Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Allies

Some students came out in support of us or was it because of the free brownies.
Some Great Hearts Students Join Anti-Transgender Policy Protest, Others Shout 'MAGA!'
Phoenix New Times
By Molly Longman
October 30, 2017

About 20 protesters just outside of Great Hearts Veritas Preparatory Academy in Phoenix were swarmed Friday afternoon by a politically diverse group of teen students.

Hannah Duncan, a 2011 Great Hearts graduate, admitted part of the draw could have been the free brownies.

But the students also engaged in a civil discourse about the school's "sex and biological gender" policy, which many believe is discriminatory towards transgender students, and that made Duncan feel great.

The protesters with Duncan carried signs and a transgender flag, offering fact sheets for the students at a table. After school ended at about 3:15 p.m., some of the several-dozen students came bounding across the school's lawn to sniff out the sidewalk diplomacy and side of brownies.
And of course the haters came out,
One boy made a “Make America Great Again” sign and later led his group of friends in “Trump” cheers, shouting “Let’s make America great again!” alongside all the anti-policy demonstrators.

One boy borrowed a protester’s sign that read “This is ridiculous” and added “People who undergo hormone therapy have a 45% chance of suicide" in small black lettering.
He went on to say…
“I hear them say, ‘Why are you disrespecting people?’” the boy said. “Frankly, I think people should learn how to get harder skins. I do not support bullying to the point where the person kills themselves — but I think ridicule can make a person stronger at the end of the day.”
Well kid I have news for you, the high suicidal idealization rate is because of people just like you! People who think bullying okay it just that we’re “snowflakes.”

I’ll say it again and again that haters and bigots have been given the green to come out of the woodwork.



This afternoon I am a college in the New Haven area teaching a class on multicultural education, every semester a friend who teaches the class lets me teach it for the section on transgender culture. Part two is Thursday.

No You Don’t

That is what a federal judge ruled the other day about Trump banning trans service members, he laid down the law to Sessions and Trump.
Federal Judge Blocks Trump's Ban On Transgender Service Members
NPR
By Camila Domonoske
October 30, 2017

President Trump's would-be ban on transgender service members in the military has been blocked from going into effect for the foreseeable future.

A U.S. district judge in Washington, D.C., decided on Monday that trans members of the military have a strong case that the president's ban would violate their Fifth Amendment rights. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted a preliminary injunction to keep the policy from going into effect while the court case moves forward.

As a result of her injunction, the military policy on transgender service members will "revert to the status quo," Kollar-Kotelly writes — that is, the policy that was in place before Trump's announcement. That policy allowed trans members currently in the military to serve openly and for openly trans people to be admitted to serve in the future.
However, the judge didn’t stop the administration from blocking insurance coverage, she said it was outside her jurisdiction.
Under the new preliminary injunction, this portion of the memo is unenforceable and the Pentagon policy is once again in effect. This means that unless the policy changes again, openly trans people could begin joining the military on Jan. 1.
She wrote,
The judge ruled that the plaintiffs have persuasive claims that their Fifth Amendment rights are being violated and have a good chance of succeeding in their court case. She noted, among other things, that the president's policy was announced with little apparent deliberation, "disfavors a class of historically persecuted and politically powerless individuals" and contradicts the conclusions of military leaders.

She also wrote "the reasons given for [the directives] do not appear to be supported by any facts" — for instance, there is "practically no explanation at all" about how trans service members would harm "unit cohesion," she wrote.
I expect some nasty tweets from Trump over the judge’s ruling because she was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

This ruling only is a temporary injunction until the case is heard in court.



I have been fighting a cold since a week ago Monday and I am just starting to feel better during the day, at night and first thing in the morning I'm still coughing, The coughing is doing a number on my back.

Monday, October 30, 2017

FFS

Those who are not trans are wondering FFS? Well in the trans community it is known as Facial Feminizing Surgery where they reconstruct the facial features to a more feminine appearance.
Facial Gender Confirmation Surgery: A New Nomenclature
By Capitán, Luis M.D., Ph.D.; Simon, Daniel D.M.D.; Berli, Jens U. M.D.; Bailón, Carlos M.D.; Bellinga, Raúl J. M.D.; Santamaría, Javier G. M.D.; Tenório, Thiago M.D.; Sánchez-García, Anabel Ph.D.; Capitán-Cañadas, Fermín Ph.D.
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery: November 2017 - Volume 140 - Issue 5 - p 766e–767e

One of these medical-surgical treatments, facial surgery (popularly known as facial feminization surgery), has steadily gained importance and is emerging as a key element in the complex transition process, primarily for male-to-female transgender patients. Despite the evidence regarding the importance of and need for facial treatment for this group, many gaps remain that must be addressed, and views differ about the role that this surgery plays in the treatment algorithm. There is a need for a clear, concise definition of the different treatments involved, the type of patient for whom this surgery is indicated, and its place in the transition process timeline.

One constructive step in this definition process would be to determine the most appropriate nomenclature, one that would establish precise limits regarding the surgical field, when this surgery is indicated, and what its procedures are. In this context, the term “facial gender confirmation surgery,” as proposed in the recent article by Berli et al., provides a more suitable description of this surgery than “facial feminization surgery.” This new term indicates that although the surgical techniques are the same, their objective is very distinct and, moreover, they are intended for specific patients with well-defined needs.
Hmm… I wonder if the trans community will start using FGCS? FFS sounds much better that FGCS (at least they didn’t suggest “Affirming” for the initials FGAS).

Now if they had written about how to  get insurance to FFS it would have been a much better discussion than renaming FFS, if they talked of the medicinally necessary of FFS it would have been a good for getting the doctors paid by the insurance companies rather than by us.

Why Does It Takes A Death To Begin The Dialog?

In Iowa a high school trans student was murdered and now the community wants to open a discussion,
Kedarie Johnson's death prompts transgender conference for educators
Des Moines, Register
By Mackenzie Ryan
October 29, 2017

A homicide involving a gender-fluid high school student in Burlington last year has prompted Iowa's first conference on transgender issues geared toward school teachers, administrators and counselors.

"There's a serious need in the state," said Nate Monson, executive director of the advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools, the event's organizer. Transgender youth are more likely to commit suicide, be sexually assaulted or the victims of a hate crime, he said.

The death of Kedarie Johnson has served as the catalyst that's sparked conversations to promote understanding and awareness of issues unique to transgender and gender-fluid youth, Monson said.
Why didn’t they begin the conference before the bullying, harassments, and the violence began? Why can’t they be proactive instead of reactive.

Then you know that the so called “family” associations are against any discussion…
Drew Zahn, a spokesman for The Family Leader, said the conservative Christian advocacy group believes that teaching and encouraging gender fluidity harms children, but added: "We would agree with Iowa Safe Schools that no child should be bullied and our schools should be made safe for all students."
I think that we can all agree that “…no child should be bullied and our schools should be made safe for all students” but by the statement “that teaching and encouraging gender fluidity harms children” shows that you want to encourage bullying against sexual minorities and denning our existence.



What a wild night! Pouring rain, high winds all around the state, we had 3 inches (7.62 cm) of rain in the last 24 hours and in the last 5 days we had a total of 7 inches (17.78 cm). All around the state were wind guests of 60 mph (96 KPH) which is approaching hurricane speeds

15,000 people without power and many road closed with downed trees. Every time the lights flicker at my house there was a calliope of beeps as the alarm system and other electronic things reset, I now have to go all reset all the clocks.

The swamp (AKA wetlands) is flooded and doing its thing, slowing the runoff from the 7 inches of rain in to the brook downstream. No large branches or trees are down and basement is dry.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

No Peace In Death

Even in death do get disrespected.

