I Thought That We Were Beyond This

There is one person who we put our lives in their hands and that person is our doctor. We count on their skills and good will to keep us alive and when that trust is not justified we can literally die.

When I first came out, I saw the movie “Southern Comfort” about Robert Eads, a trans man who died of ovarian cancer in rural Georgia because he couldn’t find a doctor to treat him and I always wondered why did he come north to get treatment. I figured it was only southern doctors who wouldn’t treat him, I was wrong.

This Trans Man's Breast Cancer Nightmare Exemplifies The Problem With Transgender Health Care
HuffPost Live
By Ryan Buxton
Posted: 06/15/2015

Jay Kallio is a transgender man who lived through a healthcare nightmare he hopes no other trans person will ever have to face, and he shared the painful story with HuffPost Live's Nancy Redd last week.

It began when Kallio found a lump on his breast just three months after a mammogram. He had a second mammogram, then a biopsy and, when weeks went by without receiving any test results, he just assumed everything was fine. That changed when he suddenly got a phone call from the doctor who performed his biopsy -- and who was not his primary physician.

"She said to me, 'Hi, I was just curious how you were doing with your diagnosis.' And I said, 'What diagnosis?' She she sort of spurted, '[Your doctor] hasn't called you yet?'" Kallio remembered.

And what did his doctor have to say…

"The first thing [the doctor] said was, 'I have a real problem with your transgender status.' And he said, 'When I found out you were transgender, the first thing I wanted to do, my first impulse was to send you to psychiatry,'" Kallio said. "So this is what a breast surgeon wanted to do with my breast cancer, is first send me to psychiatry."

After a long struggle, Kallio eventually did find a "very welcoming" surgeon to help him, and the procedure also accomplished something Kallio had never been able to do because of his low income.

I worry about his because you will probably not know if your doctor is biased against you, it is one thing to tell you to your face that he or she doesn’t want you as a patient but another to withhold information that is vital to your health. Also as "Religious Freedom" bill proliferate you have to wonder how they will affect our healthcare if we end up in an emergency room/

I had one doctor who I was a little leery of, he seemed a little uneasy to treat me. To me he seemed eager to get me out the door and unfortunately it was about a chronic disease. He never found a cause of the illness but I am showing improvement, he that there was no need for any follow exams because I was improving. I am not seeing him now and if my condition gets worst I will seek another doctor.

Here is Jay’s interview on Huffington Post Gay Voices

So What Has Gotten The Opposition In A Tilly?

It is diversity training. Yup, they have their tail feathers all on edge over diversity training for Hartford School principles.

Hartford School Principals To Get Training on LGBT Issues
By Vanessa de la Torre
June 9, 2015

HARTFORD — School principals in the city will receive mandatory training next academic year on how to create a more inclusive environment for students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, district officials and legal advocates said.

The training, in partnership with legal groups that represent LGBT students and their families, will include an overview on anti-discrimination laws, proper terminology and how to navigate personal

Central office administrators will also be trained on LGBT issues in August as part of the district's professional development for the 2015-16 year. The nonprofit True Colors will lead the instruction, said David Medina, a schools spokesman.

So what has gotten their tail feathers up?

It was because of “"providing a welcoming environment for all…” because they say it is only one sided that it doesn’t consider those who object on religious grounds or consider parental rights. They feel that their right to discriminate and harass is being abridged by gay rights activists.

Being open and affirming doesn’t mean you have to give up your religious beliefs all it means is that you cannot bully or harass other people and the same time open and affirming it means that students cannot be bullied or harassed because of their religious beliefs. But I guess that isn’t good enough for them, they want to bully LGBT students but they don't want to be bullied because of their religious beliefs

Some Gays Just Don’t Get It Or Don’t Want To Get It

When I was down at the Norwalk Pride on Saturday a number of people asked me if I saw Alyssa Edwards, Laganja Estranja, and Shangela from RuPaul's Drag Race and I just said no. The thing many trans people are not fans of the RuPaul's Drag Race show because of the use of words that are objectionable to many in the trans community.

Earlier in the month the Guardian had an article about RuPaul,

RuPaul: 'Drag is dangerous. We are making fun of everything'Riding high with his reality show Drag Race, the star tells us why he will never be mainstream, the importance of finding your tribe, and the secret to being a ‘badass bitch’

I don’t mind drag; it is just not my cup of tea. What I do mind is the words that RuPaul uses, there are many people who do drag that understand that they do not need to use words that hurt the trans community. But RuPaul refuses to change his ways.

Last year, RuPaul found himself under fire from an even less likely enemy. A number of people from the transgender community objected to the show’s use of the phrase, ‘You’ve got she-mail’ following a challenge called Female or She-male? There were complaints to its US network, Logo, which dropped the line for the new season. “I would not have changed it, but that’s their choice,” he says now. “Our intention was always coming from a place of love. On paper, you cannot read intention, so it was actually hurtful. First of all, drag is dangerous. We are making fun of everything. But when someone doesn’t get the joke or feels offended by it, it’s a lose-lose situation, because you can’t explain a joke. It isn’t funny if you explain it.”

Is anything off-limits when it comes to comedy? “Not with me. It has saved my life. Some of the trauma from my childhood and my sisters and some of the stuff going on in my family, we just fuckin’ laughed.” This is what he learned from his punk-rock “tribe” in Atlanta – to laugh in the face of “how horrible the situation was on Earth”. He grows serious. “If you cannot laugh at it, you gotta buck up and get strong. Cos I think everything is a fucking laugh riot.” And right there, you get a glimpse of the 14-year-old who decided not to check out, but to own what it means to be the most badass bitch of all.

Yes there are limits to the words you can use, you don’t use the “N” word, you don’t use ethnic or racial slurs or you don’t use the “F” word for gays and you don’t use words the trans community finds objectionable. Those words are the words we hear called out on the street to degrade us or are used in the pornography business.

Words hurt.

The Times

The New York Times has had a number of trans articles, some bad but most of them good. The latest is about trans history and they have a great video, the article “Beyond Caitlyn Jenner Lies a Long Struggle by Transgender People” covers a synopsis of our history,

The Jenner story is a jumping-off point for the latest installment of Retro Report, a series of video documentaries examining major stories of the past and their enduring effects. The video, though, goes much farther back, to the 1960s and gay rights protests in San Francisco and New York. Transgender men and women, people whose sense of identity did not match the body they entered life with, played significant roles. But over the years they bore burdens unique to them, in part because they were unfamiliar to most Americans.
[…]
Life in prisons or in homeless shelters, never pleasant for anyone, can be a nightmare of rape and other abuses for transgender men and women. Lourdes Ashley Hunter, executive director of the Trans Women of Color Collective, left Detroit in 2002 to put down roots in New York. Homeless on her arrival and turned away by a women’s shelter that would not accept her gender identity, she had no choice but to go to a men’s shelter. There, she told Retro Report, she was raped in the shower by a man holding a razor blade.

Here in Connecticut we had an incident where a trans woman was put into a men’s shelter even through Connecticut law and HUD guidelines require trans people to be placed into a shelter of their gender identity. When I was giving training in a homeless shelter and got to the law and HUD policy their mouths dropped, they had a trans woman in their men’s shelter.

One goal of advocacy groups is to take control of their own narrative. “Language is power,” Ms. Boylan said, echoing an understanding among political groups that a national debate on, say, a topic like the estate tax is shaped mightily by whether one calls it “a death tax” or “a Paris Hilton tax.” The rights group Glaad, formed in the 1980s as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, has issued a guide for news organizations filled with explanations about which words are acceptable and which are not. “Transgender,” this advisory makes clear, is an umbrella term that can encompass various forms of identity. It may be applied to those who alter their bodies with hormones or through surgery and to those who make no physical changes.

