Category: trans

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MWMF: Solidarity, Please

This photo of a protest/action, in support of inclusion of trans women  at MichFest (aka MWMF) brought tears to my eyes. Thanks for the linkage goes to Joelle Ruby Ryan, who teaches Women’s Studies and is a transfeminist. She is as excited as I am by bridges being built between trans and non-trans women, and you can follow her on twitter at JoelleRubyRyan.

(Of course there’s nothing that could keep me away from a music festival more than a policy of it being only for women, but I’m not big on any kind of separatism.)

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National Trans Advocacy Network (TAN)

A group of state and local transgender leaders are pleased to announce the formation of the Trans Advocacy Network. The Trans Advocacy Network held their first meeting in Memphis, Tennessee on July 10, 2010 with the purpose of defining their mission and goals for the upcoming year.

Their mission statement is as follows:
“The Trans Advocacy Network is an alliance of transgender organizations that work at the state and local level, coming together to build a stronger trans movement by facilitating the sharing of resources, best practices, and organizing strategies.”

The Trans Advocacy Network will serve local and state level trans advocacy groups that are both established and newly forming as well as support groups, college-based groups, and other organizations that are doing advocacy and policy work for transgender rights and protections. The
Trans Advocacy Network will assist these groups by sharing policy, training materials, resources, tools, and best advocacy practices. It hopes to foster leadership development, sustainability, and to make the movement for trans rights stronger and more effective. The Trans Advocacy Network will operate with a steering committee made up of leaders from state and local trans organizations from across the country. There will be a limited number of spaces on the steering committee for advisers from national organizations.

Plans for the first year of the Trans Advocacy Network include expanding the steering committee to include people who are not yet well-represented, connecting more state and local trans advocacy groups across the country, creating guiding principles, starting a list serve that all trans advocacy organizations will have access to, outreaching to other groups by region, creating a more cohesive communication network, creating a organizational survey to understand the needs, resources, and get a realistic view of where trans community organizations are across the country, and holding conference calls and webinars to share best practices and strategies.

The Trans Advocacy Network Steering Committee currently includes Gunner Scott of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Masen Davis of the Transgender Law Center, Marisa Richmond of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition, Lisa Scheps of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, Sadie-Ryanne Baker of the DC Trans Coalition, and Shane Morgan of TransOhio. Advisers to the Steering Committee include Lisa Mottet of the Transgender Civil Rights Project of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Jaan Williams of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The steering committee is interested in additional members who represent predominantly people of color trans organizations and low-income trans organizations.

Contact Gunner Scott for more information or how to become involved at transadvocacynetwork@gmail.com.

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Trans Tax

In a sense, this article about how Pakistan is hiring trans people to shame people into paying their taxes gives you a better idea of how hjira are viewed in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh.

In a bid for a solution — and some publicity — the Clifton board borrowed a creative idea that alleviated tax woes in neighboring India: It hired a team of transgender tax collectors to go door-to-door to embarrass the rich until they pay.

Transgender people, known as TGs in Pakistan, carry a social stigma in the country, and their presence rattles the rich. For many of the TGs hired by the Clifton board, tax collecting is their first salaried job, and two of them still work as sex workers.

*sigh*

But before you criticize the women in question for doing this work, remember that otherwise they tend to do sex work and other crap, low-paid jobs.

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The Vegas 8

Eight protestors stopped traffic on the Vegas strip in order to get Harry Reid to act on the pending ENDA legislation:

Fantastic, all of you & thank you for a creative, cool way to do it.
(via The Advocate)

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Trans Model in French Vogue

I had a friend do a translation of the text that accompanies the photo:

Lea, Born Again.

New top model alert: in this fall’s Givenchy campaign, Lea is standing, in feathers, close to Mariacarla, Malgosia and Joan Smalls.  With hollow cheeks and faded eyebrows, she exudes a beauty that is regal, detached, retro, and androgynous, something between Greta Garbo and Candy Darling.  Lea T., the sensation of fall 2010, is the new star of the agency Women.  A woman to be [or possibly “a woman in the process of becoming”], born Leo, she decided to tame life in high heels.  Originally from Belo Horizonte, she grew up a well-educated boy in both Brazil and Italy, in a respected Catholic family.  With two sisters and a brother, Leo was destined for a career in veterinary medicine, up to the day when Lea appeared:  “I met Riccardo Tisci, who had just come out of Central Saint Martins (College of Art and Design).  Little by little, we became friends.  And, one night, he encouraged me to wear high heels to a party.  We went to buy drag queen shoes and also bleached my eyebrows.  It was a revelation.”  Lea followed her pygmalion/mentor to Givenchy in Paris and worked there as his assistant, confidante, and fitting model for two seasons.  Back in Milan, she decided to start her physical metamorphosis, a treatment that was met with public prejudice and immense familial unease.  “It was like a war inside my head,” she says.  From Paris, Riccardo followed the ups and downs of the change.  He offered help and “one day, he called to ask me to pose for a Mert & Marcus ad.”  Lea accepted in the name of all her transsexual friends, a standard bearer for their cause, and “especially proud of her friendship with Riccardo.”  Since that ad campaign, casting and interview offers rain on Piero Piazzi, Lea’s agent at Women, “another of my guardian angels.”  Lea, with disarming simplicity, explains that she is waiting for the definitive intervention that will liberate her femininity, “as soon as the papers are finalized.”  She is open to her future, be it on the runway, or perhaps in the fashion studio/workshop, or back home, her true birthplace, Brazil.

I think it’s cool, & I’m glad she did it, though I know some of you are burnt out on people using trans bodies as this week’s shock factor. I don’t think this one is doing that, even though it’s confrontational because she’s looking right at you, the viewer. It’s impossible not to see her as a person (unless you’re the kind of person who dehumanizes any naked woman). Thoughts?

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Passing Pat Dye

Skip the Makeup has a good blog post up about Pat Dye, the 31 year old who has allegedly pursued and seduced a 15 year old girl.

That’s the huge problem: not the gender, but the age gap. Impersonating a minor to have sex with a minor is criminal.

Being trans or clocked for the gender you’re not is not a crime, or immoral, or anything like that.

So maybe let’s keep the two things entirely separate, okay?