Women Born Transsexual

When I was a young hippie woman I used to wear a button that said, “Question Authority.”  Questioning Authority seemed like the best policy then and it still does.

It is one of those rules  like, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Every single day for the last six months I have been getting 20-40 emails from various elected officials telling me how the sky is falling and how we are doomed if I don’t give them money I don’t have.

My partner and I are really going through some hard times after a series of minor disasters combined into a major disaster.

Things are bad to the point of my selling off my trans-library and archives on  eBay and our looking for things to sell on Craig’s List/FaceBook Swap Meets.

Mostly though,  the pitches combined with a growing feeling that both the Democrats and the Republicans actually represent the interests of Wall Street, the Banks, and the ultra rich  leave me feeling apathetic.

It sometimes seems as though the two parties met in a big board room and dealt out a bunch of cards with freedom denying special interests on them that became the make or break issues.

I’m old enough to remember when both parties had leaders who banged heads of their parties various morons and stubborn jerks until the two parties were able to work out compromises.

But then too I’m also old enough to remember when there were actual newscasts on television instead of propagandists pounding their particular messages in to the heads of the sheeple that follow them 24/7.

In June we were doing a swap meet in a small town where the cable service in our hotel room was out.  I picked up a trashy action thriller paperback and realized I actually enjoyed reading something other than “non-fiction” propaganda.

Face it many of the social critics wrote one book which they issued under many different titles.  Considering the stress we are under I’d much rather read formula fiction from Lee Child or some other fiction writer.

I mean it doesn’t take some genius prognosticator to see that mankind has totally fucked up and we are rapidly heading into what preppers call TEOWAWKI (The End Of the World As We Know It) and the SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan).

Butter has gone up some $2 since the start of the year.  Our food supply is being impacted by major drought.  We have well over 7 billion people and most people seem unwilling to recognize that population is at the root of all the multitude of disasters that are coming home to roost.

At the same time activism has fallen victim to the false allure of Identity Politics, where allegiance to and commitment to the group and group think has replaced individual thought and any questioning of authority. Woe unto the person who deviates from the Stalinistic approach to group think.  People who are wannabee activists, aka make a middle class living doing activism will mount Twitter Campaigns and troll you into submitting to criticism/self-criticism, aka forced confessions, or face social ostracism for heresy.  I know about such campaigns.  Nearly 15 years ago I was subjected to one that lasted over two years.  I came very close to suicide.

When it comes to Transgender Group think, I am a heretic, an infidel, a non-believer.  I honestly don’t give a shit.  Rights are rights and bullshit is bullshit.  I support the rights and try my damnedest  to ignore the bullshit.

We divided people up into these identity factions, told them that is the be all and end all of their existences.

When someone asserts we must be “out and proud” trans-women, I am forced to ask, “Why?”

Being transsexual/transgender isn’t the same thing as being gay.  It just plain isn’t.

For us coming out equals transition and living the sex/gender of our core being.  That doesn’t equate with being out and proud.  That equates with living the sex/gender of our core being.  They are two different things.

I have a lot of trans-friends on FaceBook and when they aren’t posting about being trans they aren’t really different from non-trans-folks.  Those of us who are old have the same problems as old non-trans-folks.

I realize there are trans-folks out there who want to celebrate their trans-ness and that’s okay but lay off the trip pushing.  Your trip is not my trip. Trans-folks are very diverse people with diverse politics and likes/dislikes.

We face a very hard future.  Identity politics has been a major part of the problem that has got us in the situation we are in.

I really don’t give a shit if a change of direction and way of doing political activism means the whole current crop of activist suddenly winds up working the floor in big box stores.

We need a new direction.  We need to rethink the dogma.

I haven’t watched “Orange is the New Black.”

I don’t spend money on Netflix and have no intention of starting.  Actually I wouldn’t watch it if it were free on a channel I do get.

“Transparent” has zero appeal.  I probably wouldn’t be bothered watching it if I were paid to do so.

I honestly have no interest what so ever in the fictionalized drama of elderly/middle age transition.