But RuPaul hasn’t learned that yet, in the Guardian he says,

Last year, RuPaul found himself under fire from an even less likely enemy. A number of people from the transgender community objected to the show’s use of the phrase, ‘You’ve got she-mail’ following a challenge called Female or She-male? There were complaints to its US network, Logo, which dropped the line for the new season. “I would not have changed it, but that’s their choice,” he says now. “Our intention was always coming from a place of love. On paper, you cannot read intention, so it was actually hurtful. First of all, drag is dangerous. We are making fun of everything. But when someone doesn’t get the joke or feels offended by it, it’s a lose-lose situation, because you can’t explain a joke. It isn’t funny if you explain it.”

Words have power is something he hasn’t figured out yet, but that is another blog.

The NY Times video is well worth watching…

Topic Du Jour

Have you noticed that everyone want to get on the trans bandwagon?

I have been getting so many requests to interviews from the media that I can’t answer them fast enough and I had to farm them out to other trans people. Between Caitlyn and passing the birth certificate bill I have been busy. There has been a flood of newspaper articles, television shows and just about every type of media has a trans story. People and celebrities are falling over one another to voice their support.

Miley Cyrus Launches Instagram Portrait Series To Celebrate Trans People
MTV
By emilee lindner
June 15, 2015

Miley Cyrus is throwing herself in the trans acceptance movement once again, partnering up with Instagram to help non-cis people share their stories. The singer announced the #InstaPride hashtag on Monday (June 15) to get the conversation going.

“I’m launching #InstaPride today, in partnership with @Instagram, to share stories of transgender and gender expansive people from around the country,” Cyrus wrote on Instagram, accompanying a photo of smiley-faced balloons — a design that has become Miley’s logo lately. “Over the next 2 weeks, you’ll meet them and the people in their lives who support them, as we highlight their stories of resilience.”

We are moving from being the wacko killer or the murder victim to having our own reality show. Entertainment Weekly website has an article, “The transition will be televised,”

A sports figure comes out as transgender, and the general public is riveted by her story, which is met with everything from bigotry to curiosity to empathy. All at once, the subject seems to be everywhere from op-ed pages to dinner-table conversations. Transgender stories – this time fictional – start to gain a toehold in popular culture. The highest-rated sitcom on network TV takes some tentative steps toward exploring the fluidity of gender identity by having a gay cross-dressing performer as a recurring character. A popular medical drama wins an Emmy nomination for a two-part episode about a doctor who undergoes gender-reassignment surgery.
[…]
1970s, when a People magazine interview remarked coldly that Richards’ “buttocks are flat, her breasts small” and smirked that she could end up the “King of the Virginia Slims circuit.” But Jenner was also less alone. In the past year, the Amazon series Transparent, about a dad who comes out as trans to her three varyingly sympathetic adult children, has won Golden Globes for best comedy series and best actor (Jeffrey Tambor). Trans actress Laverne Cox appeared on Time’s cover and returns as trans inmate Sophia Burset on the third season of Orange Is the New Black. The final season of Fox’s Glee featured a subplot in which Coach Shannon Beiste (played by Emmy nominee Dot-Marie Jones) had reassignment surgery, a story line that climaxed with the appearance of a 200-person trans choir. The producer of daytime’s The Bold and the Beautiful surprised actress Karla Mosley by telling her that her character would be revealed as trans. Netflix’s new sci-fi thriller Sense8 features a trans character (played by trans actress Jamie Clayton) as the focus of one of its eight intertwining plotlines. And, of course, reality TV is deep in the mix: Aside from I Am Cait, Jenner’s own upcoming E! docuseries about her transition, there’s ABC Family’s 10-part Becoming Us, about an Illinois high school junior whose father is trans.

Also another change is that trans actresses and actor are starting to get the parts instead of straight actresses or actors.

The HRC blog reports that,

Lana Wachowski’s newest project featuring openly transgender actress Jamie Clayton premiered on Netflix last week.

Lana and her brother, Andy, wrote and executive-produced the new sci-fi show, “Sense8.”

Wachowski, the critically acclaimed director of the Matrix trilogy and Cloud Atlas, is an openly transgender woman.

Clayton plays Nomi Marks, an openly transgender “hacktivist.”

Then actress Michelle Hendley is reported to be on a new show, “The Player” about a security expert in Las Vegas. IMDb says that she will be “Sally Ride” on the show, my guess is that she will be a “show girl” and not the astronaut.

Huckabee

At the beginning of the month former governor, presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee made a joke about trans people, the other day Huffington Post Religion had an article about it.

Why Mike Huckabee Fails His Christian Duty By Mocking Transgender People
USA Today
By Kristen Powers
Posted: 06/11/2015

How should Christians treat transgender people?

The answer seems obvious: With respect and love. Yet former governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite of Christian conservatives, took to mocking transgender people at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention as he criticized city ordinances that allow people to use public restrooms based on how they identify their gender.
[…]
Though Huckabee might believe that being transgender is sinful, that’s not a uniform position. Pat Robertson acknowledged in 2013 that “I think there are men who are in a woman’s body. It’s very rare, but it’s true. Or women that are in men’s bodies.” Robertson added, “I don’t think there’s any sin associated with” transitioning to the other gender.

The church should be the safest place in the world to discuss personal struggles. Huckabee could help make it so by saying two simple words: I’m sorry.

The thing is that there are many open and affirming churches and their numbers are growing.

As one evangelical church ‘comes out’ for LGBT rights, others cast a wary eye
Religious News Service
By Heidi Hall
March 3, 2015

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) Pastor Stan Mitchell’s announcement that his evangelical GracePointe Church would fully affirm gay members met with a standing ovation from some, stunned silence from others, but everybody prayed together quietly at the end of it.
[…]
The shifts and conversations within this Bible Belt congregation mirror a larger debate among American evangelicals as they engage tricky and sensitive matters of human sexuality, the authority of Scripture and a rapidly changing culture. That dialogue is being pushed by Christians who, like Mitchell, no longer believe that the terms “evangelical” and “LGBT-affirming” are mutually exclusive.

A handful of large evangelical churches are publicizing their supportive stances. The Highlands Church in Denver was among the first, suffering deep drops in attendance and donations but now recovering. EastLake Community Church in Seattle announced its LGBT inclusion and affirmation; Mitchell spent a February weekend there, huddling with church leaders.

The churches are finding out that many leave the congregation but more come in to join the church.

I think more and more people don’t want to go to a church that preaches “hate thy neighbor” but rather go to a church that preaches “love thy neighbor.”

We Have Protection For The Kids, But…

A lot times we don’t have protection for adult bullying or if there is it is not followed.

It was just recently that the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) had a policy on employment against trans people and eighteen states and the District of Columbian have protection for trans people in employment, but Wisconsin is not one of them.

Transgender MPS teacher commits suicide after bullying complaints allegedly ignored
WDJT CBS 58
By Marshanna Hester
Posted: Jun 12, 2015

But Greinke said workplace bullying was too much for her transgender daughter to handle. Karis committed suicide in November 2014 and left a suicide note, saying the bullying had happened for 10 years, while teaching at German Immersion School.

And the school system knew this was happening and did nothing,

Family and friends said Karis voiced her concerns to the school's principal, but they went ignored.

The school district actually has a policy that states in part…

(2) HARASSMENT/BULLYING (NON-SEXUAL)
(a) The District is committed to maintaining and ensuring a workplace that is free from all other types of workplace harassment. Harassment based on race or any other statutorily protected class or protected activity (e.g., religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, or complaint reporting) is unlawful. Harassment or bullying based on gender identity and/or expression is prohibited. Harassment or bullying for non-discriminatory reasons is inappropriate.
(b) The District is committed to taking appropriate action to sustain a work environment free from any and all types of bullying. Bullying is deliberate or intentional behavior using words or actions intended to cause fear, humiliation, intimidation, harm, or social exclusion. Bullying often involves repeated behavior and an imbalance of power.

