Women Born Transsexual

Sometimes a link or need to research something takes me to Andrea James site and I never cease to be blown away by the material she has amassed and how much of a living treasure she is.  I’m so thankful for the initial boost she gave me when I first started this blog a bit over two years ago.

I treasure being her Facebook friend and the occasional link she gives me.

I went through a period of when I was confused by all the sociopaths among the HBS/Classic Transsexual Mafia/intersex not trans/AGP/AP folks who troll the web and mailing lists.

I knew I was dealing with sock puppets and stories that stunk of science fantasy.  Details that didn’t ring historically true.

In a world where so many women with transsexualism spread so much self-justifying BS or should that be HBS, spend so much time and energy creating sock puppets, creating diva wars and calling name I needed some serious background briefing so I could sort out the game players.

I got that  from Andrea.

I’ve come to realize that when people bad rap her they are most likely game players she has exposed.

But more than unmasking people who cause much harm she provides the best source of general information of almost anyone around when it comes to things people should know regarding transition.

So a big shout out and thank you to Andrea James for all the hard work she has done and continues to do

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/opinion/27dowd.html?_r=1

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 26, 2011

April is the cruelest month for Chrissy Lee Polis.

The 22-year-old stopped by the Rosedale, Md., McDonald’s, just east of Baltimore, last week.

Two patrons, an 18-year-old woman named Teonna Monae Brown and a 14-year-old girl, seemed to come out of nowhere and began ferally assaulting Polis.

The savage pair may have been disturbed at the prospect that Polis was transgender. “They said, ‘That’s a dude. That’s a dude. And she’s in the female bathroom,’ ” Polis told The Baltimore Sun.

The attackers spit on her, threw her on the floor, kicked her in the face and back, punched her in the nose, ripped her earrings out of her earlobes, dragged her by her hair across the restaurant and only stopped when she began to have an epileptic seizure and an older woman in a white track suit intervened.

A McDonald’s employee, who captured it all on his cellphone, was fired after his video went viral on YouTube.

“They all sat there and watched,” Polis told The Sun in a poignant video interview. “I think it’s a shame that people of my preference, I don’t care if you dress like a guy or a girl or anything, I feel like people should not have to be afraid to go out of their house.”

With long brown hair, a slender frame, a feminine manner and a Baltimore accent, Polis said her family had told her that she did not need to explain herself, that she should “be who you are and go as you are.”

But people at parties sometimes want to fight her. “I have been raped before, too, because of who I am,” she said, adding: “It’s bringing me down, slowly but surely down.”

The suspects have been charged with assault and the Baltimore County state’s attorney office is determining whether it classifies as a hate crime.

A week before the attack, Maryland’s Senate shelved a measure extending anti-discrimination protections to people who openly change their gender identity even though, as The Sun editorialized, “It would have sent a powerful signal that transgender people are not fair game for bigots.”

A rally against transgender violence at the Rosedale McDonald’s on Monday night featured Polis’s mother, grandmother and a crowd of 300, singing “We Shall Overcome.” Chrissy, no doubt afraid, stayed home. Her mother, Renee Carr, told The Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, that she supported her daughter “100 percent” and added: “I even carried her pocketbook on the way to the bus stop as a kid.”
Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/opinion/27dowd.html?_r=1

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/26/oklahoma-lawmakers-approve-life-sentence-for-cooking-hashish/

By Eric W. Dolan
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

A bill that mandates a sentence of up to life in prison for converting marijuana or marijuana oil into hashish is heading to Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin’s (R) desk after being passed by the state Legislature on Monday.

House Bill 1798 makes the conviction of a first time offense of manufacturing hashish a felony with a prison mandatory minimum sentence of two years and a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Hashish is made by compressing and heating glandular hairs from marijuana plants known as “kief.” Chemical solvents can also be used to extract the psychoactive components of the marijuana plant, resulting in hash oil.

