http://www.365gay.com/news/prop-8-repeal-bid-begins/

(San Francisco, California) A group seeking to repeal Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in California, is expected to begin collecting signatures this week to have the measure overturned.

The Secretary of State on Friday gave the group Yes on Equality until Aug. 17 to collect the nearly 700,000 signatures needed to qualify its initiative for the 2010 ballot.

It is one of two ballot measures to repeal Prop 8. Earlier this month, two college students were given the OK to start collecting signatures for a proposed ballot measure to strike the word “marriage” from all state laws.

The measure would repeal the ban, and define domestic partnerships as unions between all couples, regardless of sexual orientation.

Prop 8 grew out of last May’s state Supreme Court ruling that opened marriage to gay and lesbian couples. It was passed by voters in November by a slim 52 percent. By that time, some 18,000 same-sex couples had wed.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights immediately filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the vote.

Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court heard arguments in the case. The court has 90 days to issue a ruling.

A Field Poll released after the court hearing shows that prospective voters remain deeply divided over the issue of same-sex unions.

Forty-eight percent said they would vote to repeal the proposition. Forty-seven percent would vote to maintain the ban.  Five percent are undecided.

When the 3.5 percent margin of error is factored in it is a dead heat.

There has been this strange canard regarding transsexuals and 24/7 transgender as well as the occasional transvestite invading women’s only spaces ever since I came out in 1969.  I know for a fact that it existed a long time before that.

Now these WOS tend to vary but the ones most right winger Taliban Christian people whip out in horror is the women’s rest room.  But lately the changing rooms and gym lockers have gotten big airplay.

When lesbians speak of WOS they tend to mean that annual lesbian folk festival in the woods of Michigan.

Before I came out I was terrified of using the men’s room.  I had some teenage boys attack me when I was 12 or 13 and beat me up for having the audacity to us the rest room at a theater and so I was afraid of being physically beaten just for the assumption I was gay.  Later in my teen years I was  this pretty little teen queen and I couldn’t use the men’s room because half the time I went into one some guy would hit on me.  Tearoom sex was sooo not my thing.  Besides I was afraid of the vice pigs who troll the restrooms looking for hapless gay men to jack up and arrest.

From the first time I went out as a girl using the women’s room was such a relief.  But then I fit in, matched expectations for a person using the women’s room. For many of us though achieving that fitting in takes far more effort than it took me.

I as a pre-op occasionally tried on clothes in communal fitting rooms.  I kept my panties on.  YMMV.

Last night I watched a DVD about The Wobblies, Industrial Workers of the World an early 20th century union movement and I was struck by how the rich elite bosses of their time used the same basic arguments against workers striking for an 8 hour day as they use against the employee free choice act.

The right wing Conservatives and Taliban Religious only have a few arguments that they use over and over again.  I’d be willing to bet they used the rest room argument against the early feminists in the Suffrage Movement.  I know for a fact that the ugly neo-Nazi harridan Phyllis Schlafly used it against passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. “Oh women will have to use the same rest rooms as men.”  “Lions and tigers and bears and transsexual rapists, oh my!”

It is all such bullshit.  Way back in 1969 Dr Lieberman at the Center for Special Problems gave me a card to carry that said I was in treatment for transsexualism.  With all the freaking requirements for screening they have now days how hard would it be to issue an equivalent sort of card?

Our biggest problem is that we aren’t really a class.  Rather we are more a bunch of individuals of widely varying appearances who enter into this process and our individual level of acceptance as well as the speed with which we amass that acceptance varies.  And it tends to be based on one of the most unfair of all factors by which people are judged, appearance.

Now working in a large mass retail environment can be a very enlightening experience.  Humans both men and women vary a lot in appearance.  Real life ain’t like TV or the movies.  There are some very odd looking folks out there.  Realization of this can go a long was in adjusting values of appearance based judgment up or down.

This brings us to the freaking MWMF.  I honestly always found it rather elitist and back in the 1970s I had every record that every single lesbian folk singer recorded on Olivia Record and records by some who recorded on other labels.  I even went to concerts by many of them in Los Angeles.  But I never had the money to travel to Michigan, nor much inclination to spend an outrageous amount of money for tickets to sleep on the ground.

As for meeting lesbians I had the Women’s Building, the Palms and Venice Beach.

This brings us to WBW or Women Born Women.  In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”  Women Born Female would be more appropriate.  For those who have compared WBT to WBW… WBT is more women born with transsexualism and is more analogous to women born female in that both take into account the process of becoming.

I found it rather ironic that on the MWMF list back when the whole shit storm was happening it came out that one of the most vehement anti-trans women was in fact a WBT.  Some of us seem to think being the first one to cast a stone at other sisters is a way to gain acceptance and avoid suspicion.

But I think honesty and earnestness count for more.  There were actually a lot of us who were second wave feminists and very few of us were trashed.  But those who were trashed are the stories that get remembered.

Now days Julia Serano is actually accepted on a level that may well create envy on the part of other sisters.  She has talent, is creative and cute.  She is also brilliant and accepted in feminist circles. Damn the only thing I can fault her on is the annoying use of cis-sexual and cis-gender.

Do any of you think anyone other than an ultra right wing Taliban Christer would challenge her right to use the women’s room.  And I’ll bet she would be welcome at the MWMF too.

[I’m probably going to surprise the hell out of a bunch of folks who wouldn’t expect this from either Monica Helms or from me.  On occasions over the past few years we have exchanged e-mails.  There are many issues where we are still in serious disagreement and there are places where we can say to each other, “You know, you have a point.

And you know what even if we may not have the same needs or political goals being so damned purist as to cut your own nose off to spite your face when you do have common issues is stupid.  It is isolationist and it is self destructive.

Also who knows by engaging in dialogue over common issues may well lead to greater understanding on the part of everyone.]

Men in Dresses? In the Military? I don’t &#@!* think so!

March 21st, 2009

By Monica F. Helms

The impending repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hangs over Bigot Americans like a specter of doom that will reach biblical proportions. In other words, they lack a strong grip on reality. They will do anything it takes to instill fear on the unknowing masses, stopping short of predicting the coming of The Rapture. Well, maybe they won’t stop short of that.

