodysseyfamily.com
Gender Spectrum Education and Training: www.genderspectrum.org
Starts today
Gender Odyssey Family, through Monday at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, 800 Convention Place, Seattle. Admission at the door is $150-$200 for adults, $100 for teens 13-17, free for children
12 and under. Childcare is provided on-site. (www.genderodysseyfamily.com)
Five-year-old Zach stands barefoot in the middle of his bedroom, faced with a dilemma: Should he wear the pink dress or the powder blue? Both are long princess-style affairs, the first displayed on a hanger held by his mother, Rebecca, the second, slightly wrinkled, pulled from the top of a dresser by Zach himself.
"Or would you rather wear your witch's outfit?" his mother asks him, nodding at a black polyester costume in the closet, its neckline trimmed in orange.
"No," Zach says. "I think I want the blue one." He dashes out of the room with dress in hand, returning half a minute later, his pink T-shirt replaced by a tight crushed-velvet bodice. Zach bounds around the room, smiling, wisps of blond hair breaking free from the French braid that trails down his back.
It's that playful exuberance that Rebecca and her husband, John, hope their son never loses. "But we're concerned that this piece of him will get lost, if other children aren't able to respond to him well," says Rebecca, 39, who asked that her family's real names not be used.
Of course, most parents dream of the best for their children. But Rebecca and her husband are a certain kind of parent: They're raising a boy who wants to dress in girls' clothes. And that places them in largely uncharted territory. Is this a passing phase or something central to Zach's identity?
A compass of sorts may await the family this weekend, when mother and son participate in a local conference called Gender Odyssey Family. The event at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center will be Seattle's first conference for parents raising "gender-variant" kids, or those children who fall outside what's traditionally defined as "boy" or "girl."
The conference will offer 23 sessions over the course of the weekend, some geared toward entire families and others focused specifically on gender-variant teens.
One family workshop, titled "A Dad's Place," will provide a forum for fathers to discuss the feelings brought about by raising such children. Another family workshop will help parents determine how — and when — to disclose their child's gender variance to others.
Experts in such fields as pediatrics, endocrinology, psychotherapy, gender studies and communications, and parents of gender-variant children will lead workshops. . . .
Trans week in Seattle
This weekend in Seattle there will be a conference called Gender Odyssey. . .for transgender, and what are described as gender variant people.
Transgendered People And The Gender Odyssey Conference. . .a focus will be on the early transition movement, children and adolescents.
Here's an audio overview from KUOW public radio:
Trans tax trial concludes
Ethan Jacobs
ejacobs@baywindows.com
The United States Tax Court resumed hearing testimony Aug. 23 in Rhiannon O’Donnabhain’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for denying her a medical deduction for the cost of her sex reassignment surgery. The IRS’s expert witness, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, testified that he does not believe Gender Identity Disorder (GID) meets the medical definition of a disease and that IRS regulations only permit medical deductions for treatments related to diseases or injuries; he argued that taking a medical deduction for sex reassignment surgery to treat GID violates IRS regulations. Dietz defined a disease as a pathology that has a biological basis. He was the final witness to testify in the trial, and prior to his appearance the court heard three days of testimony from witnesses July 24-26 (see “Experts at tax trial explain gender identity disorder,” July 26, and “Tussle over tax deduction continues,” Aug. 2).
Dietz, who has consulted on a number of high profile court cases including the trials of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and the Unabomber, told Judge Joseph H. Gale that GID is “a serious personal problem. Whether it would best be understood as a psychological problem or a social psychological problem or a social problem remains to be seen.” He said it is appropriate for people with GID to seek medical treatment for the disorder, but he said differences in gender identity are “one of the variations in the human condition” and that people who fall outside the conventional labels of male and female should not be viewed as diseased.
Dietz attempted to link the GID diagnosis to the treatment of homosexuality as a disorder prior to its removal from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973. He claimed that at one time in history it was useful to the gay community to have homosexuality classified as a disorder because it took homosexuality out of the criminal arena. Contrary to Dietz’s reading of gay history, the laws in many states criminalized homosexual acts long after homosexuality was removed from the DSM; the U.S. Supreme Court waited until 2003 to strike down the nation’s sodomy laws. Dietz said eventually the classification of homosexuality as a disorder outlived its usefulness, and he said that while the GID diagnosis allows transgender people access to medical treatment, it also stigmatizes them.
