Women Born Transsexual

How come the FBI targets leaders of non-violent movements like Occupy to be murdered by snipers but doesn’t do shit about right wing gun nuts who advocate armed insurrection and random murder?

How come Vegan Quakers for Peace (made up group but Quakers have been targeted) and similar groups are infiltrated with all sorts of undercover police while the right wing groups that actually advocate terrorism are aren’t?

Any left wing leader threatening to take up arms and murder people would be subjected to a SWAT raid so fast his or her head would spun and lawyers would find their client charged with dozens if not hundreds charges.

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/10/unhinged-tactical-response-ceo-threatens-to-start-killing-people-over-obamas-gun-control/

By David Edwards
Thursday, January 10, 2013

From Upside Down World:  http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4059-the-word-on-women-transgender-rights-in-ecuador-a-legal-spatial-political-and-cultural-acquittal

by By Rochelle Jones
Tuesday, 08 January 2013

A discussion with Elizabeth Vasquez from PROYECTO TRVNSGEN3RO about their innovative work, inspiring achievements and further challenges ahead for transgender rights in Ecuador.

Source: The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)

The first professional transgender generation in Ecuador are now in college or just graduating. This is an immense achievement, over ten years in the making. But according to Elizabeth Vasquez from PROYECTO TRVNSGEN3RO, or ‘Project Transgender’, “because access to rights is so recent, it means that there are thousands of people who face the consequences of that earlier deprivation, especially of lack of education, therefore lack of access to better jobs.”

Project Transgender is an organization in Quito that has spearheaded the rights movement for transgender and intersex people in Ecuador. Described as a “political proposal” as well as a non-profit organization, Proyecto Transgenero’s work includes legal, social, cultural and art interventions. Their work aims to “strengthen trans identity in Ecuador … [focusing] on improving the exercise of aesthetic and identity rights for trans and intersex people, freedom of association and the occupation of urban and sociocultural spaces from which we have remained historically excluded”.

Transgender rights and the law

The success of the legal component of Proyecto Transgenero’s work is evidenced in the changes made to Ecuadorian laws over the past decade, many of which are a direct result of interventions by Proyecto Transgenero and translate as victories for every-day rights most people take for granted. For example, hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are now classified as an aggravated form of criminal offence.

In 2008 the New Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador was approved. Vasquez worked as an advisor with a Member of the Constituent Assembly (CA) and as a result the Constitution guarantees equality before the law without discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Vasquez says “equality claims in different areas in which trans citizens have felt at disadvantage have been filed ever since. For example, an adolescent trans girl filed a claim against a military school for not letting her to go to school in female military attire and the school had to comply. Trans access to education is the biggest improvement in the last four years. The first transgender medical doctor graduated last week. Many transgender youth are in college these days. Others have filed employment claims, also with success.”

Another important norm that was approved in the Constitution is the right to “aesthetic freedom”. Vasquez explains “It has facilitated the respect of trans aesthetic in every Ecuadorian institution – public and private – and in the public space. This has especially benefited transgender sex workers who used to be arrested on the grounds of “improper attire” in the past. Articles 68 and 69 of the Constitution now importantly recognize “family diversity” – which Vasquez says is a “LGBTI issue in general – recognizing alternative forms of family such as families formed by transgender sex workers who act as a single economic and social unit”; and same sex civil unions –that “in practice benefit transgender people on the ground that their unions will usually fall under technical same sex unions under the law.”

Continue reading at:  http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4059-the-word-on-women-transgender-rights-in-ecuador-a-legal-spatial-political-and-cultural-acquittal

MtF 3 year Timeline
This video is of me going through a 3 year transition (Roughly one thousand pictures). I have had FFS during the process. I started roughly around when I was 20 – 21 years of age.

I use to have my own channel a while ago where I’d post videos, but removed it. Here I am again making a return.

From The New Statesman:   http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2013/01/transdocfail-hashtag-showed-many-trans-people-are-afraid-their-doctors

Trans patients should not have to please medical staff before they can access treatment, writes Charlie Hallam.

By Charlie Hallam
Published 09 January 2013

There are a group of people in the UK who experience horrific abuse at the hands of people who are ostensibly responsible for their care. You might think that after the horrific revelations of the last few months that I am referring to children who are abused by those charged with caring for them, but no. I’m talking about trans* people. If you are a trans* person, not only are you required to live and behave a certain way to access treatment, but the situation is compounded by the fact that many trans* people are reliant for life saving treatment on the very doctors who perpetrate this abuse. They are prevented from speaking out to try and improve the system through the fear that if they are honest, they will forever be denied the treatment they need.

In most areas of medicine, the first stage when you identify that something is wrong is to visit your GP, discuss the problem, work out if treatment is necessary and then discuss with your doctor about what that treatment should be. From the stories shared on yesterday’s twitter hashtag #transdocfail, and from the stories I’ve heard from my partner and trans* friends, doing this with gender dysphoria would be the single worst thing to do.

