Recently in Transgender Issues Category

Maybe I should give up on complaining about this, but it still irks me every time I see an article that is about women's issues (and now we can add trans women's issues) in the NYTimes in the Fashion and Style section. Articles about health, doulas, women, etc. It seems like every article that interests me is in this section and it pisses me off. Ok, rant over.

Despite the placement of this article, it's actually a quite positive piece about trans women's experience transitioning in the workplace.

Breanna L. Speed waited four years before announcing to her co-workers that she would not be Wendell anymore. She was concerned that the revelation that she felt more comfortable living life as a woman than in the male body she was born with would jeopardize her job at Hewitt Associates, an outsourcing company in Lincolnshire, Ill., where she had worked as a database administrator for seven years.

But since Feb. 26, 2007, when she walked into the office as Breanna (with a company ID and a workplace paper trail that carried her new name), Ms. Speed said she has received nothing but support.

What's really great about the article is it puts the onus of guaranteeing a smooth transition on the employers and managers of the companies, rather than the employee themselves.

The next cycle of America's Next Top Model will feature a transgender contestant, 22-year-old Isis. Now, I'm inherently skeptical of all things that fall under the category of "reality TV" -- and we've certainly critiqued Top Model before -- but I have to admit, this sounds pretty exciting.

"My cards were dealt differently," Isis, a 22-year-old former receptionist, tells Us Weekly exclusively in its new issue, on newsstands now.

Hailing from Prince George's County, Maryland, Isis identifies herself as "a woman born physically male."

Will she be a role model?

"I like to help people, but I'm here to follow my dreams," she tells Us.

Monica Roberts has some clips of Isis's runway skills, and is hopeful that ANTM won't bungle this opportunity. She's noted before that Tyra Banks has been consistently respectful about trans issues on her own show, Tyra. Here's hoping that attitude extends to ANTM.

From her recent piece at Alternet:

Over the last five years, trans feminine feminists have begun to articulate a new perspective on feminism and trans activism that better captures our own experiences dealing with sexism. This approach is not so much rooted in queer theory as it is in intersectionality -- a theory that grew out of the work of feminists of color, most thoroughly chronicled by Patricia Hill Collins, and perhaps first discussed in relation to the MWMF trans woman-exclusion issue by Emi Koyama. Intersectionality states that different forms of oppression do not act independently of one another, but rather they interact synergistically. Unlike queer theory and lesbian-feminism, intersectionality focuses primarily on the ways in which people are institutionally marginalized, rather than fixating on whether any given individual's identity or behaviors "reinforce" or "subvert" the gender system.

It's long and delves deep, but as with most of her writing it's pretty fantastic. Check it out.

Since the theme of this afternoon's posting seems to be gender (soon to come, a post about the olympic's and gender verification) I thought I'd post this music video from Athens Boys Choir. He's pretty fantastic and I think the video speaks for itself. I promise it will be stuck in your head.

Warning: Not appropriate for work, unless sexual words are okay...

The BBC reports that a school in Thailand is providing three bathrooms for students, one for boys, one for girls and one for "boys who want to be girls" (phrasing from the BBC).

You can see a short video clip about it here. While I think it's awesome that they are providing a space for trans girls (or boys who are questioning their gender identity), it only leaves space for one other type of gender expression. What about girls who are experimenting with their gender identities as well?

Bathrooms have historically been a point of contention for trans people, and it's really crucial for them to have facilities they can feel safe using. But further segregating people does not in my opinion address the underlying problems with the gender binary which can be confining for people in many different places on the gender identity spectrum.

Cultural context is obviously really important here as well, and I don't mean to criticize the obvious progress this school is making in ensuring the safety of their students. Instead the clip brings up a lot of issues around bathroom safety and gender identity that I wanted to bring up.

See feministing community blogger pow3rful's post about this news item.

Also, a note about language. When referring to a transgender person, always use their preferred gender identity (and pronouns). So, for example, a boy who now identifies as a girl could be referred to as a trans girl. Or a girl who now identifies as a boy would be a trans boy.

Thomas Beattie, the pregnant trans man who made headlines recently after an appearance on Oprah and an article for the advocate, just gave birth last month.

You can see the video from the Good Morning America segment here.

Quench Zine is liveblogging the first-ever congressional hearing on trans issues, "An Examination of Discrimination Against Trangender Americans in the Workplace."

