Women Born Transsexual

In a Playboy interview in 1976, then Presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter confessed to the sin of “lusting in his heart.”

People made fun of him.

But I was raised Catholic and was taught even thinking about committing a sin is the same as actually committing it.

So when a man fantasizes about raping women, he is a rapist in his heart.

According to the Bible he should therefore go castrate himself based on the concept behind the passage about “If thy eye offends, pluck it out.”

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/09/man-with-bible-threatens-to-rape-woman-during-gay-day-in-michigan/

Man with Bible threatens to rape woman during ‘Gay Day’ in Michigan

By David Edwards
Thursday, August 9, 2012

Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan say that there was nothing they could do after Bible-preaching protesters threatened to rape and murder pro-LGBT activists at a “Gay Day” event over the weekend.

In a video posted to YouTube, several protesters with Bibles can be seen shouting at a woman celebrating in the inaugural “Gay Day” celebration, an event organized by the human rights group Tolerance, Equality and Awareness Movement (TEAM) to showcase the community’s diversity.

“Back in the day there was no free power, there was no going to the mall,” one protester tells the woman. “There was, ‘sit your ass in this house until I bring my ass home.’”

“And if your ass get to going out there like you said, guess what?” a second protester adds. “You get raped. And that’s what’s going to happen to you. … Keep your pussy clean, that’s all you need to do. Do you understand?”

After one man claims, “the Lord said that,” the woman challenges him to find the corresponding Bible verse.

He responds with Isaiah 13: “Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/09/man-with-bible-threatens-to-rape-woman-during-gay-day-in-michigan/

From GLAAD:  http://www.glaad.org/news/trans-man-denied-cancer-treatment-now-feds-say-its-illegal

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

From Xtra Canada: http://www.xtra.ca/blog/national/post/2012/08/07/Gender-dysphoria-replacing-gender-identity-disorder-in-APA-manual.aspx

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI
Aug. 7, 2012

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) will replace the term gender identity disorder in the upcoming fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a move that activists have lobbied the APA to make for years, contending that that term characterizes transgender people as mentally ill.

Instead, the term gender dysphoria will be used to refer to people who experience “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender,” according to an Associated Press report.

“We know that there is a whole community of people out there who are not seeking medical attention and live between the two binary categories,” psychiatrist Jack Drescher, an APA subcommittee member, said in the report. “We wanted to send the message that the therapist’s job isn’t to pathologize.”

Retired surgeon Dana Beyer also told AP that shifting the emphasis from a disorder that “by definition all transgender people possess to a temporary mental state that only some might possess” signals real progress. “A rightwinger can’t go out and say all trans people are mentally ill, because if you are not dysphoric, that can’t be diagnosed from afar.”

Like gay people before them, transgender people have seen APA language applied to their disadvantage.

According to AP, advocate Kelley Winters, who was among those who helped push for the change, also notes that the “disordered” label saddles transgender people with the burden of proving their competence.

Continue reading at:   http://www.xtra.ca/blog/national/post/2012/08/07/Gender-dysphoria-replacing-gender-identity-disorder-in-APA-manual.aspx

Far too many TS/TG folks have the courts do the dirty work of custody and visitation denial.  I am saddened by the stories of some of my Facebook friends who are no longer permitted to see their children or share custody.

The APA/DSM classification of TS/TG people being disordered (GID) is used as a tool to deny custody and/or visitation.

From Joe My God:  http://www.joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/08/bryan-fischer-christians-should-kidnap.html

By Joe Jervis
Aug. 8, 2012

For years here on JMG we’ve been following the case of Lisa Miller, the “ex-gay” woman who kidnapped her daughter to Central America after losing several court cases that awarded custody to her former partner. The preacher accused of facilitating that crime is about to go on trial, prompting American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer to issue calls for an anti-gay “Underground Railroad” to help shield the kidnappers of the children of gay parents.