Another trans woman of color has been murder and misgendered in death.
This Transgender Woman Was Brutally Murdered. To Police And Local Media, Though, She Was Just “A Man In A Dress”
Stephanie Montez is believed to be the 22nd transgender person murdered in the U.S. this year.
NewNowNext
By Dan Avery
October 29, 2017

The violent death of a transgender Texas woman almost went unacknowledged after police and local media misgendered and dead-named her. Stephanie Montez, 47, was initially referred to as “a man in a dress” in a Nueces County police report.

Had friends not investigated her disappearance and spoken up, it’s likely we’d never know about the murder of what’s believed to be the 22nd transgender American this year alone.

An October 26 article in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported that the sheriff’s office was “investigating the death of a 47-year-old man found with multiple gunshot wounds on County Road 61 near Robstown.”
Medical examiner Heraldo Pena said authorities initially believed the person was a woman; the person was wearing a dress and make up. They discovered later the person was male and that he had been shot in the chest, abdomen and a shoulder.
I have to wonder if they do it on purpose, if as the kids say they dis them by the police, medical examiner, and the media.

Who will speak for us in death?

Will they put our true gender on our death certificate?

Will they put our true name and gender in the obituary?

Will they honor our wishes and put our true name on our headstone?

Who will stand up for us?

Now What?

After taken my time to get my master’s in social worker I finally graduated in 2011 and that same year after working to pass a gender inclusive non-discrimination act since 2007 it passed in 2011, so I was left with “now what?” I went through a mild depressions while I found new goals and from many trans people and others who have gone through surgery, a new research study found…
Depression and postoperative complications: an overview
Pub Med
By Ny Mohamed M. Ghoneim corresponding author and Michael W. O’Hara
Published online 2016 Feb 2

Abstract
Background

The interaction of depression and anesthesia and surgery may result in significant increases in morbidity and mortality of patients. Major depressive disorder is a frequent complication of surgery, which may lead to further morbidity and mortality.
In their conclusion they look at a number of causes and found that depression is common and can be a factor in surgical outcome.

Conclusions
The available literature suggests that depression is prevalent in patients before major surgery. Non-alleviated, it may predict increased morbidity and mortality after the operation. It may be associated with greater postoperative pain, higher incidence of postoperative infections, progression of malignant tumors, poor health-related quality of life as well as other complications. Accurate prediction of perioperative risk enables informed consent for patients before surgery, guides clinical decision making in the perioperative period and allows clinical audit. Multiple tools are available, but unfortunately, none of them include major depression among the patient-related factors.
For many trans people they have always been reaching for the brass ring and now that they have it they don’t know what to do next and they go through a minor depression until they reset their goals.

But one thing to remember is that depression and regrets are common for all medical procedures not just for GCS.



From an earlier OBE
Last night I went to a small intimate dinner of 420 called One Big Event, I had to leave early because I was beat! This was the first time out of the house all week except for short forays for groceries and a doctor's appointment because of a cold I have had since Monday.

But as usual it was a very good night. A couple of weeks ago Stana asked if she could join me at the table where I was sitting, so I found out if there was an extra seat available at the table and there was. Then a couple a days before the event a couple of other trans women said that they wanted to go to the OBE. There were a number of other trans women there that I know.

It is expensive, $150 a plate but it is worth because of the work that the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective does not only for the LGBT community but also for the people of Hartford that they serve. They have a dental clinic and do STDs and STIs testing as well as other medical testing, but as Ryan White funding and other grants are drying up, along with the uncertainly over ACA make them more dependent on fundraisers like the OBE.

I also volunteer there two days a week.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Saturday 9: Monster Mash

Saturday 9: Monster Mash (1962)



On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…
Last week I was up on Cape Cod in Provincetown
Also I have been having problems posting comment, I get a message “Publishing” but it doesn’t get posted. Is anyone else having that problems?

Unfamiliar with this week's featured song? Hear it here.

1) In your younger days, did you ever trick or treat while dressed as a monster or ghoul?
I think that I did a monster once wrapping up myself in gauze.

2) Do you enjoy being frightened by celluloid boys-gone-bad, like Michael Myers (Halloween) or Jason (Friday the 13th)? 
Um… wrong generation.
For me it was Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, and Boris Karloff movies.
I like the old movies much more than the new horror movies; the old movies filled you with suspense, they left to your imagination instead of blood and gore.

3) When you were a kid, did you ever TP a neighbor's house or indulge in any other Halloween acts of vandalism? (Don't worry, the statute of limitations is up.)
Nope. We were good little kids… yeah, right.

4) Will you be attending any Halloween parties this year? If so, will you dress up?
I will be hibernating all night.

5) Can you see any Halloween decorations as you answer these 9 questions?
Nope.
But I used to have a neighbor whose son decorated there house to the “nines,” gravestones, gouls, monsters, witches flying around the front yard. I was so glad that they moved, the street was backed up in both directions, hundreds and hundreds of people all over the neighborhood, noisy, trash littered the streets.

6) While Halloween is most popular in the United States and Canada, and isn't really celebrated at all in Japan or South Korea. How would you explain our Halloween customs to a visitor from another land?
Easy… $$$$$ for the candy makers

7) "Monster Mash" is one of Halloween's most played songs. Are you happy to hear it every year? Or does it set your teeth on edge?
I used to own a 45 of it and it drove my brother nuts, he took it away from me and hid it. Hmm… I think I will post it on his Facebook page.

8) This week's featured artist, Bobby "Boris" Pickett, started as a stand-up comedian who incorporated his imitations of Boris Karlof and Bela Lugosi into his act. Can you impersonate anyone?
Naw.

9) Dick Clark was an impossibly young looking 33 in this week's featured clip. Are you often told you look good for your age?
Oh yes, everyone thinks I’m in my fifties; I owe it all to hormones.

Stacy, Zippi, The Gal Herself, and Country Dew I can't post using my Google Account for some reason. I have asked Google forum if there is a problem

Friday, October 27, 2017

We Are Still Winning

Even in today’s climate we are still winning in court cases, this time in state court in the unlikely state of Missouri.
Historic Missouri Ruling Adds LGBT Protections To Sex Discrimination LawA landmark case “simply recognizes the manifold ways sex discrimination manifests itself,” an appeals court ruled.NewNextNow
By Dan Avery
October 26, 2017

A Missouri Court of Appeals ruled this week that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is prohibited under state laws barring sex discrimination.

“If the employer mistreats a male employee because the employer deems the employee insufficiently masculine, it is immaterial whether the male employee is gay or straight,” wrote Judge Anthony in Tuesday’s decision. “The prohibition against sex discrimination extends to all employees, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.”
[…]
The ruling stemmed from a 2014 case in which Harold Lampley, a gay man, claimed he was fired from the Missouri Department of Social Services because he didn’t meet his bosses’ expectation of how a man should behave. (A female coworker also sued, claiming she was retaliated against because she associated with Lampley.)
[…]
The Missouri Commission on Human Rights initially claimed it didn’t have jurisdiction because the discrimination was based on Lampley’s sexual orientation, rather than his sex. But the appeals court disagreed, maintaining the case “simply recognizes the manifold ways sex discrimination manifests itself.”
This is BIG! Because it all stems from a Supreme Court ruling back in the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, from 1989 where the court ruled that sex discrimination also includes sex stereotyping. The idea that sex also includes gender identity and sexual orientation is starting to gain traction in the courts. We have won many cases already but now lesbians and gays are starting to win in court.
Clashes over Title VII protection of sexual orientation make way toward Supreme Court
Washington Times
By Alex Swoyer
August 13, 2017

When the Trump Justice Department last month asserted that civil rights laws don’t protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation, it clashed with another part of the administration — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — which previously claimed that the laws did apply.

Federal appeals judges are also at odds. A Chicago-based court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does cover sexual orientation, while an Atlanta-based court ruled that it was never envisioned as a protected class under the law.