But like so many employers what their policy says and what they do is two different things. I applaud the mother in not taking legal action but sometimes that is the only way to bring about change.

CBS 58

Pride!

Friends keep asking me to join them in going to the NYC’s and Boston’s Pride Parades to march, well I don’t go for two reasons. The first is the marching; I am so badly out of shape that I would have a hard time walking that distance let along walking back. And the other reason is I don’t like big cities, I like open spaces.

I like the Northampton Pride because it is small and I usually stop by the uniTy table for awhile to help staff it. While sitting there I usually see a lot of people that I know and we catch up on what happened since last year. The same is true for the Hartford Pride (When they have it that is. There will be a Hartford Pride this September, but I not sure where they will hold it.) and I usually hang out at a group’s table.

That is what I did yesterday down at Norwalk’s Pride, as I wandered around the Pride I met a number of people I knew and I stopped to chat, when I spied the tent for PFLAG of Hartford two friend waved me over and pulled out a chair. We talked for awhile and as I was getting ready to leave a couple of women stopped by, it turned out one was involved with one of the organization that sponsored the Pride, and she was a case worker. I went with her to their table and got so literature from her, listed of trans friendly therapist and endos from the Norwalk area… a gold mine of information.

Hartford is going to have a Pride rally on June 26 from 5 to 7 at the Old State House and the Pride Festival will be in September.

Saturday 9: American Pie

Crazy Sam’s Saturday 9: American Pie (1971)
... because Country Dew suggested it

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) In the lyrics, Don McLean refers to having once been a paper boy. When you were a kid, what job or household chores did you do for spending money?
Mow the lawn or shovel the driveway.

2) Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye. What's the last drink you ordered?
It was a club soda, with a dash of cranberry juice and a lime.

3) He drove to the levee but it was dry. When is the last time it rained where you are?
It rained overnight with some thunder boom booms.

4) When McLean was working on the song, he wrote the lyrics out in long hand. It took him 16 pages of lined notebook paper. Today it's a laptop/smartphone/tablet world, and Sam can't remember the last time she hand wrote anything longer than a sign on her front door that read, "Bell broken. Plz knock." What about you? What's the last thing you wrote with pen or pencil?
I wrote a “thank you” note this morning.

5) McLean's most recent CD is called "Addicted to Black," in reference to Olivia in The Twelfth Night. Quick! Without looking it up, name another character from Shakespeare.
Hamlet or Romeo.

6) Don was born in New Rochelle, New York, which was named one of The Best Walking Cities in America by the American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA). What about your neighborhood? Is it easily walkable?
No, it is up and down hills

7) In 1971, the year this song was popular, Walt Disney World officially opened. Have you ever been to DisneyLand or Disney World?
Nope.

8) Also in 1971, Mattel introduced Malibu Barbie. This doll was a "sun-loving California girl" and had a distinct tan. Have you ever used a tanning bed?
Nope.

9) American Pie is also the name of a 1999 movie. Have you seen it?
I don’t think that I watched the whole think through. Now American Graffiti that was a movie! It is a classic, if you haven’t seen it go and watch it on Amazon.

Peeing In peace

The “bathroom police” are on the job against… ops.

Lawsuit: Fishbone's mistakes woman for man, ejects herBy Katrease Stafford
Detroit Free Press
June 11, 2015

A woman who says she was mistaken for a man while trying to use the women's restroom at Fishbone's Rhythm Kitchen Cafe in January has filed a lawsuit against the Detroit eatery, claiming she was injured when a security officer physically ejected her from the restaurant.

Detroit resident Cortney Bogorad said in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Wayne County Circuit Court that the incident happened about 11 p.m. on Jan. 23 after she and some of her friends ate dinner at Fishbone's in Greektown.
[…]
Bogorad is suing the restaurant for "whatever amount above $25,000," to which she is found to be entitled on eight separate counts, ranging from civil rights violations to intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Bogorad said after she paid for her food, she went to use the women's restroom prior to leaving the restaurant, and while she was in the bathroom, she heard someone shout: "Whatever man is in the restroom, come out now!"
[…]
The guard carried her to the front of the restaurant and physically threw her out onto Monroe Street, Bogorad said. Her upper torso was exposed to all of the patrons that were sitting inside the restaurant.

"... In the process she sustained physical damages including contusions, wrist injuries, shoulder injuries and scarring which required medical treatment," the lawsuit stated. "As a direct and proximate result of the defendants' wrongful acts, plaintiff not only suffered physical damages, but suffered severe embarrassment, humiliation, shock and mental and emotional distress and anguish."

I hope that she wins!

This is what the trans community has been saying, how can you enforce any bathroom law, what are you going to do, have an officer placed outside of each bathroom checking all IDs? Or are you just going to check those women who do not look womanly enough and that would create embarrassment if you ask a woman for her ID. Also it would create all types of legal entanglements by picking and choosing who you are going to question.

CAMH

Anyone who has been around the trans community long enough has probably heard about CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) in Toronto and their focus on reparative/conversion therapy and Dr. Zucker.

Ontario becomes first province to ban 'conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ children
Legislation proposed by NDP’s Cheri DiNovo passes unanimously at Queen’s Park. Health minister says conversion therapy has ‘no place in Ontario.’
Toronto Star
By: Rob Ferguson Queen's Park Bureau
Published on Thu Jun 04 2015

Ontario has passed a landmark law banning so-called “conversion therapy” on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children and preventing medical practitioners from billing OHIP for it.

The legislation proposed by New Democrat MPP Cheri DiNovo won unanimous support from all three parties at Queen’s Park on Thursday, in time for Pride week, which begins June 19.

It’s the first law of its kind in Canada and goes further than conversion therapy bans in several U.S. states by including protection for the transgender community.

Reparative/conversion therapy is based on “correcting” homosexuality and transgenderism by forcing children to become “straight” what it does in reality is suppress it and as a result suicidal ideologies increase along with depression and self-injuries like cutting.

In the article “Sexology's war on transgender children” on Boing,Boing they have a history of reparative/conversion therapy at CAMH.

To understand the unethical history of anti-transgender reparative therapy, follow the money. The Archives of Sexual Behavior was founded by sexologist Richard Green in 1971, and he made his clinical and editorial goal clear in his first issue: “the prevention of transsexualism.” Green’s team at UCLA was rewarded with funding for this goal. As described in Green’s book The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome,’ his faction of sexologists basically believes gay people are born that way, but being transgender is a lifestyle choice that can be cured by subjecting young children to anti-transgender reparative therapy. Green’s hand-picked editorial successor Kenneth Zucker has subjected hundreds of children to government-subsidized “therapeutic intervention,” and he uses the Archives to promulgate his views.

Though most gender non-conforming children do not make a gender transition later in life, clinics like Zucker’s at CAMH make money from anxious parents by diagnosing Gender Identity Disorder in children, a disease Zucker and friends created in 1980. To cure it, Zucker developed a version of Green’s clinical protocols: parents must shame or punish feminine boys who play with dolls, make art using pink or purple colors, draw pictures of girls, or seek out girls as playmates.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychoanalytic Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Social Workers all have called for banning reparative/conversion therapy for minors. Additionally, President Obama has called for its ban and a number of states have also banned reparative/conversion therapy for minors.

Guilty

But the damage has been done, DCF is guilty of overstepping their bounds. The court order to send Jane Doe to an adult prison was overturned by an appeals court.

CT Court Reverses Transfer Of Transgender Teen To Prison
Hartford Courant
By Josh Kovner
June 8, 2015

RTFORD — The transfer last year of a 16-year-old transgender girl to an adult prison was improper, the state appellate court said Monday in a ruling that will hold state child-protection officials to a higher standard for future transfers.

