Women Born Transsexual

From The New York Times:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/unknown-knowns-avoiding-the-truth.html?_r=1

By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
Published: December 31, 2011

Bath, England

COULD there be a single phrase that explains the woes of our time, this dismal age of political miscalculations and deceptions, of reckless and disastrous wars, of financial boom and bust and downright criminality? Maybe there is, and we owe it to Fintan O’Toole. That trenchant Irish commentator is a biographer and theater critic, and a critic also of his country’s crimes and follies, as in his gripping if horrifying book, “Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.”

He reminds us of the famous if gnomic saying by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the United States secretary of defense, that “There are known knowns… there are known unknowns … there are also unknown unknowns.” But the Irish problem, says Mr. O’Toole, was none of the above. It was “unknown knowns.”

What he means is something different from denial, or evasion, irrational exuberance or excess optimism. Unknown knowns were things that were not at all inevitable, and were easily knowable, or indeed known, but which people chose to “unknow.”

Unknown knowns were everywhere, from Wall Street to Brussels, from the Pentagon to Penn State. Ireland merely happened to offer an extreme case, where “everyone knew.” They just chose to forget that they knew — about the way that Irish banks ran wild, how easy credit fueled a monstrous explosion of property prices and speculative house-building. Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister at the time of the rapid economic growth, merely boasted, “The boom is getting boomier,” preferring to unknow the truth that booms always go bust.

Beginning in 2008, the skies were lighted up by financial conflagrations, from Lehman Brothers to the Royal Bank of Scotland. These were dramatic enough — but were they unforeseeable or unknowable? What kind of willful obtusity ever suggested that subprime mortgages were a good idea? An intelligent child would have known that there is no good time to lend money to people who obviously can never repay it.

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/unknown-knowns-avoiding-the-truth.html?_r=1

From Raw Story:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/02/santorum-tells-iowans-i-dont-want-to-make-black-peoples-lives-better/

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, January 2, 2012

Speaking to Republicans in Iowa on Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said his administration would reform welfare to the point that it would offer no welfare at all.

After suggesting that an expansion of Medicare is really just a plot to make voters more “dependent” on Washington, Santorum added: ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”

“I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families,” he added. “The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.”

Grumble, grumble…  Another year gone by.  A few steps forward, a few side ways and a lot of the same old shit from those locked in the ideology of the “Transgender Borg”.

There have been reasons to celebrate and not just for transgender people but for post-transsexual people as well.

Go read Mara’s list, even a curmudgeon like me found a few that I saw as really positive and good for those having to deal with the immediacy of being transgender or in the process of changing sex.   I mean Chaz Bono doesn’t mean much to me but I’m really happy to see the part of a TS/TG person in a film actually played by a TS/TG person instead of by a non TS/non TG in Drag Face.

Number 6 was the biggie for me:  This one affects any of us and has been long over due:

6. Using Sex Discrimination Laws to Protect Trans People 

While laws the Employment Nondiscrimination Act are still badly needed, we are making strides in achieving protections for trans people in jobs, housing, and schools on the basis of existing laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Federal agencies that enforce these laws are increasingly pursuing complaints from transgender people and providing redress for some. A “hugely important” ruling from a usually conservative federal appeals court in Atlanta advanced this trend, ruling in favor of Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman fired from her job because of her gender transition.

Mara Keisling in The Advocate Lists 14:

Op-ed: 14 Reasons That Made 2011 Great for Trans People

This has been a game-changing year for transgender rights, says Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. By Mara Keisling, op-ed contributor

For eight years, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be doing trans social justice work. And as I look back at what has been accomplished, I can say that 2011 is especially marked by victory after victory. Most Americans now know a little bit more about the struggle trans people face. Every day people are becoming stronger trans allies. From the trans actors we are finally seeing on movie and television screens, to local nondiscrimination laws, and to the global call for LGBT rights, there is real change in nearly every facet of our lives.

Of course, discrimination and disrespect against trans people persists. Disparities in employment and healthcare for trans people and especially among trans people of color run high. And our federal policy agenda is brimming with solutions we are pressing the federal government for.

