Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal Everywhere In The US

An old man walks, with some trepidation, into an old house.

It's dark, there's lots of dust and the floors creak with each step he takes.  But he' not really worried (or so he tells himself) until he hears:

Boooo.... I am the spi-rit...of same-sex marriage...Woooo!

The old man screams:  Oh, no!  There goes the threat to our democracy.

Now, of course, neither that house nor that ghost exists---except, of course, in the fantasies of that old man.

And who is that old man?, you ask.

Why, he's none other than our good friend Antonin Scalia.

Yes, that Antonin Scalia.  The one who's been on the Supreme Court for nearly three decades.  

Now, to be fair, he didn't specifically say that same-sex marriage is the threat.  Rather, he blasted the Supreme Court--or, more specifically, five members of it. In calling them the threat to democracy, he probably came as close as he could to saying that he's against same-sex marriage without saying it.  He's like all of those people who say "states' rights" as a code phrase for their opposition to laws protecting racial equality.

Those five judges--Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the opinion), Stephen Beyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan--marriage is a right of all same-sex couples, regardless of where in the United States they live.  The other four judges--Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas--each wrote their own dissenting opinions.

From the tone of this, you can tell that I'm pleased with the ruling. However, I still don't believe that granting same-sex marriage rights is the best solution.  I believe that, ideally, governments should have nothing at all to do with marriage other than to set a minimum age.  I also don't believe that religious institutions should be vested with the power of marriage.  If people want to have ceremonies in their houses of worship or prayer or whatever, that is fine.  But such a ceremony shouldn't legalize a person's union.  I'm no Constitutional lawyer or scholar, but it seems to me that the situation I've described--i.e., the one we have--conflicts with the Constitutional separation of church and state. Today's ruling does nothing to change that.

Still, though, today's decision is better than second-class citizenship, which is what too many same-sex couples now have.
 
 

Why Did She Heckle The President?

It's all but impossible to determine how many transgender people there are.   For one thing, definitions of "transgender" vary:  Some would count cross-dressers; others would include only those who have had gender reassignment surgery.  For another, not all trans people self-identify, or are readily self-identifiable.

Interestingly, the easiest setting in which to count the number of trans people is detention centers for illegal or undocumented immigrants.  Trans people, more often than not, flee their native countries because they are transgender and will say as much on applications for documentation--or simply for release from prison.


According to one report, about one out of every 500 detained immigrants is transgender. Yet one out of every 5 cases of sexual abuse in such facilities is committed against transgender detainees. 

Those numbers are a reflection of what Jennicet Guiterrez had in mind when she heckled President Obama at a White House reception for LGBT pride month.

"I saw the President come in speaking about gay pride and the progress that's been made," says Guiterrez.  The activist at Familia TQLM, an organization that serves LGBTQ Latino/as says she's spoken to "trans women who were released from detention centers" and told about "the abuse and torture they're facing in detention."  Hearing their stories, she said, made her want to give them a voice.

Secret Service police escorted her out of the reception but didn't arrest her.    And Obama's self-congratulation--whoops, I mean celebration--continued.
 

Being A Trans Girl Is Like...

When Will Trans People Live Cisgender Lives?

I was rather pleasantly surprised by this article in the New York Post. Its author, Eric Hegedus, seems pleased that more trans actors are appearing in films and television series.  On the other hand, he points out that there is a danger of trans actors being typecast if they are called upon to play nothing but trans characters. 

To me, an actor is someone who can step into a role, even one completely different from his or her own experience.  Of course, by that definition, there aren't many true actors.  But the day is coming, I think, when we'll see just how good some trans actors are when they play cisgender characters.

I had to laugh, though, at the title of the article:  "When will we start seeing transgender actors in non-transgender roles?"  Fact is, it's happened, at least once.  And the trans actress I'm thinking of played a cis woman all the way back in 1981.

Back in my previous life, I would sometimes go to the movies with my father and brothers (My mother has never been much of a movie-goer!) and, later, with male buddies or co-workers.  Some of the most popular "guys' night out" movies (I almost typed "films") are the James Bond flicks. I think the last one I saw was For Your Eyes Only.

