Reposted from Pam’s House Blend with permission

Original post may be seen at
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/13237/hanging-citizen-journalists-out-to-dry-shieldlaw-amendment-excludes-unpaid-bloggers

And Pandagon

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/hanging_citizen_journalists_out_to_dry_shield_law_amendment_excludes_unpaid/

Hanging citizen journalists out to dry: shield-law amendment excludes unpaid bloggers

by: Pam Spaulding

Tue Sep 29, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM EDT

This may seem like a little inside baseball, but bear with me, because it will directly affect some of your favorite blogs.Here at the Blend we have inboxes overflowing with emails asking us to cover this story or that event — from advocacy organizations, tips from readers, PR firms, and the news media. It’s pretty clear that the equality rights movement is highly dependent on blogs and citizen journalism to analyze, report and advocate in the unique way that we do.

Many of these LGBT-based blogs are done as a labor of love because there’s certainly not enough money out there to quit our day jobs. Bloggers like myself, who subsidize the site with an unrelated day job are about to get a big F-You from Chuck Schumer if the roof isn’t raised. Ad revenue is irrelevant here, btw; you have to be employed by an entity to be covered.

A recent amendment to the federal shield bill being considered in the Senate will exclude non-“salaried” journalists and bloggers from the proposed law’s protections.

The law, called the Free Flow of Information Act, is intended to prevent journalists from being forced to divulge confidential sources, except in cases such as witnessing crimes or acts of terrorism.

Well, read the fine print to see how citizen journalists are left legally hanging out to dry. Schumer’s amendment draws a distinct line between bloggers and “real journalists” that:

limits the definition of a journalist to one who “obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity-

a. that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means; and

b. that-
1. publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;
2. operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;
3. operates a programming service; or
4. operates a news agency or wire service.”

So there’s no doubt that independent bloggers are the target here. At once we’re considered irrelevant and so dangerous they have to legislatively set up a slippery slope that can land us in the clink or left penniless just for trying to participate in citizen journalism. Wow.  The real issue here, however, is less the shield law than placing a definition of what is a journalist on the books. That will alllow pols, news outlets, state governments, etc. to deny citizen journalists press access because they are not “journalists” as defined by federal law.

It’s a huge slippery slope and a loss for independent reporting by bloggers if this definition clears.

Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake confirms that we’re screwed:

To to be a journalist in Chuck Schumer’s eyes, you have to both have a boss (at this point, you generous readers and Jane would count as my boss, but Jane doesn’t have a boss, for example) and that boss’ company must disseminate news on some other medium, in addition to the Toobz. Even free-lance writers or people like IF Stone (in the period when he ran his own newsletter) would be excluded from this definition of journalist.

Now, I’m on the record as a skeptic that this new law is going to work out the way the media thinks. I fear that the national security exemption will mean the law will protect people like Judy Miller mobilizing smears or the Rent-a-Generals spreading propaganda, but not protect Dana Priest or James Risen and their sources.

Still, this move pisses me off because it’s a transparent bid to grant a powerful industry special privileges.

This is about ensuring that there is a wall between real journalists and the perceived unwashed masses of ignorant, unqualified bloggers who are mucking up the system. This is a serious issue, because I believe that reliable citizen journalists do have the respect of traditional media in some circles, but this legislative bid to create a firm wall is declaring war on us.

Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward, who previously noted the House’s different definition of journalist, also expressed concern. “The shield law obviously needs a definition that limits its scope, but the professional definition, which now seems inevitable, would exclude student journalists as well as bloggers with a day job,” he wrote.

Pam Spaulding :: Hanging citizen journalists out to dry: shield-law amendment excludes unpaid bloggers

It’s ironic that this development surfaces right after I discussed the fairly accurate perception that blogging/advocacy journalism sits in a position that is ill-defined. (Huffington Post, “A Tech-Powered Gay Rights Movement“):

It’s a headless monster in many ways — digital activists in this world are frequently not Big Gay insiders. They are often part-time activists — people who feel strongly about issues and use the Internet daily. They never intended to lead or even follow movement leaders; they are just handy with the Internet tools of the trade, and have something to say about equality that resonates with readers.

Feeling the same financial pain the traditional print publications are experiencing with the economic downturn and drop in ad revenue, there is no pleasure in seeing LGBT publications shutter. Bloggers and activists are highly dependent on the strength of news media with an LGBT focus that has a budget to send reporters to do stories the online activists simply don’t have the funds to do. It’s a symbiotic relationship as well — many LGBT reporters want their stories linked on high-traffic or influential gay blogs because it expands their reader reach, and builds support to continue doing the work critical for both journalism and the equality movement overall.

Honestly, I have problems with this shield law for other reasons — why is the federal government getting into the business of regulating journalism to begin with? Surely there are constitutional issues at play here. But that’s a different topic worthy of debate…So simultaneously as traditional news media is under financial fire, citizen journalists are about to take a hit of epic proportions with the aid of a Democratic Congress. Imagine that. Thanks, Chuck. You can give him a ring at (202) 224-3027.

[Note:  This is reposted for discussion and not necessarily because I agree with the author’s conclusions.  I tend to think we give all too much credit to “identity” without requiring at least an equal commitment to action at least reinforcing that “identity”.  We are currently in a state of flux as we are coming out of a thirty year backlash against progressive thinking and an era ruled by virtual church state fascism.  I believe much of current “gender theory” is craven appeasement of conservative thought and all too much weight has been given to the ideas of nurture over nature.]