The disagreements make it much more likely that the case will end up at the highest levels.

“I would think it’s a dead certainty to make it to the Supreme Court,” said Richard Epstein, a law professor at New York University. “Conflicts of interest generally get to the Supreme Court if they’re big.”
One thing to remember is that the Republicans an d Trump is packing the courts with ultra conservative judges because they held up president Obama’s court nominees and now they are filling those opennings.

Embolden

Okay, what she did was treason but what she writes about is true, on social media the trolls have become encourage in today’s political climate.
Why I Retweet My Trolls
Chelsea Manning is not intimidated by online harassment, and believes we can all work together so everyone feels the same.
Them
By Chelsea Manning
October 26, 2017

Harassment. It is something we all face. However, with the ubiquity of social networking and social media, it has become far more intense and pervasive. It also has a wider audience, and more far-reaching consequences for victims.

Online harassment is as widespread as it is diverse. Regardless of its form, the objective is the same: to bring down morale and confidence — to “own” you, and to “destroy” you. The target is usually the core of who we are — how we express ourselves, how we connect with friends, or how we even just live, learn, and exist online. As we become more visible, we become more vulnerable.

Targeted posts are as demeaning as they are frightening. They can send victims spiraling towards negativity, even when you’re offline. They can also discourage friends, families, and employers from wanting to associate with you — again, even offline.
She ends up saying,
In the meantime, we need to listen to marginalized people and groups who are targeted online and offline. We need to give power back to the survivors of online harassment. We don’t have to face trolls and online harassment alone. In other words — #WeGotThis.
One of the reasons I moderate my comments is I get trolls and as I call them “TERT” (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Trans) who are trans people who think they are more trans than you are.

One thing that we can’t do is stoop to their level, we have to keep to the high ground and not use vulgar and hateful comments to reply to them but we have to respond to them. We can’t let them go unchallenged. But I just comment once and not get into a flame war because that is what they went us to do. I like her idea of retweeting their comments with their names removed, I have done that in the past to criticize them and point out their hate and bigotry. We can always get in the last word on our blogs.

As a friend says, “If you hear mean, intervene.”

Thursday, October 26, 2017

No Surprises Here

You probably have read that Playboy is featuring a trans woman as their playmate of the month,
Ines Rau is Playboy’s first transgender Playmate
Washington Post
By Ellen McCarthy
October 21, 2017

Ines Rau is Playboy magazine’s first transgender Playmate, appearing in the marquee centerfold spot of the magazine’s November/December issue, which will be available Oct. 31.

The 26-year-old French fashion model first appeared in the magazine’s May 2014 issue in a feature exploring gender identity titled “Evolution.” In an interview published by Playboy last week, Rau said that participating in that spread had changed her life.

“I took that chance, and then I signed with an agency,” she said.

Playboy’s newest Playmate is not the first transgender woman to appear in the magazine. Caroline “Tula” Cossey appeared in a 1981 issue. She had appeared as an extra in the James Bond movie “For Your Eyes Only.” At the time, though, she was not public about her transgender status. She was featured again in 1991 after being outed as transgender.
Well as you can imagine there are some people who are not in favor of a trans playmate, in the Huffington Post they compare the letters to the editor to when they had their first black playmate,
Playboy Claps Back At Transphobia After Announcing First Trans Playmate
Jenna Jameson and others slammed Playboy last week after it announced trans model Ines Rau would be in an upcoming spread.
By James Michael Nichols
October 25, 2017

Playboy responded to backlash against its first transgender Playmate with a series of tweets comparing recent social media reactions to reader letters about its first black Playmate in 1965.

The adult entertainment magazine made history last week when it announced Ines Rau would become the first openly transgender person to be named a Playmate. The move drew criticism from some users on social media, and, perhaps most notably, former porn star and Playboy cover model Jenna Jameson.

“I have a problem with it just like I have a problem with a transgender competing against biological women in sports,” she tweeted Thursday. “I think it’s setting fire to an iconic brand and pandering to this ridiculous PC world we live in.”

Jameson went on to claim that she is not transphobic ― though Twitter activity from the star seems to indicate otherwise.

Playboy responded to the backlash with a series of powerful tweets on Thursday.
[…]





Okay, you think that is bad? Get a load of the comments on the Huffington Post article…
If you enjoy looking at women, and they start publishing pictures of guys...there's other places to look. There is nothing sacred about Playboy, it's just another magazine. Kind of like, back in the day, when a rock radio station went to a country format. You just stop listening, and send them a letter asking to change back. It's between the business and the consumer. No reason to get on the bully pulpet [sic] about it
And he got 7 thumbs up!

Whenever they have a playmate that is not a white cis-female the bigots are going to crawl out of the woodwork and spew their hate.

Well Now We Know

Why we are trans, a British politician knows the real reason why there are more trans people in the world.
Prominent British Ex-Politician Claims Pollution Is Making People Transgender
IFL Science

Another day, another outdated, outmoded, and anachronistic politician saying something ridiculous and offensive. This time it's the turn of former Chairman of the British Conservative Party, Lord Norman Tebbit, who has written in a national newspaper that he thinks pollution is making people transgender.

In a comment piece in The Telegraph, the 86-year-old Peer, who it is worth noting has a pretty detailed record of speaking out against LGBT+ rights, claims that the rise in people identifying as transgender is possibly down to the increase in pollution, and that science backs him up. I fear this might be overkill, but science really doesn’t.

“I think it is time we had some research into the extent of the phenomenon both in time and geographical reach,” wrote Lord Tebbit. “I do not know if the populations of third world or of urban or of rural societies are more or less affected.”
[…]
Predictably, this isn’t the first time that a British politician has come up with some bat-shit explanation for the increase in people identifying as LGBT+. Only earlier this year a Liberal Democrat (yeah, the irony isn’t lost on us either) parliamentary candidate Susan King claimed that “there are a lot of feminising hormones getting into the environment and that has to be taken into consideration; it's affecting people's sexuality, basically.”

In other words, she thinks that the water is making people gay. The idea of gay water has been floating around the internet for some time now, with the ever measured and grounded Alex Jones being one of the theory's biggest champions. Speaking in soft, not at all terrifying tones from his InfoWars studio, Jones has previously raged against the fact that gay water is making men put on short skirts and wear lipstick. Which, I’m sure you don’t really need reminding, is not actually the same thing as being a homosexual.
Let's start the rumor that it is because of plastic bottled water, maybe we can help the environment.

You know we have been around since the beginning of time. Look at ancient Greece there were gays, lesbians, and trans people back then. It wasn’t until modern times that we were forced underground by the Church and politicians. You ever hear of the Mollies and Tommies? Look them up.



I had a cold since I came back from Fantasia Fair and I hope that I am better by Saturday because One Big Event is Saturday night and I bought a new dress for the event.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

The Wrong Way

There are some right ways and some wrong ways to teach trans culture, and this was differently the wrong way.
University Officials Are Looking Into A Professor Who Gave Students A Quiz Called "Female Or Shemale"
Students say the professor also told them, "You don’t want to get too drunk or you’ll go home with the wrong one."
BuzzFeed
By Salvador Hernandez
October 21, 2017

Officials at State University of New York College at Geneseo are looking into one of the school's sociology professors after he allegedly asked students to pick out trans women from a series of pictures in a slide titled "Female or Shemale."

A picture of the presentation, shown to students during an introductory sociology class this week, was shared on social media Friday morning and has since been circulating among students at the university.

Subsequent criticism over the presentation prompted the university's president, Denise A. Battles, to respond, and promise that the school would look into the issue.