“Only by shedding that illness metaphor was it possible to look at gay people as full humans and not impaired. And ultimately I think transgender people deserve the same consideration,” Dietz told the court.
On cross-examination Ben Klein, a member of O’Donnabhain’s legal team and an attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), pressed Dietz on whether GID should be viewed as a legitimate mental disorder and emphasized the psychological trauma experienced by people with GID. He asked Dietz if GID is associated with suicidality, auto-castration or penectomy, which means the removal of the penis. On the first day of the trial O’Donnabhain testified that prior to her sex reassignment surgery there was an incident where she stood in her kitchen gripping a knife and contemplating cutting off her own penis.
Dietz responded that GID is associated with all three conditions or acts described by Klein but that there is less of an association than mental health officials once believed. . . .
ejacobs@baywindows.com
The United States Tax Court resumed hearing testimony Aug. 23 in Rhiannon O’Donnabhain’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for denying her a medical deduction for the cost of her sex reassignment surgery. The IRS’s expert witness, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, testified that he does not believe Gender Identity Disorder (GID) meets the medical definition of a disease and that IRS regulations only permit medical deductions for treatments related to diseases or injuries; he argued that taking a medical deduction for sex reassignment surgery to treat GID violates IRS regulations. Dietz defined a disease as a pathology that has a biological basis. He was the final witness to testify in the trial, and prior to his appearance the court heard three days of testimony from witnesses July 24-26 (see “Experts at tax trial explain gender identity disorder,” July 26, and “Tussle over tax deduction continues,” Aug. 2).
Dietz, who has consulted on a number of high profile court cases including the trials of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and the Unabomber, told Judge Joseph H. Gale that GID is “a serious personal problem. Whether it would best be understood as a psychological problem or a social psychological problem or a social problem remains to be seen.” He said it is appropriate for people with GID to seek medical treatment for the disorder, but he said differences in gender identity are “one of the variations in the human condition” and that people who fall outside the conventional labels of male and female should not be viewed as diseased.
Dietz attempted to link the GID diagnosis to the treatment of homosexuality as a disorder prior to its removal from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973. He claimed that at one time in history it was useful to the gay community to have homosexuality classified as a disorder because it took homosexuality out of the criminal arena. Contrary to Dietz’s reading of gay history, the laws in many states criminalized homosexual acts long after homosexuality was removed from the DSM; the U.S. Supreme Court waited until 2003 to strike down the nation’s sodomy laws. Dietz said eventually the classification of homosexuality as a disorder outlived its usefulness, and he said that while the GID diagnosis allows transgender people access to medical treatment, it also stigmatizes them.
“Only by shedding that illness metaphor was it possible to look at gay people as full humans and not impaired. And ultimately I think transgender people deserve the same consideration,” Dietz told the court.
On cross-examination Ben Klein, a member of O’Donnabhain’s legal team and an attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), pressed Dietz on whether GID should be viewed as a legitimate mental disorder and emphasized the psychological trauma experienced by people with GID. He asked Dietz if GID is associated with suicidality, auto-castration or penectomy, which means the removal of the penis. On the first day of the trial O’Donnabhain testified that prior to her sex reassignment surgery there was an incident where she stood in her kitchen gripping a knife and contemplating cutting off her own penis.
Dietz responded that GID is associated with all three conditions or acts described by Klein but that there is less of an association than mental health officials once believed. . . .
Private School Keeps Transgender Teacher On Staff
(08/30/07 -- DURHAM) - For 12-years a band and music teacher named Leslie Webster has taught at the Duke School for Children - a private kindergarten through eighth grade school near the Duke University campus. Now Ms. Webster has become Mr. Webster and at least one parent of 9-year-old is very concerned.
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"It should not be a topic of discussion, especially something as harsh as a gender change," concerned parent Jim Gossett said.
But this week, the school sent a letter home to parents saying teachers would discuss the sex change with students who were taught by Webster last year.
"Every so often a community has the opportunity to test its core values," school officials stated in the letter, "Duke School is now facing such a test."
"I'm a parent of two children at the school. I think the school handled it exactly right." Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at Duke usually comments on the U.S. Constitution. Now he's speaking up for his children's transgender teacher.
"It used to be that schools made teachers leave the classroom when their pregnancy began to show. And it used to be said that children couldn't deal with gay and lesbian teachers. We look back at those things and it seems so anachronistic. Likewise, students and children can deal fine with transgender teachers. It's the person that matters in the classroom. Not the gender of the teacher," Chemerinsky said.
