Monday, February 29, 2016

Interesting Research

When I do cultural competency training sometimes I get asked clinical questions, sadly I am not qualified to answer; my MSW is in community organizing not clinical.

However, some of the questions that I am asked is about co-occurrence with other diagnoses such as Autism Spectrum Disorders. There is a research paper from Transgender Health online about that,
Gender Variance Among Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Retrospective Chart Review
By Aron Janssen, Howard Huang, and Christina Duncan
Volume: 1 Issue 1: February 18, 2016

ABSTRACT
Purpose: Increasing clinical evidence suggests an overrepresentation of gender variance (GV) among patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This retrospective chart review aims to contribute to the existing literature on co-occurring ASD and gender dysphoria (GD). We compare the rate of parent-reported GV in patients with an ASD diagnosis to that of parent-reported GV in a normative nonreferred data set.

Methods: Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) charts were collected from 492 children and adolescents (409 natal males and 83 natal females) aged 6–18 years who have received a diagnosis of ASD at the New York University Child Study Center. Parent-reported GV was determined through endorsement of CBCL sex item 110, which assesses the presence of gender-related issues. We calculated the odds ratio of endorsement of item 110 between our ASD sample and the CBCL sample data.

Results: The subjects diagnosed with ASD were 7.76 times more likely to report GV than the CBCL sample. This finding was statistically significant. About 5.1% of the patients in the ASD group and 0.7% of the CBCL nonreferred group endorsed sex item 110. 5.1% of natal males and 4.8% of natal females endorsed sex item 110. Neither gender nor age influenced the rate of endorsement.

Conclusion: This finding supports the growing research suggesting a heightened co-occurrence rate of ASD and GD. Focus should be placed upon improving our understanding of the nature of this co-occurrence and on gender identity development within the atypical development of ASD.
This is something that is very important; why is there correlation between ASD and GD. I have also found research papers that report left handedness and dyslexia are more prevalent in the LGBT populations.



This afternoon I am giving the third in three lectures on gender variant students in the Multicultural Education classes

Life Is All Around You

[RANT] It seems like everyone is plugged in to the web these days. The internet is an enigma, at the same time it is expanded our horizons and shrinking the world it is limiting our reach.

This video illustrates my point…



When I was little during the summer we drove around to all the battle fields and national parks and we visited just about every state this side of the Mississippi. I remember playing games with my brother to see how many state license plates we could find, or reading the Burma-Shave signs, or looking for Mail Pouch Tobacco signs on the side of barns, or just looking at the variety of countryside as it went by.

Today when kids are traveling in a car they just stare at their phones texting or playing games. Cars are now coming equipped with hot spot Wi-Fi so you can be connect because they fear of being left out.

In the summer we used play outdoors in the woods around our houses and then go traveling around the country for two weeks. I learned so much in those vacations, walking through the battlefields at Gettysburg and looking down from Little Round Top, imagining what it was like for a Union solider. Or driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Visiting Mammoth Caves and driving through the Great Smokey's so many wonders that we saw.

Now it seems like everything is organized from sports to summer actives, the kids don’t use their imagination and build forts in the woods. Kids don’t do sledding through backyards anymore it is all fenced in like stockade.

They are all sitting next to one another texting away and not interacting with their friends except by text. One time someone asked me for a ride up to UConn main campus in Storrs to a meeting we were going to, he didn’t say one word all the way up. Instead he just texted and when we got there he opened the car door with one hand keep texting in the other. Luckily he got a ride back with someone else.

There is a cartoon going around on Facebook that embodies today’s generation perfectly…


[/RANT]

The Clock Is Ticking…

Dennis Daugaard the governor of South Dakota has until tomorrow to sign, or veto, or let it go into law without his signature.

The New York Times opinion page about the bill has an interesting comment by the Republican legislator, who introduced the bill said,
… Fred Deutsch, absurdly argued that it was intended to “protect the innocence of children.” He acknowledged that there was no evidence that allowing transgender students to use the restroom of their choice — as thousands do across the country every day — had harmed anyone’s safety or morality. The bill, Mr. Deutsch told a Times reporter, is “entirely preventative.”
Hey but this bill rallies our political base and brings in campaign donations, so what if we further marginalized an oppressed population.

The governor said,
Mr. Daugaard recently said he had never knowingly met a transgender person. Kendra Heathscott, a transgender woman from Sioux Falls, wrote the governor a letter to let him know he actually had. The two met when Ms. Heathscott was a 10-year-old student, who was struggling with school and bullies, and found refuge at the Children’s Home Society, a human services organization that Mr. Daugaard ran at the time.

Mr. Daugaard agreed to meet on Tuesday with Ms. Heathscott and two transgender students. Ms. Heathscott described the governor as warm and compassionate during the meeting. “I just wanted to share my humanity with him,” she said.

The governor told them that he wanted to hear from both sides and that he would make a decision consistent with his values.
This isn’t about safety, this isn’t about privacy, it is all about politics and playing to the conservative base of the Republican Party. If it was privacy, a hundred dollars of shower curtains would take care of that and if it is about safety then the over forty years since the first law went into effect without an assault proves it is safe.

My guest is that the governor will wash his hands of the bill and let it become law without his signature.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Open And Affirming

An open and affirming school climate helps everyone all around. A new study is out how family support makes all the different in a successful transition.
Study looks at well-being of transgender youth
Postcrescent.com
By Lindsey Tanner, AP Medical Writer
February 26, 2016

CHICAGO - Young transgender children allowed to live openly as the gender they identify with fared as well psychologically as other kids in a small study that suggests parental support may be the key.

Rates of depression and anxiety were equal in the study, which compared 73 transgender kids aged 3 to 12 with 73 nontransgender youngsters. The trans kids also fared as well on both measures as a group of their nontransgender siblings.

Rates of anxiety among trans kids were "a smidge higher" than national averages for children of the same age, but otherwise they matched national norms, said lead author Kristina Olson, an associate psychology professor at the University of Washington.

She said it's the largest study to examine the psychological health of transgender youth who have socially transitioned. Parents recruited from support groups, conferences and a special website rated their kids'well-being on a standard mental health scale.
While the opposition say,
Opponents of allowing these youngsters to adopt names, hairstyles, clothes and pronouns opposite their birth gender have argued that kids so young "cannot possibly know their gender at such an early age," said Sherer [Dr. Ilana Sherer, a Dublin, California, pediatrician], the editorial writer.

Letting these kids live openly as the gender they identify with "can be an incredibly affirming process," Sherer said, "showing the child that their identity is supported." She was not involved in the research.
Here is part of the introduction that Dr. Sherer wrote,
Those of us who work with transgender children frequently face decisions based on evidence that is conflicted or lacking and encounter opponents who are rightfully wary about what they see as experimental treatments without well-examined outcomes. However, in a transgender population where nearly one half experience suicidal ideation, the risk of nonintervention is quite high. In this issue of Pediatrics, Olson and colleagues provide evidence in support of social transition, a completely reversible intervention associated with lower rates of depression and anxiety in transgender prepubescent children. Socially transitioned children, or those who have adopted the name, hairstyle, clothing, and pronoun associated with their affirmed, rather than birth gender, have become more visible in the media over the last several years. Although to date there has been no published evidence to support providers in suggesting social transition as a beneficial intervention, many families, often guided by mental health professionals, make that decision based on observational evidence in response to seeing how suffering can be alleviated by allowing the child to express their own sense of gender.
I wish that I could see the rest of the research paper but you need to be a member of the  American Academy of Pediatrics..

When I do a lecture in a multicultural education class I show a video of a trans children, she went from taking 14 different medications down to none once she came out. The whole alphabet soup of diseases disappeared once she transitioned. Any who knows or have worked with trans children knows how much better off they are once they transition, it is truly amazing!

Here is a video from KING News 5 about the research.





