11/6/11

Holland MI Right Wing Fighting for LGBT Equality

As anyone who has traveled to Holland Michigan will confirm its one conservative town. And to the casual observer of the human rights movement the fact that many of the residents are now fighting for LGBT rights seems a oxymoron.

The conservative minister pictured to the right? That's Bill Freeman. He's not espousing anti LGBT rhetoric. He's leading the fight for our rights!

However our conservative advocate allies in Holland are not unique, but they are Americans of the finest caliber. They are the embodiment of true American family values. They join the ground swell of unanticipated advocates who have stepped out of the crowd and declared, we are all equal.

NPR All Things Considered

11/2/11

Transgender and Health Activists to Demonstrate at the Texas Psychiatric Convention

In conjunction with the Global International Campaign to Stop Transgender Pathologization 2012 a group of health and transgender activists will be gathering at the Texas Psychiatric Convention November 12th. We will be drawing attention to transgender demands that we not be pathologized in the revised DSM-5 scheduled to be published in 2013, irregardless of the proposed softening of dichotomy.





Since the majority of participating Psychiatrists are APA members and the conventions curlicium does not include a discussion pertaining to the social responsibilities as physicians to transgender people it is felt a protest would be appropriate.

American Psychiatrists take their cues for treatment of transgender people from the DSM which also strongly influences the World Health Organization ICD which sets the Standards of Care (SOC) for the rest of the globe.

We will be bring attention progress made in Europe. In a statement September 29, 2011 the European Parliament announced it passed a resolution demanding that the World Health Organization stop treating transgender people as mentally ill.

From the Parliaments InterGroup on LGBT Rights : "In a resolution adopted yesterday, the European Parliament has called on the World Health Organization to stop considering transgender people as mentally ill. Gender dysphoria is currently classified as a ‘mental and behavioural disorder’ in the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases. (ICD F-64 Gender identity disorders)"

The text adopted yesterday “calls on the Commission and the World Health Organization to withdraw gender identity disorders from the list of mental and behavioural disorders, and ensure a non-pathologising reclassification in the negotiations on the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases. (to be release shortly after the revised DSM) ”


Finally, we are directly speaking to all politicians. Our demands are clear:

We demand the removal of transexuality from the mental disorders’ manuals (DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10). To bring the treatments on intersex babies to an end.

We demand our right to change our name and sex in the official documents without having to go through any medical or psychological monitoring. We also think that the State should have no jurisdiction over our names, bodies and our identities.

We take here the words from the feminist movement in their fight for the right to abortion, and the right to your own body: we demand our right to freely decide whether if we want or not to modify our bodies. Our rights to be able to carry on with our decision, with no bureaucratic, political or economical impediments, nor any other type of medical coercion. We want the sanitary systems to take positions regarding the Gender Identity Disorder, for them to recognise the transphobia that this classification implies, and for them to rethink their healthcare programs regarding transexuality, making the psychiatric monitoring an unnecessary step, and the psychotherapeutic monitoring a voluntary option.

We demand also that the surgeries on intersex newborns stop.

We denounce the extreme vulnerability and the difficulties, when accessing the labor market, of the trans community. We demand granted access to the labor market and that specific politics are engaged to end marginalization and discrimination of our community. We also demand health and security conditions for sex workers and the end of the police’s besieging to these persons, as well as sexual traffic.

Vulnerability situations are stressed in cases of immigrant trans persons, who reach our country fleeing from extreme violence situations. We demand the immediate concession of political asylum in these cases, and at the same time we claim that the rights of migrant people are brought to the same level. We denounce the effects of the actual politics on foreign nationals over the most vulnerable social sectors.

While we shout that we are no victims but active beings and with the capacity of deciding over our own identities, we want to remember too all the aggressions, murders, and suicides of trans people due to transphobia. We signal the system guilty of this violence. Silence is complicity.


We finish showing the extreme rigidity with which the male/female binomial is imposed as the solely and exclusive option. Binomial that is built and therefore can be questioned. Our solely existence proves its falseness and points to a plural and diverse reality. Diversity that we dignify today.

When medicine and State define us as disordered, they are proving that our identities, our lifes, deeply disturb their system. That’s why we say that the illness is not in us but within gender binarism.


We make public that the International Network for Trans Depathologization is born to consolidate a worldwide coordination of our first goal: the removal of transexuality from the DSM-IV-TR in 2013. A first step for diversity, a first knock to transphobia.

For the diversity of our bodies and identities!

Transphobia makes us ill!

INTERNATIONAL NETWORK

FOR

TRANS

DEPATHOLOGIZATION





10/30/11

Watch Domaine Javier on MTV True Life Transgender Cross Road

We all know by now that Domaine Javier was expelled from a Southern Baptist nursing school for revealing her transexuality on this MTV "True Life" episode. But this is an amazing show. What about you? Where do you feel you are in the honesty curve?



