Originally Posted by Dylan (Post 159808)

I'd like to know HOW does Nikki's mother in law look so feminine?

There was another Houston station that ran a story allllllllllllllllll about Nikki's criminal history with her entire rapsheet (including <gasp> a ticket for driving without her license! Can you believe?!! Transpeople are so dangerous! Driving without their licenses! The Horrahhhhhhh!>

And yet...still no word about the husband's family.

I'd really like a detailed description of the mother in law's bits! And I'd also like the mother in law to PROVE she's a woman.


Dylan

Originally Posted by Stearns (Post 160250)

What happened at the court hearing that Nikki says she was pleased about? Anybody have an update?

Originally Posted by Melissa (Post 160311)

All I've picked up so far is that Nikki is fine with the 50/50 split of the death benefits between herself and the two children and that she had promised her husband she would take care of them if anything happened to her.

I found out there was no will. This is all from online news sources and so how true any of this is is anyone's guess. From what I have been reading, when there is no will, Texas will divide an estate between the spouse and children. 50% goes to the spouse and the other 50% is divided among the children. So even if Nikki's marriage wasn't contested by the in laws, the 50/50 division of the death benefits would have happened at probate anyway.

This also goes for joint owned property and bank accounts. Insurance with a named beneficiary does not count and if there was a will then the property would be divided according to the will. The judge has frozen everything (but technically, as far as I can figure out, if Nikki was named beneficiary of a life insurance policy it should not have been frozen). Also, as far as I know, bank accounts are not covered by a will. You have to name a beneficiary on the account and through your bank. So I'm not sure why her bank accounts were frozen unless there was no named beneficiary on the accounts.

The inlaws are going after everything claiming the marriage is not valid. They are not content with the 50% but want the lot. On the upside for couples, if there is a will then this could ward off what is happening to Nikki because contract law will take over. We also read somewhere, and this is for couples, that it is good to have a witnessed letter in your documents stating that the husband or wife is fuly aware her/his partner is transgendered/transexual. You have to have two witnesses to this letter. I would also suggest having a lawyer draw up the letter. This can help if, again, family comes along and argues the deceased spouse did not know and was defrauded.

As usual, gay, lesbian, trans people and partners have to have all kinds of documents to protect the relationship. And we have to think of any possible eventualities that might happen and try to ward them off in case they do.

From what I've learned, a will is your best protection. I've also learned about something called right of surviorship when it comes to property. If both names are on a property make sure you set it up as right of survivorship this way, when one of you passes away, the other automatically gets the property and the property does not have to go through probate.

Melissa

Originally Posted by Dallas Voice

Widow Braves Hostile Court Proceedings

Houston, Texas – July 23, 2010 – Jeers and public threats greeted Mrs. Nikki Araguz outside the Warton County Courthouse today. The Widow of Wharton County firefighter Captain Thomas Araguz, who was killed in the line of duty, was in court for the first hearing in a suit brought by Araguz’s mother, Simona Rodriguez Longoria. The suit claims that Longoria should inherit Capt. Araguz’s widow’s benefits and all marital assets.

Longoria claims that since Mrs. Araguz was legally a male before transitioning to female, and legally changed her gender prior to her subsequent marriage to Capt. Araguz that Longoria, not Mrs. Araguz, should receive all benefits and joint property. This includes any income earned by Mrs. Araguz during the marriage. Mrs. Araguz was the principle wage earner of the couple.

Capt. Araguz’s two children from a previous marriage will receive one half of Capt. Araguz’s $600,000 firemen’s fallen hero benefit regardless of the outcome of this case. They are also entitled to free tuition at Texas State Schools, as will be their children.

Longoria today expanded her claims to the property of Mrs. Araguz, asking the court to seize funds paid by a life insurance policy to which Mrs. Araguz was the named beneficiary. Judge Clapp granted her request, adding those funds to the widow’s benefits and all marital assets currently being held in escrow.

In a victory for Mrs. Araguz, the Judge also prevented Longoria from spending any of those funds or disposing of Capt. and Mrs. Araguz’s marital assets.

Longoria said in court today that her goal was to “freeze Nikki out.” All of Mrs. Araguz’s assets are currently frozen and unavailable to her.

If you would like to help support Nikki in her hour of desperate need, donate to the TG Center Nikki Araguz Fund. The TG Center Nikki Araguz Fund not only supports Nikki’s ongoing legal battle, it also provides for her day-to-day needs.

Originally Posted by Dylan (Post 160481)

Insight by Lisa Harney about this case. The comments are worth reading also.

Click Here


Dylan

Originally Posted by firie (Post 160511)

Dylan and I are going to call a few groups tomorrow and one of our club owning friends and see if we can get a benefit together (he's always up for doing something at the queer bar), so maybe we can get some local talent together and try to raise awareness and maybe some money for Nikki's legal defense.