Despite the work ahead, I’m still both humbled and excited by the progress that we are winning.

Recognizing that there is lots of good work being done across the country, here’s my take on 14 reasons, in no particular order, that made the year great for trans people.

Continue rearing at:  http://www.advocate.com/Society/Transgendered/14_Reasons_That_Made_2011_Great_for_Trans_People/

Boston’s Bay Windows has the following:

Success, celebration, and a step forward

by Hannah Clay Wareham
Associate Editor
Thursday Dec 29, 2011

2011 was the year transgender equal rights took center stage in Massachusetts.

The hard work and dedication of transgender rights advocates, allies, and volunteers came to a head this year with a handful of momentous wins.

The victories

It began in February, when Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed an executive order extending protections against discrimination to the state’s transgender employees. In addition to all state agencies and programs, the executive order also applied to any businesses that contract with the state.

“Governor Patrick is committed to protecting the equality and civil rights of all of the Commonwealth’s residents,” Alex Goldstein, the governor’s press secretary, said in February. “This Executive Order ensures that all employees in the executive branch will continue to be able to perform their duties free of discrimination.”

LGBT activists across the state — and country — praised the signing of the executive order, and applauded the Deval Patrick’s continued support of the state’s transgender community.

Continue reading at:    http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3&id=128311

These are all positive things…  Really…

Of course the year had its negatives too including Autumn Sandeen’s three part attack on Ashley Love followed by a hit piece on Bilrico.

We’ve had to listen to racist anti-transsexual crap from Monica Roberts that wouldn’t be tolerated from any male or female that wasn’t part of the transgender community.

I haven’t been amused by the Transgender Activists opportunistic turning of hate crimes into tools to be used to pass what was supposed to be an Employment Non-Discrimination Bill into something with far less of a chance of passage.

Do they really care about passing an Employment Non-Discrimination Bill orhas the perpetuating of this bill’s non-package become a power trip for holding a non-cohesive community together?

Pass ENDA first and simultaneously push for total LGBT/T Civil Rights Bill that would attack the accommodations issue.

Time to stop using hate crimes as a lever to push measures that would have little or no impact on the lives of the transsexual and transgender sex workers getting murdered.

When I was with the National Transsexual Counseling Unit in SF in the early 1970s, we were a service provider, we interacted with people needing help, dispatched advice and got them in contact with other service provider agencies that could help better their lives.  That was more important than politics.

Over the years I have watched dozens of my sisters die of drug abuse.  Drug abuse, mostly prescription pills killed more of my sister friends than AIDS and violence combined.

Yet try to find TS/TG friendly NA or AA meetings, place where TS/TG people can be open and honest about the issues that are behind their substance abuse.  How can you go through a drug program, when that drug program isn’t safe for you to discuss being transsexual or transgender without fear of being verbally abused or mocked?

Time for a lot more heavy duty honesty about the back story on so many of the martyrs remembered on the Day of Remembrance.  They were Street Sex Workers, doing the most kamikaze form of sex work imaginable in what is the world’s most dangerous line of work, street prostitution.  Instead of separating these murders from the murders of assigned female at birth street sex workers, who are murdered doing the same form of sex work, they should be linked together.  We should be advocating for services to be provided to assist all these women in at least lowering the risk.  Working the phone or working  out of a house reduces the violence problem considerably. Making working the ads via the phone de facto legal (by not arresting simply for working those ads, quietly and without attendant matters such as robbery) could lower the level of violence experienced by sex workers.

Offering job training and entry level positions that pay a living wage and offer counseling and support would also help sex workers move beyond the danger and degradation of sex work.

I am heartened to see people like Mia Tu Mutch starting peer out reach groups.

Cindy Lauper and other operating shelters for the runaway and throwaway kids who are all too often transkids.

Time to kill the Transgender Borg meme that post-transsexual women who assimilate into the world as women are somehow “Separatists”.  Transsexual isn’t the same as transgender only with Sex Reassignment Surgery.  They are two different things and moving on with growing as a member of the sex that SRS reassigns one to used to be an expected part of post-surgery adjustment.