"A professor is reported to have presented materials and made comments about which some students have expressed concern," Battles said in a statement Friday evening. "We are taking the matter very seriously and are gathering the facts to determine if and what action is warranted."
Let’s hope that the university does the right thing and disciplines the professor.
"He just said, 'We want you to write whether it's female or she-male,'" Sternberg said. "He never said what the point of the quiz was during the class, but when I addressed him afterward he said it was partly for humor and partly to discuss sexual dimorphism."
So what did he do when the students called him out it?
Stemberg said that she has not yet received a response to the email she sent Sorbello — but that she did receive a class-wide email notifying students that phones, laptops, and photo-taking will now be banned from his class. Sternberg said students were previously allowed to take pictures of the class slides to use as study materials.
We don’t know what point he was trying to make, was he trying to show that trans people are no different from other people? Was he trying to make fun of trans people? Which it seems he was.

If he said “female or trans” and then went on to explain how we are not different from everyone, I know a trans person who did that, they had nine women shown and three were trans. She then talked about the achievements of the trans women, one was Lynn Conway, Amanda Simpson, and the last one I forget who it was. I thought it was done nicely and got the message that she was trying to teach about inclusion.

Also a local LGBT organization used to have a panel “Guess the Gays” where the audience could ask questions but not anything related to sexual orientation. Once again the purpose was to show the audience that we are just like everyone else.

If that was what the professor was trying to show he blew it big time by using derogatory words to describe us, he needs some diversity training, but if he meant to belittle us then he needs to be shown the door. However, judging by the sub-title about getting drunk he needs to be fired.

Regrets

Yeah, so we do have regrets but it is only a couple of percentage points which is a lot less than other medical procedures.
‘Transgender Regret’ Is Rare… But Real
Health Line
By Constance Gustke
October 24, 2017

Some people who change genders at a young age decide they’ve made a mistake and switch back. Experts say parents play a key role in this decision-making process.

Changing genders can be difficult.

There are lots of unseen challenges along the way, especially in battling stigmas.

In fact, some people who do transition to the opposite sex at a young age may end up thinking they’ve made a mistake when they get older.

So they revert back to their original gender.

Some have labeled this reversal “transgender regret.”
[…]
But after transitioning, Cooper felt depressed and angry and tried to kill herself two times.

In the United States, though, gender reversals like Cooper’s are rare, according to experts.

And children who want to transition to another gender usually have checks and balances along the way to guide them, experts add.
The thing to remember is…
However, there are no biological markers for gender dysphoria, said Dr. Wylie Hembree, a retired endocrinologist in New York who helped write the first guidelines for transgender treatment.
So the only thing to go by is us, how we feel and how we express ourselves, it takes a good therapist who guides and doesn’t lead.

The other thing to remember is that it is also the environment, is it hostile? Are the parents supportive? Are they being harassed and bullied at school? Is their religion saying that they are damned and going to hell?
So the best way to transition is having strong community, family, therapist, and even church support, she added.

People can even choose trans-friendly colleges that may offer hormone services.

Supportive parents can also greatly reduce a teen’s risk of suicide, according to research.
[…]
Other tips include connecting a child with resources, supporting self-expression, and celebrating diversity.
So just because they detransition doesn’t mean that they are not trans all it means is that transition is not for them.



Last night I went to LGBTQ+ History Trivia and Dinner at the Simsbury library. The trivia questions came from the book “Queer, There, and Everywhere.”

One of the reasons I went was to see if there were any trans questions and there were.

The team that I was on did miserably, the children from True Colors rocked! But then they read the book and the team that I was on didn’t.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Is It A Boy Or Girl?

That is usually the first question you hear when a baby is born, what do parents say when it is neither?

That is the dilemma new parents face when a baby is born with ambiguous genital. There is tons of pressure against the new born parents to say we don’t know.
How Hospitals Respond When It’s Uncertain If the Newborn Is a Boy or a Girl
In differences of sex development, hospitals vary widely in terms of treatment and guidance ahead of irreversible procedures, a new study shows.
University of Michigan Health Labs
By Beata Mostafavi
October 18, 2017

Mike and Julie were eagerly counting down the days until they’d get to meet their baby girl, Emma. But hours after her birth, their joy turned to worry. Doctors had made a discovery that shocked them: Their newborn daughter had what appeared to be testes.

The next 24 hours were a blur as Emma underwent several tests, and her parents were told that for unexplained reasons, she was born with XY chromosomes.

“They told us ‘you don’t need to raise your baby as male or female. You can be gender neutral for the first year,’” Julie remembers. “It blew our mind. Maybe in a perfect world we could, but this isn’t a perfect world and society doesn’t allow you to raise a nongender child. How could we ever choose a gender for our child? My heart was just broken for her imagining how hard her life would be.”

“At the time, we were just so uneducated about this topic. We felt extremely alone and isolated.”

About 1 in 1,500 babies are born with a disorder, or difference, of sex development (referred to by some outside the medical community as intersex), in which development of the sex chromosomes, gonads or sex anatomy is atypical.
Some hospitals are doing something to help the parents understand about DSD while other hospitals turn to surgery to “correct the mistake.”
In fact, there’s significant difference in how institutions across the country respond to such cases — having a major impact on a family’s experience and decisions about sometimes irreversible procedures, according to a new study led by members of the DSD team at University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

“A family’s experience and potential care for these conditions may be drastically different depending on where their child is born,” says senior author David Sandberg, Ph.D., a pediatric psychologist at Mott. “We found substantial variability across health care institutions in the ways that they organized and delivered care for these patients and families as well as how families were counseled prior to genital or reproductive anatomy surgery.”
Now more and more healthcare providers are saying wait. Wait until the child is old enough to make an informed decision. While other healthcare providers stand there with scalpel in hand saying they know what is best for the baby.

It is time to step away from surgical intervention model to an informed consent model where the patients get to decide what is best for them.

There Are A Million Reasons…

We feel guilty that somehow we caused it.

We are afraid the police won’t believe us.

We are embarrassed or afraid what others will think.

We don’t not want our family or friends to know.

I will be revictimized in court

No one will believe or do anything because I’m trans.
Why I'm Not Staying Silent About Being A Trans Woman Who Was Sexually Assaulted
I stayed silent because so many people believe trans women are "too disgusting" to be assaulted, or that we're sexual predators ourselves. But I'm not staying silent anymore.
BuzzFeed
By Sarah McBride
October 20, 2017

It was right around Halloween in 2012, just six months after I had come out as transgender. While finishing my junior year of college in Washington, DC, I was still getting used to life as a newly out transgender woman. And at the time, I was woefully insecure about how I looked — desperately trying to fit in, and yearning to be viewed as conventionally beautiful.
[…]
Perhaps he sensed my insecurity all along. Perhaps he instinctively understood the power dynamic — the royalty of his cisgender, straight male desires to the peasantry of my newly out transgender womanhood. Whatever it was, it started as consensual. That is, until he tried to escalate things after our friends had gone home, the party had ended, and we found ourselves downstairs alone.
[…]
I stayed silent because I knew that while many survivors are met with disbelief and doubt when they share their stories, trans survivors often also face a different kind of disbelief — one rooted in the perception that trans people are “too disgusting” to be assaulted. Alleged rapists and sexual harassers will sometimes insist that they couldn’t possibly have done what they’ve been accused of because the person accusing them is too unattractive to merit being assaulted. We’ve even heard that defense from our sitting president.
Then all the fears mentioned above starts to kick in…
This is how systems of oppression work: The violence, discrimination, and stigma I face as a woman compounds the violence, discrimination, and stigma I face as a trans person, and vice versa.

But the mere fact that I can safely share all of this now reflects my own privilege. Despite the continued experiences of harassment I face as a woman, as well as the threats I face as a trans advocate, I don’t have to work, live with, or see my abuser. I don’t have to fear his retribution.
For most of us, we don’t have a lifetime of experience to read the signs of danger, we are used to just walking up to the car and unlocking it without checking out our surroundings. We don’t park under a street light. We don’t pick-up the warning signs at a party. We don’t know not to accept drinks from strangers in a bar.

