Women Born Transsexual

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/30/french-breast-implant-second-company

Jean-Claude Mas, head of firm at centre of implant scandal, was employed by a new prosthetics company set up by his children

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/opinion/does-stripping-gender-from-toys-really-make-sense.html?_r=1

By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Published: December 29, 2011

Berkeley, Calif.

NOW that the wrapping paper and the infernal clamshell packaging have been relegated to the curb and the paying off of holiday bills has begun, the toy industry is gearing up — for Christmas 2012. And its early offerings have ignited a new debate over nature, nurture, toys and sex.

Hamleys, which is London’s 251-year-old version of F.A.O. Schwarz, recently dismantled its pink “girls” and blue “boys” sections in favor of a gender-neutral store with red-and-white signage. Rather than floors dedicated to Barbie dolls and action figures, merchandise is now organized by types (Soft Toys) and interests (Outdoor).

That free-to-be gesture was offset by Lego, whose Friends collection, aimed at girls, will hit stores this month with the goal of becoming a holiday must-have by the fall. Set in fictive Heartlake City (and supported by a $40 million marketing campaign), the line features new, pastel-colored, blocks that allow a budding Kardashian, among other things, to build herself a cafe or a beauty salon. Its tasty-sounding “ladyfig” characters are also taller and curvier than the typical Legoland denizen.

So who has it right? Should gender be systematically expunged from playthings? Or is Lego merely being realistic, earnestly meeting girls halfway in an attempt to stoke their interest in engineering?

Among the “10 characteristics for Lego” described in 1963 by a son of the founder was that it was “for girls and for boys,” as Bloomberg Businessweek reported. But the new Friends collection, Lego says, was based on months of anthropological research revealing that — gasp! — the sexes play differently.

While as toddlers they interact similarly with the company’s Duplo blocks, by preschool girls prefer playthings that are pretty, exude “harmony” and allow them to tell a story. They may enjoy building, but they favor role play. So it’s bye-bye Bionicles, hello princesses. In order to be gender-fair, today’s executives insist, they have to be gender-specific.

As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, one of the largest across the life span. It transcends not only culture but species: in two separate studies of primates, in 2002 and 2008, researchers found that males gravitated toward stereotypically masculine toys (like cars and balls) while females went ape for dolls. Both sexes, incidentally, appreciated stuffed animals and books.

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/opinion/does-stripping-gender-from-toys-really-make-sense.html?_r=1

From The Los Angeles Times:   http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lear-occupy-the-new-year-20111230,0,4956520.story

The Occupy Wall Street movement has unleashed patriotic outrage. If you don’t want to camp out or protest in the street, find another way to let your voice be heard in the new year.

I was recently shown a picture from one of the Occupy protests taking place across the country. It featured a young woman surrounded by police. She was the only protester in the picture, but she didn’t seem intimidated. All by herself, up against the police barricade, she held a handwritten sign saying simply “I am a born again American.”

I’ve never met this woman, but I think I know exactly what she’s feeling.

I had my first “born again American” moment 30 years ago, when I was moved to outrage and action by a group of hate-preaching televangelists who were trying to claim sole ownership of patriotism, faith and flag for the far right. One of them asked his viewing congregation to pray for the removal of a Supreme Court justice.

I did what I knew how to do and produced a 60-second TV spot. It featured a factory worker whose family members, all Christians, held an array of political beliefs. He didn’t believe that anyone, not even a minister, had a right to judge whether people were good or bad Christians based on their political views. “That’s not the American way,” he wound up saying. I ran it on local TV, and it was picked up by the networks. People For the American Way grew out of the overwhelming response to that ad.

One of the most encouraging things to happen in 2011 was the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is giving the entire country the chance for a “born again American” moment. In calling attention to the country’s widening chasm between rich and poor, the Occupiers have unleashed decades of pent-up patriotic outrage against the systematic violation of our nation’s core principles by the “say good-bye to the middle class” alliance of the neocons, theocons and corporate America.

Continue reading at:   http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lear-occupy-the-new-year-20111230,0,4956520.story

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/27-3

by Brian Moench
Published on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Taking inspiration from the Occupy Movement, last week a group of doctors and environmental groups in Salt Lake City, Utah announced a law suit against the third largest mining corporation in the world, Rio Tinto, for violating the Clean Air Act in Utah. This is likely the first time ever that physicians have sued industry for harming public health.