Trans* people are scared of their doctors.

My partner came out and transitioned socially last spring, and our circle of friends includes a number of trans* people, some trans men, some trans women and at least one person who considers hirself agender. We know people who have finished the process of medical transition, people who are the middle of the process, and people who have transitioned and are receiving continuing care.

Bad experiences with GPs at the start of the process and experiencing difficulties in obtaining a referral to specialist services were a common theme on yesterday’s hashtag. Many people reported being dismissed in various ways at their first appointment, one being laughed out of the office, and another told, I’m not going to refer you (to GIC) because I don’t believe in all that”. In the last few months, I have myself heard an obviously female patient called up with what was clearly their male, pre-transition, name. Despite these obvious and apparently simple to fix problems, so many trans* stories about doctor’s failing patients end with the line, ‘but I daren’t say anything in case the clinic find out, object and decide that I’m not eligible for care.’

Continue reading at:   http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2013/01/transdocfail-hashtag-showed-many-trans-people-are-afraid-their-doctors

From The New York Time:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/opinion/after-being-raped-i-was-wounded-my-honor-wasnt.html

By SOHAILA ABDULALI
Published: January 7, 2013

THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience for an Indian women’s magazine. It created a stir in the women’s movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared. Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rage after a young woman’s rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

It’s not exactly pleasant to be a symbol of rape. I’m not an expert, nor do I represent all victims of rape. All I can offer is that — unlike the young woman who died in December two weeks after being brutally gang raped, and so many others — my story didn’t end, and I can continue to tell it.

When I fought to live that night, I hardly knew what I was fighting for. A male friend and I had gone for a walk up a mountain near my home. Four armed men caught us and made us climb to a secluded spot, where they raped me for several hours, and beat both of us. They argued among themselves about whether or not to kill us, and finally let us go.

At 17, I was just a child. Life rewarded me richly for surviving. I stumbled home, wounded and traumatized, to a fabulous family. With them on my side, so much came my way. I found true love. I wrote books. I saw a kangaroo in the wild. I caught buses and missed trains. I had a shining child. The century changed. My first gray hair appeared.

Too many others will never experience that. They will not see that it gets better, that the day comes when one incident is no longer the central focus of your life. One day you find you are no longer looking behind you, expecting every group of men to attack. One day you wind a scarf around your throat without having a flashback to being choked. One day you are not frightened anymore.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/opinion/after-being-raped-i-was-wounded-my-honor-wasnt.html

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/planned-parenthood-funding-_n_2434592.html

Laura Bassett
01/08/2013

House Republicans are so eager to strip federal family planning funds from Planned Parenthood that two of them have introduced identical bills to do so in the first days of the new Congress.

Tennessee Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R) and Diane Black (R) separately reintroduced a bill during the first two days of the 2013 legislative session that would prohibit Title X family planning grants from being awarded to any organization that performs abortions. The bill, first introduced by former Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) in the 112th Congress, primarily targets Planned Parenthood, which receives about $340 million a year in Title X funds for non-abortion health and family planning services. Both bills amend Pence’s original bill to include exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother.

Blackburn is Vice Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee with jurisdiction over the issue. Since she filed and circulated her bill on Thursday, the first day of the legislative session, more than a half-dozen Republicans have signed on as cosponsors and numerous anti-abortion groups have endorsed it.

Blackburn declared the bill a priority for her committee and vowed to carry on Pence’s agenda. “Congressman Pence has been a champion in the fight to protect innocent human life and I hope to continue his leadership in the House,” she said in a statement. “As a woman, I believe America deserves better than abortion.”

The day after Blackburn circulated her bill, Black introduced the same bill. One of Black’s staffers pointed out to HuffPost that her bill has the same number as Pence’s original bill and said that Pence, the governor-elect of Indiana, had specifically given Black his blessing to carry it on. Black’s bill has 38 cosponsors and endorsements from all the same organizations that Blackburn’s has.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/planned-parenthood-funding-_n_2434592.html

From PoliticusUSA:  http://www.politicususa.com/steubenville-rape-war-on-women.html

By: Rmuse
Jan. 9th, 2013

In a nation as large and diverse as America, it is difficult to encapsulate society in one snapshot, although there are some broad generalizations that could be made about the nature of what it means to be American. There is, though, a particular aspect of American society that stands out as noteworthy and remains a blemish on the national character that remains unchanged over the past century, and became an overriding issue in the 112^th Congress. The horrendous events surrounding the vicious assault and dehumanizing treatment of a 16-year old girl in Steubenville Ohio have shocked decent human beings around the world, but Americans should not be the least bit surprised because the patriarchal mindset of the rapists, and their supporters, are a microcosm of conservative Christians and their legislative arm – the Republican Party.

