Women Born Transsexual

I’m not a RuPaul fan.  I have never and will never watched his TV show “Drag Race” because honestly it sounds like a drag.(Pun intended.)

I recognize the role drag has played in the gay community, how it is the focus of certain communities within the LGBT/T communities. How our culture would be lessened if drag as art and performance were to disappear.

Drag Shows have been an alternative to street prostitution for a number of my TS and TG sisters over the years.

When  I listen to so many outspoken activists within the world of TS/TG activism, the impression is sometimes such as to create the idea that no TS or TG sister ever came out through a period of time spent thinking she might be a gay boy.  Instead the most common trope is having entered into a heterosexual marriage to cure being transsexual or transgender.

Over the last twenty years I have watched as all sorts of different groups have been sucked into the Transgender Umbrella.  This has created a near cult like appearance to that concept that caused me to label the “Transgender Umbrella Cult” as being the “Transgender Borg”.

Sometimes that cult seems awfully straight to claim membership in a special interest collective of communities that comprise the world of gay and lesbian folks. Heterosexual cross dressers are considered part of this community, but drag queens are not.  Same sex marriage if entered into via heterosexual privilege is good, but the fight for marriage equality that would permit say two post-op sisters to get married or other non-trans same sex partners to marry is supposedly a  distraction from what should be the real cause of the entire LGBT/T community which is a trans-inclusive ENDA.  An ENDA which was bumped up last year from being an employment bill to including public accommodations.

Some forty years ago I came to the conclusion that transsexuals were transsexual, drag queens were drag queens, transgender folks were transgender and heterosexual transvestites were transvestites. Other than transsexuals sharing a bunch of issues with transgender folks who lived full time with hormones and top surgery, none of these groups had much of anything in common  beyond the superficial.  Even then the connection was very thin given all the arguments about identities.

Post-transsexual women, whether we call ourselves WBTs or Classic Transsexuals have been vilified by the promoters of the Transgender Borg Cult for years.  Transsexual Separatists is one of the nicer things they call us.

Mostly because we just want to get on with our lives.

Therefore I find the outrage with RuPaul sort of silly.  He’s RuPaul, he makes catty remarks for a living.  Catty, bitchy remarks are a Drag Queen Diva’s stock in trade.  Without a catty, bitchy mouth he would be indistinguishable from heterosexual transvestites.

Further I’ve listened for years to how the Stonewall uprising was a transgender uprising.  While there were people who would fall under that label there they were a minority.  If you dismiss drag queens as not really being transgender then that minority of street queens seriously dwindles.

The Following People weighed in on RuPaul’s comments.  (Let it be known I am tired of transgender folks calling gay men “faggots” and then wondering why gay men don’t bend over backwards in support of the transgender cause..)

Lexie Cannes:  http://lexiecannes.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/rupaul-is-not-transgender-so-quit-asking-him-to-comment-on-tg-issues/

Rebecca Juro:  http://www.bilerico.com/2012/01/you_dont_get_to_tell_us_when_to_be_offended_ru_pau.php

Kelli Anne Busey:  http://planetransgender.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-rupaul-clown-again.html

TransGriot:  http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-repeat-gay-media-rupaul-is-not-trans.html

http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/01/shade-of-gray-in-a-drag-queen-is-not.html

Marti Abernathy:  http://www.transadvocate.com/rupaul-fuck-you-you-silly-faggot.htm

Now as I said I don’t watch RuPaul’s show.  I don’t see any point in it.

But the insistence on everyone conforming to some sort of umbrella of like minded people all of whom use the politically correct language of the week is ridiculous and self defeating.  I am especially repelled by the casually expressed homophobia I see so often in the transgender community.

Often the anti-gay male homophobia is accompanied with anti-lesbian homophobia.

This is bullshit coming from people who insisted on grafting transgender onto the gay and lesbian communities.

Yes RuPaul is wrong…  But so are you when your response to his bullshit is a bunch of homophobic remarks.

It is time to retire  the practice of making jokes about men being subjected to rape in prison.

Rape is wrong and a horrible crime.  It doesn’t matter if the person being raped is male or female, gay, adult or child, straight, lesbian or trans.  It is a monstrous violation of a person’s being and should never ever be wished upon another person.

The recent rewriting of the rape laws should expand the definition of rape to include forms of rape that were previously classified as “sexual assault”, a charge with a history of being treated less seriously than rape.