As you may recall, that “Underground Railroad” already exists in the form of the virulently anti-gay Liberty Counsel, as the kidnapped child was found living in the Nicaraguan home of the father of a Liberty Counsel employee. Over at Dead Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, students were taught that it’s sometimes best to obey “God’s laws” rather than “man’s laws” and that “righteous kidnapping” in cases such as Lisa Miller’s were justified. Those classes were taught by Liberty Counsel president Mat Staver and Lina Lindevaldsen, both of whom represented Miller in her failed custody attempts. The students were then tested on whether they’d break the law for God.

Continue reading at:  http://www.joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/08/bryan-fischer-christians-should-kidnap.html

From ACLU:  http://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/lets-be-clear-transgender-discrimination-sex-discrimination

By Ian Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office
08/08/2012

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/gender/why-machismo-can-be-deadly-gay-latinos

The adulation of traditional masculinity causes many Latino men who have sex with other men to lead hidden lives.

By Erika L. Sanchez
August 5, 2012

Machismo, that aggressive masculine pride common to a number of cultures, pressures many men who have sex with other men to refuse to identify themselves as gay. This tension between identity and reality can be incredibly detrimental to the Latino community. In fact, it can be deadly.

Roberto, 27, a former supervisor of two gay bathhouses in Chicago said that there was a very large contingent of “heterosexual” Latino customers at these establishments. “Bathhouses are used as outlets for them. Many men came to take a break from work. A lot of them were older. They were men like our dads.” During his employment at one of the bathhouses, an older Latino man died in a steam room. His wife and son arrived confused and hurt. “They didn’t know he was gay, so they took out their frustration on us.”

This contradiction, and the attendant secrecy, causes depression and isolation in closeted men. They have to compartmentalize their lives, which causes barriers within themselves as well as between them and their loved ones. “It causes confusion for their families. It also exposes them to risks,” Roberto says. “Some men may take out their frustration by abusing their families.”

Andrés Duque, 44, editor of the blog Blabbeando, gives an example from the Dominican Republic: “It’s probably one of the most homophobic countries in Latin America although there are some signs that this might be changing. But, culturally, you see the figure of the ‘bugarrón,’ a guy who is straight but will sleep with men for money, emerge as an identity. And you see some Dominican men adopt that identity proudly and the masculinity that it supposedly carries with it whereas they would never call themselves gay or bisexual.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/gender/why-machismo-can-be-deadly-gay-latinos

From The New York Times:    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/nyregion/for-women-in-street-stops-deeper-humiliation.html

By WENDY RUDERMAN
Published: August 6, 2012

Shari Archibald’s black handbag sat at her feet on the sidewalk in front of her Bronx home on a recent summer night. The two male officers crouched over her leather bag and rooted around inside, elbow-deep. One officer fished out a tampon and then a sanitary napkin, crinkling the waxy orange wrapper between his fingers in search of drugs. Next he pulled out a tray of foil-covered pills, Ms. Archibald recalled.

“What’s this?” the officer said, examining the pill packaging stamped “drospirenone/ethinylestradiol.”

“Birth control,” Ms. Archibald remembered saying.

She took a breath and exhaled deeply, hoping the whoosh of air would cool her temper and contain her humiliation as the officers proceeded to pat her down.

The laws governing street stops are blind to gender. Male officers are permitted to frisk a woman if they reasonably suspect that she may be armed with a dangerous weapon that could be used to harm them. A frisk can escalate into a field search if officers feel a suspicious bulge while patting down the woman’s outer layer of clothing or the outline of her purse.

Last year, New York City police officers stopped 46,784 women, frisking nearly 16,000. Guns were found in 59 cases, according to an analysis of police statistics by The New York Times.

While the number of women stopped by officers in 2011 represented 6.9 percent of all police stops, the rate of guns found on both men and women was equally low, 0.12 percent and 0.13 percent, respectively. Civil rights leaders have argued that the low gun-recovery rates are a strong indication that the bulk of stop-and-frisk encounters are legally unjustified. (The number of police stops has dropped by more than 34 percent in recent months.)

