Women Born Transsexual

Y’all just gotta know that I can sniff out certain kind of bigots by the weaselly “code words” they use.

Every set of bigots has their own set of code words they use that allow them to pretend they aren’t really bigots.

I’ve been running into the bigotry of the self  anointed “radical feminists” since 1969 and listening to their bigotry couched in concern for the harm a very small minority group represents  to biological women.

Who knew the power of a tiny minority made up of perhaps one person in a thousand.

Who but a bigot would think that the only reason women born with transsexualism or transgenderism, who have been victimized and abused by sexism and misogyny from the cradle would think feminism is a good idea and would want to be part of the feminist movement is so they can rape unsuspecting lesbians?

Who but a bigot would listen to a class of people tell the stories of their lives, of the pain endured, the abuse and then turn around and say, “That is all a lie, you only want to destroy the women’s movement.”?

Last night I posted a piece about the LAPD finally creating separate housing for transgender arrestees.  The article lacked details and used the incredibly vague “transgender”, but my incredulity regarding the story is that an announcement of their finally doing this means that for over 50 years they haven’t had special accommodations for people who are now called transgender.

Something San Francisco had in 1968.

Now of course one of the “Rad Fem” trolls tried to weasel a snide comment in.  May I suggest people unpack the following attempt at ill concealed bigotry.  “This sounds like good news, like it will be a good way to keep both transgender people and biological women safe. I don’t like the idea of biological men being in cells with women. I think it puts the women in danger.”

First of all:  What the fuck is a biological man or a biological woman?

I know what males and females are, based on the hole or pole form of sexing.  The method used sexing for every thing from humans to farm livestock.

But a ten year old male isn’t a man nor is a ten year old female a woman.

“Biological” is fraught with even more issues.  What determines that “biological”?  Christo-Nazis and Radical feminists want it to be at the chromosomal level, which is pretty absurd since the vast majority of people have never had their DNA tested to the level that would determine their sex chromosomes.  Even the common test used in the Olympics, prior to their discontinuance due to its inaccuracy, wasn’t really set up to accurately determine chromosomal sex.

“Rad Fem” speak is kind of like NOM speak, a cover for sociopathic levels of bigotry.  Fears of contamination by the transsexual and transgender impure.

Are anti-discrimination rules based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” really vague on what those terms actually mean?  You bet, and I think that sort of looseness of language is making the passing of those measures considerably harder than more concrete definitions might.  That debate should be internal to the groups pushing for those measures.  But it is also the language transsexual and transgender people have used in pushing measures protecting TS/TG people from hate crimes.

What can’t be mistaken is how the “radical feminists” are not really allied with mainstream feminists, who are focused upon the Right Win/Religio-Fascist war on women.  Instead they are allied with the Right Wing, the Christo-Fascists, NOM, Concerned Women of America and the Independent Women’s Forum.

I’ve always thought one should decide where a group is coming from by their friends and their choice of enemies.  When your main focus is a laser beam of bigotry aimed at a tiny minority group then you are a hate group not and are not part of a progressive movement aimed at advancing the freedom and rights of all people including the despised and the dispossessed.

When You sound like a fascist and a bigot your posts wind up in the trash can.

Then you get to go complain on your blog how horrible I am for not allowing your bigotry on my Blog.

BTW when I was scoping out that particular little spoonful of hate coated with a veneer of concern I noticed the poster had said some nasty stuff about one of my friends.

For way too long being pre-op transsexual or transgender and being arrested has put one in extreme danger

From The LA Times:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/lapd-jail-transgender.html

April 12, 2012

The Los Angeles Police Department will begin housing arrested transgender men and women in a women’s jail by the end of the month, making it what administrators believe is the first police department in the country to do so.

The announcement came Thursday night from Capt. Dave Lindsay, commander of the department’s jail division, speaking to a meeting in Hollywood of transgender people with police Chief Charlie Beck and members of the city’s Police Commission.

The department will open a women’s module at its Metropolitan Detention Center downtown. One of the sections within the module will be reserved for up to 24 transgender people, Lindsay said.

“This is a major change,” he said, that will allow for “an environment that’s safe and secure, as there’s been a history of violence against transgender people” in jail.

“We’ve pushed for this,” said Karina Samala, director of the Transgender Working Group, which has been discussing changes in police policy and regulations with LAPD officials since 2007.