In this endless process of misinformation and out-and-out lies, the one part of the LGBT community that they like pointing to in order to generate the most fear are transgender people. They will always gravitate to the worn-out, standard line from the Bigot’s Handbook (Volume 17, 5^th Edition, page 963,) “Men in dresses.” If all else fails, they can always throw out “Men in dresses,” even if it has nothing to do with transgender people. To Bigot Americans, ALL gay men wear dresses. That’s BS to the max. Hell, I know several trans women and lesbians who wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress.

Let me show the important points in this latest round of lies that the BAs like to gloss over or don’t wish people to know about.

Continue reading at: http://www.monicahelms.com/blog/veterans/men-in-dresses-in-the-military-i-don%E2%80%99t-think-so.htm

Richard Docter wrote a very interesting book about the Prince of many names.  He was born Arnold Lowman and took the pseudonym Charles Prince in the 1950s.  By the 1960s that had become Charles “Virginia” Prince.

It was during the 1960s that he wrote the highly misogynistic “The Transvestite and His Wife” and what later became the ideological under pinnings of the ideology of transgender “How to be a Woman though Male”.

If that were the end of the evil that Lowman/Prince did transsexuals would hardly find him wort considering problematic. But during the 1960s he went to weekly “therapy” sessions with Dr. Robert Stoller, author of Sex and Gender vol I & II.  Stoller taped these and it doesn’t take a great deal of cross referencing to see the influential role Prince played in the pathologizing of people with transsexualism.

Now… I came out pretty much in isolation.  I lived in Berkeley and was part of the radical left rather than a part of the San Francisco Tenderloin transsexual/queen scene of 1967-70. But in 1969 and 70 I met people who were part of that.  Some of us were transsexuals and were bound and determined to move heaven and earth to get our “operations”.  We called ourselves, “transsexuals”.  Others, whom we called queens did pretty much exactly what we did when it came to everything but getting a sex change operation.

I was friends with a number of people who met this description.  Hell.. To be honest I considered them my sisters and never felt uncomfortable sharing a bathroom, changing room or even bed with them (In a non sexual way.  I have kaikaied with a few of these same sisters but this is not where I am going with this).  Sex work was one of the few fields open to pre-ops in those days, since one could not really get ID that said female or legally change name until later in the 1970s, so we were sisters in the sex industry.

After I got my sex change operation I remained friends with a few non-ops but I lived in a different part of LA by then and moved in different circles so getting together took conscious effort.

Then in the mid 1970s I met Carol Katz (Sister Mary Elizabeth) and Jude Patton.  They had this great new term, transgender.  I thought this was a great mid-point term because considering friends who were never going to get surgery “pre-op” was stretching the concept of “pre”.

What I didn’t realize was that these two were mainstreaming Prince’s malignant ideology.

At about that point I met this person Prince at a party and thought, “Who is that loathsome man in a dress?”

My opinion of her went downhill from there.  I was still under 30, some 4 years post-op and Shane of L-Word cute.  I was also a militant lesbian feminist with a hot girl friend, who was both WBW and taller than me.  We got paid to go to parties of the rich and famous and make out, act out what ever.  So neither my girl friend nor I took kindly to this ugly shrivelled toad of a man in a dress telling me that I couldn’t be transsexual since I liked women.  Or her telling me I made a mistake and should have kept my dick if I liked women instead of having it inverted into a man made artificial vagina.

S/he was lucky we didn’t kick the shit out her. But it was a cheesy party anyhow so we split and went clubbing.

Every time you see the term “artificial vagina” think Lowman/Prince, same for inverted penis.  He was the Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead of most of the negative psychological crap regarding transsexualism as well as the source of most of the misogynistic ideology of transgender.

Her philosophy permeates the debates.  Every negative thing transgender activists say regarding transsexuals can be traced back to his/her writings.

Now you may ask what happened to those non-ops that I knew back in the late 1960s or for that matter the sisters who got their operations?  Why wasn’t a counter argument mounted?

The reality is that before the early 1960s many of us never made it through high school.  The queens I knew were lumpen proletariat with 8th grade educations at best.  Often they had great native intelligence and yet they were so oppressed that they self destructed with substance abuse.  AIDS was devastating.

The straight TVs had educations and male jobs.  They could fund propaganda organs such as Tapestry.  Who has more credibility?  A trannie sex worker or a married engineer with an advanced degree and a job at a major corporation?

Even when the sex worker is living it 24/7 and is actually subjected to all the socil abuse the engineer is colonizing and claiming as his own.

The straight TVs have also denigrated the queens who were part of the gay and lesbian culture when only the too obvious were actually considered to really be gay.

It is the queens , those non-op or really everything but SRS folks who have paid the price to earn the term of respect that transgender should and could be.  Instead their lives get erased.

I have plenty of issues regarding the weekend warriors, the dress up for Tri-Ess CDs.  Some of those issues have to do with their never contributing time or money to support the transactivist but demanding that these same activists include them in any hate crimes or anti-discrimination bills.  This is even harder than including those who live 24/7/365 with procedures that change their secondary if not primary sexual characteristics.

That said…  I am more likely to think all Catholic priests are pedophiles than I am to think all CDs are.  Further I have known both fetishists and CDs and most CDs are not fetishists.  Nor are most rapists.

Labeling het CDs as nothing but perverts while possibly satisfying is the same sort of bullshit the Taliban Christers throw at us.

I started this blog to move the concept of WBT into the mainstream.  Tina and I never meant it to be the exclusive property of people to use as a club on other people who are also marginalized.

That is horizontal hostility between oppressed groups whose oppression may be different but which is none the less oppression.  Different people’s oppression should not be subject to measuring in some sort of my oppression is bigger than your oppression competition.

Just as there is too much calling of transphobia over stuff that always has been the lot of those who march to a different drummer so to there has been too much childish name calling.

The nayh, nayh, nayh prevents meaningful discourse and leads to people wasting energy engaging in in-fighting.