At the same time being post-op and even post-transsexual shouldn’t be construed as a license to become an asshole that spews nothing but bigotry and slurs.

You can be post-transsexual, not part of the transgender community and not be a bigoted asshole.

Mercedes Allen wrote several post this last year showing how it is possible for transsexuals to move beyond transgender, remain part of a larger progressive community and not abuse transgender people.

At the same time I wish like hell transgender people would stop the bullshit abuse of transsexual folks.  Why would we want to be around people who verbally abuse us in a manner that is unacceptable when it comes from gay men, lesbians and right wing straights as well as from the infamous “radical feminists”?  What reason do we have to support people who verbally abuse us in that manner?

Three years ago when I started this blog I tried to put an end to the name calling by moderating posts.  I still found myself getting called names except from both sides.

I realized that what I have taken to calling the Transgender Borg Collective has a cult like ideology that feels it has to attack anyone who strays from its dogma.  This in my eyes is every bit as negative as those post-transsexuals who take up the positions associated with right wing Republican bigotry.

I’m on Facebook and it has been eye opener, especially this last year when so many of us have taken stands on issues far beyond the range of transsexual or transgender identity politics.

Suddenly lots of people I thought of mainly in terms of transsexual or transgender have become full people fighting for social justice issues that put us in coalitions with non-TS and non-TG people and that is a very neat thing indeed.

So as I creak and groan my way into the new year I hope to see more people move in a more positive direction for all people or at least all people in the 99%.

From Addicting Info: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/01/rick-santorum-says-he-will-end-the-marriages-of-legally-married-same-sex-couples/

By Stephen D. Foster Jr
January 1, 2012

If there is one candidate in the Republican Presidential field that absolutely hates homosexuals, it’s Rick Santorum. He has never missed out on an opportunity to bash gays and same-sex marriage and he would just love to acquiesce to the demands of the extreme Christian Right, many of whom actually want to execute all members of the LGBT community. Santorum has compared homosexuality to “man on dog” sex (apparently Rick has some experience with that), and he allowed a debate crowd to boo a gay soldier after fielding a question from him.

Many Republicans have called for allowing states to decide whether or not to allow same-sex marriage, and many have also called for a constitutional amendment banning it altogether. Rick Santorum supports the latter and he says that if he were President, he’d annul every legal same-sex marriage in the nation.

Continue reading at:  http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/01/rick-santorum-says-he-will-end-the-marriages-of-legally-married-same-sex-couples/

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/01-1

by Doug Harvey
Published on Sunday, January 1, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

One of the more delusional aspects of capitalism is the idea that if one pursues the acquisition of private wealth with abandon, that this is somehow automatically “good” for human society.

The laissez-faire advocate and novelist Ayn Rand wrote that if one does not support this notion that greed is good and pursuing “enlightened self-interest,” (as Adam Smith characterized it), is the highest virtue, then one defaults to supporting a centralized oppressive regime that allows no personal freedom and no private wealth whatsoever.  One supports living in darkness and despair or, in a word, Hell.  This Manichean thinking is in keeping with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition dating back to the Indus Valley divide between the Vedic traditions and the Zoroastrian belief system of ancient Persia.  The notion that the world is characterized by an ongoing “war” between the forces of light and the forces of darkness is at the base of much of so-called western thought.

In The Three Metamorphoses, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that humans are saddled with a heavy burden as children.  Using the metaphor of a camel, he describes how we then venture into the wilderness with this burden, whereupon we are attacked by a great dragon.  The dragon is covered with hundreds of scales, each scale bearing the words “Thou Shalt.”  The human is then transformed into a lion in order to do battle with the dragon.  If the lion is victorious in the battle – slaying the dragon “Thou Shalt” – the metaphor then turns to that of a child.  The human then becomes what he or she was born to be – “a wheel rolling out of its own center.”  One of the scales on the dragon for most of us growing up in the “developed world” is that “thou shalt believe in the war between light and darkness.”  And, the societal assumption is that one aspect of this war is the capitalist notion of “enlightened self-interest” versus the evil “socialist” notions of public ownership and oppressive altruism that punishes the productive and rewards the unproductive.  This has become conflated with the Judeo-Christian religious structure of “good versus evil” to the point where in some quarters there is no distinction between the secular and religious versions of the myth.  To complete the Nietzschean metaphor in this context, most people do not slay the dragon.  The result is a societal discourse that is largely delusional and controlled by mythic thinking, catch-phrases, and unquestioned assumptions.