And, yes, that was the one that featured the trans actress:  Caroline "Tula" Cossey, who played the obligatory "Bond Girl" in the movie.  To promote the movie, she also posed for Playboy magazine.  She was probably the first trans woman to do that as well, although nobody--at least, nobody in the general public--knew about her identity at that time.

However, a year later, News Of The World, a British tabloid, "outed" her.  For the next decade, she fought for transgender acceptance and worked to educate people.  In 1991, she approached the editors of Playboy, who did another pictorial of her. 


Now 60 years old, she lives in the Atlanta area with her husband.  She says she is happy that there is more acceptance for trans people, though she was still shocked when Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn before the eyes of the world.   Ms. Cossey empathises with Caitlyn's pain and suffering, so she knows just how difficult the road ahead could be for Caitlyn, in spite (or perhaps because) of her fame and fortune.  

Even with such changes, and with the love and support she's received, "Tula" says doesn't know whether she'll ever "stop feeling like a second-class citizen".

Unfortunately, even her looks and talent aren't a shield against internalizing the hate and meanness that was directed at her.  So,  I believe, the question shouldn't be about when we will see trans actors play cis parts.  Instead, we should find when people who just happen to be a little different from what society deems "normal" will be able to  grow up and live without bullying, shame, discrimination and the threat of death for simply being who they are.

(Aside:  Angelina Jolie was offered a role as a "Bond Girl" in Casino Royale.  She turned it down.  "I'd rather be Bond," she said.  Now that, I would pay to see!) 

Is She Better Just Because She's One Of Us?

The second-most powerful Democrat in the House of Representatives is a staunch advocate of LGBT rights.  You are LGBT, and you live in his district.  

Chances are that you voted for him.  And you probably will vote for him when he runs again.

Unless...

As it happens, someone is running against him in the Democratic primary.  As the district is heavily Democratic, the winner of that primary would probably win the Congressional seat.  But the incumbent is extremely popular, so the odds of his losing the seat, let alone the primary, seem very long.

Unless...

The person running against him in the primary is a former Navy SEAL who was deployed 13 times.  This candidate hasn't made LGBT issues a campaign priority and, while supporting same-sex marriage, believes it and other issues should be "left up to the states" and not subject to the broad Federal regulations the incumbent favors.  Such a stance does not endear the challenger to the LGBT community and may make the incumbent's re-election all thoe more likely.

Unless...

All right.  I'll tell you about that challenger.  Kristin (nee Christopher) Beck transitioned from male to female two years ago, after retiring from the Navy.  She's talked about staring down Taliban warlords and knocking down doors to capture insurgents only to, after coming home, get beat up outside a bar for wearing a dress.  

Of course, her candidacy begs the question of whether we should replace a proven ally of our community with someone who just happens to be a member of the community.  

That's a bit like asking whether a Ben Carson presidency would be better for African-Americans than Lyndon Johnson's was.  Actually, that comparison might be a bit extreme, but it's still doubtful that Kristin Beck would be better on LGBT (or even just trans) issues than Hoyer has been.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day!

I offer this wish, not only to those of you who are male parents in the traditional sense, but also to any of you who have taught your child, or any young person, an important life lesson or skill.

And I offer it especially to all of you trans women who helped to raise children while you were still living as men.  You also were husbands (or partners) to the biological or adoptive mothers of your children.  I commend you for all of the strength you have in holding yourselves, your marriages and your families together.  Now I hope that you can enjoy loving, supportive relationships with the people you married and the ones you helped to bring into this world.

If you no longer have relationships with those people, I hope you will find others that will give you and share the love you deserve.  

Happy Father's Day to all!

"Tolerance" Of Transgender People Caused The Charleston Church Massacre: Erick Erickson

It seems that any time there's a manmade tragedy or natural disaster, we are somehow blamed for it.