By Selwyn Duke
Reposted with permission
Original article may be found at:

http://selwynduke.typepad.com/selwyndukecom/2009/09/death-of-the-west-our-sexual-identity-crisis.html

Perhaps you’ve heard the tragic story of David Reimer.  Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1966, David was the victim of a botched circumcision that left his penis charred beyond surgical repair.  His parents Ron and Janet, no doubt beside themselves, were confused about the best way to proceed.  Then, one day, they saw a man named Dr. John Money on television.

Money was talking about his theory of “gender neutrality,” which states that “gender identity” is learned rather than innate.  The idea was that the sexes were the same except for the superficial physical differences; this implies that if a child were altered so as to superficially resemble the opposite sex and was raised as one of its members, he would be happy with that sexual identity.  Hearing this, the Reimers hoped they had found their salvation.

They took their boy to Money, who told them that their son’s penis could not be restored and that he stood a much better chance of living a happy life if “sex-reassignment surgery” (in reality, reassigning sex is about as possible as reassigning species) were performed and he was raised as a girl.  The Reimers agreed, and the surgery was performed when the boy, who would be named “Brenda,” was 22 months old.

In reality, the kindest way to describe Money’s theory is fanciful.  His idea of “gender neutrality” was still in vogue when I was a youth, and “vogue,” in the most frivolous sense, is the correct term.  It was always more style than science; it was something that I, even as a teen, knew was bunk.  Yet who would listen to people such as me?  We were old-fashioned, behind the times.  And it didn’t matter that Money was Alfred Kinsey redux and believed pedophilia was lovely if it was for “love.” It didn’t matter that David and his twin brother, Brian, said that Money sexually abused them during photo shoots.  He was a “doctor,” a Ph.D. on the cutting edge of a brave new world.

Only, David (“Brenda” at the time) wanted nothing to do with that world.  Although he was never told he was a boy, had been surgically altered, was dressed and raised as a girl and was regularly seeing Money for therapy, he resisted his “gender assignment” from the outset.  He acted like a boy, played with boys’ toys and objected to seeing Money from the age of seven.  It wasn’t going well — and it wouldn’t end well.

At the age of 14, in a rare commendable act of teen rebellion, David threatened suicide if he were forced to continue with Money’s prescriptions.  This prompted his parents to finally tell him the truth about his condition.  With his eyes opened, he then replaced his estrogen treatments with male hormone therapy, took the name “David,” started living as a boy, underwent reconstructive genital surgery and later married a woman who already had children.  Yet the damage had been done.  His tormented life which began in such a tragic way came to a tragic end: he did commit suicide, at the age of 38.

Dr. Money, too, is now dead.  Yet he died with his ideological boots on; not only did he fail to repent, he fraudulently portrayed David’s case — the one for which he was most famous — as a success for years after its failure was obvious.  This, and his refusal to ever own up to the failure, only increased the chances that other children would be thus scarred.

As a testimonial to how quickly fashions pass away, Money’s theory has joined him in the grave.  The stake through its heart came in the 1990s, with brain research and an improved understanding of intrauterine development proving conclusively that the sexes are different even within the womb and the skull.  These new findings expressing old wisdom were related as revelation, reflecting the idea that nothing is truly valid until vindicated by “science.”  So there was no collective mea culpa from the psychological establishment for clouding reality and misleading generations of naïve parents.  They just continued without missing a beat, as if it were a matter no more significant than recommending the wrong size shoes for the kids.  Worse still, they have now moved on to their next mistake.

We have heard about the curious case of Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old South African runner who has been competing as a woman.  Semenya has become the focus of suspicion (I’ll use masculine pronouns, as I’m convinced this individual is a boy who experienced abnormal intrauterine development) because of his masculine physique, deep voice, development of facial hair, male mannerisms and the fact that he has been winning races by wide margins.  As a result, a battery of medical exams to determine his true sex has been conducted, although the results have not been officially released.  Yet the real story here is not what investigation may tell us about Semenya.  It is what our reaction to Semenya tells us about ourselves.

This is reflected in comments found throughout the Internet.  For instance, consider “JimBob” posting under this Daily Mail piece, who said,

“Why is everyone talking about genetics? What about Caster’s own mind – if she believes within herself that she’s female, then she is.”

Echoing this sentiment here, “Green Is Good” wrote,

“SHE identifies HERself as a female. Done.”

Then, back to the Mail, “Livio” opined,

“This is a clear case of gender identity discrimination. What if she is a man who identifies himself as a woman?”

That’s interesting.  What if you’re a lunkhead who identifies himself as intelligent?

Yet it isn’t sufficient to just dismiss this with sarcasm, as this isn’t the rambling of only a few twisted minds.

What these posters are expressing is the handiwork of today’s Dr. Moneys, “transgender” theory.  This is the idea that your “gender” can be whatever you want it to be — male, female, both male and female or neither, etc. — that it isn’t limited by biology.  If you have a problem with this, bravo, but then you should have a problem with the word “gender” itself.  Why?  Because its current usage (it used to apply only to words) was originated by people such as Money for the purposes of facilitating the relation of their theories.  Understand that while many people use “gender” as a synonym for “sex,” that is not its social sciences definition, which dictates that it refers to social rather than biological differences.  Yet people love to use this and other elements of the lexicon of the left.  It’s a fascinating phenomenon.  If you replace a simple, one-syllable word such as “poor” or “sex” with impressive sounding terms such as “underprivileged” or “gender” for ideological reasons, people, oblivious to the underlying agenda and wishing to sound sophisticated, will glom onto them.  You see, simpletons, who are relatively rare, prefer simple words.  And the only other group that does is rarer still: true intellectuals.  But I digress.