I have far more interesting stories in real life.

Seriously at any particular time I have at least a couple of people on Facebook who have friended me because I am a pioneer of sorts and honestly I’d much rather put energy into giving a real person a few words of encouragement than get into some sort of fictionalized character.

My world doesn’t revolve around the trans-community to the exclusion of other communities, nor do my cultural interests.

Telling someone to hang in there and that things will get better might be enough to get them through a bad patch.  A helping hand, even a place to crash for a night or two, encouraging some one to start 12 stepping or seek help if they are on a kamikaze course might just save a life.

But when it comes to movie I tend to like stupid action flix with lots of car chases, kung-fu, explosions and gun fights.  I’d rather curl up with an Andrew Vachss or Lee Child’s book than yet another trans-book.  I groove on outlaw country and hard core roots music along with jazz.

Sometimes I think the whole idea of “trans-identity/trans-community” seems way too obsessive.

I guess what I’m saying is that I like what Laverne Cox has to say as an activist but there isn’t much chance of my reviewing or commenting on “Orange is the New Black.”

As for “Transparent”… Don’t get me started on the drag face aspect and don’t hold your breath on me ever watching it much less reviewing it.

There is more chance I’ll watch “Dallas Buyer’s Club” mainly because it is free on demand now and because I like Matthew McConaughey.

I don’t make a habit of asking my readers for donations.

This blog has been a labor of love and a way of sharing news I think it is important for readers to be aware of.

Last December shortly before Christmas the expansion tank on our hot water heater burst.  The hot water heater was in the attic, a design aimed at improving water pressure.

Unfortunately when the expansion tank ruptured it flooded our house.

We had been planning on selling our current house and downsizing due to our economic circumstances.

We have been fighting with the insurers since last December in an attempt to get our house repaired.

We are in dire straits.

Last week we received a notice that the Home Owners Association has place a foreclosure lien on our house and we will be forced out unless we can come up with a couple of thousand dollars.

Over and above that we are in arrears on our mortgage.

We have the support of friends who will do the repairs and help us sell the house once the insurance company settles our claim.

As you already know I have been selling off my library.

My partner and I are senior citizens.

I have been a life long activist and have fought the good fight as well as struggling with personal issues for nearly fifty years.

I was one of the pioneers of the LGBT community and one of the early pioneers of the TS/TG Movement.

Everything we have is tied up in our house at this time.

We are at a loss as to what we will do if we lose the house and are unable to sell it and move into something where we can afford to continue to live.

I always prided myself on my independence, my strength and ability to survive without asking others for much help.

I was the one others came to for help.

Now I am the one asking you to not only hit the donations button on the left hand side of the blog, but I am asking you to spread the word that I need help in the form of donations to survive.

The button will take you to Paypal.

Anything you can afford to donate will be greatly appreciated.

From The New York Times:   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/opinion/jochen-bittner-whats-behind-germanys-new-anti-semitism.html?_r=1

Jochen Bittner
Sept. 16, 2014

HAMBURG, Germany — Europe is living through a new wave of anti-Semitism. The president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews calls it the worst the Continent has seen since World War II. He may well be right. Attacks on synagogues are an almost weekly occurrence, and openly anti-Semitic chants are commonplace on well-attended marches from London to Rome. And yet it is here, in Germany, where the rise in anti-Semitism is most historically painful.

On Sunday, thousands of people marched through Berlin in response, and heard both Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck denounce the resurgence in anti-Jewish hatred.

We’ve seen this before, of course. But there’s an important difference this time. The new anti-Semitism does not originate solely with the typical white-supremacist neo-Nazi; instead, the ugly truth that many in Europe don’t want to confront is that much of the anti-Jewish animus originates with European people of Muslim background.

Until recently, Germany has been unwilling to discuss this trend. Germans have always seen Muslim anti-Semitism as a less problematic version of the “original” version, and therefore a distraction from the well-known problem of anti-Jewish sentiment within a majority of society.