It is not your fault.

It is not your fault.

You did nothing wrong.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Are We Safe?

Not only is the number of trans women murdered have increased this year (currently at 23) but violent attacks are also on the upswing around the world.
Britain Is No Longer Considered A Safe Part Of The World For Trans People To Live In
Huffington Post UK
By Ruth Hunt
October 19, 2017

Britain is no longer considered a safe part of the world for trans people to live in.

We know from recent Stonewall research just how bad things are if you are trying to get on with your life as a trans person in Britain today. In the last twelve months, two in five trans people have experienced a hate crime or incident.

Every day, trans people continue to be mocked, excluded, bullied and attacked, simply for existing.

But now, other countries are openly agreeing that Britain is an unsafe place for trans people.

Last month, a tribunal in New Zealand granted asylum to a trans woman from Britain on the basis that her life would be in danger if she returned here.
Is the media complicit in this up surge in violence?
Many mainstream media voices - from newspaper columnists to social media commentators - seem to have stepped up a gear over recent months in their attempts to make vile transphobia acceptable, questioning the right of trans people to even exist. This isn’t something that is open for debate. And giving the green light to these messages has devastating real-world consequences for trans people.
Meanwhile across the pond in New Jersey…
Man pleads not guilty in transgender pepper-spray attack in Asbury Park
Asbury Park Press
By Kathleen Hopkins and Jean Mikle
Published October 20, 2017

ASBURY PARK – A Scotch Plains man accused of pepper-spraying a transgender person on the eve of an anti-hate rally in the city smiled in court Friday as his attorney pleaded not guilty on his behalf to simple assault and petty disorderly conduct. 

Morris James May, 22, flashed smiles at a news camera throughout the brief proceeding before Muncipal Court Judge Daniel J. DiBenedetto, who set Nov. 30 as a trial date on the charges.

May’s attorney, Mark Gertner, said afterward that neither he nor his client wished to comment.
Now get this! The charges have been reduced,
Butler said the charges had been downgraded from aggravated assault and possession of a weapon, which are both indictable offenses.


Simple assault carries a maximum penalty of 60 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, and petty disorderly conduct carries a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $500 fine, Butler said.
And he claims self-defense!
Karalik alleged  that on the eve of Asbury Park’s anti-hate rally, May and another man were harassing rally volunteers.

Contacted by the Asbury Park Press on Sept. 4, May claimed self-defense.
Get a load of the tee shirt he was wearing,
During the incident, May was wearing a shirt that read, “For those about to MAGA, we salute you,’’ emblazoned with a drawing of Pepe the Frog. MAGA, or Make America Great Again, was President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan.

Their Hate Makes Them Blind

Let’s face it conservatives hate our guts and are willing to go all the way to putting us in concentration camps. The latest is a Georgia legislator who happens to by the wife of the former Secretary of Health and Human Services has proposed locking up HIV/AIDS patients.
Georgia lawmaker, wife of Tom Price, suggests people with HIV could be quarantined
STAT News
By Max Blau
October 20, 2017

ATLANTA — A Georgia state lawmaker — the wife of former Trump health secretary Tom Price — is drawing condemnation for suggesting that people with HIV might be quarantined to curb the spread of the infectious disease.

Republican state Rep. Betty Price, a former anesthesiologist who represents people living in the northern Atlanta area, asked in a hearing this week “what are we legally able to do” to limit the spread of HIV throughout the state.

“I don’t want to say the quarantine word — but I guess I just said it,” Price said to Dr. Pascale Wortley, director of the Georgia Department of Public Health’s HIV epidemiology section. “Is there an ability, since I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxis and treatment of this condition, so we have a public interest in curtailing the spread. … Are there any methods legally that we could do that would curtail the spread?”

Her remarks came Tuesday morning during a Georgia House of Representative study committee meeting about barriers to access to health care in the state, and are captured in video of the hearing. The remarks were first reported by Project Q Atlanta, a local website serving the city’s gay community.
Well besides probably being illegal, immoral, and punitive, it is the worst thing that you can do to stop the spread of AIDS/HIV.

Now, with modern drugs a patient’s viral load can be brought down to levels where they are no longer contagious and drugs like Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) that can lower the chances of infection can be used to control the diseases. Instead the Republican Congress is cutting funding for Ryan White programs and cutting funding for PrEP. They have also done away with funding for Planned Parenthood that runs AIDS/HIV prevention programs.

And now Betty Price is doing a two-step to dodge the outrage she has caused.
Price’s wife on HIV quarantine remark: I was just being ‘provocative’
The Hill
By Brandon Conradis
October 22, 2017

Georgia Rep. Betty Price (R), wife of former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, defended her remark asking if people infected with HIV could be quarantined, insisting she was just being “provocative.”

“I made a provocative and rhetorical comment as part of a free-flowing conversation which has been taken completely out of context,” Price said in a statement published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday. “I do not support a quarantine in this public health challenge and dilemma of undertreated HIV patients.”
Quarantine is the worst possible thing that you can do.

Why?

Well consider that if you think that you might have HIV would you go and be tested, knowing that if you if do have HIV you would be quarantined?

That is what happens if you quarantine patients, they don’t get tested and you have all these undiagnosed HIV positive people infecting other people.

Also in states that are forcing Planned Parenthood out of their states they are seeing a rise in STDs and it is becoming an epidemic in those states. They are also seeing a rise in Cervical and Breast cancers.

The Conservatives with their antiquated moral Puritan values are putting all our lives in danger.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

The Party’s Over… Fantasia Fair Day 6

Well I’m all packed and heading down to the Sage Inn for the brunch and saying goodbyes until next year, then I head back home.

Saturday was a very productive day, all morning I was cottage hunting and I looked at six places, there’re are two that are promising, one a “fixer upper” and right now it is a dump.

Then it was lunch time and I had lunch at Sage Inn, I didn’t realize it was such a long walk and walking all the way back to the Boatslip I was beat so I skipped the keynote today and read until the afternoon workshop which was “Transgender Health: What You Need to Know” and it was giving by Lauren Abern, MD. After the workshop I asked if she would be interested in giving a workshop at our conference.

In the evening there was the “Gala Awards Banquet” where they recognize those individuals who make the Fair special. The food and company was excellent!
I will tell you after a week of walking around Provincetown, I am beat!

If you come to Fantasias Fair you will get your exercise, the meals and the night entertainment are all down in the center of the town while the workshops are all down in the south end of town and up on a small hill. But the end of the fair you will be dragging your ass around.



Anywhere you go you can be harassed even in LGBT friendly Provincetown.

I was walking down to the Gala Awards Banquet and the “Tea Dance” was going on at the motel and the smokers were all standing out in front of the motel on the road. The tea dance caters to mainly gays and to some extent lesbians, well while walking out of the motel I had to walk by the group of men one of them said “That is an ugly woman!” and another reply “That’s no woman that’s a tranny!” and they all started to laughing. I heard some of them make other comments about “trannies.”

So there are always assholes wherever you go, no place is immune.


Saturday, October 21, 2017

Day 5 At Fantasia Fair

The morning started off with my workshop “Effective Lobbying*” and I had only 3 people show up for the presentation, but those three people were there to learn. So we had a very good discussion and covered a lot of material.

At lunch I once again when to Tin Pan Alley and once again we all sat out on the deck. I have to this I think we had the best weather ever!

After lunch I went to the Keynote Address it was a panel discussion about the "State of the (Trans*) Union", on the panel was Rep. Sarah Peake (Representative from the 4th Barnstable District on Cape Cod (it includes Provincetown)), Kimberly Strovink, J.D. (Assistant Attorney General at Massachusetts Attorney General's Office), M. Dru Levasseur (Transgender Rights Project Director for Lambda Legal), Mara Keisling (Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality).