So, returning to Semenya, many people express the shocking idea that his actual sex should have no bearing on whether he should be allowed to compete with women.  It’s that modern phenomenon — image is everything, reality is negotiable.

This notion has so taken hold that we’ve recently heard of two stories out of Britain wherein young boys, ages 12 and 9, showed up in school earlier this month as “girls,” sporting girls’ clothing and ponytails and bearing feminine names.  And the schools are kowtowing to them, telling other pupils that they’ll be punished if they don’t handle the “sex change” “sensitively.”  Yet sensitivity is not for the other children, who are upset and confused.  In just the way that David Reimer’s body was mutilated in deference to yesterday’s latest theory, their minds must be mutilated in deference to today’s.

Now, even if someone subscribes to “transgender” theory, it is striking that he would allow a child who is too young to decide to have sex decide what sex he should be.  How did we get to this point?

These parents, like Ron and Janet Reimer before them, are listening to the respected social scientists of their day.  These “experts” tell them that there is something called “gender dysphoria,” which is the persistent feeling that one is a member of one sex trapped in the body of the other.  It’s enough to convince many parents, such as those of German Tim Petras, who received female hormone “treatments” at age 12 and now goes by the name of Kim.  Yet on what basis is this diagnosis really made?

Feelings.

It is truly reflective of this age, where relativism has obviated reason.  That is to say, if there are no absolutes, no Truth to use as a yardstick for judging among feelings, the feelings themselves become the ultimate arbiter.  Then, of course, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a Fig Newton if it feels like one.

But one of the problems with emotion is that it is by its very nature irrational.  And if anyone would defend an emotion-based diagnosis such as “gender dysphoria,” note that it’s brought to us by the same psycho-babblers who have given us something dubbed “body dysmorphia.”  This is this persistent feeling that a certain body part, such as an arm or leg (or multiple body parts), doesn’t belong on one’s body.  And if you think it isn’t taken seriously, know that doctors have amputated healthy limbs on this basis.

Be shocked — that is, unless you accept “gender dysphoria” as legitimate.  Then you’d better be introspective.  For what is the difference?  Why would you accept the emotion-based diagnosis of gender dysphoria but not the emotion-based one of body dysmorphia?  Why are the feelings of those who suffer from the latter invalid but the feelings of those who suffer from the former a credible arbiter?  Both groups have persistent feelings that their bodies aren’t as they should be.  Both groups cannot bear to live in their bodies as they are.  Both groups want to have their bodies altered.  And both groups have found “experts” willing to put them under the knife.  Sure, it strikes us as the most horrid malpractice when a doctor amputates healthy body parts, such as a pair of legs.  But, then, should we view it any less dimly simply because those healthy body parts are between the legs?

Lamentably, today the answer is often yes, and this speaks volumes about our society.  That is, we’ve all heard that old stereotype of a lunatic, the guy in an asylum who thinks he is Napoleon.  Now the asylums have largely been emptied, and I think I know why: we’ve turned the outside world into an asylum.  What was once only acceptable to a small group within the scariest of walls — detachment from reality — has now been mainstreamed.  You can be a man who thinks he is a woman, yet no straitjacket is slapped on you.  It is slapped on the mouths of those who dare say self-image isn’t reality.

And that is the point: there is something called reality.  When feelings tell one he is, or should be, something he is not or shouldn’t be — a girl, a legless man or Napoleon — the sane conclusion is that you’re confronted with a psychological problem, not a physical one.  It may be intractable, and it is certainly easier to mutilate the body than cure the mind.  But you cannot mutilate reality, only obscure it.  If a man loses his genitalia in an accident, does he cease to be male?  Or, if “gender” is a continuum as today’s Moneys say, is he less male?  Did David Reimer cease to be a boy because he was mutilated and given estrogen against his will?  Of course, the “experts” would say the answer is no, since he never saw himself as a girl.  Again, though, feelings cannot be the arbiters of reality.  After all, I may have hypertrichosis like Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, undergo operations to create a snout, paws and a tail, howl under the moonlight and change my name to Spot.  Yet am I sane if I call myself a different species?

So what are we to conclude about “gender” science?  Decades ago its “experts” said society could turn your boy into a girl if it felt like it; now they say he can turn himself into a girl if he feels like it.  Is it just a coincidence that Dr. Money’s “gender neutrality” theory accorded with his day’s feminist claim that sex roles should be discarded because the sexes are essentially the same?  Is it just a coincidence that the current “transgender” theory accords with our day’s homosexual claim that sex roles should be discarded because everyone and his values are essentially different?  It is at all possible that these theories have less to do with sound science than the spirit of the age?

We have gone from the proposition that “gender” can be whatever society says it is to the proposition that it can be whatever the individual says it is without ever stopping to wonder if the second idea is just a crank like the first.  But most won’t wonder because today we place more faith in doctors than doctrine, and today’s doctors say that eternal common sense and yesterday’s doctors’ nonsense are wrong.  Yet the most significant thing that distinguishes them from Dr. John Money is that they are still alive — and their theory is not yet dead.