And yet the German police have noted a disturbing rise in the number of people of Arabic and Turkish descent arrested on suspicion of anti-Semitic acts in recent years, especially over the last several months. After noticing an alarming uptick in anti-Semitic sentiment among immigrant students, the German government is considering a special fund for Holocaust education.

Of course, anti-Semitism didn’t originate with Europe’s Muslims, nor are they its only proponents today. The traditional anti-Semitism of Europe’s far right persists. So, too, does that of the far left, as a negative byproduct of sympathy for the Palestinian liberation struggle. There’s also an anti-Semitism of the center, a subcategory of the sort of casual anti-Americanism and anticapitalism that many otherwise moderate Europeans espouse.

But the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism is responsible for the recent change in the tone of hate in Germany. Until recently, the country’s anti-Semitism has been largely coded and anonymous. Messages might be spray-painted on walls at night; during the day, though, it would be rare to hear someone shout, as protesters did in Berlin in July, “Jews to the gas!” Another popular slogan at this and other rallies was “Jew, coward pig, come out and fight alone!” — shouted just yards from Berlin’s main Holocaust memorial. And this is the difference today: An anti-Semitism that is not only passionate, but also unaware of, or indifferent to, Germany’s special history.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/opinion/jochen-bittner-whats-behind-germanys-new-anti-semitism.html?_r=1

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse

‘Reports from the future’ warn of floods, storms and searing heat in campaign for climate change summit

Reuters
The Guardian, Monday 1 September 2014

The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.

It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.

Limits to Growth was commissioned by a think tank called the Club of Rome. Researchers working out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including husband-and-wife team Donella and Dennis Meadows, built a computer model to track the world’s economy and environment. Called World3, this computer model was cutting edge.

The task was very ambitious. The team tracked industrialisation, population, food, use of resources, and pollution. They modelled data up to 1970, then developed a range of scenarios out to 2100, depending on whether humanity took serious action on environmental and resource issues. If that didn’t happen, the model predicted “overshoot and collapse” – in the economy, environment and population – before 2070. This was called the “business-as-usual” scenario.

The book’s central point, much criticised since, is that “the earth is finite” and the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods etc would eventually lead to a crash.

So were they right? We decided to check in with those scenarios after 40 years. Dr Graham Turner gathered data from the UN (its department of economic and social affairs, Unesco, the food and agriculture organisation, and the UN statistics yearbook). He also checked in with the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration, the BP statistical review, and elsewhere. That data was plotted alongside the Limits to Growth scenarios.

The results show that the world is tracking pretty closely to the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario. The data doesn’t match up with other scenarios.

These graphs show real-world data (first from the MIT work, then from our research), plotted in a solid line. The dotted line shows the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario out to 2100. Up to 2010, the data is strikingly similar to the book’s forecasts.

Continue reading at:  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse

From Ted Rall:  http://rall.com/2014/09/04/syndicated-column-why-are-feminists-telling-women-not-to-protect-themselves-from-rapists

By Ted Rall
September 4, 2014

Identity politics, a writer friend reminds me, is where liberalism goes to die.

The oceans are boiling, freelance journalists’ heads are getting lopped off, and there’s not the slightest sign of resistance to income inequality so out of control it would worry Cornelius Vanderbilt. Yet the Internet’s politically-correct “social justice warriors” are dedicating their formidable energies into attacking pissant trivialities.

Anyone who doubts that online slacktivists have their heads so far up their collective asses that they can’t see daylight need only read up on the controversy over Undercover Colors, which is a nail polish that allows women (or men, but they’re not the target audience) to discreetly discover whether their drink has been spiked by one of several common “date rape” drugs.

(My advice to women: if you’re at a party or with a guy so sketchy that you think you may have been slipped a mickey, don’t bother with the fancy polish. Just scoot. You don’t want to be there anyway.)

Better safe than sorry, right?

Wrong.

“Anything that puts the onus on women to ‘discreetly’ keep from being raped misses the point,” writes Jessica Valenti, a once-influential feminist blogger whose hammer-to-the-skull-obvious post-motherhood columns for The Guardian add to the case for automatically censoring any piece of writing by a parent about their children. “We should be trying to stop rape, not just individually avoid it.”