The American Pyschological Psychiatric Association (APA) appointed members at the beginning of May to the Committee on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders for the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

This committee will be reexamining the DSM-V, which is the manual of mental disorders that controls the diagnosis and treatment of gender and sexual difference. It was a big deal when homosexuality was declassified as a disorder, and some queer and trans activists are calling for gender identity dysphoria to be similarly declassified.

Since then, lots of people have been expressing their concern about two particular appointments: Ray Blanchard and Kenneth Zucker (who has been appointed as chair).

From Rea Carey, Acting Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

We are very concerned about these appointments. Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard are clearly out of step with the occurring shift in how doctors and other health professionals think about transgender people and gender variance. It is extremely disappointing and disturbing that the APA appears to be failing in keeping up with the times when it comes to serving the needs of transgender adults and gender-variant children.

I've gotten quite a few emails about this, as well as a link to a petition against these appointments.

Why does this matter? Some people have been alleging that these two members are proponents of "reparative therapy"--tools used to make homosexual or gender non-conforming children straight through therapeutic methods and gender normative behaviors (don't let your son play with dolls, etc). You can listen to a recent NPR story comparing two different therapy philosophies about gender variant kids.

The way the APA classifies these gender and sexual identities is important for the standards of care for queer and gender non-conforming people. It impacts what kind of medical care they can receive as well as how they are treated by the psychological community. If homosexuality (or gender variance) are considered "disorders" that implies that a) there is something wrong with these behaviors and b)that there is a cure.

I also received an email with a response from Dr. Blanchard, which pretty much denies all these allegations against him. You can see his statement after the jump.

Contributed by Julia Serano

I had about seven different conflicting thoughts/emotions upon viewing this video:

1) Oh my god, I *cannot* believe that companies are actually using personal endorsements from transgender-spectrum people to help sell their products to non-trans women. How groundbreaking!

2) And at the same time, how disturbing! I think I am experiencing the same queasy feeling right now that old-school gay/queer rights activists most certainly felt when beer companies first began offering to sponsor pride parades and queer events.

3) Great, just what we need: more fodder for feminists who insist that those of us on the trans feminine spectrum are all merely “parodies� and “caricatures� of women and that we propagate sexist stereotypes.

4) Haven’t I written about depictions like this one before?

5) As a transsexual woman, I can’t help but notice how dependent this ad is on the concept of “drag�—that is, the fact that the subject in the video identifies as a boy and that their feminine gender expression is depicted as a “performance� or an “impersonation.� The commercial would have an entirely different meaning (and would evoke a very different emotional reaction) if it featured a trans woman who fully and unapologetically identified as female. For this reason, this video will likely annoy a lot of transsexuals because it forwards the “trans = fake� trope that is too often used to marginalize us.

6) Memo to Phillips: The “Like all men he’s not great with pain� line isn’t funny. Making fun of men is just as sexist as making fun of women. And besides, when your commercial consists of nothing but stereotypically hyper-feminine imagery, you can’t make up for it all at the end with one, apparently ironic, pseudo-feminist dis on men.

7) And one more thing: I hope the makers of Secret deodorant sue you for essentially stealing their “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman� campaign.

Thanks to Jessica for the link.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist.

Bambi Weavil is founder and CEO of Out Impact, Inc and publisher of its online magazine Out Impact. Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, Bambi spends her days and her nights working to raise money for LGBTQ issues...while also squeezing time to write about pro wrestling and her guilty pleasure, "American Idol."

Here's Bambi...

The always-amazing Daisy Hernández has a great piece up at ColorLines about the intersection of transgender issues and race - it's really compelling stuff, so don't miss it.

Before coming to the Center for Genetics and Society, Emily Galpern worked for 10 years promoting community health and well-being through coalition-building, advocacy, and health education. She holds a BA in women's studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz and obtained her Master's in public health in community health education from San Francisco State University in 2004. She completed a graduate research project on women's sexual and reproductive health in southern Ecuador using a human rights framework, and conducted other research on health disparities and inequities and the impact of racial discrimination on health.

Here's Emily...

Pam has a interesting post up tying together the ongoing racist reaction to Jena and the inclusion of trans people in Employment Non-Discrimination Act. She poses some thought-provoking questions about how fear of being labeled a racist or bigot keeps people from addressing their actual racist or bigoted actions.

Check it out.

This piece couldn't be more ridiculous. While its seeming purpose of being a "calling out" of the large number of New York politicians who have been accused and convicted of rape and sexual harassment, it does anything but:

Dennis Gallagher, the Queens councilman recently indicted on charges of raping a 52-year-old grandmother he met at a Middle Village bar, is just the latest in a long line of New York City pols to have been accused of behaving badly.

