Category: trans

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Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning: Being Trans and in Prison

As many of you know, a photo of the person we know as Bradley Manning presenting as female was released by the Army before she was sentenced. As you also probably know, Manning is to serve 35 years for leaking information. She has now stated that she would like to be known as Chelsea Manning.

What you may not know is how unlikely it is that she will get anything but psychiatric treatment around the trans issues, despite her now stated desire to start receiving hormone treatments:

Ft. Leavenworth spokeswoman Kimberly Lewis told Courthouse News that treatment for transgender inmates does not extend beyond psychiatric care.

“All inmates are considered soldiers and are treated as such with access to mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist, psychologist, social workers and behavioral science noncommissioned officers with experience in addressing the needs of military personnel in pre- and post-trial confinement,” Lewis said in an email. “The Army does not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery for gender identity disorder.”

A growing number of federal judges have ruled that rejecting such treatment for transgender prisoners constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Indeed, the jurisdiction of the Maryland courtroom where the WikiLeaks source has been tried is subject to a 4th Circuit decision from Jan. 28 this year guaranteeing the possibility of sex-reassignment surgery for all federal inmates in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North and South Carolina.

The Chicago-based 7th Circuit ruled similarly in 2011, striking down a Wisconsin law banning such medical care. A Boston federal judge granted surgery to a convicted wife-killer last year, and the 1st Circuit is currently mulling that decision on appeal.

Manning, however, is being held in a military prison in Ft. Leavenworth, out of reach for all of these jurisdictions.

It’s too bad she didn’t come out as trans while in the US military long before any of this ever happens, as she would have been dishonorably discharged for it. The repeal of DADT didn’t cover trans people, only gays and lesbians. Still, I’m thankful for what she did & stand with many others in asking President Obama to pardon her.

 

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Gay Men Stay Gay….

… when they date trans men, that is.

Artist Bill Roundy wrote a comic about what it’s like to be a gay man who dates trans guys is actually pretty damned amusing.

<—– Here’s one snippet.

What we have learned: penis in vagina sex is not always straight/het sex. Genitals aren’t gender. Sometimes men have vaginas. Sometimes women don’t.

Anyway, read the whole thing — his frustration is in every frame but it should help clarify for a lot of people out there who don’t get it.

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No More Gay/Trans Panic Defense?

I hope so. It’s a ridiculous idea. The American Bar Association has voted on it, with these stipulations:

The resolution passed by the ABA House of Delegates says that legislation should:

(a)    [Require] courts in any criminal trial or proceeding, upon the request of a party, to instruct the jury not to let bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion influence its decision about the victims, witnesses, or defendants based upon sexual orientation or gender identity; and

(b)   [Specify] that neither a non-violent sexual advance, nor the discovery of a person’s sex or gender identity, constitutes legally adequate provocation to mitigate the crime of murder to manslaughter, or to mitigate the severity of any non-capital crime.

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How To?

I didn’t even know about this how-to website, much less that someone might use it so creatively & list the ways to treat a trans person of your (implied: recent) acquaintance.

  1. respect their gender identity
  2. watch your past tense
  3. use language appropriate to the person’s gender
  4. don’t be afraid to ask questions
  5. respect the trans person’s need for privacy
  6. don’t assume you know what the person’s experience is
  7. begin to recognize the difference between gender identity and sexuality

Do go read the full descriptions as they do have plenty of caveats. To me this is pretty incomplete, to be honest, and yet also beside the point. I mean, don’t you try to respect any/everyone’s gender identity and use gender appropriate language?

To me, the really important one is #5, which I might rephrase as: if you know someone is trans, you should not be telling other people the person is trans. You can, often, ask the trans person what their own policy is with who knows and who won’t. Some only tell a handful of very close friends & family; others not even those people, and still others will tell anyone who asks & don’t mind having other people tell people they’re trans either.

& Always default to my rule #1: once you know 1 trans person, you know 1 trans person. & That is all you know. You don’t know anything about “trans people” as a group as a result of having one friend/co-worker/cousin.

Really, it’s just as impossible to say one true thing about trans people as it is to say one true thing about all women.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to Calpernia Addam’s brilliantly wiseass Bad Questions to Ask a Transsexual. AN ES THESIA is my favorite part. Buzzfeed has a clever, gif-heavy list of questions trans people are tired of hearing.