Trans Filmmaker Reinvents the Teen Comedy
By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
Published: August 30, 2007
Published: August 30, 2007
Actress-Filmmaker M.C. Brennan has exciting news. After her transgender teen comedy, Dramatis Personae, won an Outfest Screenwriting Lab fellowship and was given a staged reading—with Exes and Oh’s auteur Lee Friedlander directing Nip/Tuck’s Willam Belli in the lead role—things are really heating up.
“The Outfest experience led to a lot of interest from producers and now I’m in the process of preparing to direct the script as my first feature! There are some really exciting folks who’ve expressed an interest in being a part of it, and hopefully over the next couple of months…those pieces will fall into place.”
The Arizona native, who’s lived in San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, began making short films while still in high school, while she was acting in local theatrical productions, commercials and 1985’s gender bending flick Just One of The Guys. The multi-talented trans woman has covered sports for Phoenix’s LGBT Echo magazine, designed posters for Dr. Demento, written over 150 songs and recorded five full-length albums.
Lately, Brennan has been experiencing a cinematic career revival. Her first full-length screenplay, The People’s Choice, won several awards, she appears in 2007’s lesbian Itty Bitty Titty Committee and Jana Marcus’s acclaimed photographic celebration of trans lives, Transfigurations (currently showing at Seattle’s Gender Odyssey Conference).
Brennen says she’s particularly thrilled with the reception her latest screenplay, Dramatis Personae, received at Outfest. “It’s very exciting and very flattering. [The Outfest Screenwriting Lab] was, by far, the most knowledgeable, most supportive environment I’ve ever experienced.”
Based loosely on Brennan’s own experiences, Dramatis Personae—which Brennan describes as “Pretty In Pink meets Hedwig and the Angry Inch”—revolves around a transgender high schooler from the wrong side of the tracks, and her riches-to-rags, new kid in town love interest.
Disappointed with “what passes for teen comedies today,” Brennan reminisces, “We had...the great John Hughes movies like Sixteen Candles…[that] spoke to the real truth of growing up and finding yourself…[and] had at least some queer subtext. I wanted to write a very funny, borderline filthy teen comedy that put the queer characters front and center.”
The screenwriter—who once wrote a four-book series spoofing secret agent archetypes, then co-founded the satirical Loon News and contributed to Comic News—finds inspiration in her own life. “From an early age I recognized the cosmic absurdity of my situation, and I think the ability to laugh at myself and at life’s little ironies is one of the reasons I’m still on this nutty planet.” . . .
Ten Money Questions for Jamison Green
by Nina on January 26, 2007 at 5:37 am
Filed under Ten Money Questions
Jamison Green
Queercents strives to represent diversity in the LGBT community and in my opinion the trans voice and view is one where we have come up short. So when I asked Helen Boyd if she could introduce me to a few thought leaders in the trans community, she put me in touch with Jamison Green. I was thrilled when he responded and graciously accepted our request for an interview.
Jamison is an internationally respected leader within the transgender movement and has written books, won awards and appeared in numerous documentaries. I asked him to get personal about money and share his thoughts about the financial issues that impact the trans community at large. I enjoyed this thoughtful conversation. I’m sure you will too.
1. There has been much debate in the press about Who Pays for Sex Reassignment Surgery. What’s your opinion on the topic?
It’s easy for people to get all bent out of shape about the idea of paying for someone else’s stuff, no matter what it is. The issue, as I see it, is not about whether taxpayers should cover particular medical expenses for prisoners, or whether we should advocate an “I did it on my own, so others should do it on their own, too” social philosophy. The issue is whether we as a society include sex reassignment as a covered medical expense (in insurance or government-funded contexts) because it is a human need, or whether we exclude it because we have a moral objection to it. I think our current medical insurance system in this country is seriously broken and truly serves only the affluent, but that is a different topic.
Given the current system, the way insurance works (whether it is taxpayer-funded Medicare or private insurance schemes) is that it purports to reduce costs by spreading them throughout an insured pool of individuals. Looked at in this way, the cost of surgical sex reassignment is much less than many other less rare and more expensive treatments that are routinely provided, such as open heart surgery or spinal disc repair, etc.