It is a beautiful day here in Connecticut... Time to go out for a walk in the woods on one of the Rails-To-Trails



Update 2/29/16 9:40 AM
Here is a link to the full report

Good Ol’ Republicans

They did it again; this time on a grand scale the national RNC just issued a resolution against us.
WHEREAS, A person’s sex is defined as the physical condition of being male or female, which is determined at conception, identified at birth by a person’s anatomy, recorded on their official birth certificate, and can be confirmed by DNA testing;
Stop right there! So what you are saying is that you want everyone’s DNA tested at birth? How in hell are you going to be able to confirm everyone’s DNA and what happens to intersex people? Once again the Republicans are stuck in the 1950s view of biology.
WHEREAS, Transgender policies deal with students who choose to be designated by their desired gender identity; an identity that conflicts with their anatomical sex; 
Drop your draws we are doing a check of what’s between your legs.
WHEREAS, The U.S. Congress has never included gender identity within the Title IX Federal Law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity and that mandates allowing students of one biological sex to play sports designated for the opposite biological sex;

WHEREAS, Federal courts have ruled that Title IX does not extend to claims of discrimination based on gender identity and that schools can maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities on the basis of sex where privacy is a concern;
How about the vast majority of the courts that have found that it does cover gender identity or the 1989 Supreme Court case of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that found that sex stereotyping is a form of sex discrimination.
WHEREAS, The Obama Administration’s Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released an updated policy letter stating that Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to an individual’s chosen gender identity of male or female;

WHEREAS, Federal courts have ruled that the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX is not legally binding because the Department lacks authority to promulgate such an interpretation; and
And federal courts have ruled that it is, it is so nice to have selective blindness.
WHEREAS, Policies of the Obama Administration, presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and public schools that allow any students to use the restrooms, locker rooms, or other facilities designated for the exclusive use of the other sex infringes on the rights of privacy and conscience of other students; and therefore be it
So you are going to deny trans people their human rights just because some people might be embarrassed? Well I have a simple solution… put up privacy curtains! No one likes to be nude in front of others.

Now comes the juices parts…
RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee calls on the Department of Education to rescind its interpretation of Title IX that wrongly includes facility use issues by transgender students;

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee encourages State Legislatures to recognize that these Obama gender identity policies are a federal governmental overreach, a misinterpretation of Title IX policies, and an infringement upon the majority of students’ Constitutional rights; and

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee encourages state legislatures to enact laws that protect student privacy and limit the use of restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities to members of the sex to whom the facility is designated.
So let’s ignore Title IX, let’s ignore the courts, let’s ignore the science that gender is a lot more than chromosomes, let’s ignore that fact that by having an inclusive environment that bullying drops and that students do better in school with an affirming school climate, and let’s ignore the fact that suicide rates for trans students drop in schools with a positive environment.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Saturday 9: The Times of Your Life

Crazy Sam’s Saturday 9: The Times of Your Life (1976)

Every Saturday I take time off from written on serious topics to have some fun…

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This song is all about memories. How far back can you remember? What's your earliest memory?
Playing army in the ash pits of a local power station.

2) The first line is "Good morning, yesterday." What do you remember about yesterday morning?
Over sleeping and rush to get to my endo appointment.

3) This song was originally a 60-second jingle, featured in a commercial for Kodak film. Do you ever use film? Or are all your pictures digital?
Okay, what do you think? I doubt anyone uses film that much anymore. Do the drug stores still process film?

4) Who took the most recent photo of you?
I am usually behind the camera, I think the last picture of me was taken when the UConn SSW Alumni Board was dissolved.

5) This week's featured artist, Paul Anka, was born in Canada and enjoyed appearing in a made-for-TV Perry Mason movie with fellow Canadian, Raymond Burr. Do you enjoy courtroom dramas?
I like cops programs better, besides the British shows I like Rizzoli & Isles, Major Crimes, and NCIS. I don’t like the spinoffs just the original.

6) At 15, Anka won a supermarket contest by collecting the most Campbell soup can wrappers. The prize was a trip to New York. Do you enter contests and sweepstakes? Play the lottery? 
I play Powerball only when the payoff gets out of sight.

7) This year Paul Anka performed throughout Florida (Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Clearwater and Fort Myers). The Sunshine State is a popular vacation destination. Do you have a favorite spot in Florida?
I haven’t been to Florida since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

8) In 1976, the year this song was on the charts, an earthquake hit China. Have you ever experienced an earthquake?
No. But I would like to be in a small one, just one that you can feel the earth move under my feet and go WOW!
Here is a little known fact about me, where I worked before I retired we used to make electrical equipment that had to survive an earthquake so we had to shake test equipment the size of a large van, if you want to see something amazing you should see one of those tests. To see something that size move 2 feet back and forth, up and down, and side to side all at the same time 50 time a second; it is impressive!

9) Random question: Do you know CPR?
I used to be certified for CPR and AED when I was working.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Set Your Wayback Machine… To Way Back.

All the way to ancient Egypt and through out the world to look at trans people in history.
Trans History 101: Transgender Expression in Ancient Times
LGBTQ Nation
By Mercedes Allen
February 24, 2016

History is written by the victors. Unfortunately, this tends to mean that a lot of truth gets lost over the eons, peaceful tribes can become demonized, portrayals of nature reverence can be twisted into “witchcraft” and a lot of the accurate documentation becomes lost over the years in intellectual pogroms, such as the burning of the library at Alexandria in Egypt by the Romans.
[…]
What we understand as transgender (in its many different forms) has been understood quite differently at various periods of time. In the earliest ages, people who were seen to bridge the genders were quite often thought to possess wisdom that traditionally-gendered people did not, and were venerated for this. As civilizations transformed from matrilineal and communal societies into male-driven (patriarchal) societies with rigid class divisions and emphasis on property ownership, those male-driven cultures reduced the status of women… and because they were threatened by a persistent belief that those who blurred gender lines possessed some greater insight, they set out to crush gender-transgressive people most of all. Into the modern age, transfolk resurfaced, but it is a long climb back just to restore any sense of equality.

In earliest civilizations, throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa, tribes of different types venerated what they often identified as “The Great Mother.” In nearly all of these traditions, MTF priestesses (often castrated or with some form of eunuching, which included a number of different body modifications of the time) presided, and the cultures were primarily communal systems which held women (venerated as a source of life) in high esteem. Matriarchal in nature, the cultures often espoused peace, but the realities of early civilization and tribal existence did not always allow for this.
One of the things that time does to history is that it blurs the meaning of words.
Surviving Records
Displaying the earliest records of trans existence chronologically is virtually impossible, so I will sort them primarily by location.

The Middle East

In the Middle East (Cradle of Civilization), MTF (male-to-female) priestesses were known to have served Astarte, Dea Syria, Atargatis and Ashtoreth / Ishtar. Additional MTF “gallae” served Cybele, the Phrygians’ embodiment of The Great Mother. Trans expression was also present in the early genesis of the Kumbh Mela festival in Allahbad (India).

For centuries, Muslim tradition differentiated between MTF transsexuals who live as prostitutes or criminals, and those in whom femininity was innate and who lived blamelessly. The latter were called “mukhannathun,” and accepted within the boundaries of Islam. Mukhannathun could have relationships with either men or women, but only those who had been castrated or were exclusively attracted to men were allowed into womens’ spaces. Later, it was ordered that all mukhannathun undergo castration.
The article also looked at Asia and the Hijras and the basaja; the article also mentions drag queen in ancient China,
Fanchuan was a name given to stage crossdressing, such as male-to-female performances in Beijing opera, and female-to-male acting in Taiwanese Opera…
And China even had their own Joan of Arc
…Chui Chin, a cross-dressing Chinese revolutionary and feminist was beheaded in 1907 for organizing an uprising against the Manchu dynasty.
Which brings us to Europe and Joan of Arc,
Years later, Joan of Arc was said to have followed in the traditions of Gentiles and heathen. In France, “gens” referred to matrilineal farming communities, indicating some pre-Christian tradition that she evidently had stirred up, inspiring older values and explaining why she had become such a potent threat to the church while alive.
The article then moves to the Americas and in the northern hemisphere there were the “Two-Spirit” people.
In North America, as late as 1930 (with the Klamath in the Pacific Northwest), Two-Spirit Natives are noted among tribal communities. Originally called “berdache,” a name of largely insulting intent given by Europeans, Native culture adopted the term “Two-Spirit” as a blanket term — though in reality, nearly every tribe had at least one (often several) unique name for Two-Spirit peoples, with the names sometimes addressing different aspects of those populations. Two-Spirit actually covers the full range of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, as well as intersex and other gender-variant people. It was often thought that Two-Spirits had two spirits inhabiting the same body, and that Two-Spirit people deserved a special kind of reverence. Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette notes that in the Illinois and Nadouessi tribes, nothing is decided without their advice.
And in South America had their own trans people.
In South America, MTF priestesses have been found among the Araucanians (southern Chile and Argentina) and Mapuche, although after oppressive Spanish contact, they were largely replaced by female preistesses. Some females in the Tupinamba tribe lived as men, hunted and went to war. In 1576, explorer Pedro de Magalhaes recorded this, and recalling the Greek legend of the Amazons, named the Amazon river for these Tupinamba. For the Yoruba (Brazil), the deity Shango is represented as all sexes.
We are everywhere and we have always been here!