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CA Trans Students: Good News

Well, this is indeed good news:

Today, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the historic School Success and Opportunity Act into law, ensuring transgender youth have the opportunity to fully participate and succeed in schools across the state. Assembly Bill 1266—which goes into effect on January 1, 2014—was authored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and passed the California State Senate and Assembly earlier this summer. The law is the first of its kind in the country, and requires that California public schools respect students’ gender identity and makes sure that students can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity. . . 

and

California law already prohibits discrimination in education, but transgender students have been often discriminated against and unfairly excluded from physical education, athletic teams, and other school activities, and facilities. This exclusion negatively impacts students’ ability to succeed in school and graduate with their class. For example, physical education credits are required to graduate, but transgender students often do not have the support they need to fully participate in the courses.

It’s the first law of its kind, but it would be amazing to see this happen in a lot more states.

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RIP Dwayne Jones

(I don’t know what his femme name was, or if he even had one, or even if he used female pronouns. His friend Khloe, in this article, refers to Jones as “him” so I’m going with that.)

This is another heartbreaking account of homophobia and transphobia, and another reminder to boycott Jamaica until they get their act together.

Dwayne was the center of attraction shortly after arriving in a taxi at 2 a.m. with his two 23-year-old housemates, Khloe and Keke. Dwayne’s expert dance moves, long legs and high cheekbones quickly made him the one that the guys were trying to get next to.

. . . Minutes later, according to Khloe and Keke, the girl’s male friends gathered around Dwayne in the dimly-lit street asking: “Are you a woman or a man?” One man waved a lighter’s flame near Dwayne’s sneakers, asking whether a girl could have such big feet.

Then, his friends said, another man grabbed a lantern from an outdoor bar and walked over to Dwayne, shining the bright light over him from head to toe. “It’s a man,” he concluded, while the others hissed “batty boy” and other anti-gay epithets.

Khloe says she tried to steer him away from the crowd, whispering in Dwayne’s ear: “Walk with me, walk with me.” But Dwayne pulled away, loudly insisting to partygoers that he was a girl. When someone behind him snapped his bra strap, the teen panicked and raced down the street.

But he couldn’t run fast enough to escape the mob.

Here’s the original report of the murder.

& To hell with anyone who isn’t speaking up about what they saw and who they saw. The same to Jones’ family who wouldn’t even claim the child’s body.

 

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Trans*

In case you’re wondering, here’s a brief explanation of why some people are adding a * to the end of trans.

When the asterisk is put on the end of trans*, it expands the boundaries of the category to be radically inclusive. It can be understood as the most inclusive umbrella term to describe various communities and individuals with nonconforming gender identities and/or expressions en masse. In addition to its use as an umbrella term, it is also used by some individuals as an identity to describe just themselves (e.g. “I identify as trans*”).

Effectively, this is the same concept as trans-, which has showed up from time to time.

Betty used to say that she was trans – and you could add whatever you wanted after.

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Trans Rabbis

Fascinating:

Questions of transgender inclusion become even more complex when Jewish law comes into play. In 2003, the Conservative movement deemed sexual reassignment surgery an essential component of gender transition. But many trans people never receive surgery, and so their transitions go unrecognized by the movement.

Rabbi Leonard Sharzer, a bioethicist at the Jewish Theological Seminary, has written a Jewish legal opinion that counters the Conservative ruling, saying that Jewish law should consider trans Jews according to the gender they identify with regardless of surgical status. He plans to submit his opinion to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the Conservative movement’s law-making body.

Also:

All six rabbis and rabbis-in-training are actively involved in creating Jewish ritual for gender transition, from a prayer for binding the chest to a prayer for taking hormones. It remains to be seen whether these individuals will gain long term employment as Jewish leaders. But they’ve already become sought-after voices on panels at synagogues and in community centers on the topic of gender transition and Judaism.

I’m still surprised when I hear people refer to Judaism as if it’s a monolith, and it is so much not so. If anything, debate and argument and interpretation are at the heart of the religion, which leads to all sorts of splits and rifts and factions.
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Letter to a Crossdresser’s Wife

And while I was away, Laura Stuart of Express Milwaukee wrote this column in response to a woman who wrote in having found out her husband crossdresses.  I think she does a great job for a short column, and of course I appreciate the mention. I’m wondering what some of you might have to say about the Craigslist ad and photo, though, as that seems a little suspect to me — as it does to the wife. It may just be an urge to be seen, but it may be something else, too.