Air pollution causes between 1,000 and 2,000 premature deaths every year in Utah. Moreover, medical research in the last ten years has firmly established that air pollution causes the same broad array of diseases well known to result from first and second hand cigarette smoke–strokes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, virtually every kind of lung disease, neurologic diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, loss of intelligence, chromosomal damage, higher rates of diabetes, obesity, adverse birth outcomes and various cancers such as lung cancer, breast cancer and leukemia.

Most of Utah’s cities are in violation of many of the EPA’s national air quality standards, and for several days during a typical winter Utah is plagued by the worst air pollution in the country. The American Lung Association routinely gives Utah’s largest cities an “F” for our air quality. Last February, Forbes magazine, hardly a cheerleader for excessive environmental protection, rated Salt Lake City as the nineth most toxic city in the country, and the biggest contributor to that ranking was the mining and smelting operations at the Bingham Canyon mine, run by London-based mining conglomerate Rio Tinto/Kennecott (RTK).

This mine is the world’s largest man made excavation and has created the largest mining related water pollution problem in the world. The mine is located on the western doorstep of Salt Lake City, home to well over one million people. There is no comparable juxtaposition of an enormous mining operation this close to such a large urban center. RTK’s mine and smelter operations account for 30% of the particulate matter emitted into the atmosphere over Salt Lake County, making it by far the largest source of industrial pollution in the urban areas of Utah.

Continue reading at:    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/27-3

From Alternet:   http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153607/major_ron_paul_supporter_favors_death_penalty_for_gays/

Paul’s endorsement from a pastor who wants the death penalty for gays exposes his links to radical Christian Reconstructionists.

By Adele M. Stan
December 29, 2011

At first it seemed like the moment of triumph for the Ron Paul for President campaign. The Texas congressman had won the endorsement of Rev. Phillip G. Kayser, a prominent right-wing Nebraska pastor, just as momentum built toward a possible big win for Paul in next week’s GOP caucuses in neighboring Iowa, where evangelicals comprise a majority of voters.

The campaign issued a press release on Wednesday, lauding Kayser and trumpeting his endorsement, citing “the enlightening statements he makes on how Ron Paul’s approach to government is consistent with Christian beliefs.” Then came word of Kayser’s “Christian belief” in applying the death penalty for gay male sex, and the Paulites got busy scrubbing their press release from the campaign Web site. (The text of the release and a screen shot can be seen on the Web site Outside the Beltway.)

What reporters Pema Levy and Benjy Sarlin of TPM uncovered when they scrolled through Kayser’s writings on his Web site, Biblical Blueprints, were not simply the rantings of a random fringe preacher, but a “blueprint” for the philosophy of Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to make manifest biblical law as the law of the land. That would include the death penalty not only for the practice of sex between men, but also for adultery and insubordination by children.

Coming on the heels of recent revelations by a former aide that Ron Paul would not use the bathroom in a gay man’s home or shake the hand of a gay supporter, and the homophobic and racist utterances attributed to him in a series of newsletters published under his name in the 1980s and ’90s, news of Kayser’s death-to-the-gays theology was hardly a boon to the campaign.

In one of the many pamphlets authored by Kayser, the TPM reporters unearthed this from a tract on the biblical validity of the death penalty:

It is not just the sinfulness of homosexuality that is known, but also the justice of the death penalty for homosexuality. In verse 32 Paul says, “Who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”

The mere threat of the death penalty for the sin of gay sex, Kayser wrote elsewhere, can be “restorative” to those so threatened. When questioned by reporters Sarlin and Levy, Kayser confirmed his beliefs.

Continue reading at:     http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153607/major_ron_paul_supporter_favors_death_penalty_for_gays/

From Think Progress:    http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/28/395595/perry-pledges-to-openly-defy-a-supreme-court-decision-striking-down-an-anti-choice-personhood-law/

By Ian Millhiser
Dec 28, 2011

At a radio forum sponsored by the anti-abortion and anti-birth control group Personhood USA, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that he would refuse to obey a Supreme Court decisionstriking down the group’s signature anti-choice proposal:

QUESTION: You have agreed to “endorse legislation making clear that Fourteenth Amendment protections apply to unborn children” . . . . What happens if the U.S. Supreme Court attempts to strike down this legislation, and replace it with one of its own edict denying the inalienable right to life for all persons born or unborn? Would you enforce the inalienable right to life or the Court’s opinion as the law?

PERRY: Well, obviously you enforce the right to life opinion.