Um, what?

Valenti is serious about this: “So long as it isn’t me isn’t an effective strategy to end rape. ‘Undercover Colors’ polish and products like it only offer the veneer of equality and safety. And that’s simply not good enough.”

Which is true. And stupid.

Continue reading at:  http://rall.com/2014/09/04/syndicated-column-why-are-feminists-telling-women-not-to-protect-themselves-from-rapists

Hey folks I don’t want to have to schlep these books off to Half Price Books when people claim to want to give them a good home but I will if they don’t get bought on line.

I’m a senior citizen, one of the pioneers of the Trans-Movement from back before many of you were born and I need to reduce my possessions as part of a forced downsizing.

I am not starting a “Fund Me Campaign”  I’m selling off an archive many people have claimed they want.

The prices on the books are reasonable and many are rare.

The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights…

Evolution’s Rainbow : Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People

Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual

Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue By Leslie Feinberg

Becoming a Woman: A Biography of Christine Jorgensen

Lessons from the Intersexed by Suzanne J. Kessler (1998, …

Mirror Image By Nancy Hunt

Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity

Invisible Lives : The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgender People

Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

Horsexe

Gender Madness in American Psychiatry : Essays from the Struggle for Dignity

The Man-Maid Doll by Patricia Morgan and Paul Hoffman (19…

Gender Shock : Exploding the Myths of Male and Female by …

The Woman I Was Not Born to Be : A Transsexual Journey by…

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism

Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach

Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism by Patrick Califia

Trans/forming Feminisms: Transfeminist Voices Speak Out

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/rich-people-hog-water-during-drought

Celebrities and moguls aren’t doing without while the region suffers from a disastrous drought.

By Cliff Weathers
August 27, 2014

While most of California worries, cuts back and braces for the worst of this epic drought, the Golden State’s 1-percenters are staying flush with water. While some are obeying public water restrictions and having it shipped in by the truckload to their mansions in the tony exurbs of Santa Barbara County, others are just breaking the rules and paying hefty fines for not obeying local water restrictions.

Politico reports that tanker trucks filled with water make routine deliveries to the grand manors of the rich and famous, carting up to 5,000 gallons of water to the region’s wealthiest residents. The beltway newspaper reports that Oprah Winfrey, one of Montecito’s richest residents, gets water deliveries on a regular basis to keep things flowing at her 40-acre estate. Oprah, whose water bill from the Montecito Water District was almost $125,000 last year, has cut her municipal water use in half this year, but she still needs massive deliveries of H2O to make it work.

Montecito Journal columnist Bob Hazard, says he would not be surprised if some of the town’s wealthiest are “paying as much as $15,000 a month for trucked-in water.”

Still, not all Montecito residents are relying on water shipments to make up the difference. They are just ignoring the restrictions.

More than 800 consumers in the water district have already been hit with penalties totaling more than $500,000 altogether, which means they wasted some 13 million gallons of public water. One homeowner was reportedly hit with a $30,000 fine. And it’s not only homeowners who are pirating the trickle of water the area gets from its aquifer; the Biltmore Four Seasons Hotel was hit with a hefty fine of nearly $50,000. According to Politico, there will be about $4 million in fines levied to Montecito Water District users this year.

Meanwhile, California’s drought has taken a significant turn for the worse. The U.S. Drought Monitor, a government-funded weekly map of drought conditions, reports that 98% of the state is experiencing a severe to exceptional drought, with 58% suffering from the harshest of drought conditions. All the state has been suffering from drought conditions since May, the first time in 15 years.

In July, California imposed statewide water-use regulations for the first time. State regulators approved stringent measures limiting outdoor water, including $500 fines for using an outdoor hose without a shut-off nozzle.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/rich-people-hog-water-during-drought

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/companies-making-profit-abusing-poor

We’re increasingly shifting costs to those least able to afford to pay.