Continue reading at:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/lapd-jail-transgender.html

From Mother Earth News: http://www.motherearthnews.com/honeybees-beekeeping/neonicotinoid-pesticides-zb0z1204zlon.aspx

By Cheryl Long
4/13/2012

MOTHER EARTH NEWS’s sister magazine Utne Reader has just published an excellent report on new evidence that the systemic neonicotinoid pesticides widely used to grow corn are one of the reasons so many honeybees and other pollinators are dying. One study has shown that neonicotinoid pesticides are so potent and persistent that residues are present in high fructose corn syrup that is sometimes fed to bees by commercial beekeepers.

We should all write to the Environmental Protection Agency and demand that they cancel all registrations for neonicotinoid pesticides immediately.

Utne’s report doesn’t tackle the huge question raised by this discovery of pesticide residues in corn syrup — What about the effects on humans who eat huge amounts of food containing corn syrup and many other corn products? Persistent, systemic pesticides simply have no place in food production. The reasons to grow your own food just keep growing.

Here are abstracts from three recent neonicotinoid toxicity studies.

1) “In Situ Replication of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder” abstract:

The concern of persistent loss of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies worldwide since 2006, a phenomenon referred to as colony collapse disorder (CCD), has led us to investigate the role of imidacloprid, one of the neonicotinoid insecticides, in the emergence of CCD. CCD is commonly characterized by the sudden disappearance of honey bees (specifically worker bees) from hives containing adequate food and various stages of brood in abandoned colonies that are not occupied by honey bees from other colonies.

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/13/gay-conversion-therapies-bullies-missionary

Former Pentecostal Christian Peterson Toscano says his life was ruined by his church authorities’ attempts to alter his sexuality

Robert Booth
guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 April 2012

Peterson Toscano, a 47-year-old American, underwent gay ‘conversion’ therapies for 20 years as he struggled to reconcile his Pentecostal Christianity with homosexual attraction. It devastated his life, cost him tens of thousands of dollars and left him needing a decade of counselling and therapy, he said.

He now lives happily as a Quaker and is in a gay relationship but in 1996 he was in crisis. He had been married for five years and was working with his wife as a missionary in Zambia, when he was forced to leave the project and his wife because of his struggles with same-sex attractions. He found himself in the Worcestershire town of Kidderminster and attended a community church where another experience of an attempted gay conversion began.

“This is how it always works out,” he recalled. “Someone in the church knows you are struggling through people sharing prayer requests about you or talking behind your back. One way or another some church authority finds out about it and they say: ‘listen, let’s help you brother’. The treatments are varied.

“One person will try and cast out demons, the other will take you through a 12-step programme. In essence they are saying it is wrong to be gay, it is not natural and you have to change. If you don’t there are direct consequences in this life and the next.

“The mission I worked with connected me with a counsellor at True Freedom Trust [a charity that offers gay Christians counselling to overcome their homosexual feelings]. We went for walks two to three times a week to chat about the issues and we would meet in his office. It was very grandfatherly and in many ways very sweet. But on the other hand he reinforced the idea that I needed to change and while I still may have the same desires, I was making the right choice in denying them.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/13/gay-conversion-therapies-bullies-missionary

From Dissent:  http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=731

Mark Engler
April 12, 2012

It is a myth that Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” But that old saying nevertheless carries a lot of truth when it comes to social movements. And it is always a pleasure to see a worthy target of activism move from disregard or mockery to going on the attack.

Therefore, I was happy to see the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) release a half-defiant, half-pathetic statement bemoaning the “coordinated and well-funded intimidation campaign against corporate members of the organization.” Its statement reads:

ALEC is an organization that supports pro-growth, pro-jobs policies and the vigorous exchange of ideas between the public and private sector to develop state based solutions. Today, we find ourselves the focus of a well-funded, expertly coordinated intimidation campaign.Our members join ALEC because we connect state legislators with other state legislators and with job-creators in their states. They join because we support pro-business policies that promote innovation and spur local and national competitiveness. They’re ALEC members because they’re more interested in solutions than rhetoric….

At a time when job creation, real solutions and improved dialogue among political leaders is needed most, ALEC’s mission has never been more important. This is why we are redoubling our commitment to these essential priorities.  We are not and will not be defined by ideological special interests who would like to eliminate discourse that leads to economic vitality, jobs and fiscal stability for the states.