This is particularly disturbing at a time when getting ourselves depathologized by removing GID from the DSM is probably a more worth while endeavor.

Further we need to do something, come up with something to educate transkids to the risks so we can stop the slaughter of kids like Angie Zapata and Gwen Araujo.  Something more preventative than the Day of Remembrance or even hate crimes law.

This is not to say that probably a good many reading this aren’t already doing things to help make life better for all of us.  Lets stop getting bogged down in name calling.

[This was/is notable for its usage of transsexual instead of the ubiquitous transgender.  At this point if it would hasten the death of transgender as umbrella I could handle accepting people who are on hormones with possibly other surgeries and living 24/7 but not genital surgery as non-op or top-ops etc.  Shit I already cut T to M folks that slack.  Let that group use such semantic constructs as transwomen/transmen.  I don’t particularly see this group as an enemy.  I’m far more put out by the assuming patriarchal privilege of the het CDs.

In short I consider straight men in dresses who go back to exercising their straight male privilege more of a problem than the image one presented by the “trannie” sex workers.  Blame those with power and privilege not the powerless and oppressed.]

Letter to the editor Visalia Times Delta

http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20090320/OPINION03/903200336

Humanity should dictate gay tolerance

My opinion may be somewhat slanted in that I do not understand much legalese, and I do cherish friends who happen to be homosexual. Also, I am old enough to remember the personal and societal damage of prejudices against minorities. Justification is always the same, “they (the minority) are different and therefore less than we (the majority).

” The court’s ruling last spring resulting in 18,000 same-sex marriages was based on recognizing our common humanity and equality with lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual people, and ruling the LGBT people a protected minority who must be afforded all of the majorities’ protections and privileges. Should the court uphold Proposition 8 and not allow civil marriage for same-sex couples, the state will be forced to abandon civil marriage for all people.

Under any court ruling the Bill of Rights will continue to allow religion to define marriage for their congregations

That we share a common humanity is not news for those with friends and loved ones within the LGBT community.

I am optimistic that the final outcome will reinforce our claim that we are a nation of justice and liberty for all.

EDWARD F. BRENNAN Visalia

[One problem with calling every petty slight transphobia and looking for transphobia in any one who disagrees with the transgender ideology is the over use of the term until it no longer gets taken seriously.  Then when some shit for brains impotent dick like Trevor Carey spews forth his hate and we call it transphobia we have lost a tool for labeling violence advocating hate.  Indeed I would go so far as to say Trevor is advocating and encouraging terrorism and belongs on the Southern Poverty Law Centers Hate Watch List.]

Take Action: Demand that Colorado Radio Host Trevor Carey Disavow Remarks Condoning Violence Against Transgender People

Contact: Richard Ferraro, Director of Public Relations
Phone: (646) 871-8011    Email: ferraro@glaad.org

Contact: Adam Bass, Media Field Strategist
Phone: (323)634-2018 Email: bass@glaad.org

In a disturbing diatribe on KNUS radio on March 14, host Trevor Carey engaged in a conversation with a caller in which both men condoned violence against transgender people, blaming slain Greeley, Colo. resident Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman, for her own brutal murder.

(Transcript from Colorado Media Matters):

CAREY: And what the transgender segment of our society needs to be telling their type is, you don’t commit fraud because –

CALLER: No, that’s exactly what it was.

CAREY: A), you’re at least gonna get your teeth kicked in, and B) – [caller laughs] – here’s a story from Greeley that turned out very tragic, and you should pay attention to this, because –

CALLER: You know, when I was growin’ up in Greeley, I grew up in Greeley, that kind of stuff didn’t ever, you know, surface in this town. And it’s just sad, you know; my heart just weeps for all, everybody that’s concerned. But, you know, we gotta go back to basics. You’re a man or you’re a woman, and, like you said, if you’re fraudin’ somebody, then you deserve to have your teeth kicked in. Not necessarily hung or you’re killed, but it just – they shoulda known better, you know?

Carey sustained his gratuitously defamatory tone throughout the entire show, and his remarks during the segment – including a false representation of a conversation with a GLAAD representative – make it clear that his references to Angie and her tragic murder will continue to be disrespectful, abusive and inaccurate. The transcript and audio for the program can be found on the Colorado Media Matters website.

Carey owes the family of Angie Zapata, the transgender community and all Coloradans an apology for condoning and promoting the very hostile climate that puts transgender people in harm’s way and then blames them for the resulting acts of violence committed against them.

TAKE ACTION NOW!
Please contact Trevor Carey and ask him to disavow his remarks that condone violence against transgender people. Call on KFKA and KNUS to hold Carey accountable for his remarks and establish clear standards to ensure their media platforms will not be used to condone or promote violence towards any parts of the communities they serve.

Please forward this link to any of your friends and others who may also wish to take action. When contacting KFKA and KNUS, please ensure that your emails and phone calls are civil and respectful and do not engage in the kind of name calling or abusive behavior that we are expressing our concerns about.

Trevor Carey
Host, KNUS, “Trevor Carey” and KFKA, “AM Colorado with Trevor, Troy and George”
Phone:  (720) 434-2714
trevorcareywork@aol.com

Justin Sasso
General Manager, KFKA
Phone: (970) 356-1310
justin@1310kfka.com

Kelly Michaels
Operations Director, Salem Communications (KNUS)
Phone: (303) 750-5687
kelly@salemdenver.com

I have to head out to work soon.  Too soon to elaborate on the following thought from one of my favorite blogs that I read everyday “Echidine of the Snakes”.  I don’t know how I forgot to add her to my blog roll, a mistake I corrected today.

Think of the way we debate gender roles. The two end-points are often seen as someone with Talibanesque views on women on one side and someone who’d let women go out and run for the President of the United States, sure (as long as the dinner is still on the table when the hubby comes home). Well, perhaps not quite, but you get the point: There’s nary a radical feminist anywhere in sight.

