Women Born Transsexual

Dr. George Tiller, an outspoken advocate for abortion rights and one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country, was shot dead in church this morning.

WICHITA, Kan. — George Tiller, one of only a few doctors in the nation who performed abortions late in pregnancy, was shot to death here Sunday in the foyer of his longtime church as he handed out the church bulletin.

The authorities said they took a man into custody later in the day after pulling him over on Interstate 35 in Johnson County, Kan., near Kansas City. They said they expected to charge him with murder on Monday.

The Wichita police said there were several witnesses to the killing, but the law enforcement officials would not say what had been said, if anything, inside the foyer. Officials offered little insight into the motive, saying that they believed it was “the act of an isolated individual” but that they were also looking into “his history, his family, his associates.”

A provider of abortions for more than three decades, Dr. Tiller, 67, had become a focal point for those around the country who opposed it. In addition to regular protests outside his clinic, his house and his church, Dr. Tiller had once seen his clinic bombed; in 1993, an abortion opponent shot him in both arms. He was also the defendant in a series of legal challenges intended to shut down his operations, including two grand juries that were convened after citizen-led petition drives.

On Sunday morning, moments after services had begun at Reformation Lutheran Church, on this city’s East Side, Dr. Tiller, who was acting as an usher, was shot once with a handgun, the authorities said. As many as a dozen other churchgoers were standing in the foyer near him when he was shot, the police said. The gunman pointed the weapon at two people who tried to stop him, the police said, then fled the church and drove off in a powder blue Taurus. Dr. Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, a member of the church choir, was inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting.

The police in Wichita described the man who was taken into custody as a 51-year-old from Merriam, a Kansas City suburb, but declined to give his name until he was charged. The Associated Press reported that a sheriff’s official from Johnson County identified him as Scott Roeder.

Contine reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html?hp

May 29, 2009

From Andrea B.
By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk • May 19, 2009 – 15:17

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12510.html

A trans girl has been barred from attending her Catholic school in Omaha, Nebraska, after officials objected to her wearing girls’ clothes.

The eight-year-old, who has not been named, was prohibited from transitioning at St Wenceslaus school.

“The child is welcomed to come, but it would not be acceptable to change the child’s gender and present as a girl,” said Omaha Archdiocese’s Chancellor, the Rev Joseph Taphorn.

Taphorn added that as the girl had already attended the school for three years as a boy, her new appearance as a girl would not help foster a good learning environment for other pupils.

The girl has been supported by her parents, who have decided she must live openly as a girl, rather than being forced to dress as a boy for school.

Speaking to WPTZ.com, the girl’s mother, a devout Catholic, said: “She’s been a girl since the beginning, everything about her, the way she dances and skips around and the things she’s attracted to. It’s more than toys and clothes.”

“One night, she said, ‘Every night when I go to bed, I pray my inside will match my outside. But it never happens,'” she added.

The girl will now attend a public school in the autumn where she will be permitted to dress as a girl.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I read an Op-Ed piece in the local newspaper regarding a Catholic Woman Hating organization promoting the boycotting of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

What the fuck?  The Catholic are pro-breast cancer.  Now I know they are one of the major forces of superstition based misogyny and take the inferiority of women as a core belief.  That they do not thing women should have reproductive freedom and all that but organizing a boycott of the ubiquitous Pink Ribbon.  Tell mehey aren’t serious.

Why that is akin to being pro-breast cancer and I had a hard time believing that even Catholics would stoop that low.

But according to the following op-ed piece that is pretty much what they have done.

Norman Roberts: A pro-life Catholic supports Komen
11:54 AM CDT on Friday, May 29, 2009

As a committed pro-life advocate, I find myself in an awkward dispute with the Catholic Pro-Life Committee, an organization I normally support. You see, I am also an enthusiastic supporter of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a group that does a great deal of good in raising money and advocating for research, prevention, early detection and treatment of breast cancer. I was recently dismayed to learn the Pro-Life Committee is cooperating in a scandalous campaign to discourage Catholic support for Komen.

Continue reading at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-roberts_30edi.State.Edition1.37f8d96.html

Susan G. Komen’s big sin was giving money to Planned Parenthood, an organization that does far more for women’s health than provide abortions and birth control.

But the Catholic Church  has never been long on empowering women and this is not the first nor will it be the last outrage perpetrated in the name of the invisible imaginary sky daddy

One of the benefits of being anarcha -feminist autodidact is that I tend to thumb my nose at academic authority figures who tell me that I shouldn’t pull material from lots of sources.

Yeah right.  We are supposed to recognize the only possible relevant material written about our lives by the “transsexual” or “transgender” in the title.  Since we’re such a bunch of sick freaks nothing written about normborns could possibly be relevant.

So imagine my surprise when I opened a Carol Gilligan book I bought at Half Price Books titled In a Different Voice and read the following on page 14:

These observations about sex differences support the conclusion reached by David McClelland (1975) that “sex roles turn out to be one of the most important determinants of human behavior; psychologists have found sex differences in their studies from the moment they started doing empirical research.” But since it is difficult to say “different” without saying “better” or “worse,” since there is a tendency to construct a single scale of measurement and since that scale has generally been derived from and standardized on the basis of men’s interpretations of research data drawn predominantly or exclusively from studies of males, psychologists “have tended to regard male behavior as the ‘norm’ and female behavior as some kind of deviation from that norm” (p81) Thus when women do not conform to the standards of psychological expectation, the conclusion has generally been that something is wrong with the women.

That’s a pretty profound paragraph right there and is a variation on things I have been saying for 40 years.  I sussed early on that we were being considered mentally ill for things considered normal in women.  I also figured out really quickly that I was being treated as “the perfect transsexual” because I was this cute young girl and not some 45 year old father of two who may well have been suffering the same hitting of the wall where one either changes or suicides.

That one is a form of beauty skin privilege that creates credibility based on conformity to expected appearances rather than according to actual internal feelings.

We get labeled as deviant for the same behavior considered normal in women born female.  Why?  Because we are evaluated against male standards.

In 1969 when I was going to a bunch of psychiatrists that the social workers were sending me to as part of an attempt to get government funding for SRS the doctors I saw wrote these glowing letters saying I was an ordinary pretty Berkeley girl/woman and wasn’t the least bit psychologically disabled.

Which was pretty much the truth.  I was resourceful enough to make my way across the country and find one of the few public health clinics treating transsexualism anywhere in the world (in 1969) all the while living on pennies as a hippie radical.  Disabled I wasn’t.  My main problems at that point often had to do with being undocumented, an alien in my own country.