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/health/as-victims-men-struggle-for-rape-awareness.html?_r=4

By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: January 23, 2012

Keith Smith was 14 when he was raped by a driver who picked him up after a hockey team meeting. He had hitchhiked home, which is why, for decades, he continued to blame himself for the assault.

When the driver barreled past Hartley’s Pork Pies on the outskirts of Providence, R.I., where Mr. Smith had asked to be dropped off, and then past a firehouse, he knew something was wrong.

“I tried to open the car door, but he had rigged the lock,” said Mr. Smith, of East Windsor, N.J., now 52. Still, he said, “I had no idea it was going to be a sexual assault.”

Even today, years after the disclosure of the still-unfolding child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the arrest of a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach accused of sexually abusing boys, rape is widely thought of as a crime against women.

Until just a few weeks ago, when the federal government expanded its definition of rape to include a wider range of sexual assaults, national crime statistics on rape included only assaults against women and girls committed by men under a narrow set of circumstances. Now they will also include male victims.

While most experts agree women are raped far more often than men, 1.4 percent of men in a recent national survey said they had been raped at some point. The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that when rape was defined as oral or anal penetration, one in 71 men said they had been raped or had been the target of attempted rape, usually by a man they knew. (The study did not include men in prison.)

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/health/as-victims-men-struggle-for-rape-awareness.html?_r=4

From Truth Out: http://www.truth-out.org/breast-cancer-behind-bars-how-prison-sentence-can-become-death-sentence/1326504683

by: Victoria Law
Wednesday 25 January 2012

Imagine finding a lump in your breast. Imagine that your efforts to schedule a medical check-up are stymied and you have to wait weeks, if not months, for that initial exam. In the meantime, the lump continues to grow. Imagine that, when you finally do see a doctor, you are told that you have breast cancer. When you walk out of the office, you are locked into your prison cell with no more information or sympathy than when you walked in. This is the daily reality for women in prison.

In 2006, a Department of Justice (DOJ) study found that women in prison are at significantly greater risk for cancer than their male counterparts. Out of every 10,000 incarcerated women, 831 had cancer, compared to 108 per 10,000 men. Of those, 91 of every 10,000 women behind bars reported having had or currently having breast cancer. Given that 114,979 women were behind bars at the end of 2009, this would mean that over 1,000 women have had or currently have breast cancer.

Despite these numbers, prevention, screening, diagnosis, care, pain alleviation and rehabilitation for breast cancer remain virtually nonexistent in prisons. In 1998, a study at an unnamed Southern prison found that, although many were at high risk because of family histories, women were not provided with a clinical breast exam, information or basic education on self-examination upon admittance. Seventy percent of women who should have had mammograms under standard medical procedure had never been tested. [Williams, Roma D, Terry D. Mahoney, and R. M. Williams, Jr, "Breast Cancer Detection Among Women Prisoners in the Southern United States," Family & Community Health 21.3 (1998): 32.]  Even women who enter prison already diagnosed with cancer must fight to receive lifesaving medical care.

Fifty-two-year-old Margaret DeLuca had already been diagnosed with stage 3A breast cancer and undergone a left-breast mastectomy before arriving at Clinton Correctional Facility in New Jersey. “She knew exactly what she needed, but was unable to get it,” stated Bonnie Kerness, a human rights advocate and coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Prison Watch Project, who helped DeLuca fight for proper medical care. Their advocacy resulted in incremental improvements in DeLuca’s medical care but did not change the prison’s health care system. [Interview with Bonnie Kerness, December 28, 2011]

Continue reading at:  http://www.truth-out.org/breast-cancer-behind-bars-how-prison-sentence-can-become-death-sentence/1326504683

From Common Dreams:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-10

by Peter Bosshard
Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by Common Dreams

Milestone birthdays are opportunities to take stock of our family, health and financial situation. So how is Planet Earth doing 20 years after the Earth Summit, the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro? The planet’s economic output has more than doubled since 1992. Some members of the global family are doing extremely well, but the number of hungry people is increasing. And the planet’s health is steadily deteriorating, with vital ecosystems nearing the point of collapse.

We can celebrate milestone birthdays with empty rhetoric, or we can use them to change course. Twenty years ago, governments adopted resolutions that aimed to bring the global community into social, environmental and economic balance. They resolved to follow basic rules of global housekeeping such as the precautionary principle, the internalization of environmental costs, and the polluter-pays principle. They prepared a specific roadmap of global change in the Agenda 21. And most of them made binding commitments by signing the conventions on biodiversity and climate change.