More importantly, the two end-points of this opinion line are seen as ‘Kirche, Küche und Kinder’ for women, at one end, and ‘legal equality of the sexes’ at the other end. Or ‘men should dominate’ vs. ‘everybody is equal’. Note what’s missing there, as is missing from all the other debates about women’s essential nature or whatnot?

The symmetrical end-point to the view ‘men should dominate’. The effect of this one is to make ‘compromise’ appear something inbetween full equality and absolute male domination, and the effect is also to make someone like me come across as an extremist, when in fact arguing for equality should be the middle position. Don’t you think?

The problem with defining by and the overuse of gender instead of sex is that it limits women to proscribed roles and un-sexes them if they step outside those proscribed roles.  Sort of like Mick Jagger’s singing in Satisfaction “But he can’t be a man coz he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me”

[This article has been amended to correct the exclusionary language usage of “transgender” when speaking of both transsexual and transgender students.]
http://www.365gay.com/news/study-trans-students-victimized/

(New York City) A new study finds transssexual and transgender youths face extremely high levels of victimization in school – even more so than their lesbian, gay and bisexual peers.

But the study, by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, also found they are more likely to speak out about LGBT/T issues in the classroom.

Called ”Harsh Realities: The Experiences of Transgender Youth in Our Nation’s Schools,” it is the first comprehensive study on transsexual and transgender students.

Nearly nine out of 10 transsexual and transgender students experienced verbal harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation and gender expression, more than half experienced physical harassment because of their sexual orientation and gender expression and more than a quarter experienced physical assault because of their sexual orientation and gender expression.

The levels of victimization were higher than those faced by the non-transgender lesbian, gay and bisexual students who participated in the GLSEN ”2007 National School Climate Survey.”

“[This] demonstrates the urgent need for educators, policymakers and all who care about safe schools to address the disproportionate victimization of transsexual and transgender students and to improve the knowledge and understanding of all members of the school community about issues related to gender and gender expression,” said GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard.

“It is important to note, however, that in the face of extreme harassment, transgender students are resilient and taking the lead to bring up LGBT issues in school,” she said.

In addition to looking at comparisons between transsexual/ transgender and non-trans students, “Harsh Realities” specifically examined the experiences of the 295 transsexual/transgender students who took the ”National School Climate Survey.”

The high rate of victimization had a direct impact on school attendance and academic performance. Transsexual/transgender students who experienced high levels of harassment were more likely to miss school because they felt unsafe and had lower grade point averages than those who experienced lower levels of harassment.

Less than a fifth of transsexual/transgender students said that school staff intervened most of the time or always when hearing homophobic remarks or negative remarks about someone’s gender expression.

In addition, school staff also contributed to the harassment. A third of transsexual/transgender students heard school staff make homophobic remarks, sexist remarks and negative comments about someone’s gender expression in the past year.

[This was taken from Page One Q   http://pageoneq.com/stories/US_will_sign_UN_declaration_on_gay_righ_0318.html There is one thing I really think worthy of noting.  I’ve made it Bold to make it easy for people to see.  They used the word transsexual and not transgender.]

by AP News
Sources: US to sign UN gay rights declaration
MATTHEW LEE
AP News
Mar 17, 2009 23:28 EST
The Obama administration will endorse a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality that then-President George W. Bush had refused to sign, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said Tuesday they had notified the declaration’s French sponsors that the administration wants to be added as a supporter. The Bush administration was criticized in December when it was the only western government that refused to sign on.

The move was made after an interagency review of the Bush administration’s position on the nonbinding document, which was signed by all 27 European Union members as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries, the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress was still being notified of the decision. They said the administration had decided to sign the declaration to demonstrate that the United States supports human rights for all.

“The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world,” said one official.

“As such, we join with the other supporters of this statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora,” the official said.

The official added that the United States was concerned about “violence and human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual individuals” and was also “troubled by the criminalization of sexual orientation in many countries.”

“In the words of the United States Supreme Court, the right to be free from criminalization on the basis of sexual orientation ‘has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom’,” the official said.

Gay rights and other groups had criticized the Bush administration when it refused to sign the declaration when it was presented at the United Nations on Dec. 19. U.S. officials said then that the U.S. opposed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation but that parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.

According to negotiators, the Bush team had concerns that those parts could commit the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In some states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

It was not immediately clear on Tuesday how the Obama administration had come to a different conclusion.

When it was voted on in December, 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries signed the declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with anti-gay discrimination.

But 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality — and in several, homosexual acts can be punished by execution. More than 50 nations, including members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, opposed the declaration.

Some Islamic countries said at the time that protecting sexual orientation could lead to “the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts” such as pedophilia and incest. The declaration was also opposed by the Vatican.

Lot of things get labeled transphobia when calling them that is pretty dubious at best.

One problem is the Transgender as umbrella puts every freak that cross dresses in the same big tent that includes post-SRS men and women as well as the 24/7/365 TG.  This includes the stubbled pancaked fetishistic het TV wanker who wants to use the ladies room because he is en femme and the sociopathic rapist.

In Western Australia a cross dresser is on trial for murdering a Chinese student (female) after his DNA was found on her shirt.  Blah, blah this is pretty smoking gun fella…  Sort of like using a murdered victums credit cards or taking their card and then trying to use the transpanic defense.

Another thing that may not be transphobia is if after transitioning you can’t find a job in your field when your field is so male dominated that only 1% of the people working in it are female.

It may not be transphobia when people look at you at the mall and laugh if you dress so odd as to be stared at when you go to a punk rock or goth concert.  Or if people go and get the store manager if you try to use the women’s rest room.

It might not be transphobia that causes the residents of an area to get pissed of if a bunch of trannies try to turn the street in front of their buildings in to a whore stroll.  Try using the sex ads instead.

It probably isn’t transphobia if the police come down on public prostitution like a ton of bricks.  Especially if they pretty much leave those working the papers alone.

I could come up with a thousand of these but mainly it comes down to this..  If you are  a person with a transprefixed word attached to you and you are publicly making an ass out of yourself screaming transphobia does not make your case.

Let’s save that one for actual transphobia that gets exercised when ever some low life scum uses the transpanic defense to try to get away with murder.  Used to often it becomes a case of “The Boy who called wolf.”