© 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

I last night watched a show on the Smithsonian Channel about John Cohen, one of the New Lost City Ramblers.  It featured Pete Seeger and photographs of a young Bob Dylan.

When I was young and very alone the music of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez filled my life.

I joke and say Pete Seeger made me a commie although my left wing roots are more in the labor movement and the anarchists of the IWW.

But the rebel music be it rock and roll or folk was always there and I was always an outsider more attuned to fighting for the oppressed than living the glamorous life.

I was drawn to Greenwich Village because of the music of Washington Square and MacDougal Street.  Gerde’s and the Gaslight. Ban the bomb buttons, long hair, poetry and art.

When my parents busted me at 13 they told me I should go live with the queers in Greenwich Village.  Years later I would discover Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker books and know where my mother got that idea.

The music was intertwined with the politics.  Woody Guthrie’s guitar had “This Machine Kills Fascists” written on it.  They called Pete Seeger a red and blacklisted him.

I was a teenage commie queer according to some folks so the Village seemed the place to go.

Rambling around New York town,

The buildings go up and the subway down.

Fresh off the bus the first stop on the train for me was Sheridan Square, at the corner of Christopher Street.  Right near Bleeker Street.

I found Izzy Young’s Folklore Center and Fretted Instrument too.

I saw Dave van Ronk play the Gaslight.  The Fugs, Laura Nyro and the Mothers of Invention too across MacDougal Street at the Cafe Wha.

When I went to the coast it was because San Francisco was easier on kids like me or so I had heard from another transkid finding herself in the Village.

By now the Vietnam War was raging and I was part of a tide moving from protest to resistance.  I danced at the Avalon, the Filmore, the Straight Theater.  The music was the Dead and the Airplane.  Phil Ochs and Country Joe provided the politics.  The MC 5 gave us music to riot to.

Tonight I watched Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on a recent tour.  From “Four Dead in Ohio” to “Let’s Impeach the President”.

Women’s music from Joan Baez and Laura Nyro to the 1970s Meg Christian and Cris Williamson and Alix Dobkin fueled my feminism and gave music to my lesbianism.

When I came back to my roots after getting seduced by the right it was Rage Against the Machine, Green Day and John Fogerty and yeah Neil Young too along with the Dixie Chicks who returned me to my senses.

Maybe the music always mattered and maybe like Grace Slick used to sing it was the way to “Feed your head!”

[Controversial if you are a Christo-Fascist misogynist who believes the sole purpose of women is to have babies.  Not if you believe in women’s equality.]

AFP, France

Excerpt: He [Prime Minister Zapatero] has pushed through legislation legalising gay marriage, allowing for fast-track divorces and giving increased rights to transsexuals, among other changes.

[9/26/09]

Spanish government approves controversial abortion reforms

(AFP)

MADRID — Spain’s Socialist government Saturday approved controversial reforms to the country’s abortion law which would allow women as young as 16 to undergo the procedure without parental consent.

The proposal was passed at a cabinet meeting despite strong opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, the conservative opposition Popular Party and even many supporters of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist Party.

The measure now will to go to parliament for approval, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told a news conference.

Under the proposed reforms, abortions would be allowed for women of 16 and over on demand up to the 14th week of pregnancy, and up to 22 weeks if there is a risk to the mother’s health or if the foetus is deformed.

Women can also undergo the procedure after 22 weeks if the foetus has a serious or incurable illness.

“We want to offer minors as much protection as possible and the most respect for their basic rights,” said de la Vega.

The existing law introduced in 1985, a decade after the death of right-wing dictator Francisco Franco, only allows abortion in cases of rape, fetal malformation and when a pregnant woman’s mental or physical health is deemed to be at risk if the pregnancy goes to term.

The Popular Party has said it will challenge the reforms in the Constitutional Court, and the Spanish Family Forum, a coalition of Catholic groups, said it would stage a demonstration against abortion on October 17 in Madrid.

Popular Party spokeswoman Soraya Saenz de Santamaria condemned the reforms which she said “go against to the feelings of the vast majority of women and of parents.”

An opinion poll carried out last June said 64 percent of people oppose the measure allowing 16-year-olds to have abortions without parental consent.

Among Socialist supporters, 56 percent said they opposed the move, according to the Metroscopia poll of 1,000 people carried out for the left-wing newspaper El Pais.

Zapatero has defended the changes, saying the state should not “intervene in the free and private decision of a woman, who is the one who has to take on the responsibility of a pregnancy during her entire life.”

The prime minister has passed a series of sweeping social reforms since coming to power in 2004 that have angered the Roman Catholic Church.

He has pushed through legislation legalising gay marriage, allowing for fast-track divorces and giving increased rights to transsexuals, among other changes.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

©2009 Google

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jpfLm3J0OBSUPlQJYvyLUuPmkNaQ

When I got my SRS in 1972 America enjoyed far greater prosperity and economic equality than it does now. Today inequality and poverty are the result of some 40 years of Ayn Randian neo-lib/neo-con corporate fascism aimed at putting all the wealth in the hands of 0ne percent and screw everyone else.

We were a bunch of poor kids and the mix was far more multi-racial than it is now.  Unlike today, we weren’t for the most part salaried people with high status jobs granted to us as a result of male privilege.