After about the third reference to “job creators,” it’s hard to miss that this is an operation nestled snugly within the depths of the far-right echo chamber, never passing over a chance to frame tax cuts for the top 1 percent as a moderate, bipartisan path to common bliss. In fact, far from sticking to promoting “improved dialogue,” ALEC has (with troubling effectiveness) advanced a slew of reactionary measures in statehouses throughout the country. Stand Your Ground? Check. Prison privatization? Check. Right to Work? Check. Discriminatory Voter ID laws? Check. The list goes on and on.

Continue reading at:  http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=731

From Crooks and Liars: http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/tennessee-senators-update-sex-ed-law-

By Susie Madrak
April 13, 2012

Fundie Christians are, indeed, a bunch of control freaks. And much like their Middle Eastern sharia-loving counterparts, they won’t be happy until marriages are arranged by parents without the parties concerned actually even meeting before the ceremony. I suppose this law, if passed, will result in hoards of flashlight-carrying Sex Police patrolling the local lovers’ lanes.

But really, it’s that they just can’t bear the thought of someone having unpunished fun somewhere:

MEMPHIS, TN – (WMC-TV) – Tennessee senators approved an update to the state’s abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against “gateway sexual activity.”

In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. Planned Parenthood said that allowing state government to define local sex education curriculum could backfire.

According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That’s higher than the national average.

Complete article at:  http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/tennessee-senators-update-sex-ed-law-

From Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine:   http://www.pcrm.org/media/news/nearly-half-supermarket-chicken-tainted-feces

Poultry Products Rarely Tested for Contamination, Cause 1.5 Million Illnesses a Year

April 11, 2012

WASHINGTON—Nearly half the chicken products marketed by national brands and sold in supermarkets are contaminated with feces, according to laboratory test results of chicken samples from 15 grocery store chains in 10 major U.S. cities. The testing was conducted by an independent analytical testing laboratory at the request of the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

PCRM investigated chickens from Perdue, Pilgrim’s, and Sanderson Farms, as well as 22 other popular brands. Testing revealed that 48 percent of the chicken samples tested positive for fecal contamination, indicated by the presence of coliform bacteria commonly found in chicken dung. The bacterial species E. coli is a type of coliform bacteria and a specific indicator used by slaughter and processing plants to check for fecal contamination of food products and water.

Chicken samples from every city and every grocery store chain tested positive. In Dallas, 100 percent of the chicken bought at the Kroger’s store tested positive for fecal matter. In Washington, D.C., 83 percent of the chicken bought at a Giant store and 67 percent of the chicken bought at a Safeway tested positive. Samples were also tested in Charleston, S.C., Milwaukee, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Miami, and San Diego.

“One in every two supermarket chickens is contaminated with feces,” says PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D. “Meat packers can’t avoid contaminating poultry products during production, and consumers are cooking and eating chicken feces in about half the cases.”

Skinless chicken breast was particularly likely to have fecal traces, and both “organically produced” and “conventional” products were frequently contaminated.

Continue reading with:  http://www.pcrm.org/media/news/nearly-half-supermarket-chicken-tainted-feces

From Truth Out:   http://truth-out.org/news/item/8502-the-rich-are-different-from-you-and-me-they-pay-fewer-taxes

By Michael Winship and Bill Moyers
Friday, 13 April 2012

Benjamin Franklin, who used his many talents to become a wealthy man, famously said that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. But if you’re a corporate CEO in America today, even they can be put on the back burner – death held at bay by the best medical care money can buy and the latest in surgical and life extension techniques, taxes conveniently shunted aside courtesy of loopholes, overseas investment and governments that conveniently look the other way.

In a story headlined, “For Big Companies, Life Is Good,” The Wall Street Journal reports that big American companies have emerged from the deepest recession since World War II more profitable than ever: flush with cash, less burdened by debt and with a greater share of the country’s income. But, the paper notes, “Many of the 1.1 million jobs the big companies added since 2007 were outside the U.S. So, too, was much of the $1.2 trillion added to corporate treasuries.”

To add to this embarrassment of riches, the consumer group Citizens for Tax Justice reports that more than two dozen major corporations – including GE, Boeing, Mattel and Verizon – paid no federal taxes between 2008 and 2011. They got a corporate tax break that was broadly supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Corporate taxes today are at a 40-year low – even as the executive suites at big corporations have become throne rooms where the crown jewels wind up in the personal vault of the CEO.