The panel was very informative; one of the things that I learned was that the ballot initiative to repeal the public accommodation law that protects needs to get voted on by 30 percent of the people voting in order for the ballot to count. I asked a question at the end about the so called “religious freedom” law that U.S. Attorney General is pushing and can it override the state non-discrimination law and the said under the current federal law that it cannot be used as a weapon to discriminate. I also commented on what was said about Planned Parenthood treating trans patients, that Connecticut Planned Parenthood have treated patients for over ten years and they also sat on the Anti-Discrimination Coalition and then later the ctEQUALITY meetings for all the trans legislation and has lobbied for the bills since I first started attending the meeting back in 2006.

After the Keynote Address I went back to my room and read. I went out to supper with a friend and had pizza at George’s, she went to the Follies and I wrote this and then read for a while out on the deck listening to the waves roll on shore.

This morning I’m meeting with a real estate agent to look at seasonal cottages that I might want to buy next spring.



*My outline for the workshop...

Effective Lobby Workshop Outline
I. The inside/outside strategy
a. Both the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Saul Alinsky knew the value of the inside/outside strategies.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said,
”The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
In an article in the Huffington Post Peter Dreier wrote,
The insiders, elected officials and lobbyists, see their job as pushing through changes in law that can alter the living conditions, incomes, and access to opportunity and environment of our citizens. Legislating involves the “art of compromise” that requires the skills of brokering deals, negotiating, and forging consensus.
Outsiders — community activists, street protestors and radicals — need different skills. They often view compromise as “selling out” by politicians tied to corporate and elite interests. Activists believe that the influence of campaign contributions, and the trade-offs required by legislative give-and-take, make most elected officials undependable allies.
Both the inside and outside are equal parts in the strategies to bring about change, they are Yin and Yang and my workshop at FF will be on the inside game, lobbying your legislators.

An example of an inside outside strategy?
Trump & Bannon

II. All politics are local
Massachusetts 2018 Ballot initiative
School boards --- GI/GE policies
Public safety officials --- training

III. Motive
Financial
Personal
Emotional

IV. All lobbying is basically the same
You have a fixed amount of time to state your case
It doesn’t matter if you are talking to an elected official in their office, home, or walking down the hallway with them or testifying in a public hearing.

V. Discussion of flyer on Effective Lobbying

VI. Discussion of my testimony

VII. Get in touch with your state trans organization
Talking points --- things to say and things not to say
Letters to the editor
Talking to your elected representatives --- feedback to the state trans organization
Avoid talking to the media

Friday, October 20, 2017

Jibe

No not that type of jiving but rather correlation between numbers. A couple of days ago I wrote about the results of the 2015 Transgender Survey for Connecticut (here and here). If you remember around 20 percent of those responding to the survey from Connecticut said they have been discriminated against on the job, 17% said that with housing and around 30% said that about in public accommodation.

The survey results said that there were 319 respondents from Connecticut, so 20% of them would make 62 people said they were discriminated against; well the numbers are out for the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) cases from the last year (July 1, 2016 - June 30, 2017).
Gender Identity: 7 cases in employment, 1 case in housing, and 3 cases in public accommodation 
Well that is a lot less cases than reported be trans people in the survey, so why the difference?

I don’t think we will ever know all the reasons but I can think of some off the top of my head.

First, when you file a complaint it becomes a matter of public record and I think many trans people shy away from filing a complaint because of that… you will definitely be OUTED!

Next, the trans person could have felt it wasn’t worth the time to file a claim, they just moved on with their lives.

Another reason is that they might have settled the discrimination case another way besides filling a complaint such as arbitration.

It could also be because of the survey, since the survey was a quantitative survey using the Likert scale in some questions while in other questions it was just a simple yes or no. This was an online survey so the answers that were given are based on the respondent interpretation of the questions, and when the question asks yes or no to “Have you ever been harassed in a public accommodation?” the range could be from just being starred at to being yelled at or even thrown out of the building. Therefore, the answers that were given are based on the respondent interpretation of the questions.

So there could be many reasons why the numbers don’t jibe but what I think is important is that filing a CHRO complaint is just a part of the tools we have at our disposal.

Day 4 At The “Fair”

Well yesterday started off with the workshop “Take-aways from Last Weekend’s Fenway Conference on Transgender Health” which was a very good workshop and it wasn’t so much about the Fenway Health conference but rather trans health in general. But one of the topics at the Fenway conference was “Detransitioning and Retransitioning: What We Need To Know” which is a very touchy topic in our community but as the doctor pointed out the numbers of “regrets” are not that bad, less than ten percent which is a lot lower that other medical procedures, she said Gallbladder surgery regrets is around 30%. Also many of trans people who detransitions do so not because they are not trans but rather because of family pressures, or employment problems, or religious pressures, or other socioeconomic reasons and only a very few were because they are not trans.

The weather has been beautiful, you couldn’t ask for better weather so for the second day I sat out on the deck overlooking the bay at Tin Pan Alley for lunch.

After lunch I went to the Keynote Address by Mara Keisling and if you know Mara you know her humor; Q: What government agency doesn’t have a department for their equal employment opportunities oversight? A: The Department of Agriculture, the have the department of EIEIO.

Okay, what she did talk about was that they (the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE)) now have a PAC, a 501 (c) 4.

Then later in the afternoon they had a reception to formally introduce their “Action Fund.

I went out to supper with a friend at the Lobster Pot; we wanted to go up to the “Top of the Pot” but the bar was full so we ate in the downstairs’ restaurant. I had one of my favorite food there Lobster Newburg and I also had my current favorite drink a “Pomegranate Vodka Martini.” I was planning on going to see the movie "A Self-Made Man" but the martini and all the carbs from the lobster Newburg hit me and I didn’t think that make it through the movie and also I had seen it before so I called it a night.

This morning I give my workshop "Effective Lobbying."





Thursday, October 19, 2017

Are We Being Sold A Bill Of Goods*?

I have to wonder about the terms and conditions of the settlement down in North Carolina, the court case challenging the draconian law HB2 are kind of vague.
Settlement proposed in North Carolina transgender bathroom lawsuit
Reuters
By Colleen Jenkins
October 18, 2017


WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - Transgender people would be allowed to use public restrooms in North Carolina that match their gender identity under a settlement agreement filed on Wednesday that aims to resolve the federal lawsuit over the state’s widely criticized bathroom law.

The consent decree proposed by Governor Roy Cooper, the American Civil Liberties Union and transgender people who sued the state would remove some of the law’s harmful effects, civil rights groups said.

The judge in the case must sign off on the proposal before it takes effect.
[…]
The consent decree says that under current state law, transgender people are not prevented from using their preferred public facilities.
This is my thoughts also,
Activists were pleased by both actions but said they would continue to fight for full nondiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the state.

“Nothing can make up for the cruel and senseless attacks transgender people have faced in North Carolina, but I am hopeful that the court will agree to clarify the law so that we can live our lives in less fear,” said Joaquín Carcaño, a transgender man and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Of course the “family” organizations are jumping up and down crying foul.

I am leery of deals like this, will some other court overturn this agreement when a case of discrimination comes before them? I can see the law being used by businesses to discriminate against us, or some law enforcement officer who doesn’t know of or doesn’t care about the court case arresting us for using “the wrong bathroom.” It will be much better to get the law off the books.

*The Phrase Finder
"The phrase 'sell someone a bill of goods' means to intentionally misrepresent something, to make something worthless seem valuable. It dates from the 1920's. I'm not sure what the origin of the phrase is -- perhaps it means selling someone a description of the goods rather than the goods themselves. To 'sell someone a bill of goods' means to put one over on him. Make him believe a bunch of baloney.


