11/3/12

Facing Mirrors: The Paradox of Being Trans in Iran

Source The Guardian (link below):One of the many astonishing paradoxes about life in the Islamic republic is that transsexuality has been legal since a fatwa was issued in 1987 by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Indeed, Iran permits more sex-change operations than any other country, except Thailand, and has long subsidised such surgeries. But, though transsexuals may have the support of the government, they remains highly controversial figures among the public.



Des Buford, Director of Exhibition & Programming at Frameline, spoke with FACING MIRRORS director Negar Azarbayjani and producer Fereshteh Taerpour. (6/18/2012)



Directed By:Negar Azarbayjani
Produced by: Fereshteh Taerpour
Starring:Shayesteh Irani - Ghazal Shakeri - Homayoun Ershadi - Nima Shahrokh Shahi - Maryam Boubani - Saber Abar - Hengameh Ghazian

The religious ruling (allowing SRS) was issued thanks to the activities in the 1980s of Maryam Khatoon Molkara, a campaigner for the rights of transsexuals in Iran, who wrote to Khomeini asking him to determine their fate. Molkara had herself previously been a man, and worked for the state TV before the Islamic revolution in 1979. In the mid-70s, she started to write to Khomeini, who was in exile, asking for religious authorisation for a sex-change operation. In 1987, after a decade of campaigning, she went in person to the home of Khomeini, by then the country's supreme leader, and came back with a fatwa in hand that allowed transsexuals to choose their sex. More at The Guardian

A few years ago while Iran was still accessible via the Internet I became engrossed with the human struggle inside the country. Sadly after the Green Revolution began the goverment responded to closing the electronic border effectively isolating Iran from the world. This movie is a watershed for transgender people as it gives us a look behind this Islamic curtain.


KOMO Seattle Spearheads Attack On Evergreen College Trans Student


The right wing is on the offensive and Komo Seattle, a mainstream media source, is showcasing it with this misgendering misinformational 'news' video.

KOMO has done more that compromise its integrity, they have become the bigot.

At issue is a transgender woman right to use public accommodations as provided by law.



This might come as a surprise to Joseph Backholm. According to a poll I conducted following the original story, asking whether its OK to sauna with minors the vast majority placed the needs of the children above all else, regardless.


Fifty percent said no, not under any circumstance, thirty percent thought if the law provides for it AND privacy can be assured they felt it was OK. The remaining responded yes, if it was lawful.

Clearly the vast majority of trans people are in agreement with Joseph Backholm on that count. If this trans person was in fact exposing her original plumbing to minors it would have been unacceptable.

But there are only allegations of this gross impropriety, yet to be determined in a court of law. And that takes us back to the KOMO story.

This may very well be the worst anti transgender 'news' report, ever found in mainstream media. The disembodied sound bites from the University spokesman never expressed dismay at following the law, but they were were presented as such by KOMO. The video was edited so sound bites seemingly attributed to parents were in fact the voice of leader of the virulently anti LGBT group, the Family Policy Institute of Washington.

The reporter shaking her head in disgust, stated they hadn't been able to 'track down' the trans woman, as if tracking a predator. Evidently despite their best skills at tracking, they were unable to hunt down any of the parents either.

The framing of the KOMO 'news' article is symptomatic of transphobic reporting found in lesser 'conservitive' Faux News reports, blogs and right wing radio all which in a seemingly concerted effort have launched this simultaneous attack to convict this trans woman for simply exercising her rights under the law.

11/2/12

Voted Today For The First Time!

I just voted, see my sticker! Yes, and for the first time. I registered last presidential election but was dissuaded by a very official letter.

It said the my name and gender marker didn't match with federal records. I was afraid that I would further complicate my life by answering that letter. So I didn't vote, but this year...

I took my narrow self down to the county voter registration center and made the lady give me exactly what I needed to change my home from Dallas County to Tarrant county.

Then I waited for my registration card, and waited and waited. Didn't come so I called them up and inserted my foot into a apologetic ear and I got TWO registration cards ASAP in the mail.

I voted for Obama. He signed a decree directing Social Security to stop sending my employer a letter demanding them to explain why I was female but their records showed me as male.

Ohio won't amend my birth certificate bless there hearts. So thanks to Obama I am at least working again, albeit at half what I was before transition.

Now if the democrats would stop sending a 'record' asking, no make that demanding I send them money because I did last election.

Wonder if they'd come and pay my electricity and gas bill this month because its going to be tight.

But it beats the hell out of living on the streets, again.

Go Obama!

11/1/12

Video WOW:1st Brazilian Transsexual Beauty Contest


Brazilian Transsexual Beauty Contest: Advocacy or Meatlocker?