The Department of Children and Families will now have to present "clear and convincing evidence" that a child is too dangerous to remain in DCF custody, that the department is not capable of controlling the child, and that there is some evidence that prison would be in the child's best interest.

But the psychological damage has been done to Jane Doe and I don’t think she will ever get over being put into solitary confinement when you are sixteen.

"We had anticipated that (a reversal of the judge's transfer order) would be based on a finding that the statute itself is unconstitutional because it allows for the state to imprison society's most vulnerable people without requiring a criminal conviction," said Connolly.

"It is unfortunate that, as the court recognized, there is no remedy for the harm Angel R. experienced," Connolly said.

What is going to become of her when she turns eighteen this fall and ages out of the “system”? DCF will just wipe their hands and say “Not our problem now.” and walk away. What will become of Jane Doe with no social skills, no education, and no job skills?

I Wonder What Connecticut Will Be Like

Connecticut birth certificate law will go into effect on October 1^st and I wonder will there be a rush to change our birth certificates like in New York City?

Applicants for NYC transgender birth certificates skyrocket
CNYCentral.com
June 10, 2015

NEW YORK (AP) -- The number of New Yorkers who have applied for transgender birth certificates has skyrocketed since the city council removed the sex reassignment surgery requirement.

The council decided last year that a person does not need to have sex reassignment surgery to change the gender designation on his or her birth certificate.

The governor hasn’t signed the bill yet but he was in favor of the bill so he will probably sign it into law.

Will Connecticut see the same rush to get the gender on trans people who can’t have surgery? The nuts and bolts still have to worked out her in Connecticut first, what forms will we need and how much will it cost to get our gender changed on our birth certificates needs to be determined.

Update 6/12/15 7:30AM
You cannot change your birth certificate if you were born in NYC, only if you are living in NYC and were born elsewhere in NY.

What Makes A Woman? Part 2: The Brain

Yesterday I wrote about the New York Times opinion “What Makes a Woman?” about diversity in the trans community, today I am writing about another comment the author made in the article.

Do women and men have different brains?
[…]
But when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism.

“My brain is much more female than it is male,” he told her, explaining how he knew that he was transgender.
[…]
I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women — our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods — into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes. Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side — people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination — are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us.

That’s the kind of nonsense that was used to repress women for centuries. But the desire to support people like Ms. Jenner and their journey toward their truest selves has strangely and unwittingly brought it back.

Well actually Caitlyn is right and Ms. Burkett is wrong, there is a difference between women’s and men’s brain; transgender women’s brain is a lot like a women’s brain and  transgender men a lot like men’s brain.

There is substantial research to back that up. In Psychology Today article "Brain Differences Between Genders" by Gregory L. Jantz Ph.D., he writes,

Male brains utilize nearly seven times more gray matter for activity while female brains utilize nearly ten times more white matter. What does this mean?

Gray matter areas of the brain are localized. They are information- and action-processing centers in specific splotches in a specific area of the brain. This can translate to a kind of tunnel vision when they are doing something. Once they are deeply engaged in a task or game, they may not demonstrate much sensitivity to other people or their surroundings.

And there is also difference in the structure of the brain between genders…

A number of structural elements in the human brain differ between males and females. “Structural” refers to actual parts of the brain and the way they are built, including their size and/or mass.

Females often have a larger hippocampus, our human memory center. Females also often have a higher density of neural connections into the hippocampus. As a result, girls and women tend to input or absorb more sensorial and emotive information than males do. By “sensorial” we mean information to and from all five senses. If you note your observations over the next months of boys and girls and women and men, you will find that females tend to sense a lot more of what is going on around them throughout the day, and they retain that sensorial information more than men.

Additionally, before boys or girls are born, their brains developed with different hemispheric divisions of labor. The right and left hemispheres of the male and female brains are not set up exactly the same way. For instance, females tend to have verbal centers on both sides of the brain, while males tend to have verbal centers on only the left hemisphere. This is a significant difference. Girls tend to use more words when discussing or describing incidence, story, person, object, feeling, or place. Males not only have fewer verbal centers in general but also, often, have less connectivity between their word centers and their memories or feelings. When it comes to discussing feelings and emotions and senses together, girls tend to have an advantage, and they tend to have more interest in talking about these things.

White matter is the networking grid that connects the brain’s gray matter and other processing centers with one another. This profound brain-processing difference is probably one reason you may have noticed that girls tend to more quickly transition between tasks than boys do. The gray-white matter difference may explain why, in adulthood, females are great multi-taskers, while men excel in highly task-focused projects.

And the differences also carry over to the trans person. In the New Scientist article “Transsexual differences caught on brain scan” the author writes,

Antonio Guillamon's team at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain, think they have found a better way to spot a transsexual brain. In a study due to be published next month, the team ran MRI scans on the brains of 18 female-to-male transsexual people who'd had no treatment and compared them with those of 24 males and 19 females.

They found significant differences between male and female brains in four regions of white matter – and the female-to-male transsexual people had white matter in these regions that resembled a male brain (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.006). "It's the first time it has been shown that the brains of female-to-male transsexual people are masculinised," Guillamon says.

In a separate study, the team used the same technique to compare white matter in 18 male-to-female transsexual people with that in 19 males and 19 females. Surprisingly, in each transsexual person's brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007). "Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female," says Guillamon.

So Caitlyn is right when she says “My brain is much more female than it is male.”

No one knows why this is happens, just like no one knows why people are left handed but their brains are different from right handed people. Nature is diverse, lets celebrate that diversity.

Doublespeak

Do you remember in "1984" Orwell introduced us to the words doublethink and newspeak. We the politicians have it down to a science, saying one thing and mean another.

Rand Paul on Transgender Rights: 'Government Shouldn't Ask About Your Personal Life'
The Kentucky senator's libertarian streak makes him reluctant to condemn Obama policies.
Bloomberg Politics
By David Weigel
June 6, 2015

On Friday, I asked Kentucky Senator Rand Paul if, as president, he'd continue the Obama administration's approach to transgender rights. Since December, the Department of Justice has interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to include gender identity.

On the question of the Justice Department's move, Paul didn't exactly endorse the policy but, interestingly, he didn't exactly repudiate it either. He speculated that government could bar discrimination, but wondered about the legal implications.

"I think that government should not ask about your personal life," said Paul. "I would make that a rule—government shouldn’t ask about your personal life when you apply to anything. It would be wrong for the government to discriminate based on anything like that. But then, I don’t know what that exactly means. You get into [questions like] can you sue over it? The government ought to be as neutral as possible."

Sen. Paul’s live and let live policy sounds like a policy man LGBT people could live with, that he doesn’t believe in some of the draconian bills that have been introduced by some Republicans. But you have to dig a little deeper to find out what he does believe, in a 2011 The Hill article he is quoted as saying,

Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), faced criticism during his campaign for Senate last fall because of similar remarks he made, also during an appearance on MSNBC. Rand Paul had advanced a similar argument about property rights, and, under political pressure, issued a follow-up statement in which he voiced support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and would not support any efforts to repeal it.

Some libertarians argue that the government overstepped its authority in the landmark legislation, which sought to ban discrimination by private businesses and organizations. Paul sought to draw a distinction between holding that opinion and supporting the segregation and other tools of discrimination that the '64 law sought to abolish.

And in a CCN article said this about Sen. Rand Paul,

While campaigning for the Senate four years ago, Paul sparked a firestorm for questioning parts of the historic law, especially its underpinnings that place restrictions on private property.

The law gave the federal government too much power in telling business owners what they could and could not do, he argued. While he expressed strong abhorrence for racism, he said it was the job of communities, not the government, to fix discrimination in private places by boycotting such businesses.