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/nyregion/for-women-in-street-stops-deeper-humiliation.html

From The New York Times:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/opinion/on-trial-putin-v-pussy-riot.html

By MICHAEL IDOV
Published: August 7, 2012

Moscow

BATTLING the sweaty crowd at the Khamovnichesky court to hear the closing statements in the Pussy Riot trial, I couldn’t shake off the odd feeling that I was in the presence of genuine celebrity. My current job requires me to bump into famous Russians regularly, but I haven’t felt like this once. Yet here, staring at three young women in that absurd glass cage in which the Russian courts insist on keeping defendants, I was star-struck.

The fate of Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, each charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after lip-syncing to a punk song in a church for 40 seconds, has become a certified international cause.

The United States government expressed concern, Amnesty International deemed the women “prisoners of conscience,” and a dozen Western stars — like Madonna, Bjork and even Danny DeVito — sang, spoke, wrote and tweeted their support.

But the hometown opinion on Pussy Riot is mixed at best. Even the liberal response has involved language like “They should let these chicks go with a slap on the ass.” Despite the rapid Westernization of the city elites, the rise of the vaunted “creative class” and the widespread distrust of the state-coddled Orthodox Church, Russians remain distinctly uncomfortable with activist women.

Liberalism in Russia is a peculiar beast. Feeding as it does on the revulsion with “crooks and thieves” in the government, it is closer to Tea Party libertarianism, and it pointedly doesn’t concern itself with what Americans call “issues.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/opinion/on-trial-putin-v-pussy-riot.html

See Also:  Jezebel:   Russian Artist Sews His Mouth Shut to Support Pussy Riot

From Daily Kos:   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/08/1117978/-Romney-campaign-Bain-layoff-victim-should-have-moved-to-Massachusetts-to-get-health-insurance

by Jed Lewison
Wed Aug 08, 2012

You know that new Priorities USA ad featuring Joe Soptic, the Bain layoff victim who lost his family’s health insurance along with his job, depriving his wife access to the medical care that could have caught her cancer before it was too late? Well, get a load of this response from the Romney campaign:

A Mitt Romney spokesperson offered an unusual counterattack Tuesday to an ad in which a laid-off steelworker blames the presumptive GOP nominee for his family losing health care: If that family had lived in Massachusetts, it would have been covered by the former governor’s universal health care law.“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Andrea Saul, Romney’s campaign press secretary, said during an appearance on Fox News. “There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President [Barack] Obama’s economy.”

So Joe Soptic should have moved to Massachusetts after getting laid off from Bain? Do they realize how crazy that sounds? (Who am I kidding? They don’t have a clue.)

Maybe, just maybe, Mitt Romney should have thought through the consequences of his actions before sucking so much cash out of GST Steel, Soptic’s former employer. But, again, who am I kidding? Mitt isn’t the kind of guy who reflects on things like that. He’s not about helping anyone but himself.

And now the Romney campaign is willing to attack Joe Soptic in the hopes that it helps his presidential campaign. Saul said the ad featuring Soptic telling his story was “despicable” and was false because Soptic’s wife didn’t die until 2006, five years after Romney’s firm laid him off. Apparently, Saul didn’t consider the fact that if Soptic had still had health insurance, perhaps his wife’s cancer would have been caught before it was too late. I guess having access to excellent health care made that slip her mind.

Continue reading at:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/08/1117978/-Romney-campaign-Bain-layoff-victim-should-have-moved-to-Massachusetts-to-get-health-insurance

From The Washington Post:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-romneys-incredible-extremes/2012/08/06/894ea444-dfe5-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Aug. 7, 2012

Mitt Romney’s tax and spending plans are so irresponsible, so cruel, so extreme that they are literally incredible. Voters may find it hard to believe anyone would support such things, so they are likely to discount even factual descriptions as partisan distortion.

The pro-Obama New Priorities PAC stumbled across this phenomena early in 2012 in its focus group testing. When they informed a focus group that Romney supported the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also championing tax cuts for the wealthy, focus group participants simply didn’t believe it. No politician could be so clueless.