I can’t help but wonder if the ancient Egyptians had their own “bathroom bills” legislation?

Transphobia

Transphobia by trans people or as it is otherwise known as “Lateral Hostility”
I'm A Trans Woman, and I'm Transphobic. So Are You.
The Harlot
By Safíra Anouk
Updated February 18, 2016

This past year, 2015, was marked by an unprecedented amount of attention paid to transgender issues. 

Hollywood coming-out stories have taken center stage at a time when many of us would rather discuss workplace discrimination, gender equality, and access to transgender healthcare. However, in the midst of this era of increased transgender awareness is also a reactionary backlash — transphobia.
[…]
I am a trans woman, and I don’t like other trans women. I am transphobic, and so are you.

Internalized oppression is the involuntary internalization of discriminatory societal values among members of those groups who are being discriminated against. It is often unintentional—we all want what is best for ourselves and our communities, but internalized oppression undermines our better intentions through divisive socialization. Intended to promote homogeneity among diverse populations, it exalts a small elite class by which everyone else is measured. Its aim, to divide and conquer, causes internal strife and conflict underlined by currents of self-hate. In this way, transphobia among transgender women is a symptom of a greater misogynist ether.

Internalized transphobia divides us against one another and teaches us to hate ourselves and each other by proxy. When we judge other trans women on cisgender passing privilege, social attractiveness, sexual identity, or choice of gender presentation, we are comparing them to an unrealistic ideal of cis-womanhood. Then through brutal competition, we sacrifice each other in an effort to find validation through the invalidation of others. This behaviour, which keeps us from having actionable solidarity and community, is incentivized by our desire to be accepted by the cis-hetero mainstream.
And that is known technically as “Lateral Hostility,” or “Horizontal Violence.” PlanetTransgender had an article about it last year…
Q and A put to Indi Edwards on Lateral Hostility 25th April, 2015.
1. What does ” Lateral Hostility ” mean to you


Lateral hostility happens when an individual or individuals bully and oppress their peers from within a community setting rather than one’s true adversaries. In our case being Trans I have always noticed it and regrettably been at both ends of the phenomena. Personally I have had a lot of time to think about mistakes I’ve made in the past and would invite others to ask themselves the same question.

2. How do you see it differing from open debate?

It’s when a debate descends into name calling, victim blaming, vilification and verbal violence. Words hurt, actually words can kill. As a community we cop a lot of hostility from some cis gender folk who don’t understand us or refuse to, however when it comes from your own peers it seems to cut deeper and have a very negative and profound effect on the individual on the receiving end. LH often only ends in community division and isolation for the individual who is being chastised.

3. How has it harmed the Trans(gender) community

Basically it often holds us back from moving forward as a community and at its very worst can cause the victim or victims to feel marginalized within their own peer group and can lead to self-harm and/or suicide. Make no mistake it does happen. The perpetrator is often hurting for their own reasons and may lash out blindly with devastating results. There was a recent example where a notable Trans activist recently told another Trans activist to drink bleach and go kill herself. This was a knee jerk and emotionally driven action that could have had dire results.

4. What do you see as the key drivers of ” LH ” to be. Is it always personal?

I think yes it’s always feels personal and again partially stems from oppression. The oppressed oppressing others or I like to call it “hand me down” oppression. It’s really sad that this is happening in our community however it’s good that we are now having the conversation that needs to be had. We as Trans people are very emotionally invested in our own community. This emotional investment is like a hair-trigger waiting to be pulled.
Here is her speech at the Australian and New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health (ANZPATH)'s




This morning I have my 6 month endo check-up, afterward I am talking to doctors at a local hospital and then in the evening I have a meeting at the Connecticut chapter of the NASW (National Association of Social Workers)... A busy day.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

GLAAD With Two A’s

First GLAD with one “A” has just changed their name from Gay and Lesbians Advocates and Defenders to GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.

Okay, back to GLAAD. They just released a report on trans bathrooms and the media, Debunking the Bathroom Bill” Myth Accurate Reporting on Nondiscrimination: A Guide for Journalists and some of the thing that they recommend are…
Best Practices in Media Coverage

Interview transgender people themselves
The best sources to talk to about anti-transgender discrimination are the people who experience these acts firsthand. Hearing from transgender people clarifies and humanizes the issues they face and debunks discredited and harmful falsehoods. It’s also important to talk to the family members and coworkers of transgender people. They can provide readers and viewers with a greater understanding of how the discrimination transgender people face also impacts their friends and family.
Some of the other ideas that they suggest are,
  • Include stories from a diverse array of local transgender people about the effects of discrimination on their own lives
  • Use accurate and appropriate language
Then they talk about using the dreaded “Bathroom Bill”
Avoid reducing the complexity of the policy down to a "bathroom bill"
Refer to these laws or ordinances as nondiscrimination laws/ordinances, or call the law or ordinance by its name (for example, Houston Equal Rights Ordinance or HERO). The term "bathroom bill" is an inaccurate phrase created by those who oppose nondiscrimination laws that protect LGBT people. The term is designed to, among other things, incite panic and fear at the prospect of encountering a transgender person in a public restroom. It is also inaccurate, because most of these bills address a far broader range of discrimination protections than restroom access. Accurate reporting will discuss all of the various areas of life in which LGBT people will be protected, from fairness in housing, to equal opportunity in the workplace. If a bill explicitly addresses the use of restrooms and locker rooms within its public accommodations provisions, it is important to contextualize it within the larger issue of anti-transgender discrimination.
But I think that the news media likes to use the term because of exactly why they say not to use it, “The term is designed to, among other things, incite panic and fear at the prospect of encountering a transgender person in a public restroom” because the sensationalism sells newspapers.

They go on to list other thing to do or not do like not using images of bathrooms (yeah, right do you thing they will avoid using those images?) or to challenge the opposition on their so called facts.

Unfortunately, most media outlets will do what sells the most views not what is right. We were lucky here in Connecticut most of the news outlets were in favor of the legislation.



When I got home from this morning's meeting the power was out from the high winds we had with the overnight storm and the winds are continuing. The high to day was 65 and the temperature is dropping to below freezing tonight.

This Is What We Face

The headline reads “South Dakota Stands Up To The Transgender Mafia” and it sets the tone of the article in The Federalist.
One of the unique and wonderful things about the United States is that small states, ignored most of the time, can now and again set the big, important states on the straight and narrow path. South Dakota this week sent a bill to its governor that would require students to use the bathrooms and showers assigned to their birth genders.

While the coastal class clobbers bigoted South Dakota on social media, the parents of that state have spoken. Their representatives have accepted the time-honored definition of gender and defied the transgender mafia. That choice must be celebrated and defended.
I have another take on what is happening in South Dakota, what I see is a an oppressed community that is tired of second class citizenship standing up to the bullying, to the discrimination, and to the harassment that they face every day.