Perry’s promise to openly defy the Supreme Court is disturbing, but it is also far from original. Fellow candidates Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich have also pledged to treat binding Supreme Court opinions as if they were merely optional, and Gingrich even supports legitimizing his radical view of the Constitution through a campaign of intimidation against judges who disagree with him.

Complete article at:  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/28/395595/perry-pledges-to-openly-defy-a-supreme-court-decision-striking-down-an-anti-choice-personhood-law/

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/29/chimpanzee-chimps-minds

Humans may not be alone in having insight into the minds of others, a chimpanzee study suggests

From The New York Times:      http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/fashion/expanding-efforts-to-keep-cosmetics-testing-from-animals.html

Even the ‘cruelty-free’ label doesn’t have a universal meaning.

By ABBY ELLIN
Published: December 28, 2011

THE actress Kristin Bauer, of “True Blood” fame, has an annual ritual when she visits her family home in Racine, Wis.: She takes a black marker and scribbles on the sides of specific products and cosmetics, “Tested on animals.”

“It’s so simple for me: we shouldn’t be torturing another living being for mascara when we don’t have to,” said Ms. Bauer, a vegetarian who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Abri van Straten, two dogs and two cats. “It seems so odd when you think of shaving cream and a bunny, or mascara and a guinea pig. We’re not saving a life.”

As a spokeswoman for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit health organization whose goals include promoting animal-free testing, Ms. Bauer has a mission: to get more people to use makeup and toiletries that have not been tested on rabbits, guinea pigs, mice or rats. And while “cruelty-free” has been a basic mantra of certain earthy lines like Aveda, the Body Shop and Kiss My Face, for decades, it’s increasingly been taken up by new and glamorous proponents.

The models Josie Maran (josiemarancosmetics.com) and Christie Brinkley (christiebrinkleyskincare.com) and the designer Stella McCartney (Care by Stella McCartney) are among those who have started cosmetics lines developed without animal testing.

Companies like Clinique, Tarte and Almay have stopped the practice. Other lesser-known brands, like Pixi, Organic Male OM4 (a skin-care line for men) and Dr.’s Remedy, an all-natural nail polish, never started it.

“It was important for us to know that there would not be any animals harmed in the development or testing of our product,” said the co-founder of Dr.’s Remedy, Adam Cirlincione, a podiatrist in New York.

Consumers seem to agree, said Nancy Beck, a former science and policy adviser for the physicians’ group, who conducted a report on the topic while working there. “Part of it is awareness about the issue in general,” said Dr. Beck, who has a doctorate in microbiology and immunology. “Science has evolved, and we have the technology now that maybe we didn’t have 30 or 40 years ago to do safety assessments without using animals. So having the methods in place, and companies bothering to take the time and making the investment into developing new methods, has a lot to do with it, too.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/fashion/expanding-efforts-to-keep-cosmetics-testing-from-animals.html

When I was first coming out I used to smoke weed with my friends at night and then go to my room and listen to Laura Nyro before I crashed.

Her music was a real friend those first few months when I felt alone and scared.

It’s about time she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/keeping-college-students-from-the-polls.html

Editorial
Published: December 26, 2011
Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver’s license or a passport) to vote, which many students don’t have, and 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver’s licenses from being used for voting.

It’s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs. On Friday, the Justice Department, finally taking action against these abuses, blocked the new voter ID law in South Carolina.

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/keeping-college-students-from-the-polls.html

From Salon:  http://www.salon.com/2011/12/29/todays_gop_females_have_more_rights_before_theyre_born/

Most 2012 contenders back a personhood amendment too extreme for a red, red state, while Rick Perry hits a new low

By Joan Walsh
Thursday, Dec 29, 2011

The flailing Rick Perry is trying to revive his sinking campaign by histrionically announcing he’s changed his views on abortion and now opposes it even in cases of rape and incest. Apparently Perry met a young woman who’d been conceived as a result of rape, and that changed his mind.

“Looking in her eyes, I couldn’t come up with an answer to defend the exemptions for rape and incest,” he said at a “tele-town hall” sponsored by far-right Iowa radio host Steve Deace. “And over the course of the last few weeks, the Christmas holidays and reflecting on that … all I can say is that God was working on my heart.”

It’s just one more step toward society’s political margins for the GOP contenders. Perry has already announced his support for the “personhood” movement, which declares that life begins the moment an egg is fertilized, a measure that was rejected by the deep-red state of Mississippi as too extreme. But Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum also back the personhood crusade. That’s your modern Republican Party: It makes Mississippi look liberal. They’d like women to have more rights before they’re born than after.

