Category: trans

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Good News for Trans Portland

A note from organizer Aubrey Harrison of Basic Right Oregon:

WE DID IT! After nearly two years of working with city leaders, we are proud to announce that today the Portland City Council unanimously voted to end insurance exclusions against transgender City employees.

This is huge. Portland is now the third municipality in the country to provide trans-inclusive care to their employees, and Oregon is a clear leader in the national efforts to end insurance discrimination against transgender communities.

This victory belongs to Basic Rights Oregon’s Trans Justice Working Group-trans and allied community leaders who have worked tirelessly for nearly two years on our campaign to end health care discrimination against transgender Oregonians. It also belongs to the Portland City Council, especially Mayor Sam Adams whose leadership for the LGBT community shone through today.

Why is this care so important? Basic Rights’ Executive Director Jeana Frazzini explained it in her testimony today:
The American Medical Association has identified transgender health care as being medically ncessary. Yet many transgender Oregonians are routinely denied the ability to purchase health insurance or are denied coverage for basic, medically-necessary care solely becaust they are transgender. Without health insurance, many transgender people have no access to health care and have nowhere to turn if they develop health problems. This discrimination is all too common and can lead to serious-even life-threatening-conditions.

Such great, great news.

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DC Trans Coalition Findings: Not Good

from the DC Trans Coalition:

Washington, DC – The DC Trans Coalition today released summary findings from the first phase of its ongoing Needs Assessment Project, which found that transgender, transsexual, and gender non-conforming people in the District of Columbia – regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status – have serious concerns about their safety as they go about their everyday lives. Other findings include severe underemployment, and major difficulties accessing adequate healthcare.

“This needs assessment is the first study of its kind in DC in over a decade, and is the first trans needs study in the nation to deploy community mapping as a research technique,” said Elijah Edelman, one of the needs assessment coordinators. Over 100 trans residents in DC participated in a series of roundtable discussions where they mapped Washington, DC as a trans city, and suggested questions for the survey portion of the study. “The maps create a qualitative picture of DC that a survey simply can’t provide, and the discussion around their creation will help us craft a survey that truly investigates the community’s concerns,” Edelman said.

The mapping exercise also identified places where trans people spend their time and access resources across the city. The study found that while over half of participants mapped areas commonly referred to as sex work “strolls,” many participants mentioned these not as places where they seek income, but rather as places where they interact with their friends. “Roundtable participants overwhelmingly described the strolls as places where – despite the high chances of facing harassment or arrest – trans people go to look out for their friends, distribute resources, and support one another,” said Sadie Ryanne Vashti, a DCTC organizer. “We are concerned that some of the central places where trans people build communities are also some of the most heavily policed areas in the city, thanks to policies like the ‘Prostitution Free Zones,’” Vashti added.

The DC Trans Coalition has received a grant from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law to conduct the survey phase of the Needs Assessment Project. DCTC is actively soliciting additional funding to support the research and economic empowerment components of this project. Donations are fully tax-deductible thanks to the fiscal sponsorship of AGREAA – The Association for Gender Research, Education, Academia and Action.

To download the summary findings from phase one of the DC Trans Needs Assessment, or to donate to the project, visit www.dctranscoalition.org.

(You can find them on Facebook as well, of course.)

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Research Announcement (& Forecasted Problems)

Over at Trans Group Blog, Angus “Andrea” Grieve-Smith has posted a piece about HHS’s announcement to begin collecting data on LGBTQ issues.

The Department of Health and Human Services has just made a big announcement: they will begin collecting data on LGBT issues, including transgender issues. The goal is to document disparities in health care, as well as plain old disparities in health, so that they can be addressed in the future. The plan is to have two roundtables on “gender identity data collection” with “key experts” this summer and fall, and then the “Data Council” will present a strategy next spring. The department will also collect public comment in various ways, one being through a website called regulations.gov, which is currently down.

If done right, this could be a tremendous help to understanding transgender issues. “The first step is to make sure we are asking the right questions,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Washington Post. “Sound data collection takes careful planning to ensure that accurate and actionable data is being recorded.” As I’ve written before, current research on transgender feelings and actions is severely hampered by the lack of any kind of representative sample. Just to give you a quick sense, here are ten very basic questions that nobody knows the answer to: Continue reading “Research Announcement (& Forecasted Problems)”

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Me, Trans Ally

Our Lives magazine came to the awards ceremony when I received my Activist award from Fair Wisconsin, and asked me to write a little something based on my remarks that night. So I did, and it’s in this month’s issue.

This is the fourth year and the fourth time I’ve taught a Transgender Lives course at Lawrence University in Appleton. We always spend a week of the course specifically on violence against trans people—the kind of transphobia and gender panic that cause people to be so brutal. And every year, the week before we start that section, I tell my students that we only have to wait a little while before a new case of trans violence is reported. I can say that on Thursday, and by the time we’re beginning the section the following Tuesday, I’ve been proven right. There is always one. Last year Chanel Larkin was murdered right here in Milwaukee. I want to see a year where it’s not true, and another and another, and hopefully, eventually, I will only teach that section of Trans Lives as history.

Go read the whole thing. It’s a cool magazine.

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More Sissy Boys

The CNN Anderson Cooper special on “The Sissy Boy Experiment” continues to inspire blog posts in both the gay and trans blogosphere.