By "we" I mean LGBT people.  Usually, the blamers use "gay" as a catch-all term to include anyone who doesn't conform to accepted norms of gender and sexuality.  It's actually relatively rare that one group in the spectrum--e.g., gay men, lesbians or transgenders--are specifically indicted for one of the world's evils. 

Well, this time is one of those relative rarities.  Transgender people are being blamed for something terrible.  Actually, we're not being blamed for the tragedy itself; rather, someone is attributing it to acceptance of transgender people.

Yes, you read that right.  The mere fact that because of society's acceptance of trans people--or, more specifically, Caitlyn Jenner--people don't know what's right anymore.

Erick Erickson, the founder and editor of the blog Red Neck, I mean, RedState, had this to say on his radio show:

“We can’t have the conversations we need to have in this country about mental health and evil. We cannot have those conversations. It is impossible to have conversations like that in a society that can look at a 65-year-old male Olympian and say ‘Hey, he’s a girl now. We have to start calling him Caitlyn.’”

Now, if you read yesterday's post, you might have guessed that he was blaming the fact that "we cannot have those conversations" for the massacre of nine members of a Bible study group in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, South Carolina. 

OK...Calling Caitlyn Jenner who she is caused Dylann Roof to sit with those churchgoers--all of them African-Americans--and blow them away.  To be fair, Mr. Erickson is not a scientist or clinician, so perhaps he can be forgiven for some gaps in my knowledge.  And I'll admit that at times, my logic has been even faultier than his.

But I try not to repeat my mistakes.  Apparently, Mr. Erickson makes no such effort--or, again to be fair, he may have been unaware of his error.  Or he must have a very, very wide mouth that's impervious to pain:  He put his foot in it again when he repeated his sentiments in a post he wrote on his RedState:


"As a nation, when these things happen, we never have the conversation about real evil. We also never have the conversation about mental health.

...
Instead, we descend into partisan conversations where everything is political and neither side can concede or acknowledge the other's points. Everyone and everything gets blamed while ignoring the actual person who killed.
...
A society that looks at a 65 year old male Olympian and, with a straight face, declares him a her and "a new normal" cannot have a conversation about mental health or evil because that society no longer distinguishes normal from crazy and evil from good. Our American society has a mental illness -- overwhelming narcissism and delusion -- and so cannot recognize what crazy or evil looks like." 

So let me get this straight (pun intended):  It's tolerance that caused a young white man to kill nine African Americans because he believed that the races should be separate and black men "rape our women".  Hmm...I guess the word tolerance doesn't mean what I've always thought it meant.  If anything, I thought tolerance was more descriptive of those nine people who let him join them in their Bible study group before he killed them.

But, hey, what do I know?

Massacre In South Carolina: The Confederate Flag Still Flies

Today I’m not going to stick to the topic of this blog.  Instead, I want to talk about something that, I’m sure, you’ve heard about by now:  the massacre inside the Emanuel AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina .

One of the cruelest ironies is that members of a Bible study group—including the church's pastor, who also happens to be a  South Carolina State senator—in one of America’s oldest historically black churches were gunned down by a young white man who sat with them on the eve of Juneteenth— a few days after the 800^th anniversary of King John issuing Magna Carta.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

A century and a half after slaves in South Carolina and Texas and other states got word that they were free men and women, a young man hadn’t gotten the message that the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees all citizens, regardless of their skin color, the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights).  Heck, he didn’t even get the message thatthere’s no such country as Rhodesia anymore.  He was simply acting from the same sort of ignorance, the same sort of hate, that left earlier generations of young African Americans hanging from trees or at the bottoms of rivers.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

More than a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, in the state in which the opening shot of the US Civil War was fired, a young man entered a Bible Study group and waited for the “right” moment to shoot someone nearly as young as he is, people old enough to be his parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents.  He shattered the peace and sanctity they found in what, for many generations of African-Americans—and, perhaps, for those members of the Bible Study group—has been their closest-knit, if not their only, sanctuary.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitiol.   

From the church's website.