Day 3 At Fantasia Fair

I started of the day at lunch, I chose having lunch at Tin Pan Alley where we had a choice of meals and I picked the toasted cheese and tomato soup. The soup was excellent, the toasted cheese left a little to be desired… come on, one thin slice a cheese?

Each day at the fair we have a choice of three places to eat lunch, the Post Office, Tin Pan Alley, and the Crown and Anchor; I believe that I chose the Crown & Anchor for today’s lunch.

After lunch was the keynote address. When I read the bio of the speaker I wasn’t impressed but listening to her talk I was impressed. She talked about her transitioned while working as a firefighter and one of the things that she mentioned was that she was a conservative before she transitioned but after seeing the discrimination not only against us but also against other minorities she became a believer in affirmative action.

After her talk I went to the The Signs of Suicide Amongst the Trans/GNC Community workshop and I picked up some things I didn’t know about but most of it I know from grad school and also other trainings that I attended in the past. The workshop was given by two volunteers from the Trans Lifeline which is a suicide hotline for transgender people.

I skipped the Fashion Show, after seeing it four or five times it becomes “old hat” after a while.

Long Point Lighthouse at Sunset


Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Dismal Results (Part 2)

The Connecticut breakout from the 2015 Transgender Survey has just been published and the results are not good especially since we have laws that are supposed to prevent it.

Another section that they break out the Connecticut results is in healthcare and some of the finds were,

  • In the past year, 20% of respondents did not see a doctor when they needed to because of fear of being mistreated as a transgender person, and 25% did not see a doctor when needed because they could not afford it.
  • 29% of those who saw a health care provider in the past year reported having at least one negative experience related to being transgender. This included being refused treatment, verbally harassed, or physically or sexually assaulted, or having to teach the provider about transgender people in order to get appropriate care.

Where I volunteer two days a week they have a database of friendly LGBT providers, and I get a lot of inquiries about trans friendly healthcare providers. But for me I never had any problems with doctors or other healthcare providers. I have to train one doctor which I didn’t mind doing but he should have learned that in medical school.

  • 22% of respondents experienced a problem in the past year with their insurance related to being transgender, such as being denied coverage for care related to gender transition or being denied coverage for routine care because they were transgender.

That is a major problem and it varies from insurance company to insurance company. One company set up a concierge service for us where they assign a case manager for us if we run into any problems. While other make you jump through hoops and still sticks to the old Standard of Care.

It also seems that it varies from whoever answers your call, two operates can give you two different answers. I know that it can vary on your documentation, some proceeds are covered with no questions asked if your insurance has you listed as female if you are a trans woman while denying it if you are listed as a male on the policy. It depends also on how the doctor codes your treatment, improper code can cause complications and raises questions.

  • 56% of respondents said they would feel uncomfortable asking the police for help if they needed it.

I had to interact with police officers three times. The first was before I transitioned and I presenting as female, the Maine state police officer looked at my documents, looked at me and asked “how would you like to be addressed.” He called my Diana and miss when we talked but all the paperwork had my legal name at the time. Then one time my car was hit by a “hit and run” drive. In the last time I called 911 I thought that a friend was in trouble.

In each of the cases before I dialed 911 I worried how I would be treated.

Lastly they have about changing your legal documents, now this one is a little confusing for me.

  • The cost of changing IDs was one of the main barriers respondents faced, with 41% of those who have not changed their legal name and 37% of those who have not updated the gender on their IDs reporting that it was because they could not afford it.

Since I wasn’t charged for changing my name and gender on my driver license and the Probate Court fee for your name change can be waivered. Neither Social Security nor Medicare had any fees associated with changing your name.

Other findings under document changes were,

  • Only 11% of respondents reported that all of their IDs had the name and gender they preferred, while 71% reported that none of their IDs had the name and gender they preferred.
  • 27% of respondents who have shown an ID with a name or gender that did not match their gender presentation were verbally harassed, denied benefits or service, asked to leave, or assaulted.

Once was asked for my ID when I went into a bar and the bouncer said that they check all IDs but I didn’t observe him asking for anyone else’s IDs and I’m in my late 60s so the only reason I could think of was that he was curious to see what was on it.

Some general thoughts on the breakout data.

First, the study was also quantitative using the Likert scale in some questions while in other questions it was just a simple yes or no. This was an online survey so the answers that were given are based on the respondent interpretation of the questions, so when the question asks yes or no to “Have you ever been harassed in a public accommodation?” the range could be from just being starred at to being yelled at or even thrown out of the building. Therefore, the answers that were given are based on the respondent interpretation of the questions.

Also this was an online survey so then the demographics might be skewed toward white middle-income people and to those who had access to a computer or smartphone.

Day 2 At The “Fair”

As usual I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep so I took a sleeping pill at 3 AM and I woke up again at 8. It was cold overnight so in the morning I did some work on workshop and then went out to lunch and on the way down to the Post Office restaurant I met Dallas Denny and we walked down together to the restaurant.

After lunch I walked around town and I looked at the damage done by the fire at Lopes Square that they had here in the spring. They had it pretty much cleaned up, the building where the fire started is all torn down and the restaurant next to the one where the fire started is all gutted on the inside as they rebuild.

I then when to the keynote address to hear Gwen Smith talk about trans history which I always find interesting. After her talk I bought her book, “Trans/Active: A Biography of Gwendoyn Ann Smith” and then when back to the motel to work more on my workshop.

In the evening I went to go to supper at Bayside Betsy’s and have a bowl of their clam chowder but they were closed! I ended up eating at the Mayflower and their clam chowder on a scale of one to ten was a… maybe a 3.5 compared to an 11 at Bayside Betsy’s. The Mayflower’s clam chowder tasted and looked like it had a lot of corn starch in it and the pieces of clam had the texture of rubber.

As many of you know I am not a night person so I headed back to my room at the motel and did some reading. All around me I could hear sounds of partying from the younger or the younger at heart crowd.

It looks like that many of the regulars didn’t make it this year but FanFair usually picks-ups at the end of the week as many come for the long weekend and not the whole.

Well it is now 6 AM and I’ve been up since 3:30 so I am going to try to catch some more Zs before breakfast here at the motel.

Dismal Results

The Connecticut breakout from the 2015 Transgender Survey has just been published and the results are not good especially since we have laws that are supposed to prevent it.

Some of the finds that I find disturbing are;

  • In the past year, 23% of those who held or applied for a job during that year reported being fired, being denied a promotion, or not being hired for a job they applied for because of their gender identity or expression.
  • 20% of those who had a job in the past year reported other forms of mistreatment based on their gender identity or expression during that year, such as being forced to use a restroom that did not match their gender identity, being told to present in the wrong gender in order to keep their job, or having a boss or coworker share private information about their transgender status with others without their permission.

The survey was done four years after the passage of the non-discrimination law, businesses should have known by then about the law but it seems that many businesses are choosing to ignore the law.

Then in education…

  • 77% of those who were out or perceived as transgender at some point between Kindergarten and Grade 12 (K–12) experienced some form of mistreatment, such as being verbally harassed, prohibited from dressing according to their gender identity, disciplined more harshly, or physically or sexually assaulted because people thought they were transgender.
  • 22% of respondents who were out or perceived as transgender in college or vocational school were verbally, physically, or sexually harassed because of being transgender.

The Commission on Human Rights and Opportunity (CHRO) issued their guidelines in the fall of 2012 and also Connecticut has some of the strongest anti-bullying laws in the nation and they include cyberbullying laws. I know that many towns have been following the law but there still are holdout towns who go with their lose interpretation of the law. Just this summer the Connecticut Department of Education has released their own guidelines that will hopefully wake-up those towns that are not following the law.

In housing,

  • 17% of respondents experienced some form of housing discrimination in the past year, such as being evicted from their home or denied a home or apartment because of being transgender.