Then look at this report in The New York Times: Last year, among the 100 best-paid CEOs, the median income was more than 14 million, compared with the average annual American salary of $45,230. Combined, this happy hundred executives pulled down more than two billion dollars.

Continue reading at:   http://truth-out.org/news/item/8502-the-rich-are-different-from-you-and-me-they-pay-fewer-taxes

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/13/nuclear-industry-us-welfare

After 60 years, the taxpayer should not continue to subsidise multibillion-dollar corporations in the nuclear energy sector

Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander
guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 April 2012

The US is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programmes – the extraordinary amount of corporate welfare going to the nuclear energy industry.

Many in Congress talk of getting “big government off the back of private industry”. Here’s an industry we’d like to get off the backs of the taxpayers.

As, respectively, a senator who is the longest-serving independent in Congress and the president of an independent and non-partisan budget watchdog organisation, we do not necessarily agree on everything when it comes to energy and budget policy in the US. But one thing we strongly agree on is the need to end wasteful subsidies that prop up the nuclear industry. After 60 years, this industry should not require continued and massive corporate welfare. It is time for the nuclear power industry to stand on its own two feet.

Nuclear welfare started with research and development. According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, since 1948 the federal government has spent more than $95bn (in 2011 dollars) on nuclear energy research and development (R&D). That is more than four times the amount spent on solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biofuels, and hydropower combined. But federal R&D was not enough; the industry also wanted federal liability insurance too, which it got back in 1957 with the Price-Anderson Act. This federal liability insurance programme for nuclear plants was meant to be temporary, but Congress repeatedly extended it, most recently through 2025. Price-Anderson puts taxpayers on the hook for losses that exceed $12. 6bn if there is a nuclear plant disaster. When government estimates show the cost for such a disaster could reach $720bn in property damage alone, that’s one sweetheart deal for the nuclear industry!

R&D and Price-Anderson insurance are still just the tip of the iceberg. From tax breaks for uranium mining and loan guarantees for uranium enrichment to special depreciation benefits and lucrative federal tax breaks for every kilowatt hour from new plants, nuclear is heavily subsidised at every phase. The industry also bilks taxpayers when plants close down with tax breaks for decommissioning plants. Further, it is estimated that the cost to taxpayers for the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste could be as much as $100bn.

Continue reading at:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/13/nuclear-industry-us-welfare

From Occupy Monsanto:    http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/2012/04/13/should-monsanto-be-able-to-patent-genes-supreme-court-may-take-up-the-case-in-part/

JEREMY BLOOM
APRIL 12, 2012

From RH Reality Check:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/04/10/war-on-women-back-to-future

by Patti Miller
April 10, 2012

Republican strategists and political prognosticators are quick to assure us that Romney’s gender gap—which at 19 points is now more like a gender chasm—will evaporate as general election campaigning gears up and the attention of voters returns to bread-and-butter issues like the economy. Even Romney seems to think it’s just a blip—assuring reporters that women are talking about “the debt that we’re leaving the next generation” and “the failure of this economy to put people back to work,” not access to reproductive health care.

The Republicans seem to think they can erase the past four months and their “war on women,” but if history is any guide, this is wishful thinking. In fact, the historical record suggests we may be witnessing a re-awakening of the reproductive rights movement, especially among groups where concern about access to contraception and abortion has languished: young women and independent women. There is an eerie parallel between the awakening that is currently happening and the beginning of the reproductive rights revolution that resulted in the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s.

It all comes back to a scene that was unimaginably galling to women: a group of men sitting solemnly before microphones at a committee table testifying about whether women should have access to reproductive health care that they could never need. This may sound like the already infamous Issa congressional hearing that was ostensibly about “religious freedom,” but it wasn’t. This hearing happened more than 40 years ago and helped to light a revolution.

The late 1960s were still the dark ages for reproductive health. The Supreme Court had only just given married couples the right to use contraception; states could still ban unmarried people from buying birth control. Abortion was illegal in every state except to save a woman’s life. There was a small reform movement underway, run mostly by men, to make abortion more available under limited conditions:  in cases of rape or incest, if a fetus was severely deformed, or if a woman’s health was at risk. However, even under these reforms doctors would still control access to abortion — a woman would have to get the permission of two doctors, who in those days were usually men, to have an abortion.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/04/10/war-on-women-back-to-future