If local folks are interested in brainstorming, we'd like to do a fundraiser or something, and try to throw some Austin support Nikki's way. If anyone from the Austin area is interested, let us know.

Originally Posted by Arwen (Post 160512)

Originally Posted by Heart (Post 160600)

By calling Nikki a "gold digger," accusing her of manipulating and deceiving her husband, etc, Longoria is engaging in hateful transphobic misogyny something that trans women are routinely subjected to. It's horrific and ironic that while asserting that Nikki is really a man, they use some of the oldest, most sexist woman-hating tropes in the book.

Originally Posted by Dylan (Post 160481)

Insight by Lisa Harney about this case. The comments are worth reading also.

Click Here


Dylan

Originally Posted by Heart (Post 160600)

By calling Nikki a "gold digger," accusing her of manipulating and deceiving her husband, etc, Longoria is engaging in hateful transphobic misogyny something that trans women are routinely subjected to. It's horrific and ironic that while asserting that Nikki is really a man, they use some of the oldest, most sexist woman-hating tropes in the book.

Originally Posted by Dylan (Post 160721)

Here's the press conference after the hearing on Friday





Also, I was reading somewhere yesterday that some people think this is just some Texas, backwoods, hillbilly law. Be sure there are other states that have said exactly the same thing (for the purposes of marriage, transpeople are their birth sex...period). Texas judges made their decision based on other states' case laws (at the time of hearing Littleton). New York has Anonymous vs Anonymous (transsexual marriages are not recognized. I don't know if this case has been overturned yet). Ohio has the Ladrach case (a person's sex is determined at birth by an anatomical examination).

Idaho is (or maybe has entered legislation, at this point in time) attempting to add legislation that would state marriage can only be between a "natural born man and a natural born woman" (they already have a marriage is between a man and a woman statute).

There's only one state (New Jersey) which has a case in which a trans marriage has been considered valid (M.T. v. J.T.)

One problem with the Littleton case is that it relies heavily on chromosomes (it actually makes the assumption that transpeople's chromosomes are cis-related) when A) NO ONE gets chromosome testing at birth unless there's some sort of issue (usually, no one gets chromosome tested in a lifetime), B) there's more than just XX, XY chromosome patterns, C) chromosome testing has been ruled unreliable. The law doesn't leave room for those people whose chromosomes are outside xy or xx. It also makes the assumption that penis=xy and vagina=xx, when science, doctors, and lay people KNOW this is just NOT necessarily the case.

So, basically, there is the assumption that anatomy = chromosomes. Basically, Littleton is saying doctors determine sex with nothing more than a cursory glance at one's anatomy and somehow this is 'chromosomal'. And since, "God doesn't make mistakes" (the first judge to hear Littleton actually said this)...doctors are God and their word is final (based on nothing scientific...only a cursory glance at genitals. And what if those genitals are ambiguous? Sex is up to the discretion of the doctor.)

On another note, since only four states have ANY laws discussing transpeople's marriages, IF this issue comes up in one of the other 46 states (and it will), those judges are going to have to also work off case law from different states. This means, Littleton, Anonymous v Anonymous, and Ladrach are going to probably be the cases most (uneducated about trans-issues/or transphobic) judges are going to follow (to justify their own bigotry).

Ergo, this issue affects transpeople everywhere.

On top of that, and as I've already stated numerous times, these 'marriage' cases lead to other forms of oppression against transpeople. For example, Ohio (home of the Ladrach case) will NOT change the sex marker on your birth certificate. They just won't do it. This means, a transperson can never have a correct birth certificate if they were born in Ohio (there are other states which will not change the marker on your b.c. Idaho, South Carolina, and Tennessee). Gender markers on driver licenses cannot be changed. Gender markers on government issued identification are incredibly important, and trickle down to affect employment, housing, etc of transpeople. And since 9/11 government issued IDs are even more important. Transpeople have been/are being/ can be labeled as terrorists. And they're definitely being harassed at airports. Merely changing your name puts you in a computer for scrutiny at airports for two years after your name change.

Sorry for the ramble, but this really affects so much more than just Texans and marriage.




Dylan

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow (Post 160738)

Lovo-Lara case in North Carolina also deemed a marriage where one partner was trans valid.


ETA: Maryland it seems so as well.