While this is nothing new, the consequences are becoming too great to bear as humans acquire the unprecedented ability to wield cataclysmic power.  What is needed is a strong commitment to reality; i.e., a commitment to jettison ideology and religion for fact-based analysis.  The process begun by the Enlightenment was, by and large, a positive development at least for Europe.  But this process has been interrupted not so much by religion – the antithesis of the Enlightenment – but by a faith-based secular ideology that says the pursuit by individuals of their own private material gain is good for all.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/01-1

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/before-midnight-occupy-wa_n_1178262.html

Jason Cherkis
01/01/12

“All week! All year! We’ll still be here!”

“Whose park? Our park!”

The chants went up 10, 20, maybe 100 deep shortly before midnight at Zuccotti Park as Occupy Wall Street activists surprised the New York Police Department and retook the space that was once the homebase for their movement. The barricades surrounding the park went down. They have since been removed. Protesters were allowed to come and go through the park.

Earlier, activists danced on the piles of barricades. Some climbed the lattice of metal and hoisted American flags. Others waved signs and banners. The Zuccotti Park Christmas tree was wrapped in an Occupy Wall Street banner. Of course, there were the drums.

By 11:30, the NYPD had started to amass again with reports of mounted police units and scooter units arriving on the scene. There were reports via Twitter of police using pepper spray at various spots. By shortly after midnight, the police seem to fall back again. The Occupy movement’s own fake police tape made an appearance. The OWS bat signal championing the 99 percent was projected on a nearby building.

Zuccotti Park hadn’t been occupied since police cleared it in mid-November in an early morning raid. That led to police raids on other encampments across the country from Boston to Los Angeles.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/before-midnight-occupy-wa_n_1178262.html

From Salon: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/the_rise_of_utopian_market_populism/

Tom Frank on the dream that fueled the right wing’s improbable comeback

By Jefferson Morley
Wednesday, Dec 28, 2011

In his new book, “Pity the Billionaire,” Tom Frank turns his mordant eye on the unlikeliest political development of the Obama presidency: how the crash of 2008 served to strengthen the political right. The deregulation of Wall Street, championed for 30 years by right-wing leaders, had led to an economic catastrophe so frightening that the country elected a liberal Democrat to the presidency. Yet two years later, the most conservative faction of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, had taken effective control of the House of Representatives, the regulation of Wall Street had stalled, and the champions of economic deregulation in Washington had emerged stronger than ever.

Frank, author of the bestselling book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” provides a pithy and nuanced explanation of what he calls the “hard-times swindle.” He spoke with Salon from his father’s home in Kansas City, Mo.

Early in the book, you describe the moment in the spring of 2009 when free-market economics had been so thoroughly discredited that Newsweek could run a cover story proclaiming, “We’re all socialists now.” What happened? Why did that moment dissipate?

I saw that cover so many times [at Tea Party events]. For these people, that rang the alarm bell. I think the AIG moment [when the bailed-out insurance behemoth used taxpayer relief to dole out huge bonuses to its executives] was in some ways the high point of the crisis, when [the politics] could have gone either way. There was this amazing public outrage, and that for me was the turning point. Newsweek had another cover, “Thinking Man’s Guide to Populism,” and I remember this feeling around the country, that people were just furious. Somehow the right captured the sense of anger. They completely captured it. You could say they had no right to it, but they did. And one of the reasons they were able to do it was because the liberals were not interested in that anger.

I’m speaking here of the liberal culture in Washington, D.C. There was no Occupy Wall Street movement [at that time] and there was only people like me on the fringes talking about it. The liberals had their leader in Barack Obama … they had their various people in Congress. But these people are completely unfamiliar with populist anger. It’s an alien thing to them. They don’t trust it, and they have trouble speaking to it. I like Barack Obama, but at the end of the day he’s a very professorial kind of guy. The liberals totally missed the opportunity, and the right was able to grab it.