That aside the fashion magazines women buy reflect the same appeal that gets turned into AGP by the psychiatrists at CAMH and Northwestern

From InterSex News

We are all led to believe that Dr Alice Dreger, the Truth Bitch, has been working away on a “History of what happens when doctors say nice and wholesome things to help the ungrateful masses and the ungrateful masses do not agree!”

What we actually read in her blogs and her articles is something that is quite intriguing. Basically Dr. Alice Dreger has this utopian vision of a world where intersex people can be fitted into nice neat categories and she has this role of overseeing the care of intersex people in her new utopia.

The problem is that she does not fully understand what intersex people really are. She seems to have this view that intersex people are children who are born with medical questions about whether they are male or female. For example a girl with XY chromosomes or a boy with XX chromosomes is in her view a “Disorder of Sex Development”. While there are many variations and conditions, she clearly aims to have them all categorised as children under this “DSD” scheme. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, while much has been said about the terminology of “DSD”, the idea of a set of diagnostic criteria is workable and probably would help ease a lot of confusion about many intersex variations. The problem starts when she gets into areas she simply does not understand, the lived experience of being intersexed perhaps eludes her the most. For good reason, she is not intersexed, and as she often likes to remind the world, she is a mother of a healthy child herself, with a nice job in a university.

She seems preoccupied with the notion that adults with intersex conditions or “DSDs” (To use her terms) can be split into two groups, the first group consists of those who conform to her diagnostic standards and have a life narrative that matches to her expectations.

The second group would be those who do not fit into her expectations, a group she dismisses as “Transgender”. This is perhaps the first characteristic of the Dreger utopia that looks a bit dystopic when looked at in more detail. For some reason she does have this very arbitrary set of expectations about who should be assigned to what sex. She will define a “DSD” and then define the sex they should be assigned. If she encounters an adult who does not live according to those expectations she then turns their history from that of an intersex history to that of a psychiatric disorder or that of a political trouble maker.

This is one reason she appears to have invested so much time and effort into defending Professor. J Michael Bailey, a psychologist at the Northwestern University of Chicago who has gained some notoriety for his discussions about transsexual people, or transsexual women in particular. He essentially describes them as men who are sexually aroused by being female. There is plenty of discussion about this and this does not fall within the scope of the article, but the one thing Bailey does provide is a sort of mental health waste disposal service where the labels of “Transgender” and “Mentally ill” can be applied quickly to anyone with a “DSD” who does not conform to Dr. Dreger’s expectations.

Dr. Dreger often seems to repeat the mantra that people who are transsexual and ashamed of it opt to be defined as intersexed in order to avoid the pathologization of being transsexual. Which is interesting because she clearly supports the pathologization of transsexual people. If your life does not conform to Dr. Dreger‘s strict criteria, you are in a no win situation, you are suddenly a “Transgender seeking to avoid being pathologized by people like Professor. Bailey”. But Dr. Alice Dreger has clearly ensured that it is all set up like this anyway by supporting Professor Bailey and his work in the first place.

Where was it ever said prior to the founding of the Intersex Society of North America that transsexuals were lower down some pecking order from intersex people? While there were certainly some transsexual people who claimed to have an intersex history (Some who helped Dr. Dreger set up ISNA for example, which is curious – more on that later). There were not any significant numbers of such people. Dr. Dreger also describes those who do not fit her expectations as “Transsexuals seeking intersex privilege”. A very strange thing for a self proclaimed intersex activist to say given that she likes to remind us all that intersex people suffer a life of unwanted surgery, secrecy and shame. How is suffering a life of unwanted surgery, secrecy and shame a privilege?

She could argue that people are more sympathetic to intersex people than they are transsexual people, well yes, but then Dr. Alice Dreger is engaged in making sure that this is even more the case. It is almost as if she has been setting the situation up so she does not have to make a real argument. She just repeats the situation as it now is, the situation she has been instrumental in bringing about.

This is the point where you have to step back from the debate and ask a few questions she probably won’t be able to answer. In terms of activism ISNA used to claim that before anyone could consider themselves to be an intersex activist, they either had to be a lesbian who was born fully female or provide endless documentation to prove they were intersexed. It was during this time the strict criteria first started to appear. But as a woman who boasts endlessly about her heterosexual status (Not that lesbianism has anything to do with intersex anyway) who was involved with Denise Tree (Who has to this day never explained what her diagnosis actually was and yes she is now seen as the very thing Alice Dreger despises, a transsexual claiming to be intersexed) and “Cheryl Chase” (Bo Laurent) another individual with about 5 other aliases and at least four contradicting narratives about her intersex history.

Dr. Alice Dreger became the main player in an intersex organisation she claimed to be “The genuine article” as a heterosexual woman, with two people who certainly would not measure up to her strict criteria as people with “DSDs”. Today she claims that “intersex” is a word to describe a political identity, and was never a medical term, which is odd because it was used prior to her promoting the “DSD” terminology and a lot of medical literature did use “intersex”. She also claims that “intersex” is a demeaning term used today by transsexual people seeking legitimacy. Yet today she still describes herself as an “Intersex activist”. So is she a closet female to male transsexual seeking legitimacy?

There is also her almost obsessive commentaries in various sexology discussion groups insisting that transsexual people have no innate sense of being male or female that would contradict the sex into which they were born, she was even instrumental in making sure Professor. D. Swaab’s study on the BSTc in transsexual women never gets a mention in any academic publication she has any influence over. It is as if she is still trying to drive home the notion that “Transgender = mental illness”.

It all starts to look less like some utopia and more like some very oppressive form of gender policing. And this gender policing does seem to have a very bizarre system of reward and punishment. The reward is that you get to be defined as a physical illness, but it is probably not a reward most people would want. “I award you with being a Disorder of Sex Development“. How does that act as a reward? The punishment is to be deemed as some “Gender Identity Disorder”. This utopia is beginning to look a little hollow; there is no benefit in it for anyone because wherever you are placed within it, you are deemed to be some sort of disorder that has to be managed. OK the levels of (Engineered) cruelty may differ, if you are seen as a “Disorder of sex development” you don’t get psychologists and sexologists classifying you as some “Gender identity disorder that has to be stigmatized”.

The reality of this is that either way you lose, she wins. There are a few other strange contradictions with the way Dr. Dreger presents her utopia.

She clearly has a problem with identity politics.