By Thomas Edsall
August 28, 2014

In Orange County, Calif., the probation department’s “supervised electronic confinement program,” which monitors the movements of low-risk offenders, has been outsourced to a private company, Sentinel Offender Services. The company, by its own account, oversees case management, including breath alcohol and drug-testing services, “all at no cost to county taxpayers.”

Sentinel makes its money by getting the offenders on probation to pay for the company’s services. Charges can range from $35 to $100 a month.

The company boasts of having contracts with more than 200 government agencies, and it takes pride in the “development of offender funded programs where any of our services can be provided at no cost to the agency.”

Sentinel is a part of the expanding universe of poverty capitalism. In this unique sector of the economy, costs of essential government services are shifted to the poor.

In terms of food, housing and other essentials, the cost of being poor has always been exorbitant. Landlords, grocery stores and other commercial enterprises have all found ways to profit from those at the bottom of the ladder.

The recent drive toward privatization of government functions has turned traditional public services into profit-making enterprises as well.

In addition to probation, municipal court systems are also turning collections over to a national network of companies like Sentinel that profit from service charges imposed on the men and women who are under court order to pay fees and fines, including traffic tickets (with the fees being sums tacked on by the court to fund administrative services).

When they cannot pay these assessed fees and fines – plus collection charges imposed by the private companies — offenders can be sent to jail. There are many documented cases in which courts have imprisoned those who failed to keep up with their combined fines, fees and service charges.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/companies-making-profit-abusing-poor

From Queerty:  http://www.queerty.com/park-that-attitude-the-danger-of-trans-activist-parker-molloy-20140827

Kelsie Brynn Jones
Aug 27, 2014

This is an essay that I never wanted to write, especially after my most recent Huffington Post article on unity within the LGBT. Sadly, life has a way of interfering with one’s intentions, and that is what has happened on this occasion. Only a couple of days ago a prominent transgender activist and writer with whom I had previously conversed, decided to attack me after I voiced a contrary opinion to a piece that was highly critical of citizen journalism.

At first I was simply shocked at what I was seeing in my inbox, but within moments my shock turned to abject horror. Parker Molloy, someone I had looked to for advice on occasion and supported through her fundraising for surgery, was telling me to kill myself. Not only was she telling another trans woman to die, she was giving her instructions ranging from cutting herself to drinking bleach, and what’s more, demanding that she do it.

Rather than Molloy writing from social conviction it would seem that her body of work of late, such as her writing against RuPaul and Carmen Carrera, has been solely authored to co-opt the movement against the use of misogynistic and trans-misogynistic slurs in order to further her grip on becoming a spokeswoman within mainstream organizations rather from any deep-seated belief. The first thing that she wrote against another trans woman in this particular case, were the misogynist slurs “c-nt” and “wh-re” — hardly what I would have expected from a writer who publicly crusades against the use of those words in particular.

As a journalist, I battled for several hours with the question of whether or not I should address the attack publicly, since it was made to me in private, but after letting her words sink in I made the difficult decision to publish what she had said to me despite the backlash that will no doubt transpire from the Parker Cult within the community. Her behavior, and the behavior of those who follow blindly because they feel that she rallies against privilege, is violent, hypocritical and damaging to themselves and the greater transgender community. There are clear parallels between Parker Molloy and Susan Stanton. For readers who might not recall, Susan was an inauthentic transgender spokesperson who was once lauded by the mainstream, and who allowed herself to become a puppet for the policies of those supporting her, in much the way as Molloy now appears to be doing.

Stanton said that transgender women don’t deserve employment protection, that this would be putting transgender women at risk. What Parker did was worse, however, as she attempted to trigger another transgender woman into directly committing self-harm. Unfortunately, it became apparent that she has done this before, and, sadly, with much more success. A transgender woman whom I shall call Jane for fear of backlash, told me that she had attempted to commit suicide after a discourse with Parker that migrated from public social media to a private chat. Jane videoed her attempt, and the police arrived, and in her words she was “5150′d”, which means that she was placed in Involuntary Psychiatric Hold in the State of California.

Continue reading at:  http://www.queerty.com/park-that-attitude-the-danger-of-trans-activist-parker-molloy-20140827