My friends and I were gender trash.  Many of us were throwaway kids, disowned and on our own.  Too “other” to do anything besides pass as female.  If we had legitimate jobs they paid working class women’s pay of $2.00-3.50 per hour.  A lucky few got jobs with the phone companies as operators, others learned data entry.

It was possible to live cheap in those days, a studio apartment for 75 dollars or so in one of the ghettos.  Shared apartments of maybe two or three bedrooms for around 200-300 dollars.

Thrift store clothes and hippie home cooking.

We somehow managed to save the money or get student loans.  I got a loan from the Berkeley Co-op, a local market chain with a credit union and left wing politics.  It wasn’t much but it was enough to pay for my SRS even though I was still paying off the loan some five years later.

Fast forward to a point not to many years ago when I was being really snarky and pointed out how one could get SRS in Thailand for about the cost of a used VW Golf.

I had gotten too used to middle class comfort even though only a few years prior when I had been drinking I wold have been either homeless or down on the Nickel (LA’s Skid Row located at 5th and Main) with my sister friends who had tried to self medicate away the pain.  I had forgotten how hard it was simply to survive without the support structures cis-sexual/normborns take for granted.

I deceived myself into thinking that because luck had saved me along with falling in love with some one who gave me the support I needed to rise above the desperate poverty I had been living in, that everyone could do the same.

I knew in my heart that I was lucky and that most are not, but privilege plays strange mind tricks on people.  They suddenly cope with having privilege while so many others do not by convincing themselves that they deserve it and that others deserve the misfortune that falls upon them.

The greatest lie of all is “Social Darwinism”, the idea that the privileged are more deserving or that they work harder.

Over five years or so I worked very hard, read, studied and engaged in self-criticism to get back to the humanity and caring I had before the ultra right wing forces of Reagan and crew destroyed America.

A few years back I read Barbara Ehrenreich‘s book, Nickel and Dimed, about not getting by on the poverty level jobs so many American’s hold.  I was reading Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky too along with Naomi Klein. I was getting back to my left wing anarchist working class roots.

I could see the working class getting fucked harder and harder by the rich.  Part time hell with uncertain hours making it hard to hold two jobs.  People with two and three jobs, no health insurance with pay day loans ripping off the poor and credit card companies ripping off those one step up.  Usurious interest rates.  No more government student loans, those low interest loans replaced by “private” banks raping the poor even more.

I work with people doing retail sales who have degrees and yet work for poverty wages as those are the only positions open.

Then several years back we let a sister stay at our house while she went to E2000.  She was an executive with a major US company.  She complained about the cost of her divorce and yet she went to the finest of surgeons.  20,000 here, 50,000 on her face with Dr. O.  I found her to be oh so entitled, oh so privileged and oh so blissfully unaware of her privilege.

When I went on line a dozen plus years back I wondered where all the young sisters were.  Of course it had taken me a year of scrimping and saving, buying components at computer swap meets as well as knowing how to build a computer for me to get on-line in the first place.

Everyone seemed so middle aged and white.  So much higher up the socio-economic scale than I was.

Yet I was a volunteer at Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center as well as involved with the local chapter of the Transsexual Menace and so I knew that Transkids hadn’t suddenly all vanished.  Hell the sex ads in the free papers were full of young people with transsexualism hustling to get by in an age of AIDS, addiction and violence.

Because I am old with a somewhat iffy grasp on middle class most sisters in my circle of friends came out after 40 and after establishing careers based on male privilege.  While they lose male privilege they often retain class privilege.  Many Fortune 500 companies have non-discrimination clauses and even changing jobs after SRS isn’t necessarily an elevator ride on the downwardly mobile express.

But privilege hardens one to the suffering of those who do not enjoy that privilege.  Transsexual to Male people have been given a pass on the bottom surgery based on cost.  I’ve been called a transgender sympathizer because I look at poverty class sisters who are 24/7/365 with electrolysis, hormones, breast implants and perhaps even some facial surgery (although perhaps not from the famous Dr. O.) and I am willing to cut them some slack.

On some level the surgery that was supposed to make us whole is treated like owning a Birkin, a status symbol to be held as validation of a realness not readily accessible to those lacking the same class privilege.

It is too bad so many with class privilege have so little class as to feel it is okay to flaunt their good fortune, to feel it is alright to rub it in that they have their pussies when those at the bottom are lucky to be able to afford a place to live and see SRS as but a dream.

From the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831_pf.html

Wednesday, January 28, 2009; 12:00 AM

MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) — Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.

In the first study, published in current issue of Environmental Health, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS.

And in the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was found most commonly in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.

But an organization representing the refiners is disputing the results published in Environmental Health.

“This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance,” said Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, in a statement. “Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years. These mercury-free re-agents perform important functions, including adjusting pH balances.”

However, the IATP told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that four plants in Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia still use “mercury-cell” technology that can lead to contamination.

IATP’s Ben Lilliston also told HealthDay that the Environmental Health findings were based on information gathered by the FDA in 2005.

And the group’s own study, while not peer-reviewed, was based on products “bought off the shelf in the autumn of 2008,” Lilliston added.

The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common. The contamination occurs when mercury cells are used to produce caustic soda.

“The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury. The good news is that mercury-free HFCS ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients,” Wallinga said in his prepared statement.

