Women Born Transsexual

From Yahoo Canada: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/101031/world/eu_med_dangerous_alcohol

Sun Oct 31, 3:06 PM

By Maria Cheng, The Associated Press

LONDON – Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study.

British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.

Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.

Heroin, crack cocaine and metamfetamines, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.

The study was paid for by Britain’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online Monday in the medical journal, Lancet.

Experts said alcohol scored so high because it is so widely used and has devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.

Continue reading at:  http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/101031/world/eu_med_dangerous_alcohol

Or Halloween to those of us who look at as a way to get on the good side of the neighbors by stuffing the little ones with oodles and oodles of sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, artificial flavors and preservatives.

May the little beasties bounce off the walls of your houses for days due to sugar induced hyper-activity.

Actually I love it the anarchy, the disorganized play with kids and adults dressing up and going begging door to door in a primal act of pagan tradition?

But like a lot of things commercial exploitation has managed to mess it up.

I went to the gay celebrations on Polk Street, in the 70s as well as the ones in LA’s Boys Town of WeHo.  Went to a couple in the Castro in the 80s when they were haunted by the specter of death and bore a closer relationship with a Mexican tradition of Los Dias de Los Muertos.

In 2001 I went with a friend in LA to Los Dias de Los Muertos on Olivera Street. It seemed right after 9/11.

I like holidays even though I am an atheist.

I even got involved in the Wicca for a while in the late 1970s.  While skeptical about a multitude of god and goddess, after all when you don’t believe in one god believing in a multitude is an even greater stretch, I did like the getting high and dancing around naked under the full moon part.

The other thing I liked was how the Wicca seemed to be closer to nature than to some sort of patriarchal hierarchy with a bunch of misogynistic rules and queer hating laws.

Take the best and leave the rest.  I don’t need gods or goddesses to celebrate the turning of the seasons, the beauty of the planet and universe, to celebrate the lives of others.

To celebrate holidays for the sheer joy of partying and playing.

So Happy Samhain/Halloween/Los Dia deLos Muertos

From The Smirking Chimp:  http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-michael-green/32229/yes-of-course-theyre-brownshirts-what-the-hell-did-you-expect

by David Michael Green

October 31, 2010 – 11:08am

You know, I hate like hell using the tired old Nazi analogy.

For one thing, everybody does it, and everybody does it all the time. It hasn’t exactly earned an A for originality in about a half century now.

For another thing, not only does everybody do it, but now complete idiots who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel are doing it too, and of course they’re too dumb to even use the term properly. You can’t foam at the mouth about what a freaking socialist Barack Obama is and then call him a Nazi at the same time. Unless, of course, you happen not to mind looking like a moron. Which, of course, all too many Americans don’t anymore. But here’s a hint to all y’all in the ganglion-cyst-where-there’s-supposed-to-be-an-actual-brain crowd: Nazis hate socialists. Indeed, they murder them, along with Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals. Get it?

And then there’s a third reason to avoid the Nazi analogy, namely that because everyone else is doing it, the term has now been diluted to the point of lacking all impact or meaning anymore. If everyone’s a Nazi, no one is.

All good reasons not to use the term.

But, that said, there are also three good reasons to do just that.

Continue reading at:   http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-michael-green/32229/yes-of-course-theyre-brownshirts-what-the-hell-did-you-expect

You know when Tony Curtis died recently they didn’t feel it was necessary to mention his former name.

It isn’t even the “de-transitioning” of us as much as the disrespecting us by making us less real than others who do the same things we do yet have never been linked with one of three trans prefixed words.

Is this partly our own fault as we argue among ourselves regarding language and usage?  Perhaps but if an individual has shown a preference in life for the usage of a name or a way of defining their life experiences then common courtesy would mandate extension of that same courtesy in death, even when you might consider doing so an act of “polite fiction”.