A pastor was killed along with a deacon and laypeople.  Families lost sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers; friends lost friends and people lost spouses and other loved ones.  They loved and were loved; they raised families and were raised by families.  And they contributed to the lives of their communities through their professional and volunteer work, and the loves and interests they shared with those around them.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

Dylann Storm Roof, in an instant, ended the lives of Rev. (and Sen.) Clementa Pickney, Mira Thompson, Daniel Simmons Sr., Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, De Payne Middleton, Ethel Lance and her cousin Susie Jackson. All of them, one hundred and fifty years after Juneteenth.

And a Confederate flag in front of the State Capitol hasn't even been loweredto half-mast.

The High Cost Of Marriage Inequality

Even though same-sex marriage is legal in the vast majority of US States, in most of those states, there are groups and individuals who are trying to have bans against same-sex marriage reinstated.  I hope they don't succeed, but we can't assume that they won't.

That's why it's still relevant to talk about how unfair bans against same-sex marriage are.  What most people don't realize is the economic injustice of marriage inequality:

The Double Bind

This morning, before going for a bike ride, I went to the store.  Along the way, I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in a while.  She recently completed her Master of Fine Arts degree.  For her thesis, she made multi-media collages that celebrated women’s sexuality.  While she was working on it and taking her classes, she had a job in the same institution where she earned her degree.

She talked about the shame and guilt she had to overcome to do her creative work.  It occurred to me then that women still have to get past the notions that we are tainted and damned simply because we are women and have sexual desires, whatever they may be.  And people denounce us whether or not we express who we are.  Those who tell us that we’re being too conservative or dowdy are the first ones to condemn us for wearing anything that even hints at our sexuality, and those who denounce us for being “too sexy” are the ones who complain that we’re “too boring” when we “tone it down.”

I’m thinking now about Segolene Royal, who lost the French Presidential election to Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.  She’s been voted “the best-dressed politician in Europe and, while not provocative, does not play down her physical attractiveness.  In response to those who criticized her for that, she’s said, “Who says politicians have to be ugly and boring?”

It occurs to me now that this is one of the dilemmas trans people face all the time.  Those of us who identify as women experience everything I’ve just described and, because we have lived as males, we are probably even less prepared for it than people who’ve lived their entire lives as female.  It even happens to someone like Caitlyn Jenner:  There has been the sort of praise and damnation we’ve come to expect, from the people we’ve come to expect.  But there are also people who’ve criticized her for being too glamorous or, as one female celebrity said only half in jest, “Who does she think she is, looking better than I look?”

Now I realize that this bind women, and trans people in particular, face is one of the things that exacerbated the plight of the Lost Generation of Transgenders to which I’ve alluded in other posts. After gaining some visibility—and even a little support—during the 1960’s and 1970’s, trans people were rendered visible, at best, and vilified, at worst.  As I’ve mentioned,  the more extreme aspects of Second-Wave Feminism—sparked by Janice Raymond’s Transsexual Empire and by other writers, scholars and activists like Mary Daly and Germaine Greer—helped to undo the small gains we made during the previous two decades. 

During the time when we—all right, I’ll say it—were moving with the moment of the nascent Gay Rights movement—trans people were taught to efface all signs of the gender they were assigned at birth and to, in essence, re-invent their pasts.  In brief, we got by (to the degree we did) through induced amnesia and denial.  That, of course, was not a healthy way to live, but it was better than simply being denied and negated altogether.

However, around the same time as Raymond, Daly and their ilk were saying that we were simply men who wanted to take jobs in Women’s Studies departments, there was a “conservative backlash” against whatever gains women, including trans women, made.  Ronald Reagan had been elected; while he is by no means the only cause of the backlash, he at the very least galvanized it.  Although women were becoming lawyers, professors and corporate executives, they were always “under the microscope”:  criticized when they tried to look professional and vilified when they tried to express any kind of personal style.  This actually dovetailed very neatly with Second Wave feminism:  Phyllis Schlafly and Germaine Greer were both saying that womanhood existed only within a very rigid set of boundaries.  What neither Schlafly’s Evangelical Christian conservatives nor Germaine Greer and the Second Wavers never acknowledged, however—or perhaps didn’t realize—is that they were defining womanhood in terms that were set by men long before they or their mothers or grandmothers were born.