We have no difficulty justifying these expenses, but we have a lot of resistance to paying for someone’s sex change. Why is that? When we advocated for insurance coverage for transgendered and transsexual city and county employees in San Francisco, the amount that every covered person in the plan had to pay for trans treatments was less than one fifth of the cost that every covered person had to pay to provide substance abuse treatments for subscribers. It is just as easy to get angry about paying for someone else’s substance abuse treatment, but no one complains about that. So, without belaboring the point, it seems to me the issue is less one of “how do we divide the finite resource pie?” than it is one of “which people matter?” So long as trans people are regarded as exotic, perverted, or disposable, it will be easy to complain about sharing our scarce resources with them. My goal is to shift this social paradigm so that no one has to suffer from this kind of prejudice.
2. What is your most significant memory about money?
When I was in my early 30s, my partner, Samantha, and I saved for two years to have a month-long trip to Europe, which we took in 1982. My parents had always said that it was extremely expensive to go to Europe, and I had this idea that I’d be extremely lucky to get ever get there, but once we’d made up our collective mind that the trip was a priority, Samantha and I were able to commit to the sacrifices saving that much money required. We weren’t making much money then, and it was a struggle to save $5,000.00, enough to cover our trip and maintain our apartment, car payment, etc., while we were away. We had a wonderful time, managed our daily expenses well, and came back with $1000.00 in hand. It was then that I realized that I had much more capacity than I had previously imagined, and that I really could do things that I wanted to do if I committed myself to my goals.
3. What is your worst habit around finances?
In spite of what I just said above, my worst habit is spending money too easily. I’m quite good at it, actually. I am generous to a fault, and somewhat self-indulgent, too, and I am inclined to spend money when I have it, even though I know I should be saving, especially as I am getting closer to retirement age.
4. In your book, Becoming a Visible Man, you discuss many of the challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience. Can you share thoughts about how this personally impacted your financial status?
Becoming a Visible Man When I undertook all the medical expense of transition and surgical sex reassignment, in the years 1988 through 1991, I was very fortunate to have a management position at a leading computer technology design and manufacturing firm. I managed to have some of the minor costs (psychological counseling and hormones) covered by insurance, though on claim forms I did not describe my condition as anything having to do with transsexualism, which was excluded from treatment.
Fortunately, most of what transsexual people need in the way of medical care is not unusual, and is available to non-transsexual people (a fact that underlies one of the main arguments I have made for years about the discriminatory exclusion statements that prevent transsexual people from openly receiving medical care), so it never raised a flag.
When it came to my genital reconstruction surgery and medically necessary hysterectomy, I needed to borrow $10,000.00 from my mother to cover the $22,000.00 payment that I was required to make at the hospital the morning of my surgery (”cashier’s check only, if you please — we don’t want any deadbeat transsexuals stiffing us for their expenses!”).
Of course I worried about potential job discrimination, but, again, I was lucky. I approached the matter as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, generally a private matter, but nothing to be ashamed of, and besides, I was at work to do a job, one at which I was capable and competent, so I just made sure that I focused on the job, believing that if I did I would not be subject to dismissal.
As it happened, I did become downwardly mobile, but that was my own choice as I opted in 1992 to take on more of an activist role, and became a part-time freelance writer to finance myself as I built up the educational organization FTM International through 1999. . . .
Filed under Ten Money Questions
Jamison Green
Queercents strives to represent diversity in the LGBT community and in my opinion the trans voice and view is one where we have come up short. So when I asked Helen Boyd if she could introduce me to a few thought leaders in the trans community, she put me in touch with Jamison Green. I was thrilled when he responded and graciously accepted our request for an interview.
Jamison is an internationally respected leader within the transgender movement and has written books, won awards and appeared in numerous documentaries. I asked him to get personal about money and share his thoughts about the financial issues that impact the trans community at large. I enjoyed this thoughtful conversation. I’m sure you will too.
1. There has been much debate in the press about Who Pays for Sex Reassignment Surgery. What’s your opinion on the topic?
It’s easy for people to get all bent out of shape about the idea of paying for someone else’s stuff, no matter what it is. The issue, as I see it, is not about whether taxpayers should cover particular medical expenses for prisoners, or whether we should advocate an “I did it on my own, so others should do it on their own, too” social philosophy. The issue is whether we as a society include sex reassignment as a covered medical expense (in insurance or government-funded contexts) because it is a human need, or whether we exclude it because we have a moral objection to it. I think our current medical insurance system in this country is seriously broken and truly serves only the affluent, but that is a different topic.