It’s obvious the Tea Party is pulling the GOP even further to the right. While the movement’s fans used to insist it was about the economy, not social issues, in fact its House caucus has used its year in office working harder to stop all funding for Planned Parenthood than to reduce unemployment. The House even passed a bill that lets health providers “exercise their conscience” and refuse to perform an abortion even in cases where the woman would die without the procedure. (h/t Digby)

Continue reading at:   http://www.salon.com/2011/12/29/todays_gop_females_have_more_rights_before_theyre_born/

From Huffington Post:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lyn-mikel-brown/legos-for-girls_b_1172876.html?ref=tw

Lyn Mikel Brown
Posted: 12/28/11

When LEGO announced that after four years of marketing research, the best they could come up with was a thinner, pinker version of their product, I admit, I laughed out loud. My first reaction wasn’t outrage, but incredulity. A billion dollars of marketing research bought you… LEGO Barbie? After marketers have carpet-bombed a pink, appearance-obsessed consumer version of girl power via every conceivable media outlet for the past decade, did you really expect to hear little girls express a desire for anything else?

Turns out I wasn’t the only one with a strong reaction to the new Ladyfig LEGOs. (“Ladyfigs”? Really, ask for your money back.) SPARK (Sexualization Protest: Action Resistance Knowledge) movement girl blogger, Stephanie Cole wrote, “the part of me that still fondly remembers epic LEGO vs. Playmobile battles with my sister and cousin, is pretty royally pissed off.” The new Ladyfigs, she notes, “are taller, skinnier and they have boobs. They will be marketed to girls five and up. Why?”

We know why. In truth, LEGO may very well get a larger market share if they have two separate lines of products. “Unisex” and “gender neutral” are blasphemy to a large percentage of parents, who are quick to point out that girls and boys play differently. But as neuroscientist Lise Eliot explains, “boy-girl differences are not as ‘hard-wired’ as many parents today, imbued with the Mars/Venus philosophy, believe.” The human brain is “fantastically plastic” and the best thing we can do for our children is to give them a full range of opportunities and experiences, especially in the early years. We don’t know at five how little Tierra’s or Tommy’s passions and talents will surface, so why pay good money to limit their options to the pink and blue aisles of toy stores?

SPARKTeam blogger, Bailey, promoting Stephanie’s post on Twitter, soon began an exchange with LEGO: “They thanked me…and respectfully disagreed, stating that four years of research had told them,” in so many words, “that the mini-skirt-wearing, hot-tub-bathing, beauty-shop-running LEGO ladies are what girls want now.” As if Bailey didn’t know the difference between market research, the goal of which is to figure out the best way to target and sell to children, and unbiased scientific research, the goal of which is to know what’s good or bad for developing children. Of course, the unbiased research finds that the path LEGO has chosen, narrowing girls’ options to a stereotypical version of femininity, is bad for girls.

Continue reading at:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lyn-mikel-brown/legos-for-girls_b_1172876.html?ref=tw

From The Daily Mail UK:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2079283/Tweeting-word-drill-mean-Twitter-account-read-government-spies.html

• Fake profiles used by Department of Homeland Security, says privacy group
• List of keywords flags ‘danger’ signal
• DHS may attempt to identify users from their accounts
• Keywords include ‘virus’, ‘drill’ and ‘illegal immigrant’

By Rob Waugh
28th December 2011

The Department of Homeland Security makes fake Twitter and Facebook profiles for the specific purpose of scanning the networks for ‘sensitive’ words – and tracking people who use them.

Simply using a word or phrase from the DHS’s ‘watch’ list could mean that spies from the government read your posts, investigate your account, and attempt to identify you from it, acccording to an online privacy group.

The words which attract attention range from ones seemingly related to diseases or bioweapons such as ‘human to animal’ and ‘outbreak’ to other, more obscure words such as ‘drill’ and ‘strain’.

The DHS also watches for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’.

The DHS outlined plans to scans blogs, Twitter and Facebook for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’, ‘outbreak’, ‘drill’, ‘strain’, ‘virus’, ‘recovery’, ‘deaths’, ‘collapse’, ‘human to animal’ and ‘trojan’, according to an ‘impact asssessment’ document filed by the agency.

When its search tools net an account using the phrases, they record personal information.

It’s still not clear how this information is used – and who the DHS shares it with.