The few (at least in comparison to the numbers who came before and after) trans people who decided to live as the people they are during that time were therefore doubly damned.  In addition, the Gay Rights movement focused its attention on the newly-developing HIV/AIDS pandemic—as they should have.  As most of those afflicted at the time were men, HIV/AIDS activism—and, with it, the gay rights movement—became  almost wholly male-centered.  Even lesbians had to subsume their interests and needs; there was almost no room, it seemed, for trans women to simply exist, let alone define ourselves, as a group and individually, and flourish. 

Thus, I think it will be some time before trans women—and women generally—will be able simply to express who we are, sexually and otherwise, and reap the fruits of our labor and talents.  In the meantime, we’re going to be damned—by some people, anyway—whether are or aren’t, can or can’t, will or won’t, do or don’t.

Does A Good Papacy Get Better With Age?

Just when we all thought Pope Francis I was going to pull the church, if a millimeter at a time, away from its homophobia, he tells a crowd this:

"Parenthood is based on the diversity of being, as indicated by the Bible, male and female. This is the 'first' and more fundamental difference, constitutive of the human being."

He added:

"Children mature seeing mom and dad's...receporicity and complementarity."

OK...We've heard this sort of thing before. But, being the good Jesuit that he is, he has to come up with a good, logical explanation:  A good marriage, he said, is "like fine wine, in which the husband and wife make the most of their gender differences."

Hmm...I know I'm no oenologist.  So perhaps I can be forgiven for not realizing that wine-making had anything to do with gender differences.  Could those tastes be a result of the interplay between female and male grapes?

He made these remarks in an address the day after Rome's Gay Pride Festival, and a few days after Italy's lower house of parliament passed a motion in support of same-sex civil unions, promising to take up the issue.





 

Karis Ann Ross: Bullying, A Sucide And A Cover-Up

Ever since Bruce Jenner "came out" as transgender in an interview with Diane Sawyer and introduced herself to the world as Caitlyn in Vanity Fair, many people have lauded her for "having the courage to be who she is".  Some commentators have been touting this time as a "new day" for trans people.  Indeed, they may be right.

However, I know from experience that once you've been praised for living as the person you are, there are people--sometimes the very same ones who praised you--who are looking to use your transition against you, or simply hold you to standards to which they would hold no one else.  And then there are those who are pure-and-simple bigots, or merely ignorant, and don't change.

Worst of all, the bullying doesn't end. Or, if you hadn't experienced it before, it will start.  A lot of people still associate bullying with kids in a schoolyard, but supposedly-educated adults can be just as vicious, perhaps even more so, to colleagues and neighbors.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an expiration date on hate:  I recall the time an African-American firefighter found a noose near his equipment in the Brooklyn firehouse where he was based.  And that was nearly a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation.  

Karis Ann Ross would have been 38 years old last Sunday.  She didn't reach that mark because she killed herself over the most recent Thanksgiving weekend.  Her mother has just gone public with the contents of a note Ms. Ross left, in which she named people--in particular, three aides who worked with her--who bullied the lead special education teacher in the Milwaukee German Immersion School.

All told, the bullying went on for more than a decade.  Ms. Ross and her mother, Jill Greinke, as well as other family members and friends, complained to Milwaukee Public Schools officials about the treatment she endured.  According to Ms. Greinke, those complaints were ignored, even when Ms. Ross and members of the medical community sent numerous e-mails to school officials, warning of a crisis.  The school prinicpal downplayed the situation rather than intervening in, or mediating, the conflict.

Worse, Milwaukee Public Schools made no attempt to contact her family for two weeks. The principal sent flowers and a card, but made no announcement to the school's faculty or staff. Instead, they learned of Ms. Ross's suicide from her uncle when he came to collect her belongings.