She does seem to insist on unbiased, neutral perspectives in any discussion with intersex activists who do not agree with her because, according to Dr. Dreger, they identify as “intersex activists” (As she herself does curiously enough). Her latest article that really goes into her problem with identity politics has “Feminist Theory in action” in the title. This is where the greatest mystery of all seems to make a little more sense. ISNA was an organisation run by “Lesbians” for “Intersex”, and we are not talking the present day third wave feminism (As you may have guessed) either. But the second wave feminism as espoused by Germaine Greer and Janice Raymond. You know the feminism I am talking about, the feminism that was synonymous with lesbians huddled in female only spaces telling everyone else not to invade their sacred space, and really being angry when there is even a whiff of colonisation from any outside groups. Now think of this carefully when reading “Feminist theory in action” by an “intersex activist” who is very much a woman who breeds and tells the world about it.

This is where we get on to those “Acceptable DSD narratives”. You may notice that the one theme that runs through all her writing is that she likes to talk about boys who were made into girls and grew up wanting to be men. These are acceptable, if it just happened to be the other way round, that is someone was assigned male as a child by surgery or hormones etc. and someone rejected being male, well they are “Transsexuals using intersex to gain legitimacy”.

What sort of “Feminist perspective” is that? It is as if she is saying that boys are better off than girls and in order to make a child with a “DSD” conform, assign them male. Which does not address the core problem which is that the very conclusion she makes is sexist.

And this is where you see the dystopia for what it really is. Much of what she says makes little or no sense when you look at it at on its face value, but it does when you put it into a context of someone who clearly does not like any deviation from a norm.

Another contradiction (and perhaps her biggest) is the way she berates the sort of men who go onto emailing lists and online support groups looking to get a thrill out of those mysterious intersex people. Two contradictions arise from this.

She herself creates a mystique around intersex people. She constantly talks about the “Majority of intersex people” and “The real intersex people ” as if she is always holding conversations with some mysterious and enlightened group of intersex activists who are invisible, for most of the time, claiming that those people who describe themselves as part of a grass roots community are all interloping transsexuals or genuine “DSDs” who have been deceived. But who is she talking about? The AISSG? Well I am a member of the AISSG myself, And many of them were not all that keen on her “DSD” model either. So who does she mean? Cheryl Chase/Bo Laurent and Denise Tree/Kiira Triea? It would seem that way considering the praise she heaps on them in her blog. But they have not exactly made their own histories clear while demanding that others do. The other contradiction lies with her clear distaste for men who appear on gender variant, or intersex websites to get a cheap thrill. And yet there she is supporting Professor. J Michael Bailey a man who is notorious for that sort of behaviour.

This where any analysis of Alice Dreger seems to end. It is a drainage pipe full of contradictions that ends up in the gutter. It is quite possible that her attacks on the present day intersex support groups who simply do not agree with her will probably result in her ruining her own reputation. ISNA is gone. It was not quite the beacon of intersex activism she claims it was and people who speak in many different languages, worldwide are going to see her writings in English as irrelevant and spiteful.

She objects very strongly to the word “Interloper”. Well perhaps she can explain what she really is. She is not an impostor because she makes no pretence of being anything other than a fertile woman. Which does beg the question, what is her interest in this subject? She is a very strong advocate of pre natal screening and abortion; perhaps she is nervous about the possibility that she may be a carrier of one of these “DSDs”. Well thankfully for her child, it has not been passed on if this is indeed the case.

Her interest in intersex people and her need to control the lives of intersex people does leave more questions than answers. When she said she was going to focus on “Little people” and cut her ties with intersex activism the comments that ran around the emailing lists were something like “Oh she is going to pick on someone else now? Well at least it is not us!”

Instead of attacking people or dismissing their experiences as “Transgender” to feed into a prejudice she herself was instrumental in promoting, she perhaps needs to consider how all this is beginning to reflect on her, she may be a prominent figure in the history of intersex activism, but as it stands, she appears like a petty minded dictator who cannot let go of the past. ISNA is gone. People no longer consider her involvement as relevant and her DSD model has caused more anger than anything else.

Progress and Politics in the Intersex Rights Movement, Feminist theory in action.

Dreger A, Herndon A 2009.

Dear President Obama:

Welcome to California, Mr. President. I welcome you with a heavy heart because of the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Prop. 8, relegating same-sex couples to second class status and denying us that most noble promise of America, “liberty and justice for all.”

You are arriving in Los Angeles on the heels of emotional demonstrations throughout California and our nation and your silence at such a time speaks volumes. LGBT people and our allies have the ‘audacity to hope” for a country that treats us fairly and equally and for a President with the will to stand up for those ideals. From you we expect nothing less.

We know the country faces many serious challenges and we have strived to be patient. We’ve waited for the slightest sign you would live up to your promise to be a “fierce advocate” for our equal rights while watching gay and lesbian members of the armed forces, who have never been more needed, get discharged from the military. And so far you have done nothing. No stop loss order. No call to cease such foolish and discriminatory actions that make our nation less safe.

You pledged to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Mr. President. You promised to support a “complete repeal” of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and pledged to advocate for legislation that would give same-sex couples the 1,100+ federal rights and benefits we are denied, including the same rights to social security benefits. You said “Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples.”

What of those promises, Mr. President?

Your commitment to repeal DOMA has been removed from the White House website. Your promise to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was removed and then replaced with a watered-down version. And in the aftermath of yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling, you have remained silent while your press secretary summarily dismisses questions about the issue.

We not only need to hear from our President, we need his action. And we need it now.

We need your words, Mr. President. But we also need your deeds. We expect you to fulfill the promises you made to us. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Do not delay, Mr. President. The time for action is now.

Sincerely,

Lorri L. Jean
Chief Executive Officer
L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center

Every post-SRS woman has met them, especially if they blog, or on mailing lists and the like.

The Pre-ops who know everything there is to possibly know about life as an actual woman.  In fact you can be 30-40 years post-SRS and they will tell you, “That was then, this is now.”

Arguing with them is pointless.  I used to watch the radicals and hippies argue with the Christer freaks with the signs outside the Student Union at Berkeley and I thought, What’s the point?  I do not believe in god and they aren’t going to get me to believe just as there is little chance I will change their opinion.

I use the phrase Cybele’s Knife as a transsexual version of Occam’s Razor.  It isn’t a religious experience but it does pare away the illusory from reality.

I used to think, “Oh boy, I get my surgery and that’s it.  I’m there.”  I look back and see I was just as full of shit as the know it alls of today.

Having SRS made becoming a woman possible but the experience of living the rest of my life with a pussy between my legs and carrying all the expectations placed on vagina people is what eventually made me a woman.

But you can’t even really start learning until you have had SRS.

