Tag: transgender

Jan 29 2011

Steps Forward, Steps Back

The Human Rights Campaign, which has not always been our friend, has announced that it is sponsoring a Back to Work project seeking to empower unemployed and underemployed transgender people by providing them with the tools and skills they need to have a chance in the current job market.

The inaugural event will be in Boston on February 26-27.  Cosponsoring the event are the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (BAGLY), AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts (AAC) and MassEquality.  The event will be hosted by the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts.    

Jan 15 2011

Existing beyond Theory

During the course of a normal week, quite a few articles roll through my email and get stuck in a file somewhere.  Often I write something about them and try to share that as promptly as I can.

Today’s item is a research paper published in the Graduate Journal of Social Science this past December.  I’m not quite so prompt in reviewing this one because of my time in the hospital.  But I have gotten there eventually.

I read the pdfs so you don’t have to.  In this case the article is by Natacha Kennedy and Mark Hellen and is entitled Transgender children: more than a theoretical challenge (pdf).

Jan 08 2011

Medical News

Part of this will be personal, for those who may be interested in that, and part of this will concern some medical news in the transgender arena in general.

First up, my surgery, which was postponed on December 27 due to blizzard, was rescheduled for January 3, and apparently had no complications, since I was allowed to come home yesterday…although I am still on a clear liquid diet and am very hungry.  I have an appointment with the surgeon on Tuesday and will learn more about how things went…as well as possibly upgrading what I can eat.

Possible complications involved not having enough esophagus free to move my stomach back from my thorax into my abdomen, possible infection, and the possibility of developing pneumonia since my stomach has been sharing space with my left lung for over a year.  But I have a breathing “toy” to play with in order to expand my breathing capacity and I seem to be doing okay in that regard.

Dec 18 2010

Homeless for the Holidays

It is becoming that time of year again.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, etc…which, if you have a place to eat and money to purchase food, actually might mean something.  But not all of us are so lucky.

What I am reminded of each year are the times when I myself was homeless…in Seattle and San Francisco and Tuscon and Tyler, TX…and in order to have a holiday meal, had to turn to a mission of some sort, being the only types of homeless shelter available at the time.

But times have changed, a bit.  There are now non-religiously affiliated shelters in many locales.

Not that the religious ones were all that bad…as long as one remembered the main credo:  

You have to listen to the Word if you want to eat the bird.

It is in one of these missions that I finally learned that I could no longer call myself a Christian.  The answers to the questions I put to the preacher were just insufficient for me.

Dec 11 2010

Good News Out of Canada

C-389, the bill to protect Canadian transpeople from discrimination, proceded through another step Wednesday.  The committee report passed the House of Commons with a standing vote of 143-131.  The timetable is to have third reading in March, two hours of debate, and then a final vote.

Holding a report stage vote is “not normal,” but this extra step proved not to be an insurmountable barrier.

The bill adds “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the Canadian Human Rights Act’s list of prohibited grounds for discrimination.

Nov 27 2010

Friday Philosophy: Personal Identity

We are not confused about our gender.  It is other people who have that problem.  They confuse who we are with their image of who we should be.

Would you stand for anyone else doing that to you, for whatever reason?

Transgender people look long and hard into our identities to discover who we truly are.  Self-introspection.  We don’t look between our legs for that.  Human identity is in the mind.

Identity has no material form (Locke:  “Consciousness makes personal identity.”).  Identity does not reside in the chromosomes or genes.  

Nov 20 2010

Remembering Our Dead

The people listed inside have three things in common…and maybe more.  First of all, they are all dead and have died since last November 20.  Secondly, they are all transwomen.  Thirdly, they died as a result of nothing more than intense hatred.  One only needs to survey the causes of death to verify that.  In many cases, the rage that the murderer must have had is evident in the number of stab wounds, the dismemberment or other mutilation evident on the bodies, or the execution that clearly had taken place (please note how many had been shot in the head).

I provide this list, cribbed from this site, not to be a downer…though it sure brings me down…but to honor their lives and the courage it took to live them.

Tomorrow is Transgender Day of Remembrance.  We will not forget.

Oct 16 2010

The State of Our Health

On NCOD, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released the National Transgender Discrimination Survey:  Report on health and health care (warning = pdf:  I read the pdfs so you don’t have to).  Being as how it was during the week and that week was midterm exam time, I just got around to reading it.  I know others have reported on the findings, such as David Mixner, but I would like to share what it looks like through my eyes.

I’m a doctor, but not a medical doctor, but I thought I recalled some words from somewhere:

First, do no harm

Oct 02 2010

Death on the Halfshell

I was reading the comments in a contentious diary last Friday, when I encountered the following.  It took my breath away.

Just stop it. You aren’t convincing anyone or winning anybody over. I believe sexuality is an immutable characteristic like skin color, but if you can hide in a closet to keep from suffering it’s consequences, than the discrimination you suffer is nowhere near Jim Crow if for no other reason than you can’t hide from it.  

—Link

Hide in the closet?  Really?  For a transsexual person, hiding in the closet is tantamount to dying, because what you are counseling is to not transition.  If that were possible, there wouldn’t have been the crisis point which leads to the transitioning.

Sep 28 2010

Transgender Teen Robbed of Homecoming King Title

Sep 21 2010

Australia ends practical ban on transfolk in military

Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston has issued an order ending a policy which, while not explicitly banning transfolk from serving, accomplished doing so in practice.

Houston called for all leaders to

manage ADF transgender personnel with fairness, respect and dignity … and existing medical review provisions; and ensure all personnel are not subjects to unacceptable behaviour

–Link

May 15 2010

Friday Philosophy: ACLU et. al. to Holder: Stop Prison Rape

The ACLU, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, The Transgender Law Center, and Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund have joined in the drafting of a letter (pdf) in support of the national standards for the prevention, detection, response, and monitoring of sexual abuse as recommended (pdf) by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.  Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people are at heightened risk of being abused when in detention, both at the hands of other inmates and at the hands of facility staff.

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