Looking back, we have failed to live up to our resolutions and commitments as a global community. We can’t relive the past, but as we prepare for the Rio+20 summit in June, we have another chance to take stock and change course. Unfortunately world leaders have so far not risen to the challenge. The draft document for the Rio+20 summit, which governments are currently discussing in New York, is devoid of substance and ambition. Entitled, The Future We Want, it contains no honest analysis, few specific recommendations, and no binding commitments. Instead, it tries to hide its lack of ambition with vague concepts such as a new Green Economy.

In the water sector – the area I know best – there are indeed measures that could improve the planet’s economic and ecological health at the same time. We could start by dramatically improving the water efficiency of our existing infrastructure and agriculture. We could safeguard vital ecosystems and the services that they provide by protecting free-flowing rivers and restoring environmental flows. We could phase out public funding for unsustainable agricultural practices, polluting industries and destructive dams. And we could redirect development aid towards the decentralized, small-scale technologies that strengthen the food, water and energy security of the poorest without destroying the environment.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-10

From Earth First:   https://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/earth-first-and-occupy-protestors-blockade-bridge-in-front-of-gaim-conference/

January 24, 2012

More arrests underway as conference is disrupted by activists inside the resort as well

Palm Beach County, Florida—Protesters from the Occupy movement and Everglades Earth First! blockaded a Boca Raton bridge yesterday, snarling rush hour traffic during a cocktail party of corporate investors at the GAIM USA 2012 conference. Among them was Ana Rodriguez, an editor of the Earth First! Journal, which is also published in Palm Beach County.

Using colorful lockboxes, three activists, laid on the bridge effectively stopping rush hour traffic from 5-6:30.  Special operations police teams were called to the site to remove the lockdown devices that were linking the protesters together. The blockaders were cited with three charges, including: resisting without violence; obstructing a highway and violation of a municipal ordinance banning what the Boca police called “sleeping dragons.”

Two of the three arrested, Kevin Young and Don Carter from Occupy Miami, were released on their own recognizance. Ana Rodriguez was released today on a $1,500 bond, with the state attorney alleging that she was a flight risk to Venezuela, her country of origin.

“Every day we see corporate power destroying our communities.  From environmental disasters to private prisons, corporations are operating with impunity,” said Ana Rodriguez before being arrested. “While the bank leaders drink cocktails and toast to increased profits, people across the globe are being hurt by corporate greed.”

Continue reading at:  https://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/earth-first-and-occupy-protestors-blockade-bridge-in-front-of-gaim-conference/

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/ralph-shortley-oklahoma-aborted-fetuses-food_n_1230414.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Laura Bassett
01/25/2012

A Republican state senator in Oklahoma has introduced a bill banning aborted human fetuses in food, despite the fact that there are no known foods or food products that actually contain aborted fetuses.

Sen. Ralph Shortey of Oklahoma City introduced on Tuesday Senate Bill 1418, which prohibits “the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses.” He says he based the bill on an article he read online about an anti-abortion group boycotting companies that allegedly use embryonic stem cells to research and develop artificial sweeteners.

“People are thinking that this has to do with fetuses being chopped up and put in our burritos,” Shortey told NewsOK. ““That’s not the case. It’s beyond that.

“There are companies that are using embryonic stem cells to research and basically cause a chemical reaction to determine whether or not something tastes good or not,” he said. “As a pro-life advocate, it kind of disturbed me that we would use aborted embryos or aborted human fetuses to extract stem cells and use them for research to basically make things taste better.”

PepsiCo did partner with food product development company Senomyx to develop a new low-calorie sweetener, but the company denied using fetal tissue in its research in an April 2011 email to Children of God for Life.

“Unfortunately, there is some misinformation being circulated related to research techniques that have been used for decades by universities, hospitals, government agencies, and private companies around the world. These claims are meant to suggest that human fetal tissue is somehow used in our research,” wrote Margaret Corsi, a spokesperson for PepsiCo. “That is both inaccurate and something we would never do or even consider. It also is inaccurate to suggest that tissue or cells somehow are being used as product ingredients. That’s dangerous, unethical and against the law. Every ingredient in every one of our products is reviewed and approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/ralph-shortley-oklahoma-aborted-fetuses-food_n_1230414.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

From Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/25/411283/bill-gates-taxes-justice/

By Tanya Somanader
Jan 25, 2012

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama once again urged Congress to pass the Buffett rule, noting that 25 percent of American millionaires pay less in taxes that millions of families in the middle-class. Republicans were quick to dismiss his request as “the politics of envy and division.” However, multi-billionaire Bill Gates called his policy something else entirely: “That’s just justice.”