Grand Pronouncements as a pre-op are best whispered in isolation during the darkest part of the night and not on-line for all the world to Google.

As my life partner says, “All trannies should be required by law to keep their mouths shut for the first two years after surgery.”

I can’t tell you how many people have thought I was a bitch on wheels, mean and arrogant for telling them they were clueless turn around and after several years post-SRS tell me they owe me an apology, that I was right and they were clueless.

I have long noticed there is a serious streak of misogyny that gets eliminated with the reality of post-SRS life. becoming one with all the rest of the women of the world makes it easier to value the ideas of women.  Maybe it is suddenly ceasing to be special once the source of male privilege is removed or maybe it is growth but when it comes to actually understanding what being a woman in this world is about.  SRS is only the starting point.

No wonder so many cling to claiming to be transgender letting go of the last shreds of male privilege is scary.

I was 24/7 before I turned 22 and that was pretty darn young in 1969, especially considering I first had to get to San Francisco, work up the courage to risk being purged from my Action Faction cadre, come out and find someone to give me hormones.

Did I mention that I liked guys?

I had a few unsatisfactory sexual encounters with gay men, enough to figure out why they weren’t attracted to me beyond friendship and respectful relationships in the various movements.

A few months after coming out I started sleeping with straight guys.

I wound up being one of those women who said yes to a man who said no.

I had a bunch of sister friends as a result of working at the center.  They all had straight boy friends.

How could this be since we were all still pre-SRS?  Indeed we considered ourselves straight too.  Delusion?  Self-deception?  Internalized homophobia?

Nah.  There is a bit in John Rechy’s City of Night that tells the story far better than Bailey, Blanchard, Hontas Farmer and the dancing troll sock puppets ever could.  The lead character Johnny Rio (Jon Rechy) is talking to another male hustler about one of the queens in late 1950s downtown LA and one of them makes the comment, “You would have to be totally queer to not be turned on by (a queen whose name escapes me).”

There is something summed up in that comment that eludes the freaking boy wonders of the psychology field with their ingrained homophobia and misogyny.  A major element of sexual attraction has next to nothing to do with actual between the legs sex parts.  Much of it is reaction to secondary sexual characteristics and to qualities that are far more about gender than sex.  Much of the courting rituals are gender based in humans and our relationships with men were nothing if not heterogendered.  I was a radical hippie chick and he was a Marine Corp deserter.  You can’t get much more heterogendered than that.  On top of everything I was just starting my feminist consciousness raising.

I saw this pattern over and over again.

It is an absolute vicious slander to describe these relationships as “homosexual”.  Only the Taliban religious freaks and their secular kinfolk the psychiatric theorists like Zucker, Bailey, Blanchard and their sycophants Lawrence and Draeger think that way.

Which brings the circle back to the supposedly young emerging “homosexual transsexuals”  like the sock puppets and the burqua wearer.

How freaking self loathing do you have to be to embrace that one?  In Hontas Farmers case I’d say seriously disturbed.  First this person embraces theory that is absolutely loathsome in its vile hatred of transsexuals then this person embraces not only the political party that has made a platform out of LGBT/T hating but one of the vilest forms of all the women hating/LGBT/T hating misogynistic religions.  Not that any of the desert three are exactly woman positive.

Hontas Farmer reminds me of the poster children for Exodus and the other hate based religious reparative cults that offer to make LGBT/T people into celebate self loathing but cured LGBT/T people.

Oh by the way..  Back in the days when I was still pre-op and was still radical calling me gay would have caused me to go all “Days of Rage” on your sorry lame ass.

In the summer of 1966 there was a trannie riot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin at Compton’s Cafeteria.

Transsexual, drag queen sex workers and those who  Viviene Namaste and Mirha-Soleil Ross addressed as “Gender Trash” in their short lived publication rioted.  They were sick and tired of being exploited and bullied by the pigs.  Sick and tired of being arrested for existing.  Arrested for obstructing the side walk while sitting in a restaurant eating.

That riot is the forgotten Stonewall.

Out of it came the first organization by and for transsexuals and from that organization grew the many things that made San Francisco a mecca to go to in order to go through the process.

This organization first met at Glide Memorial Church and was called COG for Change Our Goal.  It was aimed at helping people who were living the most marginal of all possible lives to both achieve the physical change and in the process gain the tools to move into main stream society.

I met some of the sisters and they were pretty far sighted visionaries in what they wanted to accomplish.

By 1969 when I started the process the original group had splintered with a very strange couple, the Durkins forming something called CATS (California Association of Transsexuals.  Jerry Durkin was a troll and Louise was this bizarre hulking giant with flaming red hair and a ship’s propeller tattooed on her massive forearm.

They were the first trans group I managed to connect with just after getting hormones from the Center for Special Problems.  Now I was very hippie girl from Berkeley cute and naive.  Jerry the troll got me to give him a blow job in exchange for information regarding how to find the real support group, Louise had conveniently stepped out to score some wine with some money I gave for that information.

Fortunately this encounter with predatory frauds did not discourage me and I used the information to contact the other group where I met some of the real pioneers.  Two years later I was co-running the center they started.

Then there was Angela Douglas who bore a great deal of resemblance to some of the modern frauds and self-aggrandizers.  He (I use he because in spite of getting SRS from Dr Brown, the Butcher of Trailer Parks in Mexico lived most of his life after the 1970s as a man and died as a man) was the founder of something called TAO (Transsexual Action Organization)

He was the freakazoid trannie darling of the West Coast underground press during the early 1970s making all sorts of claims of his accomplishments that tended to not hold up under close examination and fact checking.  He claimed to have been in the band Love for one thing.  Upon close examination he came off as a serious head case and not one who wold come down from his personal trip were he to go drug free for a while.

There were some things I do believe he did although I cannot prove.  He hated the National Transsexual Counseling Unit.  He claimed he was CIA and that we were cops, that Jan was a drug dealer and that I was a communist.  He used his his poison pen to spread lies and rumors about our organization.

Later when the Sandy Stone affair with Olivia Records could have been a minor incident he threw gasoline on the fire that was based on the allegations of a few people some of whom may have been deep stealth WBTs trying to prevent people from suspecting them by being the first to cast stones.

Anyhow Angela Keyes Douglas wrote the infamous letter that became the basis for half the things claimed by Janice Raymond.  It could have been read as satire but people in the movement were rather humor challenged at that point and so a letter to Sisters (an LA feminist publication) was taken seriously.  Especially when it made the misogynistic claims that WBTs were superior to Women Born Female and that gradually through artificial birthing processes women born female would be eliminated.