This is typically of the way that the privilege fight against those that they oppress… these upstarts who are demanding we treat equally are infringing upon our rights to discriminate.
Recently New York Magazine published a very long story about a respected sex researcher who had been fired for holding and practicing theories about gender dysphoria that may not be spoken anymore. In short, a kangaroo court “independent” investigation found Dr. Kenneth Zucker guilty. His crime was approaching childhood gender dysphoria as a condition most children overcome and urging parents to push their children toward their determined sex.
And it is a kangaroo court because they didn’t the way that the conservatives wanted or when we criticize the validity of the research because the research didn’t have proper controls. As science is cutback in schools one of the results is that people do not understand research methods. They don’t question how the subjects in a study are chosen can affect the outcome of the research.  There is no definitive long term research on trans children, but one thing that we do know is that forcing trans students to use the birth gender or that they use the nurse’s bathroom increases bullying and harassment and also the number of suicides by trans students.
Our children are not social experiments. And they certainly must never be so for radical activists obviously willing to undermine science. Like it or not, this is a fight that can no longer be ignored. A good place to start is by standing with South Dakota.
One of the things that I have noticed is that children do not have a problem with trans students until adults step in.

A Tacoma City councilman put it this way in The News Tribune,
Re: “Protect women, girls and rewrite dangerous rule” (Your Voice, 2-22).

The author makes the case for “respectful dialogue.” However, there is nothing respectful about implying that transgender adults and children are inherently suspicious or dangerous.

Want to discuss danger and violence? More than 20 transgender Americans were murdered last year because of their gender identity. Many more have been beaten, bullied, fired from their jobs, disowned by their families or driven to suicide.

Divisive, inaccurate and fear-based rhetoric only fuels the fires of this violence. We’re better than that as a community.


This morning I am at a meeting of the Safe School Coalition, which is a coalition of state agencies and nongovernmental organizations. Right now we are working on a model safe climate policy based on Westport’s plan.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Ball Is In The Governor’s Court

In South Dakota the clock is running out for the governor to veto the bill or will he let it become law without his signature? Celebrities speak out...
Laverne Cox Urges Action on South Dakota’s Transgender BillTime
By Sarah Begley
February 24, 2016

"We should be creating safer, nurturing environments for our children"

Laverne Cox has weighed in on the South Dakota bill that would prohibit schools from providing bathroom accommodations for transgender students, sharing a message on Instagram and calling on the governor to veto the bill.

Cox, the actress known for her role in Orange is the New Black and for her activism on transgender issues, shared a photo of Thomas Lewis, a South Dakota student who spoke out about his experience at a high school where he was required to use a bathroom based on his sex at birth, not the gender he identifies with.
“Let’s urge the South Dakota governor to veto H.B. 1008, the bill that ostracizes trans students and targets them for even more harassment and bullying,” Cox wrote on Instagram. “Studies show that 78% of trans students experience harassment or bullying in school and nearly 50% attempt suicide. We should be creating safer, nurturing environments for our children not more hostile ones. Sign the petition to urge the South Dakota governor to veto this bill.”
And Caitlyn also speaks out against the bill.
Caitlyn Jenner Advocates for Transgender-Friendly Bathrooms
Time
By Eliana Dockterman
February 23, 2016

A South Dakota bill would force trans children to use the bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth

Caitlyn Jenner took to social media Monday to pressure South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard to veto a bill that would force transgender children to use school bathrooms and locker rooms that are consistent with their “chromosomes and anatomy” at birth.
I have a feeling that the governor is going to wash his hands on the bill and let it go into law without his signature.



This afternoon I am giving the second in three lectures on gender variant students in the Multicultural Education classes. Yesterday's class went well and the students asked a number of questions at the end, many of them legal questions like what do you do if the parents are against the child's transition. Unfortunately there is no set  answer, it depends upon the students age and there is no fixed age that you can give.

Mother Nature Is Never Binary

Bilaterally asymmetric gynandromorphs cardinal
Humans like to put things into nice little boxes but Mother Nature hates boxes and she likes to color outside the lines. This article was sent to me by Rhonda.
Gender Is Not Just Chromosomes and Genitals
Time
By Katy Steinmetz
February 23, 2016

The South Dakota 'bathroom bill' is out of step with science

A 17-year-old recently walked into the office of Stephen Rosenthal, a pediatric specialist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. The high school student looked like a girl. She had external “girl parts.” She lived as a girl, dressed as a girl and had never had any question about being a girl. But her primary care doctor had become concerned because she hadn’t started developing breasts, something that happens to most girls by the age of 13. And a blood test the primary care doctor had given her revealed a clue as to why: this young woman had 46 XY chromosomes, the makeup usually associated with males. So off she went to Rosenthal, one of the nation’s leading experts on sex and gender.

This young woman, who has what is called an intersex trait, is not that rare. About 1 in 2000 babies are born with an uncommon permutation of the many things medical professionals typically look to—like anatomy, chromosomes and hormones—to establish a person’s physical sex. That’s the equivalent of about 10,000 babies born in the United States every year. For Rosenthal’s patient and her mother, this revelation was a source of great anxiety and insecurity. For everyone else, very private cases like hers are important examples to hear about and consider when lawmakers are attempting to decide who should use which bathrooms—as they have in legislation floated in states such as Arizona, Kentucky, Florida and Maryland in the last few years.
[…]
“So you would say every girl who goes into a bathroom has to not only pull down her pants and prove she has a vagina, but you also need to have a blood test and show you’ve got XX chromosomes?” says Rosenthal. “Well, that girl would have XY chromosomes. Which bathroom does she use?”
This is something that I have been saying these so called “Bathroom bills” are downright ignorant  when it comes to biology, they are based on 1950s science. We now know that gender is a lot more than what is between your legs.
You can’t throw a hall pass without hitting a medical professional or academic who will explain that sex and gender are distinct. “Sex is what’s between your legs and gender is what’s between your ears,” goes one quip. But even that is oversimplifying things, given that what’s “between your legs” could indicate that a person is male, while their chromosomes could indicate otherwise (a realization some 46-XX men come to after they’ve been having trouble having kids and they find out they have a low sperm count, leading their doctor to order chromosome tests).

The bill “assumes that there’s a clear-cut division between male and female,” says Elizabeth Reis, a professor of gender and bioethics at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. “And that if we only dig hard enough we could truly distinguish between the boys and the girls. Throughout American history people have been trying to make these distinctions, and the reason why it doesn’t work is because those distinctions aren’t there. We don’t have any bright line.” Reis points to the sports world as an example, where officials have repeatedly drawn and then erased lines determining who is allowed to compete as a man or woman in the Olympics.
These bills take a simplistic biblical view of biology and do not take into account that there are more factors that determine gender than chromosomes such as 5-alpha-reductase an enzyme that converts testosterone to 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) or Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) which is an X-linked recessive androgen receptor (AR) gene resulting in a failure of normal masculinization of the external genitalia in chromosomally male individuals.

You cannot legislate biology.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

I Always Thought That Australia Was Progressive

Toward trans people but I never knew they had to jump through so many hoops.
Fighting for Isabelle: The battle for transgender kids to get access to cross-sex hormones
news.com.au
By Ginger Gorman
February 23, 2016

TWO days ago Naomi, Andrew and their children Isabelle, 12, and Hattie, 9, piled into the family car to drive from their home in the small rural town of Taggerty, about 100km northeast of Melbourne, to Canberra.

This is no ordinary road trip. Along with numerous other children, parents, a legal expert and a doctor specialising in adolescent medicine, the Langley-McNamara family is coming to the nation’s capital on an urgent mission. This morning they are meeting with members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to tell their stories.

Naomi sees this as a way to keep her eldest daughter from suicide and self-harm.
Why are they traveling all the way to Canberra?
Like 44,000 other Australian children, Isabelle is transgender. Biologically, she was born as a male but identifies as a girl.

In order to stop Isabelle going through male puberty, she will require so-called stage two cross-sex hormone treatment within the next two to four years.

In countries where this stage-two treatment is available, Australia is believed to be the only nation in the world where transgender children are required to go through the Family Court to get access to it.
Transgender advocates claim that taking a case like this through the court system can cost up to $30,000 and take many months. They also cite the emotional distress this places on the child and their family.
I can’t believe that a country like Australia requires children to go to court to get cross sex hormones, I hope that they can at least do it anonymously and they will not have a court record of the child applying for CSH.



This afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, I will be teaching a graduate class on trans cultural to students in a Multicultural Education class.

