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Monday, June 13, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Transgenderism's Rich History (A GREAT ARTICLE!)
This is a really wonderful & uplifting piece that my sista, Nikki turned me on to. On this weekend of L.A.'s Pride festivities, this really does make me proud. With a lil more positive "press" and good ol' fashioned enlightenment, we are truly "emerging from the margins".
Transgenderism's rich history
Posted by Juliet Jacques - 26 May 2011 15:59
A culture’s latest milestone.
"The transgender experience is one of the few human conditions almost completely without cultural, literary or artistic landmarks ... Transgenderism remains so foreign a concept to those who have not experienced it that its explanation falls totally to those who have."
These are two of the more eye-catching statements in Mary McNamara's LA Times review of American TV documentary Becoming Chaz, on Chaz Bono's transition from female to male. The assertions may sound accurate, but they belie a more complex reality than some cisgender (crudely, non-transgender) critics realise.
McNamara suggests that "the idea that a person could be born into a body at odds with his or her sense of gender has only recently entered the public conversation" via films such as Boys Don't Cry (starring Hilary Swank as murdered trans man Brandon Teena) and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Historically, trans individuals have been denied control of their stories within the mainstream, having them framed by cisgender journalists, filmmakers and editors in ways that are frequently sensationalist or deliberately transphobic, or that cast people as passive victims. From both necessity and choice, trans people's creative reflections have often been produced out of the spotlight, and their relationship with the media has been fractious -- hence the casual observer's perception that we have scant heritage.
For those willing to look, there exists a century of cultural landmarks, often intertwined with, and sometimes overshadowed by gay and lesbian history. This begins with the gay German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. Aware that what later became understood as transgender behaviour had existed across a variety of cultures for centuries, he published the first specific investigation into the subject in 1910 -- The Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress. Hirschfeld coined the first trans-related term, "transvestite". It held a broader meaning than today, as other words have since evolved to represent differing positions on the gender-variant spectrum.
Hirschfeld also devised the term "transsexualismus" (but did not popularise "transsexual") before overseeing the first sex reassignment surgery in 1930, on Danish painter Lili Elbe. Elbe died a year later, but her collated memoirs were published as Man Into Woman in 1933. This was the first transsexual autobiographical text, initiating what became the dominant means for people to explain their transitions.
Hirschfeld and Elbe attracted little attention beyond Germany. Roberta Cowell and Michael Dillon, the UK's first male-to-female (MtF) and female-to-male (FtM) transsexual people hit the British headlines. But the first internationally famous transsexual woman was Christine Jorgensen, who appeared on the New York Times' front page in December 1952. Like Cowell, Jorgensen wrote an autobiography, and a biopic was later produced. Subsequently, transsexual issues found their main expression in queer American counter-culture -- particularly underground film.
During the Sixties, avant-garde US directors including Jack Smith and Ron Rice cast drag queens and trans women in provocative movies such as Flaming Creatures, which presented a loose set of highly sensual scenes in which participants did not need to define their gender. Works produced around Warhol's Factory, particularly Women in Revolt, created trans icons in Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis. Darling and Curtis later became documentary subjects, as did the trans women who fought police oppression at Compton's in San Francisco in 1966, three years before Sylvia Rivera and others struggled alongside gay and lesbian people at New York's Stonewall Inn.
By the mid-Seventies, there existed a trend for Hollywood films to show trans people as psychotic, seen in in Psycho, Dog Day Afternoon, Dressed to Kill and others. Cultural portrayals focused almost exclusively on male-to-female identities. So too did the "radical" lesbian feminist Janice Raymond's assault, The Transsexual Empire (1979), which accused Gender Identity Clinics and their patients of propagating misogynistic models of femininity.
Raymond's tract galvanised transsexual women and men into reasserting and reassessing their personal histories and cultural traditions. Sandy Stone's response, The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto, questioned the portrayal of the effects of gender reassignment in several autographies. She suggested that people go beyond "passing" in their acquired genders to form a strong, specifically transsexual identity that could withstand transphobic stereotyping.