At the turn of the last century, a cigar-smoking, hard-drinking, womanizing Tammany insider named Murray Hall was discovered upon death to actually be a woman. When Hall died in 1901, a friend who knew him, er, her, through her work in the State Senate remarked, "A woman? Why, he'd line up to the bar and take his whisky like any veteran, and didn't make faces over it, either."

Ninety-one years later, Sol Wachlter, chief judge of the state's highest court and a presumed front-runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, was busted by the FBI for harassing his ex-mistress after he mailed her threatening letters and sent a condom to her teenage daughter.

So what exactly does the second paragraph have to do with this story? Oh right, those rapists and trans folks are all the same! A deviant is a deviant, right?? Blech. And it only get better with its "expert's" quote:

'In Albany everybody is sleeping with everybody,' said Dr. Bernie Katz, a noted relationship expert. 'Plus, men have this stupid idea that they picked up in middle school that no really means yes. Let's face it we men never grow up.'

Wow. I mean, wow. Not only does rape mean "sleeping around" and boys learn about rape in middle school, but all men never really get rid of that ole rapist/school boy mentality!

What a waste of a decent story. Thanks to MAC for the link.

Courtesy of Cara, check out this appalling Will Saletan column in Slate:

Um, what? In the column he conflates female genital mutilation with sex reassignment surgery. (Several countries are subsidizing surgeries for victims of FGM, while Brazil now offers health care coverage for the sex-change procedures.) His little brain explodes: Aren't these the same thing? He poses the breathtakingly stupid question,

Is genital mutilation a crime if you don’t want it but a right if you do?

Just... wow. Setting aside Saletan's totally inapt comparison, astute commenter Tracey over at Cara's place notes that, "COUNTLESS things are crimes if you don’t want them but rights if you do. Like sex, for example. Or sterilization. Or abortions." But "It’s completely ludicrous to make a comparison between FGM and reassignment surgery." Exactly.

Two incredibly awful stories recently about young Latina transwomen and their run-ins with the U.S. criminal "justice" system:

Via Jessica Hoffmann:

Victoria Arellano/Arrelano (the spelling of her name varies from story to story), a trans woman with AIDS who died in a California immigration facility for men in July after being denied medication and otherwise improperly treated, was one of three immigrants to die in federal custody in a month, according to the Washington Post.

And from Amnesty International (via AngryBrownButch):

My name is Mariah Lopez. I am a young, transgender person of color. I also am an activist who does street-based outreach in the West Village, where I also socialize.

Let me tell you how the police often respond to this.

With verbal abuse.

Sexual harassment.

Unwarranted arrests.

Withholding food, water and medication in detention.

Humiliating and inappropriate strip searches.

Physical assaults.

This is what I have endured at the hands of police and corrections officers - and not just once. What occurs is a systemic abuse of power, one that is seemingly inflicted on whim. For my friends and me, it seems that something as inconsequential as an officer's mood can dictate whether we spend time in jail.

Read her whole statement. It's gut-wrenching.

I don't mean to diminish the injustices suffered by these two women by lumping their stories together. Rather, I think it's important to recognize that what's going on here is systemic. For each story like Mariah Lopez's or Victoria Arellano's that bubbles up through the alternative media or queer/feminist blogosphere, there are countless more that don't even make the radar. Jessica Hoffmann (who has been tirelessly pushing for more coverage of Arellano's story) summed it up nicely: "Immigrants' rights struggles and trans struggles and health-care struggles and feminist struggles and HIV/AIDS struggles--and all other struggles for justice--are interconnected. If we believe in justice, these struggles are ours." (Which is also why I apologize for not posting on either of these stories sooner.)

AI has an online action alert calling for an NYPD investigation into the abuses suffered by Mariah Lopez while in custody. I'll post updates on Victoria Arellano's case as I get them.

Photograph by Mathew Schwartz

Pagan Kennedy has published seven books and is a pioneer of the '90s zine movement; her autobiographical zine Pagan's Head is noted for describing her life in extraordinary detail. Some of her books include Black Livingstone which was named a New York Times Notable Book and her novel Spinsters which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Village Voice, Utne Reader, The Nation and Ms. magazine.

Pagan's new book, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth Century Medical Revolution, is a biography that documents the life of Michael Dillon who, in the 1940s, survived the world's first known female-to-male sex change treatment.

I interviewed Pagan over email. Here's Pagan...