Americans joined citizens of other countries who were outraged after a young Indian woman died from her injuries after being gang-raped and beaten on a bus in New Delhi by six men, and despite the opinion that “it could never happen in America,” a young woman was gang-raped in a similar situation by well-respected football stars. The only difference was the 16-year old in Ohio was not beaten to death, but she was brutalized and certainly the victim of violence at the hands of a group of young men. The violence against the young woman, and yes, rape is the worst act of violence possible against a woman, is beyond the pale, but the response and support the savages guilty of the crime are receiving is typical given the recent attacks on all American women at the hands of Republicans.

Whether it is the hideous legitimate rape, rape by medical instrument popular among pro-life Republicans, or the House’s failure to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), there is a mindset in this nation that protects men who violate women. It is no wonder the rapists are flummoxed by the outrage from decent Americans at the severity of their crime, or that supporters in the Steubenville community are attempting to portray the rapists as victims. It is what a patriarchal society does when men victimize women with impunity and tacit approval of so-called Christian conservatives, and why America’s society is no better than any male-dominated tribal society.

Continue reading at:  http://www.politicususa.com/steubenville-rape-war-on-women.html

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/the-soul-of-america_b_2439576.html

Sen. Bernie Sanders
01/09/2013

Despite such terminology as “fiscal cliff” and “debt ceiling,” the great debate taking place in Washington now has relatively little to do with financial issues. It is all about ideology. It is all about economic winners and losers in American society. It is all about the power of Big Money. It is all about the soul of America.

In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth, and more inequality than at any time period since 1928. The top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while, incredibly, the bottom 60 percent own only 2.3 percent. One family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. In terms of income distribution in 2010, the last study done on this issue, the top 1 percent earned 93 percent of all new income while the bottom 99 percent shared the remaining 7 percent.

Despite the reality that the rich are becoming much richer while the middle class collapses and the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high, the Republicans and their billionaire backers want more, more, and more. The class warfare continues.

My Republican colleagues say that the deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue problem. What these deficit-hawk hypocrites won’t talk about is their spending. They won’t discuss what they did to dig the country into this $1 trillion deep deficit hole. They waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without paying for them. They gave away huge tax breaks for the rich. They squandered taxpayer dollars on the pharmaceutical industry by making it illegal to let Medicare bargain for lower drug prices. They also rescinded financial regulations that enabled Wall Street to operate like a gambling casino, leading to a severe recession that eroded tax revenue and left more than 14 percent of American workers unemployed or underemployed.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/the-soul-of-america_b_2439576.html

From Rolling Stone:   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hank-greenberg-should-be-shot-into-space-for-suing-the-government-over-the-aig-bailout-20130109

By Matt Taibbi
January 9, 2013

A lot of people are wondering what to think about the news that the board of AIG is considering joining the lawsuit filed by former AIG head Maurice “Hank” Greenberg against the Fed and the U.S. government – a suit that one news outlet describes as charging the state with handing out an “insufficiently generous bailout.”

The editorial in today’s Daily News captures the public feeling over this confusing news story quite well, I think:

If chutzpah were a crime, Hank Greenberg, American International Group’s former chief, would be going away for a long, long time.

Long since driven out of AIG, Greenberg is waging a lawsuit claiming the U.S. hurt the firm’s shareholders — including him — when the government rescued the insurance giant with the most humongous bailout of all time.

If you just read the headlines, the story that AIG is considering suing the government for bailing it out makes no sense at all. What could even be the basis for such a suit? One reader asked the question this way: “If a cop bursts into a motel room and stops you just as you’re about to blow your head off with a shotgun, can you sue him?  If the answer is yes, should I try it?”

Former bailout inspector Neil Barofsky put it this way, in an interview with Bloomberg: “The idea that AIG would have been better off by going bankrupt, for the shareholders is a very, very hard thing to sell, I think.”

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/09-0

by Medea Benjamin
Published on Wednesday, January 9, 2013 by Common Dreams

In October 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and neighbors. Two days later, when Aziz was driving with his 12-year-old cousin to a village near his home in Waziristan to pick up his aunt, his car was struck by a Hellfire missile. With the push of a button by a pilot at a US base thousands of miles away, both boys were instantly vaporized—only a few chunks of flesh remained.

Afterwards, the US government refused to acknowledge the boys’ deaths or explain why they were targeted. Why should they? This is a covert program where no one is held accountable for their actions.

The main architect of this drone policy that has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents, including 176 children in Pakistan alone, is President Obama’s counterterrorism chief and his pick for the next director of the CIA: John Brennan.

On my recent trip to Pakistan, I met with people whose loved ones had been blown to bits by drone attacks, people who have been maimed for life, young victims with no hope for the future and aching for revenge. For all of them, there has been no apology, no compensation, not even an acknowledgement of their losses. Nothing.