Ross's mother co-wrote an open letter to the schools superintendent with her friend, Madeleine Dietrich.  They expressed hope  the superintendent "will move forward with a renewed awareness of the grave responsibilities held by public schools in our society, not only in teaching our students, but in setting an example for our population through modeling tolerance for individual diversity and empathy for the plight of our neighbors".  

And Ms. Ross ended her suicide note with, "Love to everyone, even the rotten apples." 

 

Not Lost, Only Moved

In previous posts on my other blog, I've said that I've never regretted going on a bike ride.  I've also said that I never felt worse after a ride than I did when I started it.  Oh, I've felt tired, in pain and had other physical maladies. But they all healed, probably because riding my bike relieves me, at least for a time, of mental and emotional stresses.

Although I've never wished I hadn't gone on a ride or felt less happy than I was before I took the ride, that's not to say that I don't experience things that make me sad.  I've gone to favorite cafes, bookstores and even bike shops, only to find they'd closed. I've also ridden to some place or another only to find that a lovely, or simply tranquil, piece of land has been turned into a shopping mall or tract housing, or that some other place has been changed beyond recognition.

Of course, some changes--like the closure of a deli or restaurant--are inevitable.  Actually, in the grand scheme of things, change is the only thing you can count on.  As Lao Tsu wrote, "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.  Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow."

Well, while riding late this afternoon, I saw a change that I simply can't resist.  It's something that's been done, and there's no turning back.  So, according to Lao, I won't create sorrow.  But I'm feeling some now.

That change involves something that was as important to my childhood as the places in which we lived.  I was pedaling up and down residential streets in Queens and Brooklyn, in and out of neighborhoods where hipsters and Hasidim and Hispanics--and people with all sorts of other identities--live.  I skirted the edges of the neighborhoods--Borough Park and Bensonhurst--in which I grew up.  I found myself on Ditmas Avenue, at East Fourth Street, where I saw this:

If you've been in that part of Brooklyn, you might think it looks like any number of catering or event halls.  As a matter of fact, that's what that building was--before I entered it.  Long before I entered it, in fact.  

By the time my family moved to Dahill Road, about half a dozen blocks away, that building had become a place where I would spend almost as much time as I spent in the house or in school.  In fact, during the summer, I would spend hours there that, during the rest of the year, I would have passed in school.

It was the Kensington Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.  Everyone knew how much I loved to read, but in my family (immediate and extended) there weren't many books nor much money for them.  (Also, I think that the strains of blue-collar jobs and child-rearing didn't leave my parents, or other adults in our circle, with much energy for reading, to themselves or with kids.)  But that library, it seemed, had an endless supply.  And the librarians were happy to see a kid whose reading didn't consist only of school assignments.

Plus, going to the library was one thing neither my mother nor anyone else questioned.  If I wanted to go anywhere else, I had to say what I planned to do there, who would be there and who would go with me.  When I went to the library, she said only, "Just be home for supper."

Usually, I would take a few books--story or poetry collections, histories or books about exotic and faraway places--and browse them at one of the tables.  Most days, I succeeded in getting a seat at the table by the center window:

Now, from that window, one could see only up and down Ditmas Avenue, East Fourth Street and a few nearby streets--and over the rows of houses.  But I could see far enough that all of those things eventually faded into a scrim of cirrus clouds, a wall of rain or a vista of twilight.  The world opened out in front of that window, just as world opened with the books I took from the shelves of the Kensington Branch.

Seeing it closed, I feared the worst, since the library budget seems not to have increased since the days when I was using that branch.  But, in riding along, I found out that the Kensington Branch had merely moved to another location, about the same distance--though in another direction--from the house in which I lived.  In other words, I could have walked there just as easily.  And my mother probably would have told me just to remember to be home in time for supper.

A New Thai Uniform Policy

We in the US often forget that students--even at the university level--all over the world still wear uniforms.  

I wore a uniform to Catholic School. That was more years ago than I care to admit.  Some Catholic schools still require them, and there are some public and charter schools that have adopted them. But, for the most part, American students can wear whatever they want to school.