When I first heard this story my brain shorted out.  All of a sudden I started channeling John McEnroe, not the sort of over the hill doing ads for rental cars John McEnroe but the old one who used to unleash the tirades at bad calls, John McEnroe.

Free sex reassignment surgery for some guy who is in prison in Ontario for raping two women…  You can’t be fucking serious?

What the fuck?

I first saw this one over at Questioning Transphobia.  I wanted to say, Lisa, Lisa, not every negative reaction to some one who is either transgender or transsexual is transphobia.  There are some acts that are just so beyond the pale (rape and murdering women) that they are pretty inexcusable.  Even by someone like me who would have commuted  Aileen Wournos death sentence to life.

Anyhow I feel somewhat vindicated that a judge in Ontario agreed with me.

TORONTO — Paying for a sex change assessment for a convicted rapist living in a maximum-security psychiatric facility is not the responsibility of the Ministry of the Attorney General, an Ontario judge ruled Friday.

The Ontario Review Board, the agency that oversees individuals found not criminally responsible, does not have the authority to order the ministry to pay $15,000 for Shauna Taylor to be assessed for his candidacy for a sex change, the court found.

Still Taylor, who legally changed his name from Vance Egglestone, will undergo an assessment and the review board will likely pay through funds provided by the Ministry of Health, said Taylor’s lawyer Michael Davies.

“There is a bit of a shell game going on between the different departments of the government,” said Davies.

Egglestone has spent the majority of his adult life in psychiatric hospitals after being found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity for brutally raping a woman in 1976. He pleaded guilty to raping a second woman in 1986 while living as an outpatient in Toronto.

For the last several years, Taylor has been taking hormones, dressing as a woman and has expressed a desire for an orchidectomy (surgical removal of the testes) as a first step toward an Ontario government-funded sex change.

In 2007, lawyers for Attorney General Chris Bentley went to court arguing the review board exceeded its jurisdiction when it ordered Taylor, 53, to be assessed, and directed the attorney general to pay for it.

The case was settled last August when an Ontario Superior court quashed both orders, ruling the board acted outside its authority.

Only weeks later, the review board appointed an expert to offer his opinion on whether surgical intervention or sex reassignment surgery is necessary or advisable for Taylor’s health and welfare.

This time, the attorney general wasn’t contesting the assessment order, only who should pay for it, said Davies.

“The attorney general said the board should pay and the board said the attorney general should pay,” he said, noting up until now the question of who should pay for review board-ordered medical assessments has been “up in the air.”

A spokesman for the attorney general said the issue in the case was “purely jurisdictional” and the court accepted the Crown’s view that the review board did not have the authority to order the ministry to pay.

Experts have described Taylor in reports to the review board as an “identified psychopath” and “pathological liar,” and suggest his motivation for a sex change is not clear-cut.

Forensic psychiatrists and clinicians who submit evidence on behalf of the psychiatric hospital to the review board suggest Taylor’s interest in the procedure is at least in part a strategy to reduce the perceived danger that he represents and to ultimately be transferred to a less secure setting.

Least people think I am being out of line and cruel I remember seeing another film of someone named Richard Speck who murdered 8 student nurses.  In the 90s a film was circulating of him with his hormone titties hanging out doing dope in prison and cavorting with his fuck buddies. I’m not going to point you to it.  It’s on You Tube.

And hormones or no hormones, this prick, Vance Egglestone AKA Shauna Taylor is a rapist and should spend the rest of his life in men’s prison.

I don’t give a damned what hormones he takes or what surgery he has he will always be a man and a rapist.

I am furious at the attempt to link being a rapist with transsexualism.  He is nothing but a mentally ill sociopath.

As a radical Feminist I put women first and women in prison have enough to put up with without having a rapist who had SRS to be put where he can harm women to put up with.

May he rot in prison.  He is not my sister.

Pink News, UK

Opponents seek to repeal gay and trans protection provisions in Florida

By Jessica Geen • March 16, 2009 – 15:18

Voting has begun today on whether to repeal a Gainesville, Florida, ordinance that gives protection to LGBT citizens.

If passed on the March 24 election, the Charter Amendment 1 will make the ordinance conform to the Florida Civil Rights Act, cancelling the anti-discrimination protections Gainesville extends to gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people.

Howard Simon, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said: “If this ordinance were repealed, it would be perfectly legal in Gainesville to fire someone from a job, to kick someone out of rental housing, to deny someone service simply because the owner does not like the idea that someone is gay.”

Opponents say they have one reason to seek the amendment – a clause which allows trans men and women to use whichever public toilets they feel most comfortable with.

Members of Citizens for Good Public Policy, which collected the 6,343 valid signatures to get the amendment on the ballot, have said that this policy puts women and children at risk from sex offenders.

The provision, passed by a 4-3 vote a year ago, was added to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance to benefit around 100 trans residents.

Opponents of the move are currently campaigning against it, with one television advert featuring a blonde girl entering a restroom in a park as a scruffy-looking man loiters outside and then follows her in. The ad ends with the words ‘Your city commission made this legal’.

Cain Davis, chairman of Citizens for Good Public Policy, told AP that the issue is about regulating a “government gone wild” and ensuring public safety, adding that sexual predators could now simply enter a women’s restroom claiming to be a trans individual.

“We know when men go into women’s restrooms, bad things can happen,” Davis said.

However, computer programmer Clare Holman, who was born male but now lives as a woman, said she thought it best to avoid using public toilets at all.

“I don’t want to run afoul of the law by using the wrong restroom,” Holman said.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-11616.html

By WILLIE HOWARD

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, March 13, 2009

LAKE WORTH — Susan Stanton, the former Largo city manager who drew national media attention after being fired for announcing plans for a sex change, is a finalist for the city manager’s job in Lake Worth.

The former Steve Stanton worked as assistant city manager and manager for Largo for more than 16 years. He was fired by Largo commissioners in February 2007 after announcing plans to change his gender.