That’s why when John Brennan spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC last April and described our policies as ethical, wise and in compliance with international law,  I felt compelled to stand up and speak out on behalf of Tariq Aziz and so many others. As they dragged me out of the room, my parting words were: “I love the rule of law and I love my country. You are making us less safe by killing so many innocent people. Shame on you, John Brennan.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/09-0

From World Socialist Web Site:  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/09/pers-j09.html

Bill Van Auken
9 January 2013

“He has worked to embed our efforts in a strong legal framework,” President Barack Obama declared Monday during an appearance in the East Room of the White House. “He understands we are a nation of laws. In moments of debate and decision, he asks the tough question and he insists on high and rigorous standards.”

The president was describing his nominee as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, who currently serves as Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser. He also lauded Brennan’s “integrity” and “commitment to the values that define us as Americans.”

One would hardly guess from this high-flown rhetoric that Obama was describing Brennan’s role as the nation’s assassin-in-chief. He has demonstrated his “integrity” and commitment to values, law and standards by chairing the so-called “terror Tuesday” sessions at the White House, putting together “kill lists” for the president to approve, and overseeing remote-controlled murder by Predator drones.

The “strong legal framework” refers to his development of the so-called “disposition matrix,” a system for “codifying and streamlining” the extrajudicial executions that are carried out by means of drone missile strikes on a virtually daily basis. This framework, developed by a cabal of military and intelligence officials, has as much to do with a “nation of laws” as the decrees issued by Hitler during the Third Reich.

This is Obama’s second attempt to nominate Brennan, a 25-year CIA operative. Following his inauguration in 2009, the newly elected Democratic president found himself compelled to back off from installing Brennan as CIA chief in the face of a storm of protest from liberals and “lefts” in and around the Democratic Party.

Continue reading at:  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/09/pers-j09.html

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/09/maddow-calls-hagel-out-for-akin-esque-views-on-womens-health/

By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, January 9, 2013

From Think Progress:  http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/01/09/1422021/inaugural-benediction-to-be-delivered-by-anti-gay-pastor/

By Josh Israel
on Jan 9, 2013

The Presidential Inauguration Committee announced Tuesday that the President Obama has selected Pastor Louie Giglio of the Georgia-based Passion City Church to deliver the benediction for his second inauguration. In a mid-1990s sermon identified as Giglio’s, available online on a Christian training website, he preached rabidly anti-LGBT views. The 54-minute sermon, entitled “In Search of a Standard – Christian Response to Homosexuality,” advocates for dangerous “ex-gay” therapy for gay and lesbian people, references a biblical passage often interpreted to require gay people be executed, and impels Christians to “firmly respond to the aggressive agenda” and prevent the “homosexual lifestyle” from becoming accepted in society. Below are some of the most disturbing views in the sermon.

Christians must fight against LGBT-equality:

(2:40) We must not just sit quietly by and stick our heads in the sand and let whatever happens happen in our country. We’ve got to respond to the world that we live in. That is the mandate that comes to us as people of God. And this issue is coming more and more to the forefront every day.

(31:45) We must lovingly but firmly respond to the aggressive agenda of not all, but of many in the homosexual community. … Underneath this issue is a very powerful and aggressive moment. That movement is not a benevolent movement, it is a movement to seize by any means necessary the feeling and the mood of the day, to the point where the homosexual lifestyle becomes accepted as a norm in our society and is given full standing as any other lifestyle, as it relates to family.

Homosexuality is a sin:

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/01/09/1422021/inaugural-benediction-to-be-delivered-by-anti-gay-pastor/

See also Huffington Post:  Obama, Inaugural Prayers and the Evangelicals Who Don’t Like Him

From National Geographic:  http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/04/were-heading-into-the-rapids-all-wrong/

My experience running a rapid on the Payette River in Idaho offers a metaphor and lesson for our time.

From Think Progress:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/01/09/1420251/gonorrhea-cases-resistant/

By Andrea Peterson
on Jan 9, 2013

There’s only one effective oral antibiotic treatment currently used to treat gonorrhea in North America — but that number might soon drop to zero, since researchers have identified the first cases of gonorrhea immune to the antibiotic.

A study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday found that nearly seven percent of the patients at a Toronto clinic remained infected with the disease even after a round of oral cephalosporins, the lone remaining oral antibiotic that can effectively treat the resistant strains of gonorrhea. This presents a potential long-term public health crisis for the United States, where gonorrhea is the second most common sexually transmitted disease with 321,849 cases reported in 2011. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) already issued guidance to physicians in August steering them away from oral cephalosporins as a first line treatment for gonorrhea, citing resistance risks.

According to the Australian School of Business, pharmaceutical companies’ greed presents one of the major roadblocks to developing better antibiotics:

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/01/09/1420251/gonorrhea-cases-resistant/