In his later years he would send long rambling letters filled with incoherent threats and fantastic accusations to anyone who mentioned his bullshit on line.

About 12-13 years ago Out Magazine (IIRC) ran a cover story on Intersex. It had Cheryl Chase and Kiira Tirea and several other folks.

Wow yeah… Instant sympathy Suzanne Kessler wrote a book  Lessons from the Intersex and I though that infant sex assigning via surgery sucked as bad as FGM (female genital mutilation) as performed in North African nations.

First of all I believe in consent and agency and all those sorts of empowering things.  Sort of how people with transsexualism are treated as adults by enlightened physicians.

Then I encounter Kiira aka Denise Tree on various lists.  Having a knowledge of the lesbian feminist history of California some of the things she confided in me regarding did not ring true.  She claimed to have been part of the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective, a band that was active during the transwars.

This was when Sandy Stone was getting trashed.  The devil is in the details.  I know that John Money is sort of discredited yet he wrote a very detailed acount of many various intersex conditions.

But something else didn’t ring quite true and this is because I’ve heard so many impossible claims to intersex from people unwilling to admit to the intersex condition they do have which is transsexualism

Actual intersex people would have more to gain by pointing to the way transsexualism is dealt with in matters of agency than in perpetuating IGM.

Interestingly much of the surgery is pretty much the same other than agency.

Details, details.  If one were actually transsexual and trying to pass oneself of as IS, what better way than pointing fingers at actual people with transsexualism and belittling the idea that it too is an intersex condition.

As time has gone on Kiira has been shown to be a fraud and a liar as has Cheryl Chase aka Bo Laurent.  See Andrea James website.

Now we have the latest darling, Hontas Farmer.  Am I supposed to be impressed because this one is a culture vulture hiding behind a burqa?  I don’t think so.  Lay that one on some one who believes in invisible sky daddies.  You are about as real as some of the fake Indians like Carlos Castaneda.

But I must admit it is sort of amusing to watch Taliban Christers have social intercourse with people who fantasize about being actual Taliban.

Go read Ayaan Hirsi Ali and grow up.  You are a human sock puppet and a laughing stock as well as an insult to actual women who are so oppressed they are forced to wear that crap for fear of having acid thrown in their faces.

By Agence France-Presse

Published: May 26, 2009

The latest twist in California’s gay marriage debate will be revealed on Tuesday when the US state’s highest court issues its ruling on a bid to overturn a ban on same-sex couples tying the knot.

California’s Supreme Court is to release its opinion at 10:00 am (1700 GMT), with justices predicted to uphold the results of a November referendum that redefined marriage in the state as being unions between men and women only.

Legal analysts say Tuesday’s ruling is unlikely to be retroactive however, and so will not affect the status of 18,000 same-sex couples who married in California last year before the referendum.

Tuesday’s ruling comes at a time when several other US states have introduced laws allowing same-sex marriage.

Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Iowa have all extended full marriage rights to gay couples, while New Hampshire and New York have edged closer to adopting such a law.

California’s Supreme Court last May voted 4-3 to legalize same-sex marriage, sparking jubilation amongst gays in the most populous US state and sending thousands rushing to marry.

However the subject was forced back onto the agenda by religious and social conservative groups, who gathered enough support for the issue to be put before voters at November 4 polls. It passed by 52.5 to 47.5 percent.

Rights activists swiftly challenged the legality of the referendum.

In March, civil rights lawyers argued before the court that the referendum violated California’s constitution and that minority rights should not be vulnerable to a simple majority vote.

Advocates of same-sex marriage urged the court to strike down the results of the referendum, known as Proposition 8.

“Prop. 8 changes the basic nature of our government from one in which the majority protects the rights of minorities,” said Shannon Minter, lead counsel for those seeking to overturn the measure.

“It takes away the right to be treated with equal dignity and respect … A simple majority cannot be allowed to take any rights away from a historically protected minority.”

But some members of the seven-judge panel strongly indicated they were leaning toward rejecting the requests to invalidate the referendum results.

Justice Joyce Kennard, who voted with the majority in last year’s 4-3 ruling that legalized gay marriage, repeatedly made it clear she disagreed that Proposition 8 was an illegal revision of the state constitution.

Instead, she focused on voters’ approval of the proposition, saying the court could not “willy-nilly disregard the will of the people to change the state constitution as they have in the past.”

Opponents of gay marriage have expressed confidence that the court will rule in their favor on Tuesday.

“The wait is finally over and we’re confident that the right of the people to protect traditional marriage in the state constitution will ultimately prevail,” said Andrew Pugno, general counsel for ProtectMarriage.com.

However supporters of gay marriage have indicated they will seek to force another referendum on the issue if the court decision goes against them.

“We hope they rule the right way, but we are prepared to win marriage back at the ballot box,” said Marc Solomon, director of Equality California, a prominent gay rights group.

The allegations below are just that, accusations that are being amassed as part of the process of delivering an indictment.  It is a process that calls upon those who have been harmed or abused by the researchers and medical authorities to come forth and add their own stories along with evidence which can then be used to remove these alleged evil doers from power.

Silence=Death

Andrea B.

This may sound stupid and blatantly obvious.

The fact is, that CAMH videotape transsexual people, getting dressed.
They are alleged to have also put a plethysmograph on pre-operative transsexual people. That is not clinical study technique or clinical evaluation. It is blatant voyeurism and sexual fondling.

For link to penis fondling device used on pre-operative transsexual people. Go to:
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/plethysmograph.html

For information on videotaping of patients getting dressed. Go to:
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/clarke-institute.html

Scroll down to Sharon

You will find this.
—————————————————–
One of their evaluations required that I present myself dressed as woman for an interview with one of their staff, which was to be videotaped. Since I had not transitioned, and would not have passed in public, they agreed that I could change into my feminine attire on the premises. They left me alone to change in the studio where the interview was to be taped, but soon I noticed the cameras slewing to aim at me. The bastards were taping me dressing! I complained, afterward, but they just sloughed it off. It was now becoming clear that I was much more of a test subject to them, than a human being.

One of the final tests involved the plethysmograph. A contraption designed to measure penile response while the subject is shown various pictures. I was told not to speak, and to focus my attention on the pictures. I was surprised to find that some of them were from the session for which I had dressed as a woman. I remember little else about the test itself.
——————————————————

We can safely say this is not a harmless kink or something like that.

How would they like it if their daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and themselves were forced to strip naked and then get dressed for a pervert behind a mirror, to videotape it?

People who put video recording equipment in changing rooms in clothing stores end up arrested and treated as a sex offender.