Incredulity may complement what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd dubbed Romney’s strategy of “hiding in plain sight.” Romney refuses to release his tax returns, scrubbed the records and e-mails of his time as governor and as head of the Olympics, keeps secret details of his Bain dealings and covers up the names of his bundlers. And then, he’s able to announce extremely cruel policy positions with impunity, because the voters just can’t believe that’s what he is for.

This is what comes to mind with the publication of a study on the effects of the Romney tax policy by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and the Brookings Institution.

The study took its assumptions from Romney’s tax agenda on his Web page — where he promises to cut tax rates by 20 percent, sustain all the Bush tax breaks, keep the reduced rate for capital gains, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminate capital gains taxes on married families earning less than $200,000 (or as Gingrich noted, on those that don’t have any capital gains) and eliminate the estate tax (a small boon to his strapping sons).

Continue reading at:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-romneys-incredible-extremes/2012/08/06/894ea444-dfe5-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-death-squads-bain_n_1710133.html

From Truth Out: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10715-turning-college-students-into-commodities

By Jim Hightower
Monday, 06 August 2012

After graduation, students’ incomes would be “attached” by financiers.

Let’s take a trip deep into the magic kingdom of “Laissez Fairyland” and prostrate ourselves before the infallible and inscrutable force known as the free market.

While this awesome deity cannot be seen, the high priests of free-market fundamentalism insist that we mere mortals must simply have faith that its mysterious workings are always in our best interest. Yeah, sure, your holiness. We saw how well that worked out for us wandering pilgrims after you true believers deregulated Wall Street, which then crashed on our streets.

Well, get ready. Free-market purists want us to have another ungodly religious encounter with their omnipotent deity. Looking at America’s trillion-dollar student debt crisis, these spiritualists had a burning-bush revelation.

Complete article at:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10715-turning-college-students-into-commodities

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/08/america-drought-political-will-climate-change

With US politics paralysed by the partisan divide on climate change, public concern about extreme weather cannot bear fruit

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 August 2012

As the US faces record drought and an Old Testament-level pestilential heatwave in the midwest, American environmental denialism may be starting to change. The question is: is it too late?

America has led the world in climate change denial, a phenomenon noted with amazement by Europeans, not to mention thinking people around the world. Year after year, the US has failed to sign global treaties or curb emissions, even as our status as a source of a third of the world’s carbon emissions goes unchanged.

It is fairly well-known what has been behind that climate change denial in America: vast sums pumped into an ignorance industry by the oil and gas lobbies. Entire thinktanks to obfuscate manmade climate change have been funded by these interests, as have individual congressmen and women. Entirely typical, for instance, is Louisiana Representative John Fleming, whose campaigns, according to blogger John Henry, accept about $200,000 a year from oil and gas lobbyists, and who uses his social media pages to deny global warming.

It is weird to live inside that US denial about climate change. Last year, for example, as tropical storm Irene approached New York, we duly boarded up windows, put in emergency supplies, and heard endless alarming bulletins from the mayor’s office about which neighborhoods were likely to be submerged if the tides surged – without ever hearing from local officials or the media a word connecting rising sea levels with manmade global warming. All the more weird because New Yorkers weren’t writing off portions of their downtown neighborhoods to overflowing seawater a century ago.

It is weird, too, to watch the leaves turn red earlier and earlier in the fall in the American northeast and have absolutely everyone say, “the weather is strange” – yet never see mainstream media reflect any interest in the connection between human industrial activity and that strangeness. And this weather map shows how widespread and extensive that extreme weather is in the US.

But could our denial be cracking, this summer, as, in the heartland – that most iconic of American landscapes – broiling temperatures injure humans and cook fish in the water? This summer a crisis has occurred (though one that, again, is seldom reported on in terms of our outsize contribution to the disaster), as midwestern farmers lost vast swaths of their corn crop to scalding heat and drought. In the American unconscious of wishful ignorance, this disaster and loss was to be borne, as usual, by other people far away.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/08/america-drought-political-will-climate-change