More information

The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry has more about mercury and health.

SOURCE: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, news release, Jan. 26, 2009

Thank You, Senator Michael Bennet: Senate Movement on ENDA

Filed by: Dr. Jillian T. Weiss

September 25, 2009 10:30 AM

Yesterday’s ENDA Hearing: Use It To Pass ENDA

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/yesterdays_enda_hearing_use_it_to_pass_enda.php
Filed by: Dr. Jillian T. Weiss

September 24, 2009 11:30 AM

Yesterday morning, the House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing on ENDA. It was very good for the bill, raising awareness in many different ways and among many different constituencies. (See Austen’s summary <http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/congressional_hearing_on_enda_great_success.php> and our liveblog
<http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/liveblogging_the_enda_hearing.php> , as well as the archived webcast and the witness testimony on the Committee’s website
<http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2009/09/hr-3017-employment-non-discrim.shtml> .)

In and of itself, however, the hearing is not going to get the bill passed. Hearings have been held on previous versions of ENDA since 1994, and we still don’t have a law.

What will get the law passed are votes in Congress, and that is the only thing that will get them passed. You can use the hearing to help get those votes. Here’s how.

Keep in mind that the real fight is in the Senate. Yesterday’s hearing was held in the House. In the deluge of information overload that is DC, Senators don’t know about the hearing or what was said there. A lot was said there, and even those of us who watched it probably don’t remember a good deal of what happened.

We must get the Senate up to speed on what happened in yesterday’s hearing.

That is important not only for those Senators who are wavering, but also for those who strongly support ENDA. The most effective way to inform people in a body like the Senate is by their peers. Telling Senator Schumer about the hearing will mean that when it comes time for Senator Schumer to support ENDA, he’ll be able to point to a recent hearing in Congress for specific guidance. That’s very persuasive; a lot more than “it’s the right thing to do.”

What makes it the right thing to do? That’s the question that must be answered by our Senatorial allies.

So how do you educate a Senator about yesterday’s hearing? It’s no good sending them the webpage or the Youtube links and telling them to look at it. They won’t.

Instead, contact them and tell them that the hearing occurred and something specific about it.

Here’s some ideas — choose one:

1. Call your Senator’s office, and tell them about a specific witness who testified at the hearing. (Find your Senator here and call at 202-224-3121.)

Examples: At the hearing, Yale Law Professor William Eskridge testified about the state of the law and how it has failed to protect workers even where they are well-qualified for their jobs, including the professor himself.

At the hearing, Vandy Beth Glenn testified how, despite her many qualifications for her job in the Georgia statehouse, she was escorted from the building and fired when she told her boss that she was preparing for gender transition.

2. Send your Senator an email mentioning a specific fact brought out at the hearing. (Find your Senator’s email here  <http://votesmart.org/> .)

Examples: At the hearing, Acting EEOC Director Stuart Ishimaru noted that many of the nation’s top businesses recognize that discrimination is bad for business, and 87% of Fortune 500 companies had implemented non-discrimination policies.

UCLA Williams Institute Director Brad Sears presented a study showing that one in five LGB public sector employees in the 2008 General Social Survey reported being discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation.

3. Write a letter to your Senator in the mail and talk about what a specific Member of the Committee said or asked.

Examples: At the hearing, Committee Chair Rep. George Miller said that ENDA is needed to cover 172 million Americans who are subject to legal employment discrimination, including those who work for state governments.

(Find your Senator’s mailing address here <http://votesmart.org/> and call at 202-224-3121.)

I would resist the temptation to try to cram too many facts into one communication. You can always call them tomorrow or next week. The important thing is to keep up a steady rain, rather than a flood at the end. After all, the Senate vote is probably going to come up months from now, and there’s plenty of time. But, like studying for a big exam, you can’t do it all the night before. A little bit every day is the key to success.

If you want to see where we are in the Senate, look here <http://bit.ly/14TDll> .

Some people have fans.

I have people who get so exercised over my refusal to march in lock step with their sort of creepy right wing hypocrisy that it some times seems as though attacking me is their primary source of content for their “blogs”.

I returned to my left wing hippie roots and a philosophy of believing in equality and the attacking of real enemies instead of bullying and beating up scape goats whose rank on the social scale regarding access to semi decent and humane treatment is some what below my own.

How un-Republi-Nazi is that on my part?  Why any day now they will be calling me a liberal and a socialist even though I tend to find those terms some what insulting as I tend to be several degrees more radical than that.

Which brings me to “No gods, No masters”, an anarchist slogan, the title of a collection of anarchist essays and the mast head motto of Margaret Sanger’s news paper.

One recent strange attack upon me declared I was angry with god and that I “hated god”.  Indifference, perhaps, more accurately skepticism and disbelief.

Hating god… Absurd…  That would be like hating Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.  A waste of energy since I do not believe in the existence of god.  I am an Atheist, I do not believe in magic invisible misogynistic father figures in the sky who give you presents when you are good and send you to eternal pools of fire if you mess up and claim they do this because they love you.

I find the whole idea of religion absurd and oppressive not to mention something engaged in by mostly either weak minded people or people out to garner power or wealth by using the imaginary sky fairy as a weapon of extortion.

I haven’t believed since I was a kid and I’ve also scoped out Buddhism and the Wicca too and find them just as absurd.