Has no one in the Canadian Authorities, both the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association, WPATH, police, etc, not figured out that the people doing the video taping, are a bunch of criminal perverts?

I find it hard to believe they have not. By not arresting and trying these perverts in a court of law, the authorities are sending out a message that it is acceptable to do whatever you want, to transsexual people. Which is exactly what CAMH, WPATH, the authorities and people who attack, rape and kill transsexual people, do.

CAMH would be shut completely and the offenders arrested immediately, if the authorities did not support treating transsexual people in such a manner.

Everyone should ask themselves, particularly those in American Pychological Association and American Psychiatric Association and WPATH.

Would it be acceptable to demand a Jewish person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand an African person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand a Chinese person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand a Japanese person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand a Muslim person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand an East European person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of their medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand a Romany person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand a disabled person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand an American Indian person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of their medical treatment?

Would it be acceptable to demand an Irish person to dress in a clinic while being videotaped, as part of there medical treatment?

In all cases the answer is no, so why it is acceptable to do so to Transsexual people?

Are transsexual people subhuman, in the eyes of the Canadian  Authorities, CAMH, Toronto University, American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association and WPATH?

If you change transsexual people, to African people, Chinese people, Jewish people, Romany people, etc. There would be a very different reaction to CAMH and its activities, which are fully supported by CAMH and all members of staff, otherwise they would have went to the police a long time ago.

The behaviour of so-called clinicians in the CAMH and University of Toronto is purely in the realm of criminal behaviour. It would take a very twisted and sick mind to argue otherwise.

I think it is time we told people exactly what CAMH are, a bunch of perverts. They should not be emulating the sex offenders they are studying and imposing sexual offences onto vulnerable and misunderstood groups.

Has Zucker videotaped any of the 500 plus children that have went through CAMH, getting dressed and undressed or in any other capacity?

CAMH are the sex offenders; they are supposed to be studying, not joining.

FURTHER READING

Factual Websites on this issue

Raymond Blanchard
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard.html

How Raymond Blanchard sees transsexual people.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-clarke.html

Raymond Blanchard
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/BaileyAssociates/BlanchardResigns.html

Raymond Blanchard getting an award from James Fitzgerald of APA division 44. The claim was that it was for
————————————————————-
The Gender Identity Clinic has established itself as the premier research center on gender dysphoria research and clinical care since 1968, and is celebrating its 35th year.”
————————————————————
Most likely it was for dehumanising and degrading transsexual people.  If you read the page carefully, you will see that Fitzgerald, who is gay, somehow plays with missiles at the Airborne Missile Maintenance Squadron. Security clearance must be interesting.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/james-fitzgerald.html

Blanchard proposing with “ANNE THE MAN” more insane theories from the deranged.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/BIID/BIID.html

“ANNE THE MAN”, protégé of Blanchard.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-incident.html
Documentation in Case Number 97-05-0042MD
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-md.pdf
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-a-lawrence.pdf
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-case.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-lawyer.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-letter.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-report.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence-complaints.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/anne-lawrence.html

James Cantor. A gay man who was mentored by Blanchard, with loving care. As a matter of interest, it would be interesting to find out if Cantor and Blanchard were ever lovers or not.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/james-cantor.html

Kenneth Zucker
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/kenneth-zucker.html

Kurt Freund who was Blanchard’s boss, who committed suicide, in 1996. He must have been psychologically of very good mind, according to CAMH/WPATH principles and well able to write theories in his state of mind.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/kurt-freund.html

Freund’s favourite device, to use on patients.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/plethysmograph.html

The Clarke Institute, now CAMH. Which is funded by Canadian taxpayers to abuse transsexual people.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/clarke-institute.html

The war within CAMH
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/The_War_Within_CAMH.html

J. Michael Bailey, who is obviously by his name and red hair, descended from a good Irish Catholic background. The fact he associates with people who allegedly consider the Irish inferior, is a bit strange.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/j-michael-bailey.html

“Lynn Conway’s Trans News Updates: The web page Zucker attempted to suppress” http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/The_webpage_Zucker_attempted_to_suppress.html

“Kenneth Zucker’s legal threats: Part of a pattern of silencing transgender critics”
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/Kenneth_Zucker’s_pattern_of_silencing_transgender_critics.html

WPATH: World Professional Association Transgender Healthcare.
http://www.wpath.org/

Ts Road Map
http://www.tsroadmap.com/

Organisation Intersex International
http://www.intersexualite.org/

Articles from organisation Intersex International. Sophie makes very good reading.
http://www.intersexualite.org/Siedlberg-articles.html
And
http://www.intersexualite.org/English_OII/IAIA/Sophie/Sophie_Writing.html

Sucessful women who were once transsexual.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSsuccesses.html
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSgallery1.html
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSgallery2.html
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSgallery3.html
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSgallery4.html

Sucessful men, who were once transsexual.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TransMen.html

I am a sentiant human being.  With thoughts and feelings, emotions and the agency to act as a free person.

My pleasures and passions are my own.  If they seem a wee tad off to others perhaps that is not due to some innate warpedness but rather due to something never ever questioned.

The feminist Adrienne Rich called that something “compulsory heteronormativity”.  Tina posed the question :  “Do we see as abuse those child rearing practices that most see as normal?”

Those of us born with Transsexualism were attcked by some other intersex people for not having been experimented on.  It is true most of us were not subjected to infant surgical assigning of sex and University Medical Center research follow up.

But we were the subjects of expeimentation none the less.  Sometimes conducted by professionals and more often by parents and schools.  Knowing or not the attempts at curing our transsexualism are abuse aimed at heteronormatizing us.  We grow up as experiments.

Dr. Richard Green wrote a book about his exercising reparative therapy on transkids.  It is titled “The Sissy Boy Syndrome”.  It reads as if straight from NARTH, one almost expects quotes from Socrides, Nicolosi and Cameron in his work.  For the record this is the same Dr. Richard Green who co-edited Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment with Dr. John Money.

We were so hungry for treatment and the research centers were often the only places to get SRS in reasonable safety of an accredited hospital that we agreed to be part of what Dr. Robert Stoller himself subtitled his second volume of Sex and Gender, “The Transsexual Experiment”.

We agreed to take their tests, tobe photographed in before and after pictures. I didn’t say shit when, as a recent post-op I gota vaginal infection that they hadn’t seen in post-SRS women before and Dr Laub proceeded to parade some two dozen medical student/residents into the exam room to look at my cunt with my feet in the sturrups.