Later that year, Stanton appeared as Susan Ashley Stanton while lobbying for transgender rights in Washington. She finished third in the competition for the city manager’s job in Sarasota in May 2007.

Stanton, 50, formerly of Clearwater, has since moved to Arizona, according to Connie Hoffman, vice president of The Mercer Group, which conducted the city manager search for Lake Worth.

The national discussion that followed Stanton’s firing led the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council to persuade West Palm Beach, Tequesta, Lake Worth and Palm Beach County to add provisions to their codes that prevent discrimination based on gender identity.

Stanton’s gender was not mentioned by city commissioners Thursday during a discussion of city manager finalists.

“We don’t have time for bigotry in the city of Lake Worth,” Mayor Jeff Clemens said. “There’s too much for us to do. I’m going to make my decision based on who the best candidate is, period.”

In her cover letter to the city, Stanton offered to work 90 days without pay on a trial basis. The letter says she used to live in West Palm Beach and has spent “many enjoyable afternoons in Bryant Park.”

Stanton and three to five other candidates will come to Lake Worth the weekend of April 4. The city manager candidates are scheduled to tour the city with commissioners and meet the public at the city golf course April 5. They will be interviewed April 6. Final selection is set for April 7.

Other city manager finalists, selected by commissioners Thursday from a list of 10 semifinalists, include:

Former Fort Pierce City Manager Dennis Beach, who retired in September after 13 years with the city.

Former Broward County Administrator Pamela Brangaccio.

Former Royal Oak, Mich., city manager Thomas Hoover.

The Mercer Group might add another finalist or two to add racial and ethnic diversity to the list before commissioners approve it on Tuesday.

Lake Worth is offering a salary of $140,000 to $160,000 to the new city manager. Former City Manager Bob Baldwin, whose last day with the city is Sunday, worked for Lake Worth on a month-to-month basis. Baldwin begins his new job next week as city manager in Dania Beach.

The Patriarchy teaches women, “It is your fault.”

Got raped.  You shouldn’t have dressed that way.  You shouldn’t have gone to that party, that bar, that place.  What were you doing out alone at that time of night?  What did you expect?

The message is.  It was your fault you got raped and not the fault of the rapist.

When we are transkids we learn our sex roles (gender roles) second hand.  We are taught what is expected of women from books, magazines, television and movies.  Ever notice how many times in movies a woman will throw away or be unable to pull the trigger on a perfectly good gun when her attacker is so close a blind person could shot him, instead she winds up screaming for a man to protect her?  That teaches us women are supposed to be weak and defenseless.

As transgirls we may not have actively been taught that girls always lose at games to boys, but being the last picked to be on teams sure sent the message that boys considered us someone incapable of winning.  When we started to actively learn the sex roles expected of the women we were becoming by our teenage years we had already internalized the message that we were inferior to boys when it came to sports and other things.

When I was a teen queen there was a song sung by the Chrystals (written by Carole King & Gerry Goffin) recorded by Phil Spector titled “He Hit Me and it felt like a kiss”.  this came out a year or so before my mother crammed “The Feminine Mystique” into my hands and said, “You think you want to be a girl.  You better read this and maybe you will realize what you are getting yourself into.”

Boys get a mixed message.  They aren’t supposed to hit girls yet they are supposed to be superior in every way, to dominate them since after all the invisible imaginary sky daddy, big boss of the universe is m ale like them and not female like mommy.  So it is the role of males to dominate.

In the last few years there have been the murders of two really cute young girls who had just come out and started living as women.  Then bang they were murdered.  And in both cases the excuse was that they were trans.  It was their fault and not the fault of the murderers.  this plays into what I was talking about earlier.  It is always the girl/woman’s fault when it comes to being abused.

Because of having been born with transsexualism most of us have internalized from infancy a sense of worthlessness, reinforced by years of physical and emotional abuse from family and peers.  This results in us growing up with a sense of inferiority.  Some try to hide their being transsexual until middle age doing everything expected of them, thinking if they play the game they won’t be exposed and won’t have to suffer the abuse.  Even if playing the game destroys them.

Others, myself included wind up either strung out or like me, an alcoholic doing sex work because I had such a low opinion of myself that even when I was good at something I didn’t see myself as worthy of success.

Relationships can be the same way.  When I first started meeting other sisters and most of their boyfriends I though, “Couldn’t they do better than this? Because most of their boyfriends had just gotten out of and would soon be going back to one of those places that rhymes with Yale and starts with a ‘J’.’

But I was lonely and I wanted a protector because I was pre-op and doing sex work so I found a Marine Corp deserter, just back from Vietnam.  The sex was great and I liked being his “old lady” in the hippie slang of the day.  But I also had to support him.  Being a deserter he couldn’t get a job.  I loved him and I wouldn’t have said the pimp word about him if you had water boarded me.  But I was working my ass off with two jobs and hustling to support the two of us plus save for my surgery.

When we broke up I suddenly had the money to do things like hop on a plane when I wanted, buy cameras, clothes etc.

Later I came out as a lesbian and had my first serious relationship with a woman end when she smashed me in the face one night after she had smoked PCP.  We fought for what seemed like hours.  I was badly beaten up but I considered myself lucky I wasn’t arrested.  The women’s abuse counseling didn’t recognize violence in lesbian relationships at that point.

I had felt used for a number of months prior to the final eruption.  But I blamed myself and what I had been born.  But what was really going on was that I had internalized the universal message taught women in a patriarchal society, “It’s your fault.  What did you do to bring this upon yourself?”

Later I was living with a sister. I had let her back into my life even knowing the negative impact she had on me earlier.  For a year I let her tear me down, wear down the self esteem I was building through hanging out at the Women’s Building, therapy, Martial Arts and achieving minor success with my photography.  She talked me into selling off everything I treasured and had worked so hard to get and leave all my friends behind to move to Northern California and live with her.

She immediately took all the money I had so I couldn’t just leave without becoming homeless.  Then the emotional abuse started.  Eventually one night before I had an exam at school she was being particularly mean to me and I went to sleep on the couch.  She attacked me beating me with a huge Buck Bowie knife in a sheath.  I blocked it using my martial arts training. The knife broke through the sheath and I wound up breaking pieces of the edge off wiand lodging them in my shin bones.