Not one of them seems to pass the scratch and sniff test posed by the Epicurean Dilemma:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Why, indeed? Especially since people with transsexualism are born with a stigma that automatically makes us either abominations or requires us to live a life of total denial.

From Bilrico Report

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/house_enda_committee_starting_hearings_wednesday_s.php

Filed by: Dr. Jillian T. Weiss

September 21, 2009 10:30 AM

There will be an extremely important Congressional hearing on ENDA this Wednesday, September 23, at 10:00 am ET. It is before the Committee on Education and Labor. It will have a lot to do with whether ENDA succeeds or not. But of the 49 committee members, 15 have voted against, or are undecided on ENDA. Another 4 are thought to be supportive, but have failed and refused to co-sponsor.

What do you think we should do about that?

Like all Congressional hearings, it will have the charm of a lead balloon. There’s no sound track, no quick cutaway to the well-acted reactions of various witnesses and congressmembers, and it doesn’t wrap up in 30 minutes. But if you listen carefully, very carefully, the music in the background begins to rise. It will either be a triumphal anthem, swelling the heart and leading to victory, or a funeral march, foreshadowing the doom of a noble cause.

This is where your part in the drama comes in. You will either call these Congressmembers offices in droves, demanding equal rights, or you will not. You will either harangue your friends and relatives to call and email, or you will not. You will either become a demand for justice, or you will attend to other business. What say you?

The hearing by the full Committee on Education and Labor will be available to watch online live by going to http://bit.ly/bxyfr.On the top right-hand side of the page, an inch down, click on “Live Webcast.”

The hearing is designed to focus attention on this bill, amid all the other hullabaloo in DC and the nation, and to see if Congressmembers will stand up and take notice.

It is unclear whether there are enough votes to pass ENDA in the House if it were to be voted on today. The leadership will not let it proceed to a vote until that is clear. That is going to be up to you.

I suggest you watch the hearing carefully.

The House Numbers

There are currently 159 co-sponsors of ENDA, HR 3017, in the House.   Co-sponsorship is important because it means that Congressmember is solidly behind the bill and can be counted upon to vote in support.

Another 20 Congressmembers have indicated privately they will vote in support, but are not co-sponsors. 30 more are seen as probable yes votes, either because they co-sponsored ENDA in the past or supported other LGBT causes.

That brings us to 209, which is 9 short of what we need at a bare minimum.

Committee Members Not In Favor of ENDA

There are some members of the Committee on Education and Labor, who will be voting on your rights, who are not in favor of ENDA. You must call them, whether they are from your district or not, though I suggest you look for ones in or nearest your state. They are voting on your civil rights, and you have every right and duty to ask them for support.

The following members of the Committee are not co-sponsors of ENDA:
Jason Altmire <https://forms.house.gov/altmire/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm>(D-PA-04),
Paul Tonko <https://forms.house.gov/tonko/contact-form.shtml> (D-NY-21)
Dina Titus <https://forms.house.gov/titus/contact-form.shtml> (D-NV-3)

The following members of the Committee voted against ENDA in 2007
John Kline <http://kline.house.gov/?sectionid=7&sectiontree=4,7> (R-MN-02)
Thomas E. Petri <https://forms.house.gov/petri/zip_authen.shtml> (R-WI-06)
Howard “Buck” McKeon
<http://mckeon.house.gov/contact.shtml> (R-CA-25)
Peter Hoekstra <http://hoekstra.house.gov/Contact/ContactForm.htm> (R-MI-02)
Mark E. Souder<http://souder.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm>(R-IN-03)
Vernon J. Ehlers <http://www.house.gov/ehlers/contact_vern.shtml> (R-MI-03)
Joe Wilson <http://www.house.gov/formwilson/IMA/issue.htm> (R-SC-02)
Cathy McMorris Rodgers<http://mcmorris.house.gov/?sectionid=82&sectiontree=4,82>(R-WA-05)
Tom Price <http://tom.house.gov/html/contact_form_email.cfm> (R-GA-06)
Rob Bishop <http://robbishop.house.gov/ZipAuth.aspx> (R-UT-01)

The following members of the Committee appear to be undecided about ENDA:
Brett Guthrie <https://forms.house.gov/guthrie/contact-form.shtml> (R-KY-2)
Bill Cassidy <https://forms.house.gov/cassidy/contact-form.shtml> (R-LA-6)
Tom McClintock <https://forms.house.gov/mcclintock/contact-form.shtml>(R-CA-4)
Duncan D. Hunter<https://forms.house.gov/hunter/webforms/zipauthen_contact.shtml>(R-CA-52)
Phil Roe <https://forms.house.gov/roe/contact-form.shtml> (R-TN-1)
Glenn “GT” Thompson
<https://forms.house.gov/thompson/contact-form.shtml>(PA-05)

Call and ask for them at (202) 224-3121. Click on their names for their web pages and email contact info.

More Strategy Tips

It would also be good strategy to get the 50 who are likely to vote in support – but who have not yet agreed to co-sponsor — to agree to co-sponsorship.

More co-sponsorships will help notify the leadership that this bill is ready for a vote. If your Congressmember is not yet a co-sponsor, please call him or her and ask them to co-sponsor the bill. Here’s how:

Find your Representative here:
http://www.votesmart.org/.<http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2009/09/proposing-an-ex.php>

Find your Representative’s ENDA status here: http://bit.ly/Q5YMJ

The telephone number is (202) 224-3121. Put that on speed dial.

