Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Sometimes We Forget

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Sometimes We Forget

What it is like being trans* in other countries around the world; especially in conservative religious countries.

Iranian transgender refugee struggles for acceptance
Eight months ago transgender woman Tannaz Mehraban came to Canada to start a new life
By Gavin Fisher
CBC News
Posted: Aug 03, 2014

Tannaz Mehraban woke in the middle of the night to find her brother standing next to her. He told her they had to leave the house — immediately. Her family was going to kill her the next day.

Mehraban, who was only 13 at the time, had recently been kicked out of school for being someone who looked like a boy but dressed as a girl.

“Because this was a great tragedy for my family — I had destroyed my family’s reputation in the community — my family wanted to kill me,” Mehraban said, speaking in Farsi through an interpreter.

This was just one of many hardships that Mehraban had to face as a transgender woman in Iran. After being persecuted her whole life Mehraban, now 38, arrived in Canada as a refugee eight months ago. She currently resides in Burnaby.

In countries like Iran, Kuwait, and Indonesia it can be fatal for being trans*. In Kuwait roving bands police routinely arrest trans-people and in Indonesia trans-people daily worry about being attacked by roving bands of religious zealots or arrested by the police.

And it is not just confined to the Middle East in Greece last year there were reports about trans-people being rounded up as “undesirables” and held in detention centers.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Sometimes We Forget

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