She then tried to shoot me but I had unloaded the gun and hid the magazines.

Her friends told me it wasn’t her fault and tried to convince me I had done something to provoke her.

The circle goes round and round.  This is the same message I got from my mother when the boys in elementary school would beat and abuse me daily on my way to and from school.

Women join in giving the abused the message that it is her fault.  That is the result of internalization of the misogynistic message that no matter how abused a woman is it is her fault.

On the night of the Academy Awards singer Chris Brown was arrested and charged with beating the crap out of his girl friend, the singer  Rihanna.

This brought the act of partner abuse to the headlines in both the popular sphere and to the blogosphere.

It is news when big stars do it.  Yet all around the world men abuse and kill their girl friends and wives.  One study of domestic violence says that 2 out of 3 women have been physically abused at the hands of a family member or person they are acquainted with.

When it happens to one of us we are less likely to go to the police since we are aware of the bad record of negative police interactions with WBTs or for that matter lesbian or gay people.

If the abuser is a man and he knows our history he can use it against us since our history has often been considered grounds for murder.

If we are in a lesbian relationship and our abuser is a WBW we had better be cut and bleeding needing hospitalization with our partner being relatively unscathed other wise we will not be considered the victim but rather the aggressor.  Especially if our history is known.  It is used against us.

With shit like this is it any coincidence that many of us wind up living alone in isolation?

I don’t have any answers.  Even Dear Abby whose column in today’s news papers (see below) doesn’t give real answers but she sure as hell gives the warning signs.

I told y’all this wasn’t going to be the typical trannie blog.  I’m sure that this entry is only the first time we will visit this subject.

WOMAN STARTS TO QUESTION BOYFRIEND’S PROTECTIVENESS

DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend, “Josh,” won’t leave me alone. We have been living together for almost a year, and he is the ultimate overprotector. When I start to leave the house to run errands or anything, he stops me and asks, “Where do you think you’re going?” When I tell him, he will then follow me to the location.

I love Josh and would never want to hurt his feelings, but I think he’s a little too worried about me. I’m an adult, and I can take care of myself. Is Josh being too overprotective, or am I just crazy? — OVERPROTECTED IN OREGON

DEAR OVERPROTECTED: You’re not crazy. Josh’s behavior is over the top and is less about your safety than his own insecurity and lack of trust. Every year or so, I print the warning signs of an abuser. Please review them carefully. If any of the signs in addition to No. 3 apply to you, you should end the relationship immediately. Read on:

1. PUSHES FOR QUICK INVOLVEMENT: Comes on strong, claiming, “I’ve never felt loved like this by anyone.” An abuser pressures the new partner for an exclusive commitment almost immediately.

2. JEALOUS: Excessively possessive; calls constantly or visits unexpectedly; prevents you from going to work because “you might meet someone”; checks the mileage on your car.

3. CONTROLLING: Interrogates you intensely (especially if you’re late) about whom you talked to and where you were; keeps all the money; insists you ask permission to go anywhere or do anything.

4. UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS: Expects you to be the perfect mate and meet his or her every need.

5. ISOLATION: Tries to cut you off from family and friends; accuses people who are your supporters of “causing trouble.” The abuser may deprive you of a phone or car or try to prevent you from holding a job.

6. BLAMES OTHERS FOR PROBLEMS AND MISTAKES: It’s always someone else’s fault if something goes wrong.

7. MAKES OTHERS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OR HER FEELINGS: The abuser says, “You make me angry,” instead of, “I am angry,” or says, “You’re hurting me by not doing what I tell you.”

8. HYPERSENSITIVITY: Is easily insulted, claiming hurt feelings when he or she is really mad. Rants about the injustice of things that are just a part of life.

9. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS OR CHILDREN: Kills or punishes animals brutally. Also may expect children to do things that are far beyond their ability (whips a 3-year-old for wetting a diaper) or may tease them until they cry. Sixty-five percent of abusers who beat their partner will also abuse children.

10. “PLAYFUL” USE OF FORCE DURING SEX: Enjoys throwing you down or holding you down against your will during sex; finds the idea of rape exciting.

11. VERBAL ABUSE: Constantly criticizes or says blatantly cruel things; degrades, curses, calls you ugly names. This may also involve sleep deprivation, waking you up with relentless verbal abuse.

12. RIGID GENDER ROLES: Expects you to serve, obey, remain at home.

13. SUDDEN MOOD SWINGS: Switches from sweet to violent in a matter of minutes.

As an amateur historian and an archivist I’ve always had and read a fair sampling of trans themed books, especially memoirs.  I’ve watched their evolution ever since the expurgated and self censored “Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography”.

So straight, so square so different from my messy late 1960s life of sex, drugs, rock n roll and radical politics.  Canary Conn’s book in the early 1970s hinted at a life a tad edgier and closer to the lives that were being lived by my friends and myself.

But where oh where wre the books with the real stuff of life?  The stuff that caused Jim Carroll to open his book “Forced Entries” with an epigram attributed to Anatole France, “All writers of confessions, from Augustine on down, have always remained a little in love with their sins.”

To make matters worse many of the autobiographies were by people with whom I felt I had very little in common.  Renee Richards, Roberta Cowell, Jan Morris, Nancy Hunt.  No one ever writes about giving a blow job to a lead singer or lead guitar for an invite back to the Continental Riot House for the after gig party or for the pass that let me say the magic words, “I’m with the band.”  Indeed the emphasis is so on ladylike as to often come across as being afraid to mention any carnal desires and lusts.

Oh no most of these memoirs were more about being born privileged and having spent their callow youth in a uniform rather than having hot sex with a boyfriend who had deserted after returning from Vietnam.  No one mentioned the dressing to give the doctor a hard-on because we knew that was the surest way to get him (and it was most often a him) to write a hormone script or agree to do our operation.