Stone inspired a generation of writers who thought past traditional gender conventions, trying to unify disparate people under the transgender banner to fight shared oppression. Trans man Leslie Feinberg argued for "transgender liberation" and collected a history of gender variance "from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman". Kate Bornstein and Riki Ann Wilchins, meanwhile, pushed for greater recognition of the grey areas within the recognised binary.
In Britain, Press For Change, founded in 1992, strove for legal reforms for trans people, their greatest triumph being the Gender Recognition Act (2004) which won official acknowledgement for transsexual people. Throughout the Nineties, screen portrayals of trans people increased, for example in the European arthouse films of Pedro Almodóvar and Rosa von Praunheim. In more mainstream productions, trans actors rarely played trans parts, but docu-soap and reality TV formats allowed certain trans individuals greater self-expression -- and showed producers that the public was prepared to listen.
Building on the sense of identity formulated by activists and academics, and aware that the mass media is becoming more ready to let them represent themselves, trans people -- and particularly trans men -- are finally being allowed to document their own experiences in more visible contexts, in greater depth and with less editorial intervention. With heightened consciousness of the effects of negative print and screen portrayals, a plurality of voices that express the diversity of transgenderism is slowly emerging from the margins. It could not have happened without this rich cultural history; one from which transgender people of all shades continue to draw confidence.
Here is Christine Brown's "Just Plain Sense" podcast interview with the author of this piece, done by in Dec, 2010...
Transgenderism's rich history
Posted by Juliet Jacques - 26 May 2011 15:59
A culture’s latest milestone.
Trans icon Candy Darling (left) and Andy Warhol, photo by Anton Perich
"The transgender experience is one of the few human conditions almost completely without cultural, literary or artistic landmarks ... Transgenderism remains so foreign a concept to those who have not experienced it that its explanation falls totally to those who have."
These are two of the more eye-catching statements in Mary McNamara's LA Times review of American TV documentary Becoming Chaz, on Chaz Bono's transition from female to male. The assertions may sound accurate, but they belie a more complex reality than some cisgender (crudely, non-transgender) critics realise.
McNamara suggests that "the idea that a person could be born into a body at odds with his or her sense of gender has only recently entered the public conversation" via films such as Boys Don't Cry (starring Hilary Swank as murdered trans man Brandon Teena) and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Historically, trans individuals have been denied control of their stories within the mainstream, having them framed by cisgender journalists, filmmakers and editors in ways that are frequently sensationalist or deliberately transphobic, or that cast people as passive victims. From both necessity and choice, trans people's creative reflections have often been produced out of the spotlight, and their relationship with the media has been fractious -- hence the casual observer's perception that we have scant heritage.
For those willing to look, there exists a century of cultural landmarks, often intertwined with, and sometimes overshadowed by gay and lesbian history. This begins with the gay German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. Aware that what later became understood as transgender behaviour had existed across a variety of cultures for centuries, he published the first specific investigation into the subject in 1910 -- The Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress. Hirschfeld coined the first trans-related term, "transvestite". It held a broader meaning than today, as other words have since evolved to represent differing positions on the gender-variant spectrum.
Hirschfeld also devised the term "transsexualismus" (but did not popularise "transsexual") before overseeing the first sex reassignment surgery in 1930, on Danish painter Lili Elbe. Elbe died a year later, but her collated memoirs were published as Man Into Woman in 1933. This was the first transsexual autobiographical text, initiating what became the dominant means for people to explain their transitions.
Hirschfeld and Elbe attracted little attention beyond Germany. Roberta Cowell and Michael Dillon, the UK's first male-to-female (MtF) and female-to-male (FtM) transsexual people hit the British headlines. But the first internationally famous transsexual woman was Christine Jorgensen, who appeared on the New York Times' front page in December 1952. Like Cowell, Jorgensen wrote an autobiography, and a biopic was later produced. Subsequently, transsexual issues found their main expression in queer American counter-culture -- particularly underground film.