That is, as long as what they're wearing conforms to the accepted gender norms of their community.  Speaking of which:  While some parents say that uniforms are a "leveler" (If all kids are wearing the same outfit, none is "cooler" than the others), they also are a way of enforcing accepted gender norms.  Typically, males wear black (or other dark-colored) trousers and a white shirt with a plaid tie in the school's colors, while females wear a  skirt in that plaid with a white blouse.


In very few countries are transgenders more visible than they are in Thailand.  But even in the country that does more sex-reassignment surgeries than any other and whose Miss Tiffany transgender beauty contest is a national event, students are expected to wear the uniform that conforms to the gender on their national ID cards, which is all but impossible to change, even after transition and surgery.

Also, trans females are still referred to as "ladyboys" and trans males as "tomboys", which represents a different view from those in the West regarding transgenderism, not to mention an underlying male bias.

So it is significant that Bangkok university has changed its uniform policy to accommodate trans students.

A "ladyboy" can wear either of the uniforms shown above.  On the left is the female uniform; on the right is a modified male uniform with the trousers cut tighter than the ones males wear.

A "tomboy" can wear the modified female uniform shown on the right or a male uniform with the trousers cut a little looser than the ones biological males wear.

Hmm...Do you think Catholic schools will follow suit (pun intended)?  Prep schools?
 

The Third Law In The Third World

In previous posts, I've said that something like a corollary of Newton's Third Law of Motion seems to operate in the realm of transgender acceptance and equality.

Briefly, Newton's Third Law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  We see a parallel to it whenever some jurisdiction passes a law to protect us from discrimination or every time there's some favorable image of one of us in the media:  The bigots double down their ignorance, hatred  and violence against us.  

Backwater preachers and Neanderthal politicians (and others) come up with ever-more ridiculous ways of rationalizing their bigotry.  And, unfortunately, the level of violence against us is ramped up:  The beatings, stabbings and shootings become more frequent and gruesome. 

It also seems that as acceptance of us grows in secular Western societies--as seems to have happened in the wake of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn--conservative societies become even more repressive and brutal.  Such is the case in Egypt where, according to at least one report, trans people (especially women) have been targeted.  During the past year, 150 trans women have been arrested in Cairo alone.

Now, while Egypt is a predominantly Muslim country, it's not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Still, the old ideas about gender and sexuality prevail:  It's very difficult to change one's name, let alone gender, on official documentation, and many Egyptians continue to see trans women as gay men who have rejected their masculinity.

One result of their difficulty in getting IDs that reflect their true identity is that trans people have a hard time getting jobs.  To be fair, it's difficult for anyone to get a job in Egypt right now, but being trans only exacerbates that problem.  So--you guessed it--many trans people turn to sex work in order to survive.  That further stigmatizes them, in both legal and social senses, as Egypt's laws (like the laws in most places) criminalize the sex worker rather than his or her client and sex workers are seen as people "nobody will miss" if they're killed or disappeared.

So, as I've said earlier, it's great that more people are accepting us as we are.  But that also means we must be careful, as those who don't accept us will become more adamant in their hatred.

The AMA Says There's No Reason To Keep Trans People Out Of Uniform

The American Medical Association isn't usually seen as a paragon of progressivisim, let alone a left-wing hotbed.  

So it's particularly noteworthy when they make pronouncements like this:  

RESOLVED. That our American Medical Association affirm that there is no medically valid reason to exclude transgender issues from service in the US Military

Wait--there's more:

and be it further RESOLVED. That our AMA affirm that transgender service members be provided care as determined by patient and physician according to the same medical standards that apply to non-transgender persons. 

That statement came at the end of a resolution drafted at their annual meeting in Chicago this past weekend.  There, four former US Surgeon Generals--Drs. Joycelyn Elders, David Satcher, Regina Benjamin and Kenneth Moritsugo--issued a statement urging the AMA to take a stand.    

The resolution stating that there's no medically valid reason to exclude transgenders from military service was unanimously approved by the AMA's policy-making House of Delegates.