So he is against segregation and discrimination, he just feels that the government shouldn’t do anything about it and that means don’t expect him to advance any legislation like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or any additions to the Civil Rights Act that includes us.

What Makes A Woman?

I am a firm believer in diversity; it is our differences that make us unique. We all come from different cultural, race, nationalities, and gender backgrounds that makes us all different and each of us have our own way of thinking that is molded by our environment.

Watching young children play we can see the difference in genders between boys and girls, but that is only a generality. There are girls that like to play rough and tumble with the boys and we have girls that want to be princesses but that doesn’t make those that want to play with the boys any less a girl. There are boys that like to play with dolls and play house and there are boys who are into sports and are hyper masculine, but they still are boys no matter how they play.

In the New York Times opinion “What Makes a Woman?” by Elinor Burkett she writes,

But when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism.

“My brain is much more female than it is male,” he told her, explaining how he knew that he was transgender.

This was the prelude to a new photo spread and interview in Vanity Fair that offered us a glimpse into Caitlyn Jenner’s idea of a woman: a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara and the prospect of regular “girls’ nights” of banter about hair and makeup. Ms. Jenner was greeted with even more thunderous applause. ESPN announced it would give Ms. Jenner an award for courage. President Obama also praised her. Not to be outdone, Chelsea Manning hopped on Ms. Jenner’s gender train on Twitter, gushing, “I am so much more aware of my emotions; much more sensitive emotionally (and physically).”
[…]
I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women — our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods — into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes. Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side — people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination — are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us.

That’s the kind of nonsense that was used to repress women for centuries. But the desire to support people like Ms. Jenner and their journey toward their truest selves has strangely and unwittingly brought it back.

The thing is there are women who like “a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara and the prospect of regular “girls’ nights” of banter about hair and makeup” and there are trans women who also like that, there are also trans women who also cringe at it.

In addition, look at the people that Caitlyn associates with, movie stars and the Kardashians, they make their living on their looks, and she fits right in with them.

On the website Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, Elizabeth Wood writes in “What Makes A Woman? What Doesn’t!”

There is no single answer to the question “what makes a woman.” Women are not born women. They are born babies, and many of those babies are assigned as female then raised as girls. Some are not. Some are assigned as male and raised as boys and become women later on. Some of the babies assigned as female and raised as girls do not grow into women. Some of them grow into boys or later became men.
[…]
One of the problems is that mainstream US culture only has those two sets of categories for us to try to fit ourselves into. We have female and male, girl and boy, man and woman. Even feminism has often accepted that presumed-essential dichotomy, and then focused on breaking down the inequality and the roles that have been attached to the binary positions. Some transgender rights advocates have also accepted the dichotomy, with the caveat that a person can move from one position to the other fluidly, or can be misplaced and reassigned.

Some feminists and some trans advocates have gone beyond this dichotomy and posited other models. Some presume a continuum (which still, unfortunately, bases itself on poles called M and F). Others have proposed orthogonal models where masculinity is plotted along one access and femininity along another, allowing a person to be both very masculine and also very feminine, or not very masculine or feminine, or a lot of one and a little of the other. Still, we are stuck with traits and characteristics being commonly understood as either masculine or feminine.

There are even names for those who do not want to fit in the gender norms, genderqueer or neutrois,* the thing is that gender identity and expression are a continuum or a spectrum not just a binary. Yes, there are women and trans women (and also men and trans men) who fit the binary but there are also many more that do not fit into the binary.

Don’t hold us up to the images that the media creates for us; we are a lot more than that.

We know that the media creates a single dimensional view of us and we have a drinking game where we take a drink everything time the media shows us putting on makeup or shows a “before” picture of us. We are a multidimensional community.

Part 2 tomorrow:  What Makes A Women - The Brain

*Neutrois is a word taken to mean "non-gendered class." It is a non-binary gender identity which has many definitions, but most people consider it similar to being agender, gender neutral, genderless, or having a null gender.

He Did It Again!

This makes number three. This is the third trans person that President Obama has appointed to high office.

Obama names trans attorney to presidential commission
Washington Blade
By Chris Johnson
June 8, 2015

The White House announced on Monday President Obama has appointed civil rights attorney and long-time LGBT advocate Shannon Minter to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, making him among the senior transgender appointees in the Obama administration.

Obama named Minter to the position in a statement where also he declared his intent to nominate individuals for various ambassadorial appointments.

“I am confident that these experienced and hardworking individuals will help us tackle the important challenges facing America, and I am grateful for their service,” Obama said. “I look forward to working with them.”
[…]
According to the White House website, the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships selects individuals for fellowships to work at the highest levels of federal government. The fellowships are last around a year and consist of working as full-time, paid fellows to senior White House Staff, Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking government officials. Another member of the commission is Republican Ted Olson, who was a lead attorney in federal litigation that overturned California’s Prop 8 and Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage. 

President Obama also appointed Dylan Orr as special assistant in the Labor Department’s Office of Disability Employment Policy and Amanda Simpson was first hired as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce but is now the executive director of the U.S. Army Office of Energy Initiatives.

It Is Only A Skirmish Not The War

It seems like everywhere you look in the news now there is something about trans. Whether it is about Caitlyn Jenner, discrimination cases that were setting on our favor, or school systems losing court cases to segregate us, it seems like everything is going in our favor.

Conservatives Ask How They Lost the Culture War Over Transgender Rights
Bloomberg
By David Weigel
June 5, 2015

On May 28, Sean Fieler wrote a warning about the transgender rights movement, directed to fellow social conservatives. The chairman of the American Principles Project worried that the movement had blown it on Bruce Jenner's story of gender transition.

"Rather than dismiss this change as a politically irrelevant story that belongs in the tabloids, Republicans should view it as a case study in the political power of principle," Fieler argued. "The idea is simple: Your sexual desire, not your biology, constitutes your identity... the rapidly growing acceptance of the previously marginal idea that underlies the transgender moment was only made possible by the Republican decision to opt out of this debate entirely."

Just days later, Jenner—who now asks to be identified as a woman named Caitlyn—became the biggest story in pop culture. She was the cover subject for the next issue of Vanity Fair, a strikingly beautiful woman who resembled Jessica Lange. (Lange herself seemed delighted by the comparison.) Within 24 hours, the debate among supporters of trans rights was not whether Jenner was brave and beautiful. That was obvious. The debate was over whether the media was celebrating Jenner because, as academic Marc Lamont Hill put it, "she conforms to tradition (sic) cis/and European standards of beauty."

In a way we are lucky that Caitlyn looks the way she does, it focused the attention away for everyone else who doesn’t integrate well in to society.

Republicans who have walked into this subject might as well have been walking over hot coals. After Jenner's "coming out" interview aired this spring, BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray asked former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum if the Olympian was a woman. "If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman,” said Santorum. “My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticize people for who they are. I can criticize, and I do, for what people do, for their behavior."
[…]
The only Republican diving into the issue by choice was George Pataki, the socially liberal former governor of New York, who tweeted a rebuke to Huckabee and a defense of Jenner:

If someone chooses a path that's different than mine, we should respect it as opposed to mocking...

Therein lies the conservative dilemma, if they attack Caitlyn for their conservative base they disenfranchise the moderate voters, the candidates are walking a thin line.

But what will happen once the elections are over, will the Republicans still walk that thin line or will they revert to a full out frontal assault? That is why I say we won the skirmish but the battle isn’t over.

There's Gold In Them There Hills

I remember when I was first starting out transitioning all the businesses that advertised that they could make you a lady. There was a famous one in New York City which was a “Finishing School” for crossdressers, there are people who specialized in makeovers, and there are photographers who specialize in Glamor shot for trans community, they all realized that they could make money serving our community.