During the Sixties, avant-garde US directors including Jack Smith and Ron Rice cast drag queens and trans women in provocative movies such as Flaming Creatures, which presented a loose set of highly sensual scenes in which participants did not need to define their gender. Works produced around Warhol's Factory, particularly Women in Revolt, created trans icons in Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis. Darling and Curtis later became documentary subjects, as did the trans women who fought police oppression at Compton's in San Francisco in 1966, three years before Sylvia Rivera and others struggled alongside gay and lesbian people at New York's Stonewall Inn.
By the mid-Seventies, there existed a trend for Hollywood films to show trans people as psychotic, seen in in Psycho, Dog Day Afternoon, Dressed to Kill and others. Cultural portrayals focused almost exclusively on male-to-female identities. So too did the "radical" lesbian feminist Janice Raymond's assault, The Transsexual Empire (1979), which accused Gender Identity Clinics and their patients of propagating misogynistic models of femininity.
Raymond's tract galvanised transsexual women and men into reasserting and reassessing their personal histories and cultural traditions. Sandy Stone's response, The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto, questioned the portrayal of the effects of gender reassignment in several autographies. She suggested that people go beyond "passing" in their acquired genders to form a strong, specifically transsexual identity that could withstand transphobic stereotyping.
Stone inspired a generation of writers who thought past traditional gender conventions, trying to unify disparate people under the transgender banner to fight shared oppression. Trans man Leslie Feinberg argued for "transgender liberation" and collected a history of gender variance "from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman". Kate Bornstein and Riki Ann Wilchins, meanwhile, pushed for greater recognition of the grey areas within the recognised binary.
In Britain, Press For Change, founded in 1992, strove for legal reforms for trans people, their greatest triumph being the Gender Recognition Act (2004) which won official acknowledgement for transsexual people. Throughout the Nineties, screen portrayals of trans people increased, for example in the European arthouse films of Pedro Almodóvar and Rosa von Praunheim. In more mainstream productions, trans actors rarely played trans parts, but docu-soap and reality TV formats allowed certain trans individuals greater self-expression -- and showed producers that the public was prepared to listen.
Building on the sense of identity formulated by activists and academics, and aware that the mass media is becoming more ready to let them represent themselves, trans people -- and particularly trans men -- are finally being allowed to document their own experiences in more visible contexts, in greater depth and with less editorial intervention. With heightened consciousness of the effects of negative print and screen portrayals, a plurality of voices that express the diversity of transgenderism is slowly emerging from the margins. It could not have happened without this rich cultural history; one from which transgender people of all shades continue to draw confidence.
Here is Christine Brown's "Just Plain Sense" podcast interview with the author of this piece, done by in Dec, 2010...
Friday, June 10, 2011
Massachusetts Lawmaker Asks If Transgender People Change Genders ‘On A Day-To-Day Basis’ | ThinkProgress
I can also turn into a genie, a monkey, and a lawn mower, if I try really hard.
Massachusetts Lawmaker Asks If Transgender People Change Genders ‘On A Day-To-Day Basis’.
Massachusetts Lawmaker Asks If Transgender People Change Genders ‘On A Day-To-Day Basis’.
TheSpec - Trans people trying to be just ordinary
This is a really good article!
Trans people trying to be just ordinary
When I was in my early teens, I read an article that changed me. It was a Street Beat column by Paul Wilson. Paul was writing an obituary for Christine Mackie, a transsexual woman who ran a used bike shop. The article was about her life and business. The woman was just … normal. That was Paul’s point. Though I am not trans myself, I took the idea to heart.