In an interview with the BBC, Gates noted “taxes are going to have to go up” and thus he’d prefer that they “go up more on the rich than everyone else.” There needs to be “a sense of shared sacrifice,” he said, adding, “right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should”:

GATES: Well the United States has a huge budget deficit, so taxes are going to have to go up. And I certainly agree that they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That’s just justice.

Complete article at:  http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/25/411283/bill-gates-taxes-justice/

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-gore/the-keystone-myth_b_1228060.html

Al Gore
Chairman, Current TV
01/24/2012

President Obama made the right call last week when he decided to reject the tar sands pipeline. The State Department, in its Congressional Report, debunked the myth that this disastrous project would benefit the US:

Regarding economic, energy security, and trade factors, the economic analysis in the final EIS indicates that, over the remainder of this decade, even if no new cross-border pipelines were constructed, there is likely to be little difference in the amount of crude oil refined at U.S. refineries, the amount of crude oil and refined products such as gasoline imported to (or exported from) the United States, the cost of crude oil or refined products in the United States, or the amount of crude oil imported from Canada. . . .

“The analysis from the final EIS, noted above, indicates that denying the permit at this time is unlikely to have a substantial impact on U.S. employment, economic activity, trade, energy security, or foreign policy over the longer term.” Source: Climate Progress

Complete article at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-gore/the-keystone-myth_b_1228060.html

From The Jewish Daily Forward: http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/150178/

By Gal Beckerman
January 24, 2012

When Newt Gingrich is called out for using the phrase “food stamp president,” he fiercely defends the idea that he is simply pointing out the obvious: that under Obama more people signed up for food stamps. Simple as that. He is not gently plucking racist tropes for the benefit of his base, but just telling it like it is. The man has plausible deniability. He can wink and then say he was just blinking.

So I’m sure that will be the case when I bring up Gingrich’s fondness for mentioning a certain Saul Alinsky. The former speaker is just stating a fact.

And boy does he bring Alinsky up. I’ve heard Alinsky’s name mentioned by Gingrich in a handful of debates, usually by way of characterizing the president, as in Obama is a “Saul Alinsky radical” or “the centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.” But what really struck me was the number of times Gingrich brought up Alinsky in his victory speech when he won the South Carolina primary: three.

Now if you aren’t in that subsection of the “east coast liberal elite” that is closely following every twist and turn of this primary season, you might be asking yourself at this point, “Who the hell is Saul Alinsky?”

I’m willing to bet that has been the reaction of the vast majority of Americans, even for those who have really been tuning in to this race.

Before we go into who Alinsky is, just think about what his name sounds like spit out of the mouth of Gingrich with not a small measure of disdain. It sounds like a Jewish name — and to be even more specific, like a Russian Jewish name with that “sky” at the end. Perhaps I’m being too sensitive. Perhaps Gingrich is simply drawing our attention to what he thinks Alinsky’s influence on Obama is, but I am willing to say that the effect is something like this: Obama’s ideological mentor is a Jew and somehow foreign. Even if this is working on a subconscious level and more subtle than “food stamp president,” I believe it’s there.

From Alternet:   http://www.alternet.org/education/153879/will_the_young_rise_up_and_fight_their_indentured_servitude_to_the_student_loan_industry/

The solution to class exploitation and abuse is always the same: Get conscious, get angry, get energized, and get organized.

By Bruce E. Levine
January 24, 2012

In October 2011, the White House announced, “Currently, more than 36 million Americans have federal student loan debt.” By the end of 2011, student loan debt had exceeded $1 trillion. Two-thirds of college seniors graduate with student loans, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. According to the Project on Student Loan Debt, they carried an average of $25,250 in debt in 2010, but many have far greater debt than that average. And nowadays, with high unemployment, even higher underemployment, the inability to pay bills, and accumulating interest and penalties, the lives of student loan debtors can quickly turn into financial nightmares.