In an article in the Washington Post “Learning how to be a lady? For the transgender market, coaches help” Jessica Contrera writes,

So now, she was sitting in her monthly appointment at Makeovers With Elizabeth Taylor, a place spoken of with deep reverence in much of D.C.’s transgender community — a leader in the emerging market of services for people starting lives in a different gender.

Beth serves her clients wine, makeup lessons, wardrobe coaching, mannerism training, photography sessions and, most prized of all, acceptance. She calls them she. She asks them who they are and who they want to be. She waves her stubble-covering wand and assures them, “It’s no problem.”

I had makeover and I bought hundreds of dollars of makeup, but over time I realized that it wasn’t me.

I remember reading an article that someone brought to a meeting from an electrolysis magazine about an electrologist who was complaining about men dressed as women coming in her shop to have electrolysis done and she was turning them away. The woman writing the column wrote… “Honey every time I see a crossdresser walking in to the shop, I see a new swimming pool or a Cadillac.”

Another person that I know sells clothes for the community, he specializes in plus size gowns and shoes. He tells of the time he was at a shoe conference and he was talking to a shoe manufacturing rep and he asked about shoe sizes from 11 to 14. The rep asked him why so many large sizes and he said it was for crossdressers, the salesman said they didn’t want anything to do with “those people.” He said that he want to buy 500 pair, the rep paused for a second and said that maybe they could work something out.

It doesn’t take long for the businesses community to realize that there is money to be made from us. The article goes on to say,

After just three years in the business, he doesn’t need to advertise. He sees transgender clients at least once a week, nearly all of whom find him by word of mouth or online forums. …

Cha-ching$$$

Mx

Kind of sound like a racing bike does it?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Mx and how I wouldn’t use it, well there is an article in the New York Times about it.

Sometimes cultural shifts rumble at a glacial pace. Sometimes they gather momentum so quickly that our language can only surge ahead in an effort to catch up. Think selfie, or vape, or normcore.

Next up may be Mx. (pronounced mix), a gender-neutral alternative to Ms. and Mr.

I wouldn’t want to use Mx because I think it is like broadcasting to the world that you are trans or genderqueer. The article goes on to point that out.

Alice H. Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, questioned whether the use of Mx. is a good idea because it could signal (accurately or not) that someone identifies as neither male nor female, strictly speaking, or is in transition.

One reason the culture adopted the Ms. courtesy title, she said, was to avoid employment discrimination against married women, she said. The goal was to obscure personal details, not to highlight them.

“I can sympathize with the desire to not want to declare one gender or another, but using this new category on job applications and such would make me worry,” Professor Eagly said. “Really, we should just do away with all of these titles. That would be more progressive.”

As professor Eagly said, can you imagine sending in a resume using Mx? Yes, discrimination is illegal but why give them ammunition to black ball you when you are applying for a job.

free polls

I Am Torn

I can see both sides in this, I would have no problem if it was for a wedding cake but because I was a political statement I don’t know…

Patrick Stewart Defends Northern Irish Bakery That Rejected 'Support Gay Marriage' Cake
The Huffington Post
By Curtis M. Wong
Posted: 06/05/2015

"Star Trek" icon Patrick Stewart has come to the defense of Northern Ireland's Ashers Bakery, which was found guilty of discrimination last month after refusing to prepare a cake decorated with a same-sex marriage slogan.

The case made headlines in 2014 after Belfast-based activist Gareth Lee requested a cake featuring "Sesame Street" characters, along with the message, "Support Gay Marriage." Although the bakery's owners initially accepted the order, they called two days later to cancel it, citing their religious beliefs.

In response, Stewart called the Ashers case "a deliciously difficult" subject in an interview with BBC's Newsnight, adding that he "found himself on the side of the bakers" because nobody should be forced to write politically-relevant text that they didn't support.

"It was not because it was a gay couple that they objected. It was not because they were celebrating some sort of marriage or an agreement between them," Stewart is quoted as saying. "It was the actual words on the cake that they objected to, because they found them offensive."

I tend to go with Stewart, it was a political statement, and just because the topic was marriage equality it still was a political statement. If it was for a couple who was getting married rather than a political statement I would feel different, but accord to another Huffington Post article it was for,

As the BBC is reporting, Ashers Baking Company declined an order from a member of the Belfast-based Queerspace group, which asked for a cake featuring "Sesame Street" characters Bert and Ernie, along with the slogan, "Support Gay Marriage."

I can see both sides, I think that I am leaning toward giving the bakery because this is a little more complicated than just marriage equality.

What do you think? 

survey solution

One Of Our Pioneers

There is some much publicity over Caitlyn Jenner, let us not forget some of the trailblazers...
What a amazing person, she was so far ahead of her time.

Saturday 9: You're No Good

Crazy Sam’s Saturday 9: You're No Good (1974)
Every Saturday I take time off from written on serious topics to have some fun…

... because Harriet suggested Linda Ronstadt

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

1) This week's featured artist, Linda Ronstadt, turns 69 next month. Will you be celebrating any family/friend birthdays this summer?
Yes, the first birthday this summer will be my grandniece on July 4^th

2) Linda sings that she's learned her lesson and it's left a scar. Tell us how you got one of your scars. 
I have one on my forehead from a curtain rod, my brother and I were sword fighting.

3) This song is about a lover who is, obviously, no good. Let's be more positive. Who is the nicest person you know?
A friend, she is taking people under her wing.

4) Linda says that she grew up on Mexican music, which was sung by her entire family. Do you speak any Spanish?
Nope, I have a hard enough time with English.

5) She toured often throughout her career and is quoted as saying, "they haven't invented a word for that loneliness that everybody goes through on the road." Are you missing someone right now?
Yes, it seems we are growing more distant lately.

6) Ms. Ronstadt was once involved with George Lucas of Star Wars fame. Who is your favorite Star Wars character?
Wookie, he is a man of many words.

7) In 1974, when this song was a hit, The Magic 8 Ball was still a top-seller at toy stores. It retailed for just $1.99, and promised that all you had to do was gaze at it, concentrate, and wait to learn your fate ... "if you dare!" If you could get an answer to one question about the future, what would you ask?
Will I find my true love?

8)1974 is the year when Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the United States. Have you ever been to the ballet? 
Nope, and I never intend to go.

9) Random question: What's your shoe size?
Size 11.

They Won’t Stop For Nothing.

Their attacks know no bounds, they attack children, they attack parents, they attack businesses, the right wing conservatives’ hatred of LGBT people is unlimited. Today’s attack is against Caitlyn Jenner Olympic medals.

No, the IOC will not revoke Caitlyn Jenner’s Olympic medal
Washington Post
By Sarah Kaplan
June 5, 2015

Caitlyn Jenner may be the first woman to hold a gold medal in the Olympic men’s decathlon, and the International Olympic Committee is fine with that.

“Bruce Jenner won his gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games and there is no issue for the IOC,” communications director Mark Adams told Yahoo on Thursday, using Jenner’s name from before she announced her transition this year.

The remarks came in response to a Change.org petition urging the committee to revoke Jenner’s medal on the basis that it was won by a woman competing in a male event. The petitioners’ reasoning was unusual. “It is only fair to all involved that women receive their credit as champions of the Decathalon and that the men racing Ms. Jenner are not expected to compete with a superior, streamlined being such as herself,” it reads. The petition had almost 14,000 signatures as of Friday morning.

Do they sound like a bunch of spoiled kids?

I’m taking all my marble and going home, so there!

Really the petition doesn’t even make sense; Jenner won these medals way back in the ‘70s. even if he felt like a woman back then he wasn’t on hormones and beside female hormones are the exact opposite of male hormones. When I started to take female hormones I lost muscle mass, not gained it.

Is Anyone Surprised?

Gay Inc. is being called out for their lack of diversity?