Continue reading at:   http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/the_rise_of_utopian_market_populism/

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/01/european-leaders-downplay-2012-prospects

Angela Merkel says new year will ‘undoubtedly’ be harder than the last as eurozone crisis hangover prompts more austerity

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/01/ron-paul-civil-rights-act_n_1178688.html

Laura Bassett
Posted: 01/ 1/12

WASHINGTON — Despite recent accusations of racism and homophobia, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) stuck to his libertarian principles on Sunday, criticizing the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it “undermine[d] the concept of liberty” and “destroyed the principle of private property and private choices.”

“If you try to improve relationships by forcing and telling people what they can’t do, and you ignore and undermine the principles of liberty, then the government can come into our bedrooms,” Paul told Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And that’s exactly what has happened. Look at what’s happened with the PATRIOT Act. They can come into our houses, our bedrooms our businesses … And it was started back then.”

The Civil Rights Act repealed the notorious Jim Crow laws; forced schools, bathrooms and buses to desegregate; and banned employment discrimination. Although Paul was not around to weigh in on the landmark legislation at the time, he had the chance to cast a symbolic vote against it in 2004, when the House of Representatives took up a resolution “recognizing and honoring the 40th anniversary of congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Paul was the only member who voted “no.”

Paul explained that while he supports the fact that the legislation repealed the notorious Jim Crow laws, which forced racial segregation, he believes it is the government, not the people, that causes racial tensions by passing overreaching laws that institutionalize slavery and segregation. Today’s race problems, he said, result from the war on drugs, the flawed U.S. court system and the military.

“The real problem we face today is the discrimination in our court system, the war on drugs. Just think of how biased that is against the minorities,” he said. “They go into prison much way out of proportion to their numbers. They get the death penalty out of proportion with their numbers. And if you look at what minorities suffer in ordinary wars, whether there’s a draft or no draft, they suffer much out of proposition. So those are the kind of discrimination that have to be dealt with, but you don’t ever want to undermine the principle of private property and private choices in order to solve some of these problems.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/01/ron-paul-civil-rights-act_n_1178688.html

From Truth Out: http://www.truth-out.org/populism-isnt-dead-its-marching-what-bunch-farmers-can-teach-bunch-occupiers-about-how-keep-going/13

by: Ashley Sanders, War Is A Crime.org
Friday 30 December 2011

Not so long ago, Americans witnessed the beginning of a mass democratic uprising. Thousands of average people, disgusted by greedy elites and corporate control of government, launched a movement that spread to almost every state in the nation. They did it to reject debt. They did it to fight foreclosures. They did it to topple a world where the 1 percent determined life for the other 99. And they did all of it against incredible odds, with a self-respect that stymied critics.

The year? 1877. The people? Dirt-poor farmers who would come to be known as Populists.

Now it’s 2011, and the People are stirring again. It’s been over two months since a few hundred dreamers pitched their tents in Zuccotti Park and stayed.

These people weren’t Populists, but they had the same complaints. They couldn’t make rent. They had no future. They lived in a nation with one price for the rich and another for the poor. And they knew that whatever anyone said that they didn’t have real democracy.

Okay, and so what? What do a bunch of century-dead farmers have to do with the Occupy movement? Well, quite a lot, actually.

You see, the Populists came within an inch of changing the entire corporate-capitalist system. They wanted a totally new world, and they had a plan to get it. But as you may have noticed, they didn’t. And now here we are, one hundred years later, occupying parks where fields once stood. We’re at a crucial phase in our movement, standing just now with the great Everything around us—everything to win or everything to lose. It’s our choice. And that’s good, because the choices we make next will echo, not just for scholars and bored kids in history class, but in the lives we do or don’t get to have. The good news is this: the Populists traveled in wagons and left us their wheels. We don’t have to reinvent them. We’re going in a new direction, but I have a feeling they can help us get there.

Continue reading at:  http://www.truth-out.org/populism-isnt-dead-its-marching-what-bunch-farmers-can-teach-bunch-occupiers-about-how-keep-going/13