Indentured Servitude? I’ll be paying for my student loans for the rest of my life….A large portion of my earnings goes to the Wall Street elites that have commoditized and securitized my loans….I knew at the time I signed the student loans (again and again) that I would be responsible…what I didn’t figure was the cost to my children —Jeff Vincent, AlterNet

How outlandish is it to say that the spirit of indentured servitude has been revived in the United States? What can young people and their parents do to prevent student loan debt servitude, and what can all of us do to help liberate student loan debtors who are currently doomed to decades of financial misery?

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/education/153879/will_the_young_rise_up_and_fight_their_indentured_servitude_to_the_student_loan_industry/

From Robert Reich: http://robertreich.org/post/16409529548

Robert Reich
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner, is now the poster boy for what’s terribly wrong with our campaign-finance system. Adelson, you may recall, had, before the South Carolina Republican primary, donated $5 million to the pro-Gingrich Super Pac “Winning Our Future” – giving Newt a pile of money for negative advertising against Mitt Romney in South Carolina.

Adelson has done it again. He and his wife Marian have cut another $5 million check for Gingrich to go negative on Romney in Florida. The money won’t go as far as it did in South Carolina – TV ads cost a lot more in Florida – but it’s enough to give the Grinch a solid footing.

And, who knows? The Adelsons are billionaires. They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich’s Super Pac. The point is, there’s no limit.

Do you know who Sheldon and Marian Adelson are? Do you know what Gingrich has promised them, or what they think they’ll get out of a Grinch presidency? I don’t. But if Newt becomes President of the United States, they’ll be singularly responsible. And we better find out, because Newt will owe them big time.

Forget the Lincoln Bedroom. The Adelsons and their kids will have the run of the White House, including the Oval Office. Hey, they’ll take over the Old Executive Building next door and turn it into a casino.

Continue reading at:  http://robertreich.org/post/16409529548

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/fidel-castro-idiocy-us-republicans

Retired Cuban leader says Republican primaries are ‘the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been’

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012

Fidel Castro has lambasted the Republican presidential race as the greatest competition of “idiocy and ignorance” the world has ever seen, and also criticised the news media and foreign governments for seizing on the death of a Cuban prisoner to demand greater respect for human rights.

Castro’s comments came in a long opinion piece carried by official media two days after a Republican debate in Florida presented mostly hardline stances on what to do about the Communist-run island.

Cuba has become an important issue as the candidates court Florida’s influential Cuban-American community in an effort to win the biggest electoral prize so far in the primary season.

Castro said he had assumed the candidates would try to outdo each other on the issue of Cuba, but nonetheless he was appalled by the level of debate.

“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalised and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” he wrote.

Castro disputed accounts of the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza, a 31-year-old prisoner, saying he had not been a dissident and had not been on a 50-day hunger strike, as human rights and opposition groups claimed. The retired leader said Villar had been a common criminal sent to prison for domestic violence, and he had received the best medical attention possible.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/fidel-castro-idiocy-us-republicans

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-7

by Phil Rockstroh
Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by Common Dreams

When Bill Clinton and his scary, scary libido stalked the public realm, Republicans warned his presence was so anathema to all things holy that his hot breath served to salt the wings of choirs of angels.

Yet Newt Gingrich’s booty calls are forgivable. Stones shall not be cast. His transgressions humanize him and the balms of forgiveness of Christian believers rising from this sin-buffeted earth cause the Baby Jesus to coo into the dawn of a coming golden age.

When Bush/Cheney sat at the helm of empire and plundered foreign lands and breached the rule of law, Democratic partisans insisted that constitutional order be reestablished by having Bush et al marched in shackles from the halls of power. To do anything short of this was to risk the foundation of the republic being crushed to rubble and silt beneath the boot of tyranny.

Yet, we critics of duopoly are accused of being impractical sorts who don’t dwell in this world, the world of the possible. Although, it seems that political partisans give themselves permission to dwell, simultaneously, in two worlds: This one, as well as a Bizarro World–the parallel universe limned in comic books–where all things are done in reverse, where true is false and false is true, as well as, apparently, a realm where Newt Gingrich is a shining standard bearer of moral rectitude and a defender of faith and family and President Obama is a protector of constitutional law and a friend of the downtrodden.

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 77% of the citizens of the U.S. expressed the belief that the massive power imbalance in place in the nation is a direct result of the vast wealth inequity between the 1% and the 99%. In addition, according to a poll by Time Magazine, 86% of Americans held the conviction that Wall Street and its lobbyists exert undue influence over the U.S. political class.

Continue reading at:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-7