After all transsexuals aren’t human beings with feelings, we are experimental test subjects.

I filled out the tests, the MMPIs and the multiple choice ones that never had answers like:  “I identify as a radical feminist.” or “I am a lesbian separatist.”  My biggest dream might be smashing the oppressive imperialist state and fomenting a socialist revolution.  But they never asked me about that.

Their expectations for me as their experimental test subject seemed more along the lines that I would adopt the heteronormative behavior patterned  of the mythical 1950s advertising world.  Middle class and heterosexually married.  A stretch for any working class girl born into a union family with pinkish if not red daipers.

So I rebelled and I told the truth.  They can’t handle the truth.  I used as a referent the film “Bladerunner” and told them I felt like Trish, the self-aware replicant and was angry about how I felt they were using us.

And using us they were.  They discouraged us from hanging out with others like ourselves.  Belittled the idea that we could be the ones taking care of our own.

We were cowed into not sharing our stories, for not talking about how impossible and insecure legal institutions made our lives when our marriages depended on the whims of ultra right wing judges appointed for their adherence to Taliban religious principles

Now in our fight against the pathologizing of our being the stories about Zucker, Bailey, Blanchard, Lawrence and all the others are coming out.  Their defense is that people born with transsexualism can not be trusted to tell the truth about having been abuse in being used as experimental test subjects.

Yet there are so many stories and we have read so many lies and some of us who are autodidacts have read their research and not only the textual readings but we have deconstructed the jargon, read the subtexts of bigotry and sadistic manipulation of us as subjects that we have passed judgment and we have decided among ourselves that they are the ones whose honesty bears questioning.

Their combined expertise is the result of cruel and often vicious abuse of transkids and adults born transsexual.

We are on the march now and removal of GID from the DSM is but the first step.

Many of us also demand justice for those who were abused the worst by these so called experts in these temples of “Science”.

No Justice, No Peace!

By Murray Wardrop, The Telegraph (UK)
Posted on May 23, 2009, Printed on May 25, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140203/

Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that polycarbonate containers release the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) into liquid stored in them.

BPA has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.

Experts warned that babies are at greater risk, because heating baby bottles increases the amount of BPA released, and the chemical is potentially more harmful to infants.

Study author Karin B. Michels, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH and Harvard Medical School, said: “We found that drinking cold liquids from polycarbonate bottles for just one week increased urinary BPA levels by more than two-thirds.

“If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher.

“This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA’s endocrine-disrupting potential.”

Altogether 77 students took part in the study after a seven-day “washout” phase in which they drank all cold beverages from stainless steel bottles in order to minimise BPA exposure.

They were then given two polycarbonate bottles and asked to drink all cold beverages from the bottles during the next week.

The results showed the volunteers’ urinary BPA concentrations increased 69 per cent after drinking from the polycarbonate bottles.

Previous studies had found that BPA can be transferred from polycarbonate bottles into their contents, but this study is the first to show a corresponding increase in urinary BPA concentrations in humans.

One of the study’s strengths, said the research published in Environmental Health Perspectives, is that the students drank from the bottles in a normal way.

Additionally, the students did not wash their bottles in dishwashers or put hot liquids in them, as heating has already been shown to increase the leaching of BPA from polycarbonate.

Canada banned the use of BPA in polycarbonate baby bottles in 2008 and some manufacturers have voluntarily eliminated BPA from their products.

With increasing evidence of the potential harmful effects of BPA in humans, the study’s authors believe further research is needed into BPA’s impact on babies, and on reproductive disorders and breast cancer in adults.

Most adults carry BPA in their bodies, but expert opinion on the risks is divided.

The European Food Safety Authority believes that people naturally convert the chemical into less harmful substances into the body.

Harvard researcher Jenny Carwile said: “While previous studies have demonstrated that BPA is linked to adverse health effects, this study fills in a missing piece of the puzzle – whether or not polycarbonate plastic bottles are an important contributor to the amount of BPA in the body.”

BPA is also found in dentistry composites and sealants and in the lining of aluminium food and beverage cans.

From Gay Community News
An Interview with Trans Activist Stephen Whittle
by Kay Inckle
Professor Stephen Whittle OBE, PhD, MA, LLB, BA (to give his full title!) is addressing Ireland’s first ever Trans Human Rights Conference which takes place in Dublin this week (organised by Transgender Equality Network Ireland, BeLonG To Youth Services and USI). Stephen is a trans man whose life and work have been shaped by his struggle for legal and social rights, not just for himself and his own family, but also for trans people across Europe. This journey has led to his Professorship in Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University as well as the award of an OBE in 2005 for his work on gender issues.

The conference, which will be attended by legal, health and social care professionals, as well as activists, has ‘transforming attitudes’ as its key theme. Stephen described his visit to Ireland as, “an incredible privilege, to be at the start of something which will be so significant in Ireland, I feel incredibly honoured that I have been asked to speak. I have been involved in the Irish cases and this conference is a major step forward.” Drawing on his thirty years experience as a lawyer, activist, campaigner and founder member of the Press for Change organisation (www.pfc.org.uk), Stephen explained that transforming attitudes can take place through a variety of tactics. He said, “We have a lot of experience of how to do change now. There have been massive changes in the United Kingdom over the last twenty years through the work of organisations like Press for Change and the Gender Trust, and similar work needs to be done in Ireland.”

Recent years have witnessed a number of significant rulings in favor of trans rights by the European Court of Human Rights but none of these have been implemented in Ireland. Stephen said, “The fact that trans people have human rights has been barely acknowledged in Ireland. In Europe, Ireland remains one of only two countries that have failed to afford any legal recognition and rights to trans people.”

Stephen is keen to emphasise the broad-ranging impact of trans rights and gender law. “If we can solve the trans problem I think we can solve the problem of any difference: of difference in lifestyle, difference in how you want to be who you want to be, and also the differences that come with bodies. If we have solved the trans issue we can solve the problem of people who are overweight, in terms of whether they are treated equally in the work place; people who are Black or people who are Asian; or people who have a disability, anything where the body is involved. If we can do it with trans people and get over the hurdles of the mental barriers in people’s minds then we can do the rest.” This is evident in that, “by changing public attitudes we have seen a drop in homophobic crime, for example, as well as transphobic hate crime, and we’ve seen the government having to think very, very hard about the question of marriage, ‘cos if you’re going to give trans people the right to marry could you not take that a step further and give an equivalent right to gay and lesbian people?”