Given the current system, the way insurance works (whether it is taxpayer-funded Medicare or private insurance schemes) is that it purports to reduce costs by spreading them throughout an insured pool of individuals. Looked at in this way, the cost of surgical sex reassignment is much less than many other less rare and more expensive treatments that are routinely provided, such as open heart surgery or spinal disc repair, etc.
We have no difficulty justifying these expenses, but we have a lot of resistance to paying for someone’s sex change. Why is that? When we advocated for insurance coverage for transgendered and transsexual city and county employees in San Francisco, the amount that every covered person in the plan had to pay for trans treatments was less than one fifth of the cost that every covered person had to pay to provide substance abuse treatments for subscribers. It is just as easy to get angry about paying for someone else’s substance abuse treatment, but no one complains about that. So, without belaboring the point, it seems to me the issue is less one of “how do we divide the finite resource pie?” than it is one of “which people matter?” So long as trans people are regarded as exotic, perverted, or disposable, it will be easy to complain about sharing our scarce resources with them. My goal is to shift this social paradigm so that no one has to suffer from this kind of prejudice.
2. What is your most significant memory about money?
When I was in my early 30s, my partner, Samantha, and I saved for two years to have a month-long trip to Europe, which we took in 1982. My parents had always said that it was extremely expensive to go to Europe, and I had this idea that I’d be extremely lucky to get ever get there, but once we’d made up our collective mind that the trip was a priority, Samantha and I were able to commit to the sacrifices saving that much money required. We weren’t making much money then, and it was a struggle to save $5,000.00, enough to cover our trip and maintain our apartment, car payment, etc., while we were away. We had a wonderful time, managed our daily expenses well, and came back with $1000.00 in hand. It was then that I realized that I had much more capacity than I had previously imagined, and that I really could do things that I wanted to do if I committed myself to my goals.
3. What is your worst habit around finances?
In spite of what I just said above, my worst habit is spending money too easily. I’m quite good at it, actually. I am generous to a fault, and somewhat self-indulgent, too, and I am inclined to spend money when I have it, even though I know I should be saving, especially as I am getting closer to retirement age.
4. In your book, Becoming a Visible Man, you discuss many of the challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience. Can you share thoughts about how this personally impacted your financial status?
Becoming a Visible Man When I undertook all the medical expense of transition and surgical sex reassignment, in the years 1988 through 1991, I was very fortunate to have a management position at a leading computer technology design and manufacturing firm. I managed to have some of the minor costs (psychological counseling and hormones) covered by insurance, though on claim forms I did not describe my condition as anything having to do with transsexualism, which was excluded from treatment.
Fortunately, most of what transsexual people need in the way of medical care is not unusual, and is available to non-transsexual people (a fact that underlies one of the main arguments I have made for years about the discriminatory exclusion statements that prevent transsexual people from openly receiving medical care), so it never raised a flag.
When it came to my genital reconstruction surgery and medically necessary hysterectomy, I needed to borrow $10,000.00 from my mother to cover the $22,000.00 payment that I was required to make at the hospital the morning of my surgery (”cashier’s check only, if you please — we don’t want any deadbeat transsexuals stiffing us for their expenses!”).
Of course I worried about potential job discrimination, but, again, I was lucky. I approached the matter as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, generally a private matter, but nothing to be ashamed of, and besides, I was at work to do a job, one at which I was capable and competent, so I just made sure that I focused on the job, believing that if I did I would not be subject to dismissal.
As it happened, I did become downwardly mobile, but that was my own choice as I opted in 1992 to take on more of an activist role, and became a part-time freelance writer to finance myself as I built up the educational organization FTM International through 1999. . . .
Cross dressing pupil allowed to attend school
03:23 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 29, 2007
WFAA-TV
Valderamma says he has already purchased a female wardrobe for the school year.