I get about 3 or 4 calls a month about housing from trans people, many of them are looking for trans friendly housing and unfortunately I don’t know anyone who has a list like that. 211 operators and homeless shelters have been trained but like any training it is only as good as the person who answers the phone.

Then there is public accommodation and they are just as bad.

  • Respondents reported being denied equal treatment or service, verbally harassed, or physically attacked at many places of public accommodation—places that provide services to the public, like retail stores, hotels, and government offices.
  • Of respondents who visited a place of public accommodation where staff or employees thought or knew they were transgender, 29% experienced at least one type of mistreatment in the past year. This included 12% who were denied equal treatment or service and 20% who were verbally harassed because of being transgender.

Even in LGBT Provincetown we are subject to harassment. I was walking down the street Sunday afternoon four guys started to laugh, swishing their ass and holding their wrist limp as they walked by laughing. Then later a guy walked by a women and a trans woman holding and he stared almost walking in to a parked.

Tomorrow I’ll write about the rest of the survey summary for Connecticut.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Do you trust him?

Do you trust him to prosecute your case?

If you have been following the news you will have heard about a hate crime that the feds are prosecuting in Iowa where a man murdered a transgender high school student last year.
Aiding Transgender Case, Sessions Defies His Image on Civil Rights
New York Times
By Matt Apuzzo
October 15, 2017

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has dispatched an experienced federal hate crimes lawyer to Iowa to help prosecute a man charged with murdering a transgender high school student last year, a highly unusual move that officials said was personally initiated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

In taking the step, Mr. Sessions, a staunch conservative, is sending a signal that he has made a priority of fighting violence against transgender people individually, even as he has rolled back legal protections for them collectively.

The Justice Department rarely assigns its lawyers to serve as local prosecutors, and only in cases in which they can provide expertise in areas that the federal government views as significant. By doing so in this instance, Mr. Sessions put the weight of the government behind a small-city murder case with overtones of gender identity and sexuality.
So this is unusual in two ways, the first in that the Department of Justice is prosecuting the case and the second thing is that they are doing at all because of all the rhetoric that the U.S. Attorney General has made about us not being covered under Title VII and Title IX.
The difference might be because of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate crime law that specifically spells out protection for us.
 “This is just one example of the attorney general’s commitment to enforcing the laws enacted by Congress and to protecting the civil rights of all individuals,” said Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for the Justice Department.
[…]
But he has also brought several hate crime cases, including one against a man accused of burning a mosque. He condemned white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va., far more forcefully than the president. And he has vowed tough action against hate crimes, speaking aggressively in ways that few of his most ardent opponents could have predicted. He has tied enforcement of those crimes to his tough stance against violence, a cornerstone of his policies as attorney general.
But still for me I would be a little leery and wonder how much effort the federal government will put into the case.

And I’m not the only one to think that, in an article in Pink News,
Trump’s Attorney General ‘cynically exploiting’ murder of trans teenBy Nick Duffy
16th October 2017

Trump’s Attorney General has been accused of cynically exploiting a transphobic murder for good PR.

16-year-old Kedarie Johnson was shot to death last year in Iowa.

Jorge “Lumni” Sanders-Galvez was charged with first-degree murder over the shooting, but the state’s hate crime laws do not protect LGBT people, meaning the case could not be treated as a hate crime.

However, Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions has intervened in the case – putting out a release declaring that he would pursue hate crime charges federally.
[…]
Pro-LGBT law firm Lambda Legal accused Sessions of a “cynical publicity stunt” by seeking positive coverage for simply following the precedent set by the Obama administration, at the same time he works to undermine civil rights protections for transgender workers.

Lambda Legal Director of Strategy Sharon McGowan said: “Of course it is important and right that the Department of Justice assist in bringing to justice the murderer of Kedarie/Kandicee Johnson, one of the far too many transgender people, and especially transgender people of color, targeted in the ongoing lethal epidemic of hate violence.

“But it is the height of cynicism for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use this – frankly rare – instance of civil rights enforcement under his tenure to deflect from the current department’s sustained opposition to its historic mission.
Maybe the Attorney General Jeff Sessions sees hate crime differently than discrimination; hopefully that is the case.

FanFair Day 1

The day started off with an Orientation Brunch and I left right after I eat and before the orientation, it is the same talk that they give every year so I wasn’t interested in sticking around for it. Instead I went grocery shopping and bought some stuff to have in my room for the week.

I wanted to attend the keynote address by Nick Adams who is Director of Transgender Media & Representation at GLAAD but life got in the way, I got some type of stomach bug and I didn’t want to get too far away from my room.

In the evening I went to the Virginia Prince Transgender Pioneer Award Banquet where they honored where they will honor Gwen Smith and Martine Rothblatt. Dallas Denny gave the introduction and the award to Gwen Smith and she gave a short speech.

In her introduction Ms. Dallas talked about Ms. Smith’s history as an activists and of her many accomplishments,
Gwendolyn Ann Smith has been an advocate for the transgender community for most of her adult life, with a focus on the trans community on the internet, as well as in honoring those we have lost due to anti-transgender violence. Starting in 1992, she lobbied America Online, getting the company to change its policies and allow discussions on gender issues on their service. This led to the creation of the first public forum on a major online service, the Transgender Community Forum, one year later. This service allowed thousands of transgender people worldwide to connect on a daily basis. With the rise of the World Wide Web, Gwen began to provide web management for many within the community, creating sites for the Southern Comfort Conference, for transgender photographer Loren Cameron and many others, pioneering the early transgender web. She is still involved on transgender internet projects, serving as the managing editor for Genderfork. Her best known work on the Internet, however, is Remembering Our Dead, a project founded in 1998 to chronicle the scourge of anti-transgender murders. Through this project, Gwen founded the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The event, now 18 years old, is honored in hundreds of locations across the country and worldwide. Gwen also writes a column on transgender issues and ideas for the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco, California. Her column, Transmissions, has been running biweekly since 2000. Her essay, “We’re all someone’s freak” is also featured in the book Gender Outlaws, edited by S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein.
According to Wikipedia Martine Rothblatt,
Martine Aliana Rothblatt (born 1954) is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communications satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is the founder and Chairwoman of the Board of United Therapeutics. She was also the CEO of GeoStar and the creator of SiriusXM Satellite Radio
They also had an auction to raise money for their scholarship program and raised over $900 for it.

Today Ms. Smith is giving the keynote talk.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Here’s Gratitude For You

But what do you expect from a religious conservative.
Politician whose life was saved by lesbian police officer to speak at national anti-LGBT convention
Pink News
By Josh Jackman 
5th October 2017

Four months ago, Republican congressman Steve Scalise had his life saved by a heroic lesbian police officer.

Now, the House Majority Whip is set to speak on stage at a virulently homophobic hate group which has questioned if gay people should be executed.

When a shooter opened fire on Republicans who were practising for a charity baseball game in Washington DC, Crystal Griner ran towards the bullets, saving lives in the process.
[…]
Griner carried out her duty to protect Scalise, even though he previously co-sponsored a failed Constitutional Amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage in the United States.
It seems that officer doesn’t care who you are or what you believe, she treats everyone the same. She could have claimed that it was against her religious beliefs to protect someone who’s biased against LGBT people but she didn’t. She saw them as human beings who need protect and she did her job.

The Lockport Union-Sun and Journal wrote about how Rep. Scalise made a speech at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit conference.
Then there's Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, coming up a bit short in the love-thy-neighbor category. After his shooting at a congressional baseball practice stunned the nation, he graciously praised Capitol Police special agent Crystal Griner — a lesbian who is married to a woman — and the other officer who saved his life as "heroes" and "part of our family." But on Friday, Scalise was scheduled to speak at the Family Research Council, which proudly proclaims that "homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed."
The Family Research Council has been named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of their maligning and vilifying us.