Trans women, to be clear, are people born biologically male who identify as female. Trans men are born biologically female and identify as male. “Transsexuals” undergo hormone therapy, surgery, and counselling to change their physical sex features and to adjust to life as their real gender, female or male. “Transgender” — a more common word — refers to all people with unconventional gender behaviour, particularly including transsexuals. But the words “trans,” “transgender” and “transsexual” are often used interchangeably — like “black” and “African-American” in the United States.
Interestingly, very few trans people are gay. That is, only a minority are born male, transition, and live as lesbians, or are born female, transition, and live as gay men.
Science has recognized for years that being trans is no way a medical or mental problem. This is why doctors prescribe sex change. Rather, transgenderism is only a problem in that it is hard to be trans in our society, and the process of sex change is literally painful. The “problem” is with people who treat trans men and trans women as freaks.
On Tuesday, June 14, an event will take place at the Downtown YWCA that will attempt to address that injustice: The YWCA will be hosting a transgender-only swim, from 7 to 8 p.m. The swim is put on by The Well, the Hamilton area’s “LGBTQ” Community Wellness Centre. (The Hamilton area’s “unofficial” LGBT Pride Week runs June 9 to 19.) The swim is a good idea because trans people face violence and harassment in public places all the time.
Community pools and change rooms are a troublesome area. Many non-trans people are uncomfortable with the idea of a person of the “wrong” sex changing near them. Violence often ensues. It is a pattern that keeps many trans people from swimming.
In many ways, a segregated swim is not ideal. We can hope for a time when private, individual changing areas are available at pools for anyone who wants them. Certainly, trans women need to keep in mind that most women have a justified fear of being nude with strangers (also nude!) who seem to be men. This is one reason why individual changing spaces are good. At the same time, non-transsexuals have to know that the vast majority of trans people are not threats in any way. Moreover, they have an equal right to swim.
The legal question of transgender rights is a thorny one in Canada right now. It splits the Conservative Party. This year, Parliament voted on whether to add the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the Human Rights Code. Unfortunately, Parliament dissolved before the debate was completed. But the debate that did take place was interesting.
Most Conservative MPs, including Hamilton area MP David Sweet, voted against the addition. Some said it was unnecessary because trans people are already protected in law. But this is only partly true. (And even if it was true, what’s the harm in making a symbolic statement of equality?) Others suggested that the words would lead to a trans invasion of public bathrooms.
Lisa Raitt, Conservative MP for Halton, had a different view. She voted to add the terms. Explaining why, Raitt spoke about how a transsexual cousin who she loves had led her to see trans people as equal. In her thinking, trans people are just more evidence of human diversity. Needless to say, trans people and their supporters hope that Raitt’s argument, and not Sweet’s, wins out.
Meantime, the YWCA will host the swim. Some perfectly ordinary women and men will splash. We will be a very small bit closer to the day when we will judge people by the content of their character, and not by whether they are trans.
The spirit of this was summed up by Dolly Parton. She wrote Travelling Through, a hymn in the voice of a transsexual. The speaker is compared to a journeying pilgrim from the Bible: “Questions I have many, answers but a few/But we’re here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth …/As I’m stumbling, tumbling, wondering, as I’m travelling through.”
The trans person’s search for “home” is like everyone’s.
Aidan Johnson is a Hamilton community activist working in constitutional law and poverty law.
TheSpec - Trans people trying to be just ordinary
Trans people trying to be just ordinary
When I was in my early teens, I read an article that changed me. It was a Street Beat column by Paul Wilson. Paul was writing an obituary for Christine Mackie, a transsexual woman who ran a used bike shop. The article was about her life and business. The woman was just … normal. That was Paul’s point. Though I am not trans myself, I took the idea to heart.
Trans women, to be clear, are people born biologically male who identify as female. Trans men are born biologically female and identify as male. “Transsexuals” undergo hormone therapy, surgery, and counselling to change their physical sex features and to adjust to life as their real gender, female or male. “Transgender” — a more common word — refers to all people with unconventional gender behaviour, particularly including transsexuals. But the words “trans,” “transgender” and “transsexual” are often used interchangeably — like “black” and “African-American” in the United States.