Under a second offense, sentences would be doubled and those convicted would be unable to receive a suspended sentence or probation.

Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs spokesman Mark Woodward told The Associated Press that the bill is meant to “send a message” that illegal drugs won’t be tolerated in the state.

The Oklahoma Senate approved the legislation in a 44 to 2 vote and the state House approved the legislation 75 to 18.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/26/oklahoma-lawmakers-approve-life-sentence-for-cooking-hashish/

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/25/state-department-wants-passport-applicants-to-reveal-lifetime-employment-history/

By David Edwards
Monday, April 25th, 2011

The U.S. Department of State has proposed a new questionnaire that would make it almost impossible for some people to get a passport.

The new document (PDF) would require that certain applicants submit a list of every residence and every job they’ve ever had since birth.

In February, the department published a request in the Federal Register allowing 60 days for comment before the new rules go into effect.

“The Biographical Questionnaire for a U.S. Passport, form DS-5513, is used to supplement an application for a U.S. passport when the applicant submits citizenship or identity evidence that is insufficient or of questionable authenticity,” according to a supporting statement (PDF) issued along with the request for comment.

“This form is used prior to passport issuance and solicits information relating to the respondent’s family, birth circumstances, residences, schooling, and employment,” the statement added.

“In addition to this primary use of the data, the DS-5513 may also be used as evidence in the prosecution of any individual who makes a false statement on the application and for other uses as set forth in the Prefatory Statement and the Passport System of Records Notice (State-26).”

The document also requires some applicants to submit information about the mother’s pre-natal and post-natal care, the mother’s residence one year before and after the birth, the persons in attendance at the birth and religious or institutional recordings of the birth.

“The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form,” Consumer Traveler’s Edward Hasbrouck noted.

Continue reading at:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/25/state-department-wants-passport-applicants-to-reveal-lifetime-employment-history/

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/26/healthcare-congress

The mainstream media has failed to report that the Ryan plan is a privatisation programme that will hand $30tn to insurers

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 April 2011

Who shot Major Strasser? Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942). Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

The film Casablanca features one of greatest moments in movie history. With Humphrey Bogart standing with a smoking pistol over the body of the dead Gestapo major, Claude Rains, in the role of the French colonel, tells his troops: “the major has been shot, round up the usual suspects.”

Unfortunately, the Washington policy gang is busy following Claude Rains’ instructions. The nation is drowning in endless accounts of how the huge deficit will sink the economy and the country. These accounts invariably feature stories of a Congress addicted to spending and a nation that wants government benefits that it doesn’t want to pay for.

This story has nothing to do with reality, as all budget analysts know. The explosion of the budget deficit in the last three years is a response to the plunge in private sector demand following the collapse of the housing bubble. If the budget deficit were smaller, we would simply have less demand and fewer jobs.

Paul Ryan did his best to lay out the long-term story as clearly as possible with his plan to privatise Medicare. The analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that Ryan’s plan would hugely increase the cost of healthcare to seniors. Under the Ryan plan, a Medicare-equivalent policy is projected to cost almost half of a median 65-year-old retiree’s income by 2030. It would soon exceed the income of most retirees, as healthcare costs outpace income growth.

However most of the additional burden projected for retirees is not the result of cost-shifting from the government. The vast majority of the additional burden that the CBO projected for retirees comes from the higher cost of private insurance compared with the government-run Medicare system. The additional cost as a result of adopting Ryan’s privatised system is more than $30tn over Medicare’s 75-year planning horizon.

To put this in perspective, CBO’s projected increase in the cost of buying Medicare-equivalent insurance policies through the private sector is roughly six times the size of the projected social security shortfall. The projected shortfall in social security has sent thousands of politicians screaming about devastating burden on our children. How, then, should we describe something that is six times as large as this “devastating burden”, a sum that is just under $100,000 for every man, woman and child in the country?

Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/26/healthcare-congress