Intersex: Case studies
 |
| 1932 Olympic gold medallist Stella Walsh had both male and female characteristics. Image: Bettyman/Corbis The Western world defines gender in two distinct categories. But in reality, gender is a spectrum. Why does society, and even science, struggle to understand and accept those who are somewhere between male and female? This article is a boxout that goes with our feature – Intersex: The space between the genders, read the full article here. The writer HERCULINE BARBARIN was a 19th century French hermaphrodite who was treated as a female at birth but later redesignated a man after a scandalous affair and a medical examination. A hermaphrodite, she started her life as a pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, growing into a bewildered adolescent enchanted by the ripening bodies of her classmates, and becoming a passionate lover of a schoolmistress. After the affair was revealed she was reclassified as a man. . . . |
Crowds cause sex change
Cosmos Online
 |
| A school of bluehead wrasse containing a mix of females and 'sneaky' males that look identical to females. Image: James Cook University SYDNEY, 11 September 2006: Sex changes are common among coral reef fish - but gender can depend on who's around, according to a recent study by a team of Australian and American scientists. Philip Munday of James Cook University and colleagues from the University of California Santa Barbara have found that juvenile bluehead wrasse choose their sex according to the crowd they grow up with. "It turns out that social effects are really important to whether a bluehead wrasse becomes a male or a female when it is young," says Munday. "These fish are very sensitive to their social surroundings which ultimately determine whether they will become male or female." . . . |
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Thriller with a Message
by Sunny Burns
Dee McLachlan (third from left) hopes the audience realises the types of cities we’re really living in.
The sinister workings of illegal prostitution have burdened our detention centres and courts for many years. Since the recent uncovering of sex trafficking in Australia, transsexual director and writer Dee McLachlan has embarked on a creative journey to tackle the issue.
Her latest film, The Jammed,captures the true essence of Melbourne and Sydney’s sex trade.
“I once read that 40 girls were being held captive in Kew – an upper class suburb of Melbourne. I was in such disbelief that a thing like this was possible,” McLachlan said.
“My script is mild compared to what really goes on. A large percentage of the girls don’t know that they’re coming to Australia to become prostitutes and they’re treated like dirt.
“I remember reading one transcript where a girl was repeatedly raped until she was broken in and agreed to do it. Some girls who refuse are locked away for weeks on end and fed pizza under the door.”
McLachlan said the demand for prostitutes in Australia and the lack of local girls willing to go into the business were key reasons why women were trafficked into the country and forced to serve as sex slaves. She said the problem was more pronounced in America where up to 50,000 women a year are illegally brought in to work as prostitutes.
“Our government is in denial. It’s much easier to deport them than to sort out the problems and see them as victims,” McLachlan said. “Many don’t testify because they fear the consequences and retribution on their family.
“Some girls won’t testify even with [a 30-day temporary] visa. They say, ‘Why should we help you and get our lives threatened at the other end?’ Other countries have amended the laws and the victims get residency and protection, which helps when testifying.”
McLachlan said The Jammed took just 19 days to film. The script centres on a Chinese mother who comes to Australia to find her missing daughter. She enlists the help of an innocent bystander and together they rescue three girls from a trafficking syndicate.
It is a graphic and confronting film, which contains rape and physical abuse scenes. But it is also an emotional movie that taps into the strength of relationships, desperation and a need to survive. . . .
Dee McLachlan (third from left) hopes the audience realises the types of cities we’re really living in.
The sinister workings of illegal prostitution have burdened our detention centres and courts for many years. Since the recent uncovering of sex trafficking in Australia, transsexual director and writer Dee McLachlan has embarked on a creative journey to tackle the issue.
Her latest film, The Jammed,captures the true essence of Melbourne and Sydney’s sex trade.
“I once read that 40 girls were being held captive in Kew – an upper class suburb of Melbourne. I was in such disbelief that a thing like this was possible,” McLachlan said.
“My script is mild compared to what really goes on. A large percentage of the girls don’t know that they’re coming to Australia to become prostitutes and they’re treated like dirt.
“I remember reading one transcript where a girl was repeatedly raped until she was broken in and agreed to do it. Some girls who refuse are locked away for weeks on end and fed pizza under the door.”
McLachlan said the demand for prostitutes in Australia and the lack of local girls willing to go into the business were key reasons why women were trafficked into the country and forced to serve as sex slaves. She said the problem was more pronounced in America where up to 50,000 women a year are illegally brought in to work as prostitutes.
“Our government is in denial. It’s much easier to deport them than to sort out the problems and see them as victims,” McLachlan said. “Many don’t testify because they fear the consequences and retribution on their family.
“Some girls won’t testify even with [a 30-day temporary] visa. They say, ‘Why should we help you and get our lives threatened at the other end?’ Other countries have amended the laws and the victims get residency and protection, which helps when testifying.”