The Uncounted

Every year we have a day to remember those trans people who were murdered during the year but we have no idea how many trans people take their own lives.
Wisconsin mother becomes LGBT activist after transgender son’s suicide
KHON 2
By Max Gorden
Published: February 20, 2016

(WAOW/CNN) — A Wisconsin mother, heartbroken over the suicide of her transgender son, is speaking out.
She’s hoping her story — and regret — will help others become more accepting of transgenders, and perhaps save a life.
“He came out…and then I didn’t accept him,” said Joanne Lee. “If I could tell him that I loved him so much no matter what, you know, who he was. But I cannot go back.”
It is so sad that so many times we are rejected by our families, all those statistics mean nothing when it is you that is rejected by family members. The one thing that improves our transition is having the love of our family, the data shows that risk of self-harm decreases to almost that the general population. 

Monday, February 22, 2016

Anti-Trans Bills

It seems like everywhere you look anti-trans legislation is being introduced in states around the country. It almost seems like they are trying to outdo each other… “You are banning trans people from, well I see you and add a $2500 fine. Well in my state I’m offering a bonus to anyone who turns in a trans person using the bathroom!”

The HRC (Human Rights Campaign) says there are 44 anti-trans bills in state legislatures.
REPORT: 2016 is the Most Dangerous Year for Transgender Americans
Advocate
By Dawn Ennis
February 22, 2016

Transgender people are under attack like never before with more than three dozen proposed new laws across 16 states, according to a new report by the Human Rights Campaign.

“This deeply disturbing trend is a stark reminder of just how vicious and deplorable  opponents of equality are in their relentless attacks against our community,” said HRC President Chad Griffin in a statement emailed to The Advocate.

In all, HRC counts 44 bills targeting transgender people are in the works in 16 states. That’s more than twice as many as were introduced in all of 2015, and nearly two dozen of the measures focus on trans students.
[…]
Other states are considering measures that prevent transgender people from changing their gender marker on their birth certificates, from legally getting married and from accessing medically-necessary care.
And the legislation is just not against trans people.
And they are just a portion of what HRC called “a stunning surge of more than 175 anti-LGBT bills in 32 states this year.”
The Republicans say that they are for smaller government and to get government off your back but at the very same time that say that they are passing laws to control who can go the bathroom. What can be more invasive than checking to see if you are the “right” gender to use a bathroom?

They say the bills are “religious freedom” laws but in reality they give carte blanche to anyone to ignore non-discrimination laws just by claiming that it is against your religion. Anyone can claim that it is against their beliefs and there is no way to prove otherwise.

Why are they doing this?

I cannot understand how they can try to pass laws that marginalize and oppressed people. Do they hate us that much or are they doing it for votes?

You’re So Brave

How many times have we heard this? I don’t feel brave, yes we face harassment and discrimination every day but if you are white and middle class the odds are a lot better than if you are black or Latino.
More attacks on transgender women in Brazil
Spectrum
 By Kerry Cardoza
Posted February  4, 2016

There have been at least two more attacks on transgender women in Brazil, following reports that the country has had 48 trans murders so far this year.

Two transgender women were shot early Saturday morning in the Industrial Park neighborhood of São Paulo, Globo G1 reported.
[…]
Another transgender woman, Pamella, was shot in the head on Saturday “during the Carnival Teresina Parade on Raul Lopes Avenue,” Planet Transgender reported. Reports from the woman’s friends speculate that the incident was not a hate crime, but that Pamella and her friends had found a gun and it was accidentally fired.
Globo G1 reported back in January that,
Transvestite is shot in the head during Corso Zé Pereira de Teresina
According to the Military Police, the victim had quarreled with another person.
Travesty of Friends reported that she was playing with gun when fired.

By Catarina Costa
January 31, 2016

A transvestite identified only as Pamella was shot in the head at night this Saturday (30) during the Corso Teresina in Raul Lopes Avenue. According to the Military Police, the case took place in front of the mall when the victim fell out with someone else.
[…]
Pamella underwent surgery and remains hospitalized at the Emergency Hospital in Teresina (HUT). The delegate Adelmar Canabrava, holder of the 12th Police District, said it would also gather information on the case and did not confirm the version of the transvestite friends.
[Translated by Google]
To me these trans women are brave, they face death every day. Every time they go out the door they never know if it will be their last day. Violence in countries with either religious oppression or a “Macho” culture can make all LGBT people at risk.



Update 11:00AM

I just found this on Planet Transgender
Brazilian Trans Activist Melissa Campus Attacked
Added by Kelli Busey on February 9, 2016.

Transgender activist Melissa Campus was attacked on her way home January 12th. The attack which begun as simple robbery turned violent when then assailant realized that Mellisa’s was transgender. What he didn’t know was that this attack would make headlines.
[…]
The attack…
I was returning from a trip to arriving at 02:30 at the Londrina bus station. I was very tired and just wanted to get home. As I got into a taxi, a man appeared out of nowhere, jumping in front of the taxi and accusing me of stealing their belongings, saying I couldn’t leave. All I had with me was my luggage.

Still he kept accusing me saying that I had his belongings when he noticed that I was a trans woman and began to publicly humiliate me questioning my feminine identity, using male pronouns, intentionally misgendering me.

All the people who were there just watched as he pulled me out of the car, and the driver did absolutely nothing and refused to intervene. I only asked him to me take away, but the driver refused, putting me face to face with the aggressor, who started assaulting me with punches, kicks and trying to pin me.

I screamed for the police, security guards, taxi drivers, anyone, but no one did anything. They were watching and laughing!


Sunday, February 21, 2016

Yikes!

Danger, Will Roberson! Danger!

When I started hormones the doctor went over the list of possible side effects of Cross Gender Hormones and one of those listed was diabetes. Well I have diabetes; I was diagnoses with it in early 2012. Well now they are data mining Electronic Health Records (EHR) and some of the findings confirm the prevalence of diabetes for those on CGH.
Electronic Health Record Data May Sharpen Diabetes Screening
Medscape
By Miriam E Tucker
February 19, 2016

Data from electronic health records (EHR) can be used to improve detection of patients with diabetes, finds a new study that also identified possible novel diabetes risk factors.

The results were published online February 16 in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics by Ariana Anderson, PhD, a research professor and statistician at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In their analysis of nearly 10,000 EHRs, Dr Anderson and colleagues identified several new possible risk factors for type 2 diabetes, including a history of viral, chlamydial, and intestinal infections and sexual and gender-identity disorders. On the other hand, migraine disorder and cardiac dysrhythmias were associated with lower risk. Using those findings, they created a model that significantly raised the prediction for type 2 diabetes beyond that of traditional risk factors.
[…]
The study population included approximately 131,000 unique EHR visit entries, containing 9948 patients from 1137 unique sites spanning all 50 United States, collected between 2009 and 2012. Type 2 diabetes was listed as an ICD-9 250.X category diagnosis in 18%. Because there were a great deal of missing data — such as family history and prior medication use — the setup posed a "worst-case" scenario for prediction, Anderson and colleagues write.
And how much was the increase?
The full EHR model identified unexpected factors that were associated significantly with current type 2 diabetes. Sexual and gender-identity disorders increased the risk by approximately 130%, about the same order of magnitude as hypertension. Sexually transmitted disorders raised the risk by 82% and gastrointestinal infections by 88%, both roughly similar to the 101% rise seen with obesity.
I would suggest that if you are on CGH you should know the symptoms of diabetes, I didn’t and it nearly cost me my life! Here is what you can do to lower the risk and the symptoms of diabetes.

I watch my carbohydrate intake and trying to lose weights and between those two thing I have been managing the disease without drugs or injections.

It Is So Hard To Fight Fear And Ignorance

When I was taking a community organizing class one of the things that they taught was if you can tap a person’s emotions (fear, hate, love, etc.) it becomes very hard to break that connection. Some of Saul Alinsky rules are “Ridicule is man's most potent weapon” and "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself” and that is what the opposition has learned and learned well.
How a Ferocious Backlash to LGBT Equality Is in Full Force While Leaders Have No Strategy
Huffington Queer Voice
By Michelangelo Signorile
February 20, 2016

In South Dakota, Governor Dennis Daugaard is right this moment mulling over a bill sent to his desk by the legislature that would bar transgender students -- kids often facing bullying and discrimination -- from using bathrooms or locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. The bill defines such facilities as "designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex" and federal officials say it violates federal law, specifically Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. South Dakota would be the first place to pass such a law, but it certainly doesn't look like the last.