As I've said in earlier posts, the bigots, haters and other ignorant people are running out of excuses!  

Bruce To Caitlyn, In Pictures

Since I don't want to steal Caitlyn Jenner's thunder (as if I could), I won't say much today.  Instead, I'll direct you to a really good article that includes a slideshow documenting her transformation from Bruce over nearly four decades.  Just click here.
 
 

It Isn't Really Rape If Your Son Does It

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address warned us about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex".

John F. Kennedy offered this challenge:  "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

And what memorable oratory did Bill Clinton leave for us?   "I did not have sex with that woman!"  Or, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

It seems that Jim Bob Duggar is taking lessons on semantics from our forty-second President.  That is ironic, in a way, because about the only thing he seems to have in common with Clinton is Arkansas roots. 

But it seems that for a self-professed Christian, he's doing everything he can to emulate Bill from Hope's respect for the truth.  Now, I can't fault him for defending his son:  Most parents would do the same for their kids, even after those kids have done the most unspeakable things.  Still, I have a hard time hearing a defense, whoever may make it, of someone who takes advantage of someone else sexually.

He says that when his son Josh molested his sisters, who were adopted, "it was nothing like rape."  Rather, he insists it was "just inappropriate touching over the clothes" while the girls "were sleeping".  According to Duggar the Elder, the girls weren't even aware of what he had done.  In contrast, the police reports state that at least one of the girls woke up during the incident.

Now, almost anyone would agree that touching a child's private areas--whether or not there is clothing or anything else between the toucher's hand and the child's privates--constitutes sexual molestation.  In fact, most people--including most clinicians--would agree that it's molestation if the person, of whatever age, being touched can't or doesn't consent.

And, whatever we might say about the State of Arkansas, it defines sexual molestation  as rape. 

As  a transgender woman and someone who survived childhood sexual molestation and sexual assault as a young adult, I find Jim Bob Duggar's dissembling particularly offensive.  You see, he and his wife have been propagating the lie that all transgenders are pedophiles as part of their campaign against transgender equality.

I wonder how they define "transgender" and "pedophilia".

What Caitlyn Has Clarified

Caitlyn Jenner's "coming out" has been good for us (trans people) as well as the general public in all sorts of ways. 

Not the least of those ways is that many people are realizing, for the first time, that gender identity is completely separate from sexual orientation.

Infographic by Heather Walter, inspired by information from Sam Killermann's blog.

Defending Wendy Williams, Sort Of

Today I am going to do something I never imagined I would do:  I am going to defend Wendy Williams.  Sort of.

All of the fans of hers I've met are--how can I put this?--the sorts of straight men who think that anything with 42DD cups can do no wrong.  All right, I don't know WW's bra size, but you get the idea.

The few times I've ever seen her show--which were purely by chance--she struck me as vulgar, obnoxious and ignorant.  And that's when she wasn't making transphobic or homophobic comments. 

Lest you think I am not being fair to her, I will now disabuse you of that notion--at least somewhat.  I don't know exactly what she said about Caitlyn Jenner and, honestly, don't care to know.  But after the Vanity Fair photo of Caitlyn appeared all over the Internet even before the issue of the magazine saw the light of day, someone used it to treat WW in a way nobody deserves:


I am Walter.  Now, if she were "coming out" as a man--as she has been rumored to be--why would she wear that dress?  Why would she wear her hair that way?  I don't think she's an attractive woman (What do I know?), but a woman she is unless she tells us otherwise.  

Some might say, "She had it coming to her."  No.  As tempting as it is to give a hater "a taste of her own medicine", it doesn't solve anything.  It certainly doesn't do anything to vindicate what Snoop Dogg and other transphobes said about Caitlyn, or any other trans woman.  It also doesn't bring back any trans woman--or man--who was murdered simply for being.  

More to the point, whatever one thinks of Wendy Williams (and I think I've made it abundantly clear that I don't think much of her!), she has the same rights as anybody else. One of those rights is to not be slandered or demeaned.  Or to have assumptions made about her identity.