Interestingly, very few trans people are gay. That is, only a minority are born male, transition, and live as lesbians, or are born female, transition, and live as gay men.
Science has recognized for years that being trans is no way a medical or mental problem. This is why doctors prescribe sex change. Rather, transgenderism is only a problem in that it is hard to be trans in our society, and the process of sex change is literally painful. The “problem” is with people who treat trans men and trans women as freaks.
On Tuesday, June 14, an event will take place at the Downtown YWCA that will attempt to address that injustice: The YWCA will be hosting a transgender-only swim, from 7 to 8 p.m. The swim is put on by The Well, the Hamilton area’s “LGBTQ” Community Wellness Centre. (The Hamilton area’s “unofficial” LGBT Pride Week runs June 9 to 19.) The swim is a good idea because trans people face violence and harassment in public places all the time.
Community pools and change rooms are a troublesome area. Many non-trans people are uncomfortable with the idea of a person of the “wrong” sex changing near them. Violence often ensues. It is a pattern that keeps many trans people from swimming.
In many ways, a segregated swim is not ideal. We can hope for a time when private, individual changing areas are available at pools for anyone who wants them. Certainly, trans women need to keep in mind that most women have a justified fear of being nude with strangers (also nude!) who seem to be men. This is one reason why individual changing spaces are good. At the same time, non-transsexuals have to know that the vast majority of trans people are not threats in any way. Moreover, they have an equal right to swim.
The legal question of transgender rights is a thorny one in Canada right now. It splits the Conservative Party. This year, Parliament voted on whether to add the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the Human Rights Code. Unfortunately, Parliament dissolved before the debate was completed. But the debate that did take place was interesting.
Most Conservative MPs, including Hamilton area MP David Sweet, voted against the addition. Some said it was unnecessary because trans people are already protected in law. But this is only partly true. (And even if it was true, what’s the harm in making a symbolic statement of equality?) Others suggested that the words would lead to a trans invasion of public bathrooms.
Lisa Raitt, Conservative MP for Halton, had a different view. She voted to add the terms. Explaining why, Raitt spoke about how a transsexual cousin who she loves had led her to see trans people as equal. In her thinking, trans people are just more evidence of human diversity. Needless to say, trans people and their supporters hope that Raitt’s argument, and not Sweet’s, wins out.
Meantime, the YWCA will host the swim. Some perfectly ordinary women and men will splash. We will be a very small bit closer to the day when we will judge people by the content of their character, and not by whether they are trans.
The spirit of this was summed up by Dolly Parton. She wrote Travelling Through, a hymn in the voice of a transsexual. The speaker is compared to a journeying pilgrim from the Bible: “Questions I have many, answers but a few/But we’re here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth …/As I’m stumbling, tumbling, wondering, as I’m travelling through.”
The trans person’s search for “home” is like everyone’s.
Aidan Johnson is a Hamilton community activist working in constitutional law and poverty law.
TheSpec - Trans people trying to be just ordinary
Interesting flyer on a newspaper box in front of my apartment.
I'm totally not paranoid, but I find this oddly intriguing that in Koreatown, and only in front of MY apartment building, have I seen this. Weird & cool all at the same time.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Hearing held on transgender rights bill - The Boston Globe
God knows, the only reason I'm Trans is so I can skulk around bathrooms. I mean, duh!!
Depending on the arguments heard yesterday at the State House, a bill to ban transgender discrimination is either the next leap for civil rights in Massachusetts or a way for predators to gain access to bathrooms and locker rooms used by the opposite sex.
Hearing held on transgender rights bill - The Boston Globe
Hearing held on transgender rights bill
By Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff / June 9, 2011Depending on the arguments heard yesterday at the State House, a bill to ban transgender discrimination is either the next leap for civil rights in Massachusetts or a way for predators to gain access to bathrooms and locker rooms used by the opposite sex.