In Georgia and Mississippi, new "religious liberties" bills that would allow government workers, taxpayer-funded groups and businesses whose owners or operators oppose gay marriage to discriminate againt gays, have advanced. Legislators in over twenty other states are pursuing similar actions. And in Texas, a new Kim Davis is on the horizon, as Molly Criner, the clerk of rural Irion County, says she may not give out marriage licenses to gay couples (no couples have apparently yet come to get one). She testified last week before a Texas legislative committee. "This is going to be something that violates my oath," she claimed.

A backlash against LGBT equality is in full swing, eight months after marriage equality came to the entire nation, and it's not just happening in very conservative places. In Houston, a city which had a lesbian mayor and prided itself on inclusiveness, a ballot measure rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance with an overwhelming majority last November, as opponents targeted transgender people with a campaign of hate and "bathroom panic" via television ads.

LGBT leaders not only didn't have a plan then, they've still not figured out how to deal with bathroom panic and the right's age-old tactic of exploiting people's fears about their children with regard to the presence of gay or transgender people.
I read a number of reports on focus groups run by LGBT organizations and they found it is hard to break that linkage with fear. It worked with segregation (Oh my god, a black man is going to be in a bathroom with a little white boy!), it worked against the gays (Oh my god, a gay man is going to be teaching our children in school!) and it is working with us.

The only things that the focus groups found that somewhat works are education but a lot of the people don’t want to listen and also visibility. Harvey Milk was right when he said,
“Gay brothers and sisters, you must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them, but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you, not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths. Destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake.”
I feel that we have to visible!

I know that is hard for many of us to do because of loss of family, jobs and housing, but who can safely come out should.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Saturday 9: Sixteen Tons

Crazy Sam’s Saturday 9: Sixteen Tons (1955)

Every Saturday I take time off from written on serious topics to have some fun…

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.
I love this song sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford

1) 16 tons = 32,000 pounds, because there are 2,000 lbs. to a ton. Without looking it up, do you know how many ounces are in a pound?
Yes, everyone should know this. Okay I got one for you, how many feet per second is sixty miles an hour*. In other words if you are driving 60 mph and you glance for 1 second at the radio to see the name of the song how many feet have you gone?

2) The singer describes himself as having "a mind that's weak and a back that's strong." Think about yourself. Which feels more powerful today, your body or your brain?
My brain, I exercise it more than my body.

3) The poor chap in this song has money troubles. Are you good at sticking to your budget?
I don’t have any budget. I know how much income I have every month and I just make sure that I don’t spend beyond that every month.

4) Tennessee Ernie Ford snapped his fingers as he recorded this song. It's been said that while it's possible to snap your fingers of both hands, the noise is louder with your "dominant hand." (So if you're a rightie, the finger snap will be louder with your right hand.) Try it yourself. Did you find this to be true?
Nope. I’m left handed but we live in a right hand world so I can snap my fingers equally on both hands, maybe my right hand is a little louder than my left.

5) Mr. Ford appeared as "Cousin Ernie" in three episodes of I Love Lucy. What's your all-time favorite sitcom?
Oh there are so many great sitcoms that there is not just one favorite.  Barney Miller, All in the Family, Cheers, M*A*S*H, Mork and Mindy… how can you name just one?

6) Tennessee Ernie took the money he made from his performing career and invested in a California cattle ranch. Think back to the last beef you ate. How was it prepared?
Beef Stroganoff (without the mushrooms). It sounds fancy but it is easy to make.

7) Mr. Ford passed away at age 72 in 1991. That year, Dr. Seuss also died. What's your favorite Dr. Seuss book?
Horton Hears A Who

8) Gene Roddenberry also died that year. Mr. Roddenberry is best known as the creator of Star Trek. Who is your favorite Star Trek character?
Wow, I hate these type of questions. It is like when someone asks you who is your best friend all your other friends get mad at you because you didn’t pick them. Now how can you name just one? Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov there were all great.

9) Random question: We're having smoothies. What's your favorite?
Believe it or not I never had a smoothie. If I am ordering something like a smoothie I much rather have a chocolate milk shake (or for you in other areas around the country frappe)

*88 ft/sec. That conversion was hammered into my head in engineering school.  When you think in ft/sec when you are driving it kind of sinks in how fast you are going when you change your radio station so if you are going 75 you are approximately going 30% fast than 60 so 30% of 88 ft/sec is 114 ft/sec.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Coming Out Of The Closet

Many of you reading this blog knows what that phrase means but many also do not understand what it really means. For many non-LGBT people they think it happens only once, but for us in the community we know it is a never ending process.

Awhile back my primary care doctor’s office called with my lab results and the nurse asked for me and I replied “speaking” and she replied “No I have to speak to Diana.” Then we got into an argument on whether or not I was Diana and I hung up on her. I called the office back and got a different nurse who knew who I was and she gave me my lab results. Or you may have to call your credit card company about a fraudulent charge and you have to argue with them that you are really you – now tell me what crook is going to call the card company up to report they just fraudulently changed a credit card?

For some of us, we traded one closet for another. Many trans people who transitioned and can integrate into society chose not to disclose their former life, so in a way what they have really done is to trade closets and if that is what they want that is okay. But sometimes it does come back and bite you. Maybe when you apply for a loan or an old life insurance policy surfaces, when my father died I never knew he had a life insurance policy with me as beneficiary so I had to go back to the Probate Court to get a notarized copy of my name change order.

Some LGB people claim that they have nothing in common with the “T” but one thing that we do have in common is coming out. One time in Provincetown on the last weekend of Women’s Week and the beginning of Trans Week at the B & B where I was staying they put out wine and cheese at five for their guests, I was sitting there with some friends and a group of lesbians came down and sat on the other side of us. Both sides were quiet and talking among themselves when one of the lesbians asked us a question which is lost in the fog of time but I remember I mentioned about coming out, several bottles of wine later we were telling our coming out stories.

Going back “Into the Closet:” for many LGBT as they get older and need to depend upon healthcare services they go back into hiding for fear of not getting proper medical care. Many lesbians and gays keep their sexual orientation a secret and some trans people detransition because of fear of harassment or discrimination.

So where did the phrase “coming out of the closet” come from? One of the blogs that I read had a posting about the phrase and he has a link to “What is the Origin of the Phrase ‘Come Out of the Closet’?” on the Mental Floss website.
According to George Chauncey's comprehensive history of modern gay culture, Gay New York, the closet metaphor was not used by gay people until the 1960s. Before then, it doesn't appear anywhere "in the records of the gay movement or in the novels, diaries, or letters of gay men and lesbians."

"Coming out," however, has long been used in the gay community, but it first meant something different than it does now. "A gay man's coming out originally referred to his being formally presented to the largest collective manifestation of prewar gay society, the enormous drag balls that were patterned on the debutante and masquerade balls of the dominant culture and were regularly held in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, and other cities." The phrase "coming out" did not refer to coming out of hiding, but to joining into a society of peers. The phrase was borrowed from the world of debutante balls, where young women "came out" in being officially introduced to society.
Balls are still quite common, I don’t know if they are still used for “coming out” but there are probably a lot of LGBT people who come out at them not on purpose but rather… “Bob was that you in the newspaper picture at that gay ball?” (True story, I know someone who that happened to. “Her” picture was in the newspaper about Hartford Pride and fellow employees questioned “Him” about it. Opps!)

There is a good website that I found that has some good tips on coming out... How to Come Out

Set Your Wayback Machine

To the year 1971

On the internet archives there are old volumes of Drag Queen posted on the site and I just started reading them and some of the things they wrote about are interesting look into the past. Volume 1 Issue 3 I just started and one of the items that popped out at me was an article about a gay man’s arrest and having his driver license revoked.
New London CONN
A homosexual backed by the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, is going to court to challenge the State's refusal to reinstate his drivers' license. (ED, This could be enforced against transvestites, hetero or homo, that's why we must unite for greater strength.)
You got that? They took his driver’s license because he was gay!