Nineteen contestants compete in Rio de Janeiro for the title of "Miss T Brasil", the country's first transsexual beauty pageant. But this pageant seemed odd since there have been over 100 trans people murdered in Brazil since January of this year according to Keila Simpson, president of the National Counsel to Combat Discrimination of the Secretary of Human Rights to the President of Brazil. So after reading the myriad  of mainstream media articles I wanted to see for my self.

Advocacy or a slab of meat. For your consideration....

10/31/12

East Aurora School Board Acts Out Transphobicly

In what could only be seen as stereotypical reaction to attempts to make safe schools for transgender people the East Aurora school board has taken the following actions:

All but dismissed the board member who introduced the trans protective measures.

Formed a new committee to consider new anti bullying rules, but one explicitly devoid of rules protecting transgender people.

They justified this backsliding with the same reasons I have heard given time and time again while personally advocating for transgender protections.

The protections would 'cost too much' to implement.

The protections would infringe on cisgender students.

There were warned of potential legal ramifications.

Their lawyers needed time to establish criteria defining whom exactly transgender people are.


And the very worst reason of all...

Their are only maybe one or two out of the thousands of students who identify as transgender and after all, we haven't heard any complaints from them.

God. Its because they are terrified, silent afraid, closeted, desperate and near suicidal!

the East Aura School mirrors Mitt Romney's anti transgender actions in Massachusetts except he had the cojones to come out and give the real reasons:

"....May 11, 2006, when Romney decided, out of the blue, to shut down the Governor's Commission on Gay & Lesbian Youth, established by Republican Gov. Bill Weld a decade earlier to address LGBT youth suicide and strengthened by Weld's successor, Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci, to support a broad array of anti-violence and anti-bullying work. Beth Myers, Romney's chief of staff (and today a senior aide), called the chair of the commission, Kathleen Henry, and told her that Romney was issuing an executive order "revoking our existence" because he was offended by the use of the word "transgender" on letterhead where his name was on the sidebar. She told Henry that Romney would replace it with a commission focused on all the state's youth, and that they'd replace all the members of the commission."

Romney's hate is more important to him than our lives.


Source: Webz.org
Sandra Conti is a mental health therapist who has lived in Aurora for seventeen years. Her son, who is transgender, goes to school in Aurora in District 204, which is east of District 131 and extends into Naperville.
She said her son has encountered some difficulty with students and teachers at school, but she believes he’s had an easier time because of her advocacy.

“The frustrating part for me are adults who do nothing,” she said in an interview at the home of a friend. “In my school they do attend to it, but I’ll be honest, I think they attend to it because I’ve been so active in the school district.”

While Conti’s son has chosen to stay at his school despite some difficulty, she says bathrooms, locker rooms, and pronouns were all issues at first. Before he came out and was given access to a private locker room, she said, “he was to the point where I worried about suicide.”
My question is this: Will the good people of Aurora allow the boards hate to override their schools children's welfare?

Lives are at stake.






Transsexuals Are The Same As Drag Queens Before $25,000 Surgery: Rupaul

The idiot in pancake makeup is at it again.

It was by some unfortunate circumstance long ago before trans people got a voice in the matter, drag queens sahawed their purfumed selfs up under the trans umbrellas. One Drag queen a particularly nasty man has done it again. The next offensive? A quip on the October 29th Drag Race episode by RuPaul:
Comedienne Vicki Lawrence asked, “Hey Ru, what’s the difference between a drag queen and a transsexual?”

RuPaul laughingly replies, “About twenty-five thousand dollars and a good surgeon.”

Matting of makeup and hitching your penis between your legs for a occasional night of fun at others expense doesn't make you trans, it just makes you an obnoxious man in a dress. That's all. Being in drag for a few hours doesn't give you the right or even the life experience to speak for trans people.

For all his denials Rupaul knows perfectly well how hurtful 'tranny' is. He used the pejorative to lash out!

On Lance Bass's apology for using the word "tranny," Rupaul says: "It's ridiculous! It's ridiculous!... I love the word "tranny"...And I hate the fact that he's apologized. I wish he would have said, 'F-you, you tranny jerk!'

Huffpost Interview Jan 14, 2012

It's not OK to defame, bully or denigrate others. Not in small groups and certainly not on the world platform that RuPaul has.

Yes, I am lumping all drag queens into this mess.

Its your dirt, your community, you don't like Rupaul's self promotional hurtful stunts? Then grow a pair, stand against the stream, identify yourself and say something to Rupaul about it. Elevate your drag community above that sort of rhetoric.