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SoCo Keynote: Jenn Burleton

SOUTHERN COMFORT CONFERENCE 2007
KEYNOTE ADDRESS – SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2007

One Community, One Family

by Jenn Burleton, TransActive Education & Advocacy, Portland, OR

Thank you to the organizers of this amazing conference and in particular, Cat Turner, Lola Fleck and Elaine Martin. And I must thank my longtime friend, Mariette Pathy Allen. My life has been truly blessed as a result of knowing her and sharing many adventures with her…some of which are suitable for sharing with the whole family.

When Cat Turner called back in January and invited me to come to Atlanta I was of course, very honored. I was also surprised. After all, we’d never met. I’d never attended a previous Southern Comfort Conference and I am not, in my opinion anyway, one of the gender community heavy hitters.
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Globally Re-Gagged

Well, here’s a bit of good news: the Senate voted to repeal the Global Gag rule. The Global Gag Rule was put in place by Reagan (removed by Clinton & reinstated by Dubya) and prevented the U.S. from funding any organizations that even mentioned abortion as an option when providing services or counseling to women in need.  In legislation introduced by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), this restriction was lifted (and people think having women in positions of power doesn’t matter!)

The good news is that the House already passed similar legislation in June and the two versions will be reconciled so that Dubya can veto it, sadly. But at least our legislators are fighting back some on this issue.

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What Men Do

In the ‘astonishing, but not surprising’ category: CNN does a report on Iraqi women who have ended up prostituting themselves due to the war, asking sometimes as little as $8 a day. The point of course was to do a human interest story, or a feminist story, or a reality of war story, but some guy, dick in hand, instead wants to know if it’s true & how he can get in on the action. Another comments:

You are a fortunate man to find ass here in the IZ so quickly. I live here and it took me 4 months to get my connections. We have a PSD team contact who brings us these Iraqi cuties but dangerous it is.

Now that’s class. Don’t keep reading that message board if you’re an actual person with actual compassion, please.

There are days guys wonder why women hate them en masse. This is why, sensitive New Age guys. Please do something about these fuckwads & then get back to me about your problems.

(via The Cunning Realist.)

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“Stuff I Supposed After Meeting Some People in a Gay Bar”*

* quote by Mara Keisling, when providing an alternative description of what Bailey’s book could be described as instead of as “science.”

This NPR show out of the Bay Area about the whole Bailey controversy is good listening. Joan Roughgarden (author of Evolution’s Rainbow), Mara Keisling (executive director of NCTE), Alice Dreger (author of Hermaphrodites & The Medical Invention of Sex) & Bailey himself.

& A challenging phone call from Ben Barres, who I love & who does not let Bailey not answer a direct question (with textual backup from Roughgarden), specifically, whether or not Bailey feels trans people are suited to prostitution.

The only thing that no-one said that someone should have said is that Bailey now has a history & a record of turning (at best) weak science into “controversy,” such as with the bisexuality studies that came out a couple of years ago.

I’m upset by the idea of how or if Dreger’s status as a woman – not just as an academic or intersex educator – is coming into play here. That is, is a man not sexist because a woman says he isn’t? (I don’t think so, but I think that’s coloring her defense of Bailey.)

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Urgent from NCTE

Today Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Smith (R-OR) introduced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1585), which is being debated in the Senate this week and next. This amendment could be voted on as early as today. In short, today transgender people are one giant step closer to gaining federal hate crimes protections!

The language of today’s amendment is identical language to that of S. 1105, which the Senators introduced in April.

But to ensure that the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act becomes law, you must contact your Senators now and urge them to support this life-saving legislation.

As you read this, the Radical Right is mobilizing their base to oppose the federal hate crimes bill. They’re using scare tactics and flat-out lies in hopes of killing Kennedy’s amendment. Make sure that your Senators hear your voice and the true importance of this bill.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would:

  1. Extend existing federal protections to include “gender identity, sexual orientation, gender and disability”
  2. Allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes
  3. Mandate that the FBI begin tracking hate crimes based on actual or perceived gender identity
  4. Remove limitations that narrowly define hate crimes to violence committed while a person is accessing a federally protected activity, such as voting.

Find your Senators’ contact information.

The time to act is now! Call your Senators today and urge your friends and family to do the same!

(A sample letter you can copy & paste is below the break.)

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Wrong Side of a Good Thing

I read this great article about Diane & Jake Anderson-Minshall, who just co-wrote their first mystery novel, Blind Curves, and this line stopped me short:

“I would say Susannah was my wife, and they’d tell me she would have to contact them,” Diane says. “Now I say Jacob is my husband and it’s immediately accepted.”

Because Diane is, of course, talking about the difference in how their relationship is perceived by others now that they’re “straight.” I’m pretty certain they don’t think of themselves as straight, of course, but they are legally married now, and wow – it surprised me how much that one sentence stuck in my craw. I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the equation, even if I know full-well how difficult it is for partners like Diane and other lesbian-identified women to “give up” having others perceive them as lesbians.

But still. Damn.