How would like to pay only $220 for Gender Confirming Surgery?
LONDON:
Sex change operations costing $220 each --paid for by taxpayer -- are on the increase in Britain, an expert in treatment of sexual deviants said. He was commenting on a disclosure by a Sunday newspaper that seven men have been changed into women in Britain during 1970.

A senior official of the Albany Trust, a charity organization which works with homosexuals, said, "There are a growing number of people with transsexual problems seeking medical advice. It would be outrageous if such operations were only available privately."
Not bad… but surgery has come a long ways since 1971.

And marriage has always been an issue, even back in 1972.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
Two homosexuals who want a marriage license were refused a court order for one in Hennepin County District Court. Jack Baker and James Michael McConnell, who are challenging the constitutionality of a state law, has also been denied in an earlier court action for a license. Mr. Baker recently won the presidency of the Student Council at the University of Minnesota. One of the campaign ads pictured him sitting with his legs outstreched, wearing women's white high -heeled shoes. The caption was Put me in your shoes. He won the office overwhelmingly.
And the battle to pass legislation in New York was going strong back in 1971!
MARCH ON ALBANY
Seek Statute to Legalize Crossdressing!


Grant us the courage this hour, stung the drag queens, tv's and homosexuals attending the church services prior to the march on the State Capital in Albany, Sunday, March 14th. The march was in support of the bills currently before the legislators in behalf of liberalized laws on homosexuality. Amongst them are bill for the repeal of impersonation laws, according to the Gay Activists Alliance news release.

This is the first time in the history of the homophile movement that the gay organizations have publicly acknowledged as one of their goals the legalization of female impersonation.

Queens Liberation Front supporters, S.T A.R (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) and their guests went to Albany on one of the four buses chartered by the NY GAA, slowly marched out of the church with the song still ringing in their ears and tears in their eyes. . . "Grant us courage for the facing of this hour…"

Albany is known for its small town attitudes so the demonstrators didn't know what their reaction would be to the three thousand invaders.

Would they allow the gays to demonstrate without any trouble? Would the drag queen and tv be arrested? How did they feel about the invasion? According to one of the NYC newspapers, "Well, they loved Lee Brewster, anyway. . . Lee displayed 'her' womanly charms to stupefied [sic] firemen and their hardhat buddies. " The Albany KNICKFOCHER NEWS reported the demonstration and speeches in their article, "We're not afraid anymore", the signature line of the Rev. Troy Perry. Womens Lib Leader, Kate Millet, Lee G. Brewster of QLE and the Rev, Troy Perry were quoted in the article.

Amongst the QUEENS delegation was Bunny Eisenhower who explained to passersby why he dressed. His wife was with him and contributed to his defense and the two enlightened many. Bobbie, who gives drag balls and dances and his friend carried the QUEENS banner during the entire march. The town was stunned but no trouble occurred [sic].

After the demonstration the participants returned to New York feeling a spirit of unity and satisfaction.
So when you hear people say that the trans community are just a “Johnny Come Lately” in demanding their rights, well it is not true! We have always been there, way before the Stonewall Uprising.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Conservative Press Strike Back

The conservative press machine is gearing up with a blitz of anti-trans articles. The Daily Signal a multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation has a dozy.
I Used to Be Transgender. Here’s My Take on Kids Who Think They Are Transgender.
By Walt Heyer
February 16, 2016

My Transgender Story
Living in a self-made gender fantasy world void of reality is not psychologically or emotionally healthy.

I know that to be true. I was transgender kid at the age of 4. For decades, as I tried to live in my male birth gender, the feelings of being a woman only grew stronger.

I sought help from a renowned gender specialist who told me that mine was a clear-cut case of gender dysphoria—strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one’s own assigned sex. He said the only way to get relief was to surgically change genders.

I underwent gender reassignment surgery at 42 years of age after cross-dressing for most of my life.

I lived as a transgender, Laura Jensen, female, for eight years. While studying psychology in a university program, I discovered that trans kids most often are suffering from a variety of disorders, starting with depression—the result of personal loss, broken families, sexual abuse, and unstable homes. Deep depression leads kids to want to be someone other than who they are.
Hmm… do you think it might be because of people who tell us we are damned and going to hell? Or maybe because of people calling us pervert and child rapists? Could it possibly be because of parents throwing their child out on the streets to fend for themselves?
The transgender life is often the direct result of early childhood difficulty or trauma. Assisting a young child into the fabricated ideology of a transgender life is not helping the child sort out what is real and what is fiction.
Oh most definitely let’s blame it on the parents… lets maybe the father was away all the time working to keep the family feed and with a roof over their heads. I know! It must have been because their mother didn’t allow them to have an extra piece of cake. We have heard conservatives blame the parents on being gay, autism, being a bully, being shy, and just about everything in between. Gee, for me I had two loving parents, my father worked a nine to five job and my mother was a housewife. I wonder what they would blame me being trans on?

For them the only “family” is like the old television show “Father Knows Best”

Then there is an article in the Federalist,
Have We Finally Reached Peak Transgender?
Men competing as women at the Olympics, LGBT themes on 30 to 45 percent of prime-time television, and influence at the White House—please tell me we’ve reached the transgender high-water mark.
By Walt Heyer
February 16, 2016

State and local lawmakers across the country are dealing with a barrage of proposals about whether men and boys claiming to be transgender will get legal cover to force their way into both public and privately owned bathrooms and showers with women and girls.

For the 2016 spring Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, officials have indicated they will allow a man who is still packing his “tools” to compete as a female if he has low testosterone and claims to be a female. Under the new Olympic standard, a man with low T can now compete equally with biologically correct females even with all his male parts intact.
And then we have television and the movies, with trans and lesbians and gay characters! Good heaven!
On almost every television network, the preponderance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) characters and storylines is inescapable, almost to the point of saturation, even though it’s completely out of proportion to the real-world LGBT population of an estimated 3.4 percent.
Wow! Four or five shows or movies have trans characters and all of a sudden it is a “preponderance” and notice how the article is about transgender people and now we are lumped in with the gays and lesbians, I guess they couldn’t find enough trans shows to complain about go that added lesbians and gays.
Is it deliberate? Yes. The push to normalize LGBT characters has become all too predictable. We’re in the midst of a major, deliberate, well-executed social indoctrination coming from the entertainment industry, the White House, and pro-trans LGBT activists.
Let’s see if I got my latest “LGBT Agenda newsletter yet. Maybe it is because the media thinks that they can make money off of us? Somehow I don’t think television or movies are going to do anything that they think will cost them money or viewership.

Interesting…

A look at being the only woman in a company.
What Is It Like To Be 'The Only Woman In The Room'?
NPR
By Tania Lombrozo
February 15, 2016

As a physics major at Yale in the 1970s, Eileen Pollack learned about gravitation and quantum mechanics and ballistics. She also learned what it's like to be The Only Woman in the Room, the title of her new book, published by Beacon Press last September.

Unfortunately, many women with interests in science, mathematics and engineering (among other subjects) will relate to Pollack's experience of being in a conspicuous minority. According to statistics provided by the American Physical Society, women today make up fewer than 25 percent of physics majors, with lower numbers at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. These numbers come from 2015 — several decades after Pollack's own undergraduate experience.
[…]
Pollack's book contributes to the conversation about women in science, but not by marshaling evidence from empirical research, nor by developing a detailed policy agenda. She offers bits of evidence and advice here and there, but the book's strength is in the first-person narrative that gives us a vicarious glimpse into the mind of the only woman in the room as she navigates her coursework, her social life and her career plans. If other books answer questions about where biases emerge or what we should do about them, Pollack's book answers the question: "What is it like?"
Before I retired I worked at a multinational engineering/manufacturing company and I was in charge of a test department at one of their manufacturing facility (that is until they decided they would rather farm out the manufacturing) and there was one lone woman in the engineering department. I always thought it was great that she was an engineer since she had to buck the “old boys’ club.”