McLachlan said The Jammed took just 19 days to film. The script centres on a Chinese mother who comes to Australia to find her missing daughter. She enlists the help of an innocent bystander and together they rescue three girls from a trafficking syndicate.
It is a graphic and confronting film, which contains rape and physical abuse scenes. But it is also an emotional movie that taps into the strength of relationships, desperation and a need to survive. . . .
Trans Health Conference Sept. 5-8, 2007
The theme of the conference is “Looking to the Future: Environment, Transplantation, Telepsychiatry.” Among the forums to be discussed at the symposium are “On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism” and “The Impacts of Gender Policy in Athletics.” See www.wpath.org for more info. |
UK: BBC3 commissions new teen transexual documentary
29th August 2007 17.20
Gemma Pritchard
BBC3 has commissioned eight documentaries for its third Body Image season, including the story of an 18-year-old trans woman who travels to Thailand to undergo genital surgery.
BBC3 will follow up last season's Lucy: Teen Transsexual with Lucy: Teen Transsexual in Thailand, which continues the story of 18-year-old Lucy Parker as she travels to Thailand to undergo male-to-female genital reconstruction surgery to bring her body into harmony with her gender identity.
Lucy has already undergone two years of hormone treatment, psychological analysis and surgery, making her one of Britain's youngest transsexual women.
The cameras will follow her throughout her surgery in Thailand and painful recovery.
It is one of three documentaries in the season made by UK production company Endemol's Brighter Pictures.
Brighter Pictures has also made Danny: My Secret Female Body (working title), which follows a 22-year-old female-to-male trans man, Danny, who has lived as a man for the past four years.
The documentary follows him as he gets chest reconstruction surgery to remove his breasts.
In the UK, there is estimated to be around 15,000 transsexual people who self-identify as the opposite gender from the physical body they were born with.
Around a third of them have surgery to change their bodies to be the opposite sex. . . .
Gemma Pritchard
BBC3 has commissioned eight documentaries for its third Body Image season, including the story of an 18-year-old trans woman who travels to Thailand to undergo genital surgery.
BBC3 will follow up last season's Lucy: Teen Transsexual with Lucy: Teen Transsexual in Thailand, which continues the story of 18-year-old Lucy Parker as she travels to Thailand to undergo male-to-female genital reconstruction surgery to bring her body into harmony with her gender identity.
Lucy has already undergone two years of hormone treatment, psychological analysis and surgery, making her one of Britain's youngest transsexual women.
The cameras will follow her throughout her surgery in Thailand and painful recovery.
It is one of three documentaries in the season made by UK production company Endemol's Brighter Pictures.
Brighter Pictures has also made Danny: My Secret Female Body (working title), which follows a 22-year-old female-to-male trans man, Danny, who has lived as a man for the past four years.
The documentary follows him as he gets chest reconstruction surgery to remove his breasts.
In the UK, there is estimated to be around 15,000 transsexual people who self-identify as the opposite gender from the physical body they were born with.
Around a third of them have surgery to change their bodies to be the opposite sex. . . .
Onetime JonBenet murder suspect began gender transition
by Ed Walsh
edwalsh94105@yahoo.comThe former suspect in the 1996 murder of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey told the Bay Area Reporter that he had sought gender reassignment surgery, not because of any driving desire to become a woman, but to help him avoid capture by police.
He also said that a buried "gothic box" exists and that if uncovered, would result in his re-arrest for JonBenet's killing.
"I had one reason and one reason only to change my sex," John Mark Karr said last week in his only Bay Area media interview. "I saw it as an opportunity to change my identity and further evade law enforcement."
Karr, 42, was in Bangkok when he was arrested a year ago this month and extradited to Colorado. The Boulder County district attorney decided not to file murder charges against him after his DNA did not match DNA found at the murder scene. Karr revealed to the B.A.R. that before the DA dropped charges, he agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. The deal became moot when the DA declined to proceed with the case.
Karr was then extradited to Sonoma County to face 2001 child pornography charges, but those charges were dismissed after prosecutors conceded that they lost Karr's computer that they say had contained child pornography.
At the time of his arrest, Karr said that he had been undergoing hormone replacement therapy and laser treatments to permanently remove facial hair. He had been on track, he said, to get all the surgeries to completely transform into a woman by this summer. . . .
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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