Internal Report: Major Diversity, Organizational Problems At Human Rights Campaign
A “White Men’s Club,” the report calls HRC. HRC’s top officials acknowledged the report’s findings, pointing to more than 20 steps being taken to address the issues.
Buzzfeed
By Chris Geidner
June 3, 2015

WASHINGTON — Staff at the Human Rights Campaign last fall described the working environment at the nation’s largest LGBT rights group as “judgmental,” “exclusionary,” “sexist,” and “homogenous,” according to a sharply critical report that was commissioned by HRC and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Based on a series of focus groups and surveys with the staff, conducted by outside consultants, the report detailed systemic problems within HRC — ranging from treatment of employees, including those who are transgender, to concerns about human resources and organizational commitment to diversity and inclusion.
[…]
“Leadership culture is experienced as homogenous — gay, white, male,” the report stated. “Exclusion was broad-based and hit all identity groups within HRC. A judgmental working environment, particularly concerning women and feminine-identified individuals, was highlighted in survey responses.”

Surprise, surprise!

I wonder how much they spent to find out that HRC is made up of “gay, white, males” and I wouldn’t want to bet that it is made up of rich, gay, white males.

The report went on to say,

The report informed HRC leadership that staff are critical of an “exclusionary environment” at the advocacy group — where 1 in 5 staff believe “diversity and inclusion” is not a necessary part of the group’s work and values.

To that end, the report stated, “There is a general perception that current diversity efforts are not working and that there’s a lack of diversity understanding broadly.” A participant in a focus group noted, “A lot of folks are personally invested in diversity inclusion but their voices have been smothered or pushed away.”

That is what the trans community has been saying for years, why do you think we call it “Gay Inc.?”

The report notes, “Seven out of 31 men who have been promoted have been on staff less than two years (some promoted two times). No women under two years have been promoted.”

Hmm… sounds like grounds for a discrimination law suit.

Now here is another surprise,

The environment for transgender staff was highlighted in the Pipeline Project report as a particularly problematic area. In the summary of findings, the consultants broke out the focus group discussions about the experience of trans staff at HRC “[d]ue to the depths of concerns.” Among those issues were findings that “[t]rans* people don’t feel safe to come out at HRC,” noting that some staff “work for years at HRC before coming out as trans.”

No kidding Sherlock. I’m surprised any trans people work there at all.

I’m At A Hospital…

But I’m all right; I’m doing training for the staff.

I am doing cultural competency training for the staff there; I was contacted by a lawyer and that was the first time that ever happened. When I open the email it was from a big law firm, my first thought was oh, oh now what? I can’t help but wonder if it was some kind of legal settlement of some kind and they needed cultural competency training.

So anyhow, I went up early to have a long lunch with a friend.

And then at seven tonight I am doing an interview with the director of the health collective where I volunteer for one of the Sunday morning political talk show on the local Fox affiliate. It is being taped and we have an eight minute segment.

Tomorrow morning I am heading down to New Haven to do another cultural competency training at a non-profit.

Busy, busy, busy!

Take A Few Minutes To Listen To This...

Okay, I don’t listen to sports radio but someone on Facebook and Wow it was a good interview about Caitlyn Jenner on ESPN radio,

Buzz Bissinger, Vanity Fair writer
Vanity Fair writer Buzz Bissinger shares his thoughts on writing the article about Olympian Bruce Jenner now known as Caitlyn Jenner

I don't know why they interviewed the writer of the Vanity Fair article but it is a great interview. I don't like that he used the "A" word but he must feel that it applies to him. I can't argue with someone's self laboring.

Ha, Ha, Very Funny

Republican’s presidential candidates will do anything or say anything to get the conservative votes and donations.

Mike Huckabee Joked About Pretending to Be Transgender to Shower With Girls After Gym Class
Time
By Charlotte Alter
June 2, 2015

"I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today'"

Mike Huckabee joked earlier this year that if transgender acceptance had been around when he was growing up, he would have pretended to be transgender in order to shower with the girls after gym class.

While addressing the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville in February, Huckabee warned of the dangers of letting transgender people into gendered spaces. “We are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your 7-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended and you can’t be offended if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man,” he said, in remarks first reported by Buzzfeed.

Anything that will stir the rightwing paranoia is fair game for them.

Even through the law does work that way they still make the claim that child can just that “…today I really am feeling my girl’s side, he gets to go shower with the girls…” The laws say it has to be a part of your core belief. To make joke of the bullying and harassment that trans students face is one of the reasons why we do get bullying.

They know that there has never case where this happened since the first laws went into effect in 1975, but that doesn’t stop them from drumming up fear.

The Washington Post said that his campaign is stuck in the past,

The political mind of former Arkansas governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee must be a very interesting place -- a place that looks and feels a lot like 2004.
[…]
For most people, Huckabee’s comments seem a little out of date, perhaps even bigoted. This is a country in which a gold-medal-winning Olympian and one-time mascot of American masculinity just revealed that he is a transgender Republican, and then posed for the cover of Vanity Fair to share a new name, Caitlyn Jenner, along with a new gender identity and personal story.

Huckabee's February  comments might have gone over quite well back in 2004, when so-called “values voters” dominated most of the waking hours and dreams of political operatives and candidates alike. In 2004, a mostly-Republican contingent of lawmakers pushed constitutional bans on gay marriage onto state ballots, which the Karl Rove-led George W. Bush campaign ably leveraged to draw conservative voters to the polls. While casting a vote against gay marriage, Republicans could also cast a vote for Bush. And despite some post-election equivocation about the role that the gay marriage measures played in helping Bush return to the White House, Rove was utterly plain about the role that “moral values” played in the 2004 election.

I hope that they are right that voters have moved on.



And of course Fox News had to get their digs into Caitlyn’s transition.

I Don’t Think So

Do you think anyone who hasn’t had Gender Confirming Surgery can understand what it is like? I’m trans and I don’t think that I will ever really know unless I have it.

What It's Like To Choose Transgender Sex Reassignment Surgery
NPR
By Meredith Rizzo
June 1, 2015

Svoboda put flyers up in LGBT health clinics in the San Francisco area, asking people if they would be willing to let her document the experience. Jamie Nelson, who says he identifies as a transgender male who is queer, and Jetta'Mae Carlisle, who says she identifies as a straight woman, said yes. Both were preparing to have surgery, and were willing to let Svoboda follow them through the process.
[…]
In the end, Svoboda says, she learned an incredible amount. "The lengths they have had to go through in order to be themselves inspire me," she says. "They've been forced to ask for what they need, to face criticism, rejection and even degradation. They've gone through pain and confusion and still they find a way to hold their heads up and say, 'This is who I am.' "

I don’t think just by talking to someone you can understand the feelings, you can draw all types of analogies, but I don’t think it will come close.

I know just the decision to transition was agony, and nights curled up in a ball crying, it is agonizing the metamorphosis you go through is without words and then making peace with yourself and finding that inner calm.

Transitioning | KQED News from KQED News on Vimeo.

OHSA And Trans People

I don’t know if you saw it but OSHA just came out with a new policy that will probably make the Republicans hair stand up.

OSHA issues guidance on transgender bathroom access
By Lydia Wheeler
June 1, 2015

Transgender employees should have access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said guidance it issued for employers on Monday.

The National Center for Transgender Equality requested OSHA develop the 4-page “Guide to Restroom Access for Transgender Workers” to ensure transgender employees are able to work in a manner that is consistent with how they live the rest of their daily lives.
[…]
“Restricting employees to using only restrooms that are not consistent with their gender identity, or segregating them from other workers by requiring them to use gender-neutral or other specific restrooms, singles those employees out and may make them fear for their physical safety,” the guidance says. “Bathroom restrictions can result in employees avoiding using restrooms entirely while at work, which can lead to potentially serious physical injury or illness.”