I know a trans woman who worked in a situation like that, she is a project manager in another multinational engineering company. She went from what “he” said was law in meetings to being asked to get coffee in meetings.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Good News, Bad News… Now The Good News

Illinois is trying to join the club of states that will allow us to change our birth certificates without surgery.
State Bill Would Modernize Process To Change Gender On Illinois Birth Certificates
Progress Illinois
By Ellyn Fortino
February 15th, 2016

Legislation aimed at easing the process for transgender people in Illinois to change the gender marker on their birth certificate was introduced in the state House last week.

State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) is sponsoring the bill, HB 6073. It would eliminate the state's current requirement that transgender people in Illinois provide proof of transition-related surgery in order to obtain a new birth certificate matching their lived gender.
[…]
Eleven other states and Washington, D.C. have already dropped proof-of-surgery rules for changing gender markers on birth certificates.
Somehow I lost count; I thought it was eight states and Washington D.C. but that is a good thing to see that there are more states changing their laws to help us.

I wonder what would happen if someone from those states go to South Dakota goes the bathroom and gets arrested what would happen? Their birth state says they are female but South Dakota says they are male, it seems to me that Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the "Full Faith and Credit Clause" says that states must recognize other states laws.

Good News, Bad News… First The Bad News

It looks like South Dakota is going to be the first state to ban bathrooms use for us.
Transgender Law Center condemns South Dakota bill targeting transgender youth
Transgender Law Center
February 16, 2016

Today, the South Dakota Senate voted 20-15 to pass HB 1008, a dangerous bill that singles out transgender students and prohibits them from using restrooms and locker rooms consistent with who they are. The bill already passed the House and now goes to the governor’s office.

Statement from Transgender Law Center Executive Director Kris Hayashi:

“It is distressing and disturbing that South Dakota legislators would jeopardize the state school system’s funding and the lives of South Dakota youth in an effort to single out transgender students for discrimination, harassment, and exclusion. Every single child, including transgender youth, should have the opportunity to succeed and be treated fairly by our schools and elected officials. Using state law to force a student to use a separate bathroom from their peers just because they are transgender is not only dangerous and wrong, it is a violation of federal law.
The vote in both cambers was right down party lines. The Republican voted for discrimination and the Democrats voted against the bill.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 has been found by the courts to include discrimination against gender identity under sex discrimination. Federal courts has ruled that gender identity is sex discrimination based in the Supreme Court decision in the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins ruling that sex discrimination encompasses sex stereotyping, in other words that if a person is being discriminated because they don’t look or behave like a “typical” person of their gender it also falls under sex discrimination.

In the past the U. S. Department of Education has threaten to cut funding to school districts that discriminate against trans people. South Dakota received over $300 million dollars in federal education funding, that is all on the line now if the governor signs the bill into law.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

There Is A Big Discussion Going On In WPATH

Over the closing of CAMH, if you are trans you probably already know what CAMH is Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and what doctor worked there, Dr. Zucker who is loved by some and hated by others. Last week New York Magazine wrote an article about him saying the he was railroaded out and now there is an article in the Globe & Mail about him and CAMH.
Gender identity debate swirls over CAMH psychologist, transgender program
By Erin Anderssen
Published Sunday, Feb. 14, 2016

At a private Toronto gathering to honour psychologist Ken Zucker last December, days after he was dismissed from his job at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, colleagues stood to give warm tributes. Some of them had come with prepared speeches, expressing shock over the closing of the Gender Identity Clinic, which Dr. Zucker had run for more than 30 years.

The decision was made under a cloud; Dr. Zucker was called in, given the news by an HR staffer and escorted out the door. Officials at CAMH, one of Canada’s leading mental-health hospitals, apologized publicly that the clinic’s therapy was not “in step with the latest thinking” and released an external review that was critical of the way the clinic treated children and youth struggling with issues relating to their gender identity. By closing the clinic, CAMH also walked away from a $1-million grant that had been awarded to Dr. Zucker and his team to study the effect of hormone blockers on teenagers. Those grants, in a country stingy with research dollars, are not easy to get.
The article discussed both sides of the debate.
When it came his turn to speak, Dr. Zucker, 65, was composed, according to several people at the gathering. “There’s no crying in baseball,” the avid Blue Jays fan reportedly said, in his deep, gruff voice. He was quoting Tom Hanks from the movie A League of Their Own, which, as it happens, portrays a women’s team temporarily gender-swapping the role of male baseball players during the Second World War.

Dr. Zucker went on to share a story about his Jewish father, a graduate student of history in New York City in the 1950s, who had found himself out of work and blacklisted for his socialist views. Dr. Zucker’s family left New York, settling into a Chicago suburb, where his father was an editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica and his mother was the director of a nursery school. In a 2013 interview with the left-leaning magazine The American Prospect, Dr. Zucker explained his parents’ decision to “disappear from the scene” and take up a mainstream middle-class existence. “For the sake of their children,” he is quoted saying, “they needed to become conformist.”
The controversy is over his treatment of gender variant children.
The story Dr. Zucker told at the party is revealing on another level: The notion that conformity brings safety and clarity, and that difference is a risk, is a regular theme in his research. If one can find a way to live happily inside the boy-girl boxes that biology and culture have designed, wouldn’t that be better? Dr. Zucker believed this – he advised parents, for instance, to limit how much their sons played with dolls and dresses, and to hold off when their daughters wanted to change their names in elementary school.

Dr. Zucker’s approach made him a polarizing figure in an emotional debate about how to best treat children and teenagers not so easily pushed back into one box or the other. It put him at odds with a society increasingly willing to allow children to take the lead on how they define their gender. The other side of therapy says: Who cares, in the end, if a boy wants to wear a princess dress, or Martha wants to be called Martin?
And that is the heart of the matter. Trying to force the child into the gendered boxes and following the child’s lead on their gender identity. In one case parents let the child play whichever toys that “he” wanted and that was with Barbie, when “he” was bullied the parents went to see Dr. Zucker and he…
So, in late 2007, they went to see Dr. Zucker. After lengthy family interviews and tests, he laid out his recommended treatment. “It was not offensive or cruel to us,” recalls Carol, who detailed the family’s experience to The Globe and Mail, but asked their identity be protected “It seemed pretty flexible.” As Dr. Zucker explained it to Carol, his theory was to help kids value the “body they have.” In that case, it meant helping her son see that “you may want to be a girl, but it’s okay to be a boy.” Carol says she and her husband had only one agenda for their son: “It was 100 per cent about his happiness.”

For the next year, they visited the clinic twice a week, and then roughly once a week for nearly three years after that. Their son would have play therapy while Carol and her husband would meet with Dr. Zucker. At home, they slowly took away the dolls and pink toys, with their son choosing which ones. “He would be upset,” Carol admits, “and ask for them the next day.” But his favourites remained, and the missing toys were replaced with “gender neutral” options, such as Lego and toy animals. “Her son,” Carol insists, “never touched a truck unless he tripped over it.”
[…]
Carol believes that Dr. Zucker’s advice worked for her son, who is now a popular gay 13-year-old. He doesn’t talk about wanting to be a girl any more, though Carol says they are careful not assume his path is set. “The biggest and most important thing I hold on to as a mother, was that when he was young, he would never talk about his future, never talk about himself as an adult.” Now, she says, he is making plans. “This was a healthy outcome for us.” She gives Dr. Zucker the credit: “I know the positive impact his therapy had on the culture of our family.”
But…
A year later, their child told them what she had been feeling for years: She was transgender. This time, her parents took her to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, where the truth spilled out and she was given hormone blockers to slow puberty.

She finally told them: “Every birthday, every time I blew out the candles, I wished to be a girl.” She admitted to hiding costumes and wigs so she wouldn’t get in “trouble,” and expressed anger that her parents had not asked her more about how she was feeling, and that they had waited so long to start the hormone treatment.
What we need is more research to help understand how to identify trans children, we need long term studies to better understand the best treatment for trans children, that million dollars research grant could have gone a long ways to help our understanding, but CAMH was not the best organization to do the study.