Stephen adopts a broad-ranging approach to creating change: “there are three ways in which you do it: one is by changing public attitudes and this conference is a part of that; but also by taking cases through the courts, such as the Lydia Foy case; and also by lobbying for changes in legislation which TENI is very involved in doing.” Another example is Hayley in ITV’s Coronation Street, the first ever trans character in a soap opera. Hayley resulted from years of lobbying by members of Press for Change until “suddenly the story of trans people was reaching the hearts of eight million people three nights a week and it forced the British government to act.” The day in which the episode was aired, where Hayley was prevented from marrying Roy (her long term partner) because of her trans status, the British government announced a full investigation into trans issues.

Stephen’s conference address will focus on his current research regarding trans people and health care services. “One fifth to one quarter of patients have very poor experiences in terms of being trans, or any other aspects of health care they are trying to access, once they start transitioning or they are known as a trans person.” Furthermore, “one seventh of doctors in Europe provided their patient with no care whatsoever in relation to their transsexualism. They, in fact, refused to pass them on to qualified care givers in the field.” The research also uncovered, “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples” of doctors and health care professionals who have been “aggressive” or “abusive” towards trans patients, or who “have made innuendos”, “dismissed” and “insulted” them.

These kinds of attitudes are not unfamiliar to many LGBQ people in Ireland and Stephen is keen to emphasise the importance of LGBT alliances. “The link with the LGB movement is very close because historically we were all lumped together. LGBT people were all queer, we were all abominations, and we see the historical medical text books not just talking about trans people, but also talking about lesbian and gay and bi people in precisely the same way, in terms of preventing us, stopping us, giving us aversion therapy, whatever else.” In confronting today’s challenges, he said, “though we are different our issues are often the same, and the LGB community also need to recognise that a far larger proportion of trans people are gay, lesbian or bi.” He continued, “for trans people to succeed in Ireland they need the support of the lesbian and gay and bi movement, for the LGB movement to succeed in Ireland they also need the support of trans people. The two communities need to recognise each other, to not be threatened by each other, and to ultimately move on together. And if they do that they will achieve great things.”

The Transforming Attitudes conference is a historic first step on the road to a bright, diverse and equal future for all.

http://www.teni.ie

From Joanne Proctor’s Blog

The role politics play in the perpetuation of psychiatric theories have been demonstrated by the actions of the CAMH clique, including Blanchard, Zucker, Bailey, Lawrence & et al on many occasions.

This example rather speaks for itself. The original article, written by Michael J.Bailey and Kiira Triea, heavily supported Ray Blanchard’s theories. The article contained a number of inconsistencies and demonstrated poor analytical skills. It is not uncommon for academic journals to make mistakes. It is standard practice that such mistakes are remedied in subsequent publications.

In this case “Perspectives in Biology and Medicine” failed to publish either the corrections, or Professor Swaab’s letter. It should be noted that Alice Dreger is involved in the editorial side of “Perspectives in Biology and Medicine”.

Finally, Under the pseudonym ‘Denise Tree’, Kiira Triea was one of the original perpetrators of the “transkids <http://www.tsroadmap.com/notes/index.php/site/comments/transkidsus_hoax_origins_kiira_triea_sockpuppet_deni/> ” hoax. On that occasion Triea was assisted by Hontas Farmer, aka ‘BrendaQG’; aka ‘Aisha X’. Currently Farmer can be found working in tandem with James Cantor, another CAMH employee, rewriting Wikipedia entries to align them with Blanchard’s theories.

Readers may draw their own conclusions.

Continue reading at http://joanneproctor-hbs.blogspot.com/2009/05/politics-psychiatric-theories-camh.html

I recently read a book about 1960s hippie culture that reminded me about how once upon a time the attainment of pleasure was adequate reason to do something.  If you played a game or did some sort of physical sport the warm sore glow and slightly achy feel of muscles along with the physical pleasure of having done it was enough.

One did not have to climb the highest mountain faster than anyone ever has. Or be the best to enjoy it.

If one enjoyed playing at playing guitar the pleasure was enough, one did not have to have a popular band.

We used to say, “You are never too old to have that happy childhood that may have eluded you when you were actually a child.”

Then the conservative Taliban puritanical religious forces came into power and play for the pleasure became frivolity.  “Winning isn’t the most important thing, it is the only thing.”

We are to live vicariously rooting for teams rather than doing our own thing.  We are to buy products in an illusive search for the object that will make us happy, working to purchase ever more even when we are too tired to go our for a walk with our cameras or other toys.

In the 60s and 70s the puritans called us hedonistic for our finding joy in sex.

I’m an atheist, I go to museums and concerts.

When I was younger I went to festivals and street fairs in San Francisco and LA where gays and lesbians openly displayed their preferences for certain modes of sexual play.

And Christo-fascist trolls like Porno Pete LaBarbera would watch inflaming their puritanical lust, working themselves into an indignant rage that is their only pleasure.

The anti-pleasure crew was always at work when it came to us.  Perversifying anything that might bring  pleasure and relief to childhood filled with abuse and loneliness.

We weren’t even supposed to fantasize much less act out or play.

Years ago I saw a movie called “Paris is Burning” about the shows and pageants put on by the black and Latina “Houses” in New York City.  One old queen offered the insight that at the balls kids who had nothing and were no one could dress up and play at being someone, even if that some one was simply ordinary.

Pleasure can be a reason.  Life does not always need to about work or adherence to some set of rules.

http://www.365gay.com/news/bill-would-give-benefits-to-same-sex-partners-of-federal-workers/

(Washington) Legislation has been introduced in the the House and Senate to  provide benefits for same-sex domestic partners of federal civilian employees on the same basis as spousal benefits.

The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act is sponsored by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) in the House and Sens. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in the Senate.

The benefits would include participation in applicable retirement programs, life and health insurance benefits, and family and medical leave.

“This legislation would allow the federal government to keep pace with other top employers,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.

“It is not only a matter of equal pay for equal work, but also the best way to ensure that the government has access to the top talent on the same basis as the nation’s leading corporations.”

Currently, 57 percent of Fortune 500 companies provide domestic partner benefits to their employees.

Many of America’s leading companies, including defense giant Raytheon, IBM, Microsoft, Shell Oil, Walt Disney, Fannie Mae, Citigroup, Xerox, Time Warner and United and American Airlines offer the benefits.

In addition, 16 states and over 200 local governments offer their public employees domestic partnership benefits.

Meanwhile, at a House committee markup on the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Chairman Howard Berman reiterated Secretary of State Clinton’s commitment to provide equal benefits to the same-sex partners of  US diplomats stationed overseas.

The benefits would include medical care, transport between postings and security training to partners.