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Firsts.

A trans guy is running for City Council on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (from whence come all things progressive).

“I’m not running because I’m transgender,” said Mr. Wymore, 50, who was born female but now, after testosterone therapy and top surgery, identifies as transgender. But, he said, that “doesn’t mean that being transgender doesn’t bring a certain perspective.”

Although gay men and lesbians have broken many electoral barriers — serving as mayors, state legislators and members of Congress — the same is not true of the transgender community. Only a few, including a Democratic district leader in Westchester County and a former member of the Hawaii Board of Education, have been elected to office around the country.

Of course that really means those who are out as trans, which means there are probably others no one knows are trans who are holding office.

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Not Just Homos

What’s interesting to me is that it’s never just “sexual deviants” that are targeted by people who are homophobic. You’ll notice the same crowd goes after women who expect to make decisions about their own sexualities and bodies, and in general are anti-sex. This little blog, Chew on This, in predicting the dearth of accurate sex info if someone like Santorum is elected, is spot on. The laws governing who can own, buy or sell sex toys often go hand in glove with laws that govern other aspects of sexuality, whether it’s birth control or sex work or homosexuality.

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Meds for Women

It’s pretty ridiculous that most clinical trial leaders effectively ignore the fact that women absorb and metabolize drugs completely differently than men, especially since, according to this study, women use an average of five prescription drugs compared to less than four for men — and that’s not even counting their slutty prescription contraceptives. In 100% of the study’s clinical trials, women failed to take prescriptions as directed, and were often not prescribed correct dosages to begin with. The study focused on cardiovascular disease — the number one killer of women in the U.S. — and diabetes, since more than half of diabetics are women. If more women than men are dying from these diseases, how come their antidotes are still tailored to men’s bodies?

asks this Jezebel article, and it’s about goddamned time. Most clinical studies are done assuming the patient is a testosterone-dominant, 200 lb. person. If you are not, your meds aren’t accurate.

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No to Urban Outfitters

So Urban Outfitters was selling a card that said:

Jack and Jill went up the hill / So Jack could see Jilly’s fanny / But Jack got a shock / and an eyeful of cock / Because Jill was a closet tranny

Classy. Someone brought it up (and snagged a copy of the image) on reddit, and then HuffPo picked it up.

Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me at all: the fake hipster of UO is already well-known, and despite how much you might like their stuff, their owner donates your green to guys like – Rick Santorum.

So no UO for me, no matter how fast they try to disappear this one.

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Trans Canada

I’ve got someone who needs trans resources in Ontario, Canada. Please feel free to post them here, or email me with them & I will.

Thank you!

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“Viagra Review Board”

There’s a jokey photo circulating that’s meant to be a humorous response to the (male) (Republican) attempt to make birth control illegal and/or not covered by health insurance. In it, a group of women, most of them white haired,  all wearing dour clothing, old fashioned hats. They have a sign that says “Viagra Review Board.”

And it keeps bugging me to see (feminist) friends posting this as if it’s funny. Why?

There is a long, long history of women being considered the morally responsible gender, for starters, which is based on the (false) assumption that women don’t like sex. There is also a long line of feminist thought – eugenicists, anti-porn activists, & the like – who have been extremely sex negative, accusing men’s sexualities of either “ruining racial purity” (via miscegenation, because, as the thinking went, men will fuck anyone,while women innately know better & so only have sex with members of their own, appropriate race).

Similarly, women “of a certain age” and older are as well, historically, either considered the “third gender” post menopause – and that’s courtesy Simone de Beauvoir, of all people – or otherwise considered sexless, frumpy, or just unattractive. A friend of mine commented to me recently that men only seem to get more attractive as they get older, while women only decline, and as she’s a peer — well, I wanted to smack her.

So I give you Helen Mirren, who is 67 this year.

There is nothing but our own vision, and our own cultural bullshit, that allows even smart, feminist women to see men as aging well & women not aging well.

But in either case – women as sex negative and older women especially as prudish or sexless – this “jokey” response confirms and reifies (there, I said it) a bunch of ideas about women WHICH ARE THE EXACT SAME IDEAS that cause male politicians to pass laws that shame women who have sexualities – and who insist on being in control of them – in the first place, that women aren’t actually supposed to like sex, that women are only attractive when they’re young, and that any woman who is in control of her body must be a slut.

So let’s give that joke up, shall we? I mean, the Boomers are now our “women of a certain age” after all, & they were the first generation truly liberated by the pill and who were actively practicing “free love”.

That is, my feminist “Viagra review board” would be handing that stuff out to anyone who wants to continue to have sex despite physical limitations, just as they would also freely give out birth control and other safe sex tools to anyone who wanted them.

Women like sex, dammit.