At Joe.My.God, an open thread features hundreds of comments from gay men about their gender non-conformity of childhood.

Meanwhile, on Mercedes Allen’s blog, Marti Abernathy clarifies that in fact, Ken Zucker of CAMH is still conducting reparative therapy on gender non-conforming children.

I highly recommend Rottnek’s Sissies & Tomboys for further reading on gender non-conformity and GIDc.

More soon too on the complicated interplay of transphobia, homophobia, & (what I like to call) gender panic.

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Transvestic Disorder? Really?!

Yes, really. The proposed idea is for DSM V, the same book that wants to change Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Incongruence is also planning on changing Transvestic Fetishism to Transvestic Disorder. (You can see all the relevant proposed changes in a previous post.)

The entry in the current DSM on Transvestic Disorder, like the former entry on Transvestic Fetishism, is authored by Dr. Ray Blanchard of the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (formerly known as the Clarke Institute). Blanchard has drawn outrage from the transcommunity for his defamatory theory of autogynephilia, asserting that all transsexual women who are not exclusively attracted to males are motivated to transition by self-obsessed sexual fetishism. He is canonizing this harmful stereotype of transsexual women in the DSM-5 by adding an autogynephilia specifier to the Transvestic Disorder diagnosis.

Worse yet, Blanchard has broadly expanded the diagnosis to implicate gender-nonconforming people of all sexes and all sexual orientations, even inventing an autoandrophilia specifier to smear transsexual men.

For those who don’t see why this is a problem: let me posit the idea that there is no such thing as cross-dressing. That is, you can’t wear/get turned on by clothes of the opposite sex is the sexes aren’t oppositional. That is, a guy can wear a skirt and then it’s a guy’s skirt, just as a woman’s jeans are just jeans.

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Not Tragic, Just Trans

It seems whenever there’s a profile or personal narrative of a trans person in mainstream media it has to be somehow tragic. And I’m so over it. Because I think we’re amazing.

What a cool and much overdue piece about being trans and not tragic. This kind of idea is what I was trying to get at years ago (7!) when I objected to – or suggested an addition to – the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

But no matter: I’m happy to see a trans person say it.

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Mercedes Allen on the “Transgender” Debate

What a remarkable essay on the whole recent “don’t call me transgender” debate by the one & only Mercedes Allen. Historically accurate, intentionally personal, coherently political, and — just WOW. Great stuff. Of course I can’t say I agree entirely, but her impulse to take this cry seriously is the same as mine.

I have found myself using the term “traditional transsexuals” – which I love because the idea seems oxymoronic on first glance to many people – because there is a certain type of transsexual person who really doesn’t have much in common with the larger trans community. Jamison Green calls them the “mow the lawn” transsexual people – the people who come to a meeting to find out what to do & how to do it, who then do it, & then they go home & mow the lawn. Transition as a medical, legal and social pathway is effectively curative: I had the wrong body, and now I don’t, & let’s all move on with our lives. Ideally, for some people, this is exactly the solution, and I have known far too many trans people for whom this is the only answer that makes any sense. They are not necessarily stealth or closeted; they are not ashamed of their transness, and they are open about it with a very select group of people – close friends, children, partners – but otherwise are not. That is, they tell people on a need to know basis, and most people need to know someone is trans about as much as anyone needs to know if someone has had any other medical procedure.

Because people often re-gender people who are trans once they find out they are trans. I’ve seen it happen too many times.

That said, many of the things needed by transgender people – the umbrella – are also needed by “traditional transsexual” people while they’re transitioning: Legal & safe use of public bathrooms, access to hormones, non-discrimination legislation, etc. I worry more about trans people who live lives in which people don’t know they’re trans far more than I worry about those who are out — exactly because you really don’t know how someone will react when they don’t know, and many will feel betrayed — even if and when they wouldn’t otherwise have a problem with someone being trans. It sucks, but it’s true. It’s not fair, but it’s true.

The one thing I can say about the transgender communities: stuff changes. Roll with it. It’s the most exciting thing about this social movement.

 

 

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VT Birth Certificate Change

You no longer need to have surgery to change your birth certificate in VT. From The Task Force:

Although some other states allow gender changes without proof of surgery in their policies, Vermont becomes the very first to have clear language in its statute that makes clear surgery is not necessary to update one’s birth certificate.

This is great news, and good precedent. You already don’t need surgery to get a US passport, so here’s hoping more states follow VT’s example.

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No Chaser

There’s certainly plenty to object to, but I otherwise found this advice on how to pick up a trans woman kind of charming.

A couple of things you might want to keep in mind — do not assume she’s interested in dating guys. A lot of T-girls don’t. Whatever you do, don’t be stingy and suggest you split the check. Pick it up. It’s a sad fact but the transformation from male to female is not just a sexual reassignment; it’s also a socio-economic one. They often break the bank to make themselves whole.

Anyway, it’s not stupid advice. I like this especially:

“Why am I attracted to T-girls and what does that say about me?” That you’re gay? Extremely doubtful.
Most guys into T-girls are straight. That you’re twisted? No. There’s nothing twisted about being attracted to another human being.

Indeed. I mean, you may be twisted for some other reason entirely, but being attracted to a trans person has nothing to do with that.