“We know that our Commonwealth is stronger when every person can live and work free of harassment and threats,’’ Attorney General Martha Coakley testified before the joint Judiciary Committee. “The unfairness is clear, but the remedy has not been clear.’’
Under bills filed in the House and Senate, Massachusetts would join 15 other states, including every other New England state except New Hampshire, in outlawing transgender discrimination in employment, housing, education, credit, and access to public accommodations. The bills also would add offenses involving gender identity and expression to the state’s list of hate crimes.
In emotional testimony before hundreds of spectators in Gardner Auditorium, Representative Carl Sciortino of Medford, a Democrat and cosponsor of the House bill, read the names of several transgender individuals who had been murdered in Massachusetts since the late 1970s.
The list included Rita Hester, who died in Boston of multiple stab wounds in 1998, and Lisa Daniels, who died in Dorchester in 2005 when she was shot 17 times below the waist.
“What we are asking here today is so very, very simple,’’ Senator Susan Fargo, Democrat of Lincoln, told the committee, which will vote on whether to recommend the bill for approval. “It extends civil rights protection to a group that has been forgotten.’’
Opponents, however, lambasted the bill as vaguely worded and an invitation for predators who could use legal protections for gender identity and expression to enter bathrooms and other private areas that otherwise would be off-limits.
“I think that this bill would compromise the basic standards of safety and privacy that women and children deserve and expect in society,’’ Representative Marc Lombardo, a freshman Republican legislator from Billerica, said after his testimony. “As a father, I do not want to see men in the ladies room with my daughter.’’
The bill, he said, “may be well-intentioned, but it would change so many elementary items of the way we live our day-to-day life.’’
Lombardo was joined by Representative James Lyons, a Republican from Andover, who characterized the proposal as an assault on the working class.
“Is there not some moment when we say to ourselves in the Legislature of the Commonwealth, what are we doing?’’ Lyons asked the committee. “Now, the working families of our Commonwealth must worry about the moral environment.’’
Robert Joyce, a Newton lawyer, predicted the bill would force business owners and others to “determine the impossible’’ when dealing with transgender people and expose them to unnecessary litigation. The bill, he said, “is nothing but a legal ambiguity.’’
Joyce said that additional protections are not needed for transgender individuals in the state. “What I’m saying here is that it ain’t broke in Massachusetts,’’ Joyce told the committee. “The law protects people with gender-identity concerns.’’
To Coakley, critics of the bill have stoked “unreasonable fears’’ and “grossly mischaracterize what this bill does.’’
Transgender witnesses yesterday spoke of a harrowing, lengthy process to reorient themselves to a new identity and to the obstacles they encounter.
“Most of us work really hard to be invisible in society,’’ said Gunner Scott, director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, who now has a male identity. “Unfortunately, most of us have no choice but to come out of the closet.’’
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com. 
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
VIVA Beverly
I just ran across this on TV. I haven't watched AITF in ages, and the one I see has to feature the one and only...VIVA Beverly LaSalle!!!
Windy City Times - Chicago to run transgender TV show - 111
This is something that should happen in every large city in the country!
Windy City Times - Chicago to run transgender TV show - 111
Windy City Times - Chicago to run transgender TV show - 111
Catholic School Bans Rainbows at Anti-Homophobia Event
Catholic School Bans Rainbows at Anti-Homophobia Event
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
TG trailblazer Janet Mock shares her story!
This is a definite must hear! Janet Mock is the people.com editor who courageously came out recently as being transgender, tells her story of family & transition.
She is such a role model for ALL of us, Trans or not!!! Compassion and enlightenment knows no gender! Here is her "It Gets Better" video...
She is such a role model for ALL of us, Trans or not!!! Compassion and enlightenment knows no gender! Here is her "It Gets Better" video...
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