"I can snag a guy anytime I want, I go out on a lot of dates.
As long as I'm passing as a woman I never tell them I'm really a guy. As long as I'm
passing I can never allow myself to be in love. I can't allow myself to be that close to anyone. Inside my heart I am sad to be honest. People are admiring me for the fake me. It will be a huge weight off my shoulders when I can be honest."

This is a huge issue for all transgender people especially during early transition for gorgeous people like Domaine Javier. Her transition brought her to a crossroads we all are familiar with. Honesty verse deception. The emptiness of physicality. What would you do? What are you doing? How dangerous is your life?

10/29/11

LONESTAR 92.5 BO AND JIM TRANSGENDER CHILDREN like BOBBY ARE PEOPLE TOO!

Open letter reminding two grown Texas men, Bo and Jim to respect the dignity of children.

This letter should never have been needed to be written and probably would not have been had Bo and Jim Morning DJs at 92.5 Lonestar taken me up on my offer a number of weeks ago. I offered to help them understand a little more about transgender people after inadvertently listening to there show one morning and becoming upset about there obvious ignorance about gender diversity.

But the Bo and Jim show is one of those that even a radical transgender activist like myself finds hard to get overly upset about. Normally that is. Usually one of the DJ's plays bad boy approaching the line of decency in a lovable good ole southern boy style and at some point stepping over it just to be dragged back by his counter part. Its a tired old schtick but no harm no foul, right?

But this time the brunt of there humor that morning was a 7 year old transgender girl. A girl who they were already aware was in tears because a local Girl Scout leader had refused her membership and Tammye Nash editor of the Dallas Voice heard you. Tammye's natural maternal instincts kicked in and she sent a you a email.

But unlike my effort weeks ago when you ignored my outreach you acknowledged her, even apologising to her.

Bo and Jim you acted despicably and your apology needs to be made on the air to Bobby the girl you 'jokingly' said would have to endure a life of broken noses and missing teeth because of her gender expression.


Bo and Jim I can tell you as a transgender woman who has been left unconscious a number of times after being beaten for my gender expression Its No Joke. I can also tell you its been four years since I legally changed my gender marker and up until three months ago I subsisted on under 9k a year. And my new full time job? I have had to endure incredible hatred during the first few weeks and that Bo and Jim IS NO JOKE.

Anyways, an apology isn't even whats really needed here. You would do well to become personally acquainted with us and when you do you will probably feel more paternal towards our community's children as well. Its only natural for two Texas men. I will let stand my offer to talk to you too on the air. I hope this time you will take me up on it.

Kelli Anne Busey

kellibusey@yahoo.com

Administrator/Founder

Dallas Transgender Advocates and Allies


As Tammye wrote you can be a positive force for change. "...if you want to make your opinions known, you can contact Lone Star 92.5 by phone at 214-866-8000. Lone Star’s program director is Don Davis. Email him at dondavis@clearchannel.com or call him directly at 214-866-8610. And you can email Jim at jim@lonestar925.com, and Bo at bo@lonestar925.com."

Cross posted from the Dallas Transgender Advocates and Allies

10/26/11

Charles McVety STOP CORRUPTING The Bible to Instill Fear

Pseudo Christian Charles McVety is at it again. Previously a print version of this video now being aired on Canadian TV was pulled with the publisher apologizing and promising to apply any earnings made from it to queer endeavours.



Now it appears this hate monger is at it again and according to Canadian blogger Mercedes Allen there's much more to it and we need to remain vigilant.

10/23/11

Setting FOX News Right! Ablow Stop Attacking Transgender Children

Yes Keith Ablow, homophobic transphobe and Fox News go to psychiatrist, a lesbian couple is giving hormone blockers to a prepubescent MTF transgender child.

Fox News once again needlesly attacks transgender people and in doing so panders to its right wing neocon religious demagogues ignoring the scientific community instead relying on its in house "experts" and hand picked transphobes.

But this time they have stepped over the line targeting the totally unprotected and vulnerable of the gender diverse, our children.

Fox News writer Perry Chiaramonte would have done well to read the the newly revised WPATH Standard of Care for gender variant children if he had any intention of authoring a article in the child's best interest, which obviously he did not.

From the beginning Chiaramonte needless did harm intentionally misgendering the child and as this article will be available to her as she grows older it will undoubtedly cause her great distress.

Chiaramonte seeks to somehow justify the articles assertion some wrongdoing is being committed by the parents. He interviews a author who wrote a book about unsecessfully transitioning even though Chiaramonte admits that these instances are nearly non existent the author offers this as some sort of evidence of parental wrong doing.

Finally the last two paragraphs get to the real reason this article was written.

A lesbian couple is raising a gender variant child consistent with HER innate sense of gender and not her biological gender.

That evidently was too much for discredited psychiatrist Keith Ablow, a Fox News contributor to stand by and wittiness but since he was blown up by his own anchor Megyn Kelly not long ago about transgender people, he needed a ghost writer to validate him.

Congratulations Abdow we can now add Perry Chiaramonte to the growing list of discredited humiliated Faux contributors. And congratulations Ablow for your apparent demotion from 'FOX Staff psychiatrist' to 'contributor'. Maybe next you will just stop hurting people?