From Trans-Advocate: http://www.transadvocate.com/de-transitioned-in-death-how-the-media-disrespects-transgender-people.htm

Reposted with permission

Posted by Marti Abernathey

Oct 30th, 2010

I’m tired. Tired of the so called “liberal media” disrespecting our dead.  Hell, even our own “LGB(t) media does it. Ya know, “Today a transgender woman, Jane Doe,  who was formerly known as John Doe, was murdered today.”  A few examples:

“The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office reported today that the victim of a fatal shooting in Maplewood on Sunday was Victoria Carmen White, formerly James White. White had legally changed her name to Victoria Carmen following sex reassignment surgery.”- Maplewood Patch

“Detectives originally thought the 28-year-old victim, from Roxwell, near Chelmsford, Essex, may have drowned, but a post mortem has revealed unexplained head injuries.

Ms Chappel, formerly known as Bryan Hooley, underwent a sex-change operation in 1994.”- BBC News

But it’s not just the mainstream media doing it. Edge, a “Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) news and entertainment portal”, posted this:

“Johnson’s arrest for prostitution last winter led to a police interrogation in which Johnson–formerly known as Dwayne Johnson–was beaten by police officers.” – EDGE Boston

and On Top ( “a gay advocacy website”):

“Andrade has confessed to killing Zapata, formerly known as Justin Zapata, in a fit of rage when he confronted her about her sexuality.”- On Top

and the latest example:

“Police spokesperson Sgt. Ray Evers said Blahnik, whose birth name is Michael Lee, was strangled with a pillowcase.” – Philadelphia Gay News

It’s 2010, and as the Transgender Day of Remembrance comes close I think it’s time that ALL media stop disrespecting our dead brothers and sisters this way.  As a health care worker, I could be fired for revealing personal health information (HIPAA) of a patient.  If not illegal,  revealing personal health information after death is highly unethical.  And publishing the birth name or surgical status  of  these murder victims doesn’t serve any purpose,  other than titillation.  Go back and reread each one of these articles and remove the transgender person’s birth name. Does it change the story at all?

I know that in the past transgender people were outside of the public eye and that maybe media outlets didn’t know any better (never mind widely accepted journalistic standards).  I hope that from this day forward every media outlet can be more respectful of  our fallen transgender brothers and sisters.  Many died living their truth. If you’re a journalist and you post their former name,  you’re effectively  stripping their lives of that truth.

Please, just stop it.

The Republi-Nazis represent  strange cults of dispensationalists and Armageddon wishing Rapture Bunnies  that want to bring on the end of the world by any means necessary thereby hastening the return of magic Jesus and the thousand year Taliban Christian Reich.

These people are dangerous on so many levels. Ignorant of science, hateful towards ecology and bigoted beyond all belief toward anyone who isn’t part of their cults.

From The Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-battle-ahead-20101030,0,6040861.story

By Neela Banerjee
October 30, 2010

If the GOP wins control of the House next week, senior congressional Republicans plan to launch a blistering attack on the Obama administration’s environmental policies, as well as on scientists who link air pollution to climate change.

The GOP’s fire will be concentrated especially on the administration’s efforts to use the Environmental Protection Agency‘s authority over air pollution to tighten emissions controls on coal, oil and other carbon fuels that scientists say contribute to global warming.

The attack, according to senior Republicans, will seek to portray the EPA as abusing its authority and damaging the economy with needless government regulations.

In addition, GOP leaders say, they will focus on what they see as distortions of scientific evidence regarding climate change and on Obama administration efforts to achieve by executive rule-making what it failed to win from Congress.

Continue reading at:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-battle-ahead-20101030,0,6040861.story

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/mexican-president-california-marijuana-legalization-may-god-pass/

By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, October 29th, 2010 — 2:03 pm

In California’s battle to legalize marijuana, former Mexican President Vicente Fox has picked a side, announcing in a recent radio interview that he favors Prop. 19.

“How great it would be for California to set this example,” he said, speaking to the W radio network on Wednesday. “May God let it pass. The other U.S. states will have to follow step.”

The quote was first snagged stateside by McClatchy Newspapers.

The former president also criticized his successor’s violent campaign against the drug cartels, suggesting that the country’s path has been ultimately destructive.

“Violence never resolves violence,” he said.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/mexican-president-california-marijuana-legalization-may-god-pass/