It was as if actively enjoying our lives was something taboo and heaven forbid we should actually enjoy sex.  Then in the early 1980s April Ashley’s book came out and with it came a sense that it was actually possible for us to both have fun with our lives and enjoy sex.  Coincidentally April’s book treated her operation as a point in her life and not as the climax.

The same with Aleshia Brevard’s, Leslie Townsend and Rosalyne Blumenstein.  At last people had started telling their stories in a way that didn’t sugar coat them as much.  Some talked about abusive relationships post SRS others talked about having substance issues.

In writing honestly about our lives we get to see the variety of twists and turn they take and yet see the common point that resonate.  Because even as alien as some of the biographies of those who come out in middle age are to my adult life there are the same element we all tend to experience as children.

Knowing both young and older emergers has caused me to see the pathologicalization laid forth by the dicks like BB & L for the bullshit that it is.

I often find heterosexual transvestites demonstrating  both ignorance and arrogance regarding both WBTs and sisters in process.  One aspect of this is that we all start out cross dressers and that both transgenders and transexuals take it further.

I guess in this sort of cosmology a sort of sports analogy works cross dressing equals playing a high school sport, transgenderism equals playing that same sport in college and getting SRS equals playing professionally.  This is the same line of thinking that causes some TVs to put us on a pedestal  and then call us elitist when we claim to have little or nothing in common with them.

I think this stems from some common TV fantasies that show up in some TV erotica where the protagonist is forcibly feminized yet keeps his peepee while others are also feminized but are taken to the ultimate.  It is a safe fantasy of being like WBTS yet not having to give it up to Cybele’s knife.

If we challenge them on the idea of a continuum or that people tend to move toward transsexuaklism they whip out Dr. Benjamin’s scale.  The thing about The Transsexual Phenomena is that it was publishe in 1966 and hit the stores in 1967.  But it wasn’t written in 1966.  Indeed it is a strung together collection of journal articles slightly rewritten.  Many stemming from the early 1950s.  The Kinsey Scales played a role in Benjamin developing his own scale.

When we were running the office he visited us along with Zelda Suplee and we talked about the things we were finding.  One of those things was that by 1970 kids with transsexualism were arriving in the city and never going through the stages of identifying as queens.  They would get to the city, visit the office and go to the public health clinic and get hormones and enter transition.  On the other hand people were getting their SRS dates and then changing their minds but continuing to live as women.

He agreed that his observations could change with the culture and with more people living more openly.

It has been 40 years now and if some things we thought in the 1960 were right everyone would have started coming out as young adults and transvestites/transgenders would have nearly disappeared.  This suggests that while all three  might well be innate they also might not have a very close relationship.

I would say to transvestites, “Don’t put us on pedestals and then call us elitiist because we say we are different.”  It just pisses us off and makes it harder to work together on ad-hoc issues that might be of common interest to us both.  Hate crimes and ENDA spring immediately to mind as ad-hoc issues that probably are of common interest.

But we aren’t you sisters.  Further some of the crap I’ve heard from TV/TGs regarding my genitals sounds as though it came straight from some right wing Christo-Fascist preacher.

I might be nicer to y’all if you didn’t say such nasty shit about my nice little pussy.

Well I think we were actually a few shy when the counter ticked over for the first thirty but 6K is much better than my other far more anarcho-left political Blog.

I want to thank Andrea James and the women at TS-SI for putting up links that sent me a lot of readers. Also Cathryn, Joanne and Joann for putting links on their blogs to this one.  I want to thank those of you who comment regularly and read regularly.

I think after some of the initial issues get hashed out that this blog has a lot of potential.  I have positioned it more moderately than many expect of me in part because 8 years of sobrity as well as being in a stable loving relationship has made me less angry about some things although 8 years of bat shit insane right wing politics coupled with insane religious bigotry has  maybe just shifted the direction of some of my anger.

For me this is a continuation of my personal politics that have keep me in various movements for nearly 50 years now.  Back in the early 1970s I went to work at the NTCU out of love and caring for my sisters.  I have long realized that I can be open in some spheres and not in others because even speaking at a West Hollywood Townhall meeting doesn’t bestow much fame.

Any how thank you for starting to follow this blog.

Suzy

http://www.365gay.com/news/judge-tosses-confession-of-man-accused-of-killing-transwoman/

(Greeley, Colorado) The confession of a Colorado man who is accused of fatally battering a sex partner with a fire extinguisher after discovering she was a transgender woman, cannot be presented into evidence, a district court judge has ruled.

Allen Ray Andrade, 31, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Angie Zapata, 20. The victim’s bloodied, battered body was discovered in her apartment by her sister on July 17, 2008.

Andrade was arrested in the Denver suburb of Thornton, where he lives. Police responding to a noise complaint found him in Zapata’s 2003 PT Cruiser, which had been missing.

Under questioning, Andrade allegedly told investigators that he met Zapata through MocoSpace, a social network designed primarily for cell phone users. The two met July 15 and spent the day together. Andrade allegedly told investigators that Zapata performed oral sex on him but wouldn’t let him touch her. When he discovered she was biologically male, he killed her.

In the taped confession, he allegedly told investigators that he grabbed Zapata’s crotch area, felt male genitalia and became angry. He told investigators that he took a fire extinguisher off a shelf, struck Zapata twice in the head and thought he “killed it.”

But in a 24 page ruling, Judge Marcelo Kopcow said that Andrade’s rights had been violated because he had told police he was finished answering questions, but investigators persisted with questions leading up to the confession.

“This court finds the defendant’s statement, ‘I’m done. Yeah, I’m not talking right now’ … is a clear statement of the defendant’s request to remain silent and cut off further questioning,” Kopcow said in a written ruling.

Kopcow also told the prosecution it could not describe Andrade as a high ranking member of a gang that among other things hates gays. The judge said it was more speculative than substantive.

He did, however, allow the prosecution to present to the jury tapes of phone calls made by Andrade from jail to his girlfriend.

In one call he said he had “snapped” and that “gay things need to die.”

In ruling that the tapes could be played for the jury Kopcow said that prisoners “have little, if any, reasonable expectation of privacy while incarcerated.”