In describing best practices, OSHA said many companies have implemented written policies to ensure that all employees have prompt access to appropriate sanitary facilities and are given additional options, including use of a single-occupancy gender-neutral or unisex facility or use of multiple-occupant, gender-neutral restroom facility with lockable single-occupant stalls.

This goes a long ways to letting us pee in peace.

Connecticut Passes Birth Certificate Bill

Yesterday the Senate passed H.B. 7006 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates with bipartisan support…

Connecticut Passes Transgender Rights Bill
Bill removes barriers to changing gender on birth certificate and makes Connecticut a national leader on transgender rights

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 1, 2015
CONTACT: Patrick Gallahue, 860.471.8468, 860.992.7645, pgallahue@acluct.org
The ACLU of Connecticut applauds the passage of a bill that will enable transgender people to change their birth certificate to the appropriate gender without invasive requirements.

Stephen Glassman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Connecticut, said, “This is the arc of history bending toward justice for transgender people. As one of the earliest states to recognize and affirm gender identity and expression in our laws, we have now made this important additional step toward recognizing people as they self-identify with regard to their gender.”

Connecticut law previously included a state Department of Health requirement that people show proof of surgery before they were able to change the gender market on their birth certificate. This burdensome condition denied recognition to numerous people as well as those who could not afford such a procedure.

The new bill empowers healthcare providers with the ability to make a recommendation as to whether a person’s birth certificate should be corrected. The criteria could include "surgical, hormonal, or other treatment appropriate to the individual for the purpose of gender transition.”

Glassman said, “This modernizes our outdated laws and makes Connecticut a national leader once again in an evolving understanding of transgender rights.”

The ACLU of Connecticut made a recommendation to update birth certificate amendment standards in partnership with a coalition of groups including Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, True Colors, Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition, Connecticut Women's Education and Legal Fund, and others.

H.B. No. 7006 passed by a vote of 32-3 in the Senate and 126-18 in the House.

Patrick Gallahue
Communications Director
American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut

Those voting against the bill were, Sen. McLachlan (R) 24th Dist., Sen Mertin (R) 31st Dist., and Sen. Kane (R) 32nd Dist.

Members of the coalition were,

• American Civil Liberties Union of CT (ACLU)
• CT TransAdvocacy Coalition (CTAC)
• CT Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF)
• Equality Federation
• Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective (HGLHC)
• National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE)
• Planned Parenthood of Southern New England
• True Colors
• University of Connecticut Rainbow Center

And many thanks to Rachel and also the ACLU for providing our lobbyist, Gallo & Robinson LLC.

Extra: Caitlyn Jenner

Caitlyn Jenner comes out on the cover of Vanity Fair


    

Dress For Success

…Or the difference between gender identity and gender expression.

Just because someone dresses in either male or female clothes does not mean that they feel that they are that gender. In this video the fact that these women dress in men’s clothes does not necessarily mean that they identify as male.



This a good example of difference between gender identity and gender expression, the women in the video still identify as female but their expression is more towards the masculine.

# # # # #

The PBS NewsHour has an interesting article about how the laws have changed about crossing dressing over time. The Stonewall Uprising was in part because the police were there to check that everyone wore the at least three items of clothing of their birth gender, the same thing was true for the Compton Cafeteria Uprising, the Dewey Lunch Counter Protest, and the Cooper Do-nuts Uprising, the police were harassing the customers by checking the way they were dressed.

Arresting dress: A timeline of anti-cross-dressing laws in the United States
PBS
By News Desk
May 31, 2015

But some similar landmark rule changes in the United States were only a few years ahead.

In fact, a person perceived as male who dressed in clothing customarily designed for women could technically be arrested in New York for “impersonating a female” as recently as 2011 — the remnants of a 19th century statewide law prohibiting wearing “the dress of the opposite sex.”

In Columbus, Ohio, where one of the earliest ordinances was instituted, an 1848 law forbade a person from appearing in public “in a dress not belonging to his or her sex.” In the decades that followed, more than 40 U.S. cities created similar laws limiting the clothing people were allowed to wear in public.

The wave of laws in the 1850s represented a “new development specific to gender presentation,” according to Susan Stryker, an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona.

In effect, the anti-cross-dressing laws became a flexible tool for police to enforce normative gender on multiple gender identities, including masculine women and people identifying as transgender or gender non-conforming.

It was because of these laws that we are where we are today; it was the open defiance to these laws that started the modern LGBT movement. Which lead first the overturning of the dress code laws by the courts and then on to demanding our human rights and marriage equality.

# # # # #

Which now leads me to the third article about clothing…

VINTAGE PHOTOS OF ‘DRAG QUEENS’ BEFORE IT WAS SAFE TO BE OUT AND PROUD
Dangerous Minds
May 22, 2015
Here’s a collection of historical “drag queens” dating back to the 1800s and then onwards. The reason I’m using “drag queen” in double quotes is because I’m not entirely sure if these people were transgender, cross-dressers, dressing up as women for theatrical purposes or just for the of fun it. The information is very limited for each image. Either way, they’re all gorgeous and seem quite comfortable with themselves in front of a lens during a time when society looked down on such self-expression.

Brigham Morris Young

Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton AKA “Fanny and Stella.”

Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton AKA “Fanny and Stella.”

German crossdresser, Paul Storsberg

All this people were probably law breakers of their day but were willing to have their photos taken and they were able to find friendly photo studios to take their photos.

We Have A Unique Perspective

When it comes to male privilege trans women and men are able to see it first hand.

These 25 Examples of Male Privilege from a Trans Guy’s Perspective Really Prove the Point
Everyday Feminism
By James St. James
May 30, 2015

Quite a bit changed for me over the first couple of years I started testosterone.
[…]
But just as fascinating as it was to witness my mental and physical changes, it was just as equal of an adjustment to comprehend how other people were responding to me.

In short, I was being treated better by everyday America because people were reading me as a young, white, straight (?!) male. And I recognized many new privileges that came my way because of it.
He goes on to list the 25 examples of male privilege, here are some of them,
2. Yet I’m Still Taken (More) Seriously
I’m still amazed at the amount of people that now immediately shut their mouths the second I open mine.

3. I Rarely Get Interrupted
I used to be interrupted so often while presenting as a woman that I in turn started to talk over people as a form of conversational survival.

4. I Get Paid More
The proof is in my paychecks. Actual, numerical proof.

7. I Get a Ton of Free Passes
For the record, I’ve never done anything horrific enough to invoke the all-saving phrase of “Boys will be boys,” but I often forget to watch my mouth in front of superiors and authority figures.
And while I was getting into tons of trouble for the smallest thing through school and my earliest jobs, these days I can’t recall a single time I’ve been called out or reprimanded.

9. I’m Very Likely to Arrive Home Safely After Walking Alone at Night
Assuming nobody is out looking to f-g bash, but that’s a somewhat different matter.
It remains that I walk alone at night far more than I used to purely because I’m a dude.

10. I Don’t Have to Worry About Keeping an Eye on My Drink at Parties and Social Gatherings
Unless it’s at a gay venue where there seem to be some questionable, creepy chickenhawks around, drink safety doesn’t even cross my mind anymore.

Now here is one that I noticed in a theater, all of a sudden my space got smaller.

22. I’m Allowed to Take Up Space – And Lots of It
If I feel like spreading out on public transportation, nobody – regardless of gender – tells me to move over anymore.
They just act like I have full right to be obnoxious.

Trans women friends who are engineers and project managers, they tell me it is like they had a lobotomy or that they became invisible. One friend who is a project manager at large international engineer company, told me that before she transition when “he” said something at a meeting everyone nodded their heads in agreement, now when she says something it ignored until a man repeats it and everyone nods their heads. One time said that she was even asked to get the coffee.