Please let us know what you’ve done in the comment space below, so we can encourage each other. Are we willing to fight for our rights?

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/house_enda_committee_starting_hearings_wednesday_s.php

It is the debate around some kid going back to school after having started treatment to become female physically that has set me thinking. It seems the tear away, lie away Scum newspaper in the UK have been at it again. This time we are getting the “Political correctness gone mad” approach with headlines like “Sex swap kid goes back to school as a Girl!!!” Well guess what, 50 percent of the population of the school went back to school as girls so what’s the big deal?

Well I know that the answer to that would be “But they left school before the summer holidays as a BOY!!!” So what? I spent a large chunk of my childhood going to school being called “Boy” and “Girl” and “Cat” and “Dog” (By everyone else I add) so I would hardly see some kid changing their outward sex going back to school as being any big deal.

Continue reading at:

http://sophiaofthescythes.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/the-transtealth-bombers/

NOW Action Bulletin

Baucus Bill is Profit-Driven Insurance Industry Dream

Your voice is urgently required!

The long-awaited Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill unveiled this week has many deficient and undesirable provisions and it must be opposed. First and most important, the legislation does NOT contain a public option — and, as a result, there is no effective mechanism to stimulate competition and control escalating health care costs. There is no mandate for employers to provide health insurance. Everyone will be required to get their own costly insurance and, failing that, they will be assessed a stiff penalty. Essentially, the same factors that have caused health care costs to rise at four times the rate of wages are left in place. This is not reform!

Tell your senators to oppose Baucus Bill! After taking action, please support our work!

Action Needed:

For those reasons and many other burdensome and costly features (detailed in the Background section), as well as ideology-driven restrictions on women’s reproductive health care, the Senate Finance Committee bill must be stopped. Send a message to your senators right away to oppose this legislation.

Background:

In an attempt to write a bipartisan health care reform bill, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has produced a bill that fails to effectively solve problems in our dysfunctional health care system and is unlikely to overcome strident right-wing opposition, anyway. The Baucus bill would require everyone to buy insurance, thus handing over 30 million new customers to profit-driven insurance companies. It would fail to bring health care costs under control, allow insurers to increase costs as we age, and tax high-cost insurance plans (over $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families — this would include plans that are higher cost because of chronic or severe illness, as older persons often have). Instead of authorizing a public option, the bill advances the flawed approach of health care co-operatives — which have shown little success in controlling rising costs.

In brief, the bill fails to make insurance truly affordable for low- and moderate-income families; it fails to assure broad access to a full range of reproductive health services for women (that’s discrimination, clear and outrageous); it fails to provide equal access to insurance coverage for “legal” immigrants; it allows insurance companies to charge older persons five times as much as younger persons; and it imposes a mandate that everyone buy health insurance and imposes stiff penalties if they don’t, while requiring premium payments higher than either the Senate HELP Committee bill or the House bill (H.R. 3200).

In every respect, it looks as though insurance companies wrote the bill themselves, as there is no employer mandate to provide health insurance, and it can be reasonably speculated that many companies may be dropping their group plans and leaving everything up to their unfortunate employees. Under this bill, a costly burden would be placed on individuals and families. For instance, a family of three with an annual income of $55,000 would be expected to pay $7,100 a year for insurance premiums — more than either of the other major reform bills would allow. And that doesn’t even cover out-of-pocket expenses for co-pays and deductibles.

Tax subsidies would be available for low-income and modest-income persons, but eligibility is more restrictive than in other reform bills, and the subsidies are less generous. Businesses with more than 50 employees would have to reimburse the government for some or all of the cost of the subsidies provided to employees who buy insurance on their own. This approach provides an incentive to businesses not to hire poor or disadvantaged workers, and the tax on higher-cost plans will discourage the hiring and retention of older or less healthy employees. There are many other intended and unintended bad outcomes that can be expected if this legislation is adopted.

The legislation would expand Medicaid to cover millions more uninsured low-income persons, with an additional cost of $287 billion over 10 years. Whether financially-challenged state budgets can pay the required match for the Medicaid expansion is a serious question. The subsidies to low- and moderate-income individuals and families amount to $463 billion over 10 years, and tax credits for small businesses to help them buy insurance would total $24 billion.

Keep in mind that your tax dollars would pay for all the subsidies flowing to those same profit-driven insurance companies that have denied as many as one in five doctor-prescribed services, excluded cancer and other critically-ill patients when they most needed help, and paid huge executive salaries. The 20 to 30 percent private insurance administrative costs, which are a significant part of our country’s comparably higher health care expenditures, would continue.

The Baucus bill will not result in universal coverage: the Congressional Budget office estimates that as many as 25 million persons will be left out. Of that number, about a third will be immigrants. Excluding undocumented immigrants and making legal immigrants wait and show documentation for health care services is bad public health policy.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the price tag for the Baucus plan at $774 billion over 10 years. The lower cost is achieved because projected income from the unfortunate tax on the higher cost plans is used to offset costs. Additionally, Medicare costs will be squeezed to wring out more revenue to pay for this insurance industry subsidy plan. There are other sleights-of-hand in the legislation that make unrealistic assumptions about how these costs will be covered. We cannot let Democrats be pressured into supporting the Baucus bill because it supposedly has a lighter fiscal impact.

Take action by writing to your senators NOW!