States that DO recognize transsexual marriages as valid heterosexual marriages:

North Carolina - North Carolina law allows amendment of a birth certificate for persons who have received gender reassignment surgery. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 130A- 118(b)(4) (2008). In Matter of Lovo-Lara, 23 l&N Dec. 746 (BIA 2005), the Board held that North Carolina recognized a marriage as valid and heterosexual where one of the spouses had received gender reassignment surgery and her birth certificate had been amended to reflect her changed sex

New Jersey - New Jersey law recognizes as a valid non-same-sex marriage a marriage solemnized between two persons of the same birth sex, one of whom has received sex reassignment surgery, so long as the other claimed spouse was aware of the sex change. M.J. v. J.T., 140 N.J.Super. 77, 355 A.2d 204 (NJ.Super. 1976).

Maryland - Maryland law permits a change of the person's legal sex, on the basis of sex reassignment surgery. Re: Heiiig, 372 Md. 692, 816 A.2d 68 (Md. 2003). This case did not involve the issue of the person's ability to marry a person of the same birth sex. Until such time as the Maryland courts clarify this issue, however, CIS adjudicators will assume that Maryland law recognizes as a valid non-same-sex marriage a claimed marriage between two persons of the same birth sex, one of whom has received gender reassignment surgery.

States that DO NOT recognize transsexual marriages as valid heterosexual Marriages As of November 2008, the following States do not recognize gender reassignment surgery as changing a person's legal sex, for purposes of marriage:

Florida - Kantams v. Kantaras, 884 So.2d 155 (Fla. App. 2004);
Illinois - Re Marriage of Simmons, 355 III. App. 3d 942, 825 N.W. 2d 303 (III. App. 2005)
Kansas - Estate of Gardiner, 273 Kan. 191.42P.3d 120 (Kan. 2002).
Ohio - Re: Ladrach, 32 Ohio Misc. 2d 6, 513 N.E.2d 828 (Oh. Probate 1987);
Tennessee - Tennessee Code 68-3-203(d)
Texas - Littleton v. Prange, 9S.W.3d 223 (Tex. App. 1999).


source

Originally Posted by Lisa Harney

This might seem to be two tropes, and indeed they can and do work separately, but I’m going to do them together because I think they very often work together (especially in the criminal justice system). This one is trans women specific.

First, there’s the frequently touted idea that trans women are really just men in dresses. The man in a dress is a pitiful figure, trying and failing miserably to pass as a woman. The notion occasionally touted by some online feminists that trans women will be immediately and obviously be readable as trans–and hence able to be kept out of womyn’s “safe space”–relies on this idea. This is often the figure of trans women in popular culture, the laughingstock who can’t gender themselves properly (always played by a cis man, with bonus hilarity points if there’s facial and body hair).

This second half, the stealthy deceiver, is closely allied to my first trope (“Really a [assigned birth sex]“) except that it posits the trans person as actively fraudulent. The idea is that appearances are deceptive, that we are able to mimic cis femininity so well that we can trick innocent people (usually men) into believing we are something we are not. To live your life in your gender, and most particularly, to expect to have sex with someone, is inherently a lie.

This is the trans person as surprise plot twist that fuels movies like The Crying Game, though it’s more pervasive and pernicious than sheer entertainment. The figure of the stealthy trans woman fuels the notorious “trans panic” defense that seemingly every murderer of a trans woman seeks to defend themselves. Unsurprisingly, it is nearly always almost an enormous bloody lie, the evidence frequently conclusively points to murderers having known their victims were trans and then cold bloodedly killing them.

What remains profoundly foreign to this trope, of course, is the perspectives of trans women ourselves, that being born forced to attempt to live in a male gender role and sexed body might have been far more a profound lie that living as women.

So, these tropes seem to in one sense be wildly opposed – in one, transness is immediately apparent, in the other, it is a secret. But in another sense, they work together, because one can easily move from one to the other, because a cis view of trans people tends to scrutinise, looking for signs of inauthenticity, of our “real” genders. So, trans women are placed in the double bind of coming out – either come out and have your gender disregarded and ridiculed, or remain stealth and risk being exposed as a deceiver.

Both, I should point out, have incredible risks of violence.

What is more incredible is how they can both appear at the same time. Trans women are ridiculed for the obvious and apparent inauthenticity of our genders – massive bloody attention is paid to appearance, to make-up, clothing, shaving, to shoulder size, to Adam’s apples. See, for instance, this article about the murder of Sanesha Stewart:

Stewart, more than 6 feet tall, was known to wear stylish, provocative outfits with towering high heels, neighbors said.

Stewart also apparently had undergone surgery to give him larger breasts and other female characteristics, neighbors said.

“She looked like a girl but when she turned around, you knew it was a man,” a 17-year-old neighbor said. “She had a big jaw and an Adam’s apple.”

And yet the original title of the story, I should point out, was “Fooled John Stabbed Bronx Tranny” (until GLAAD complained and the title was changed). The article proceeded typically, without any evidence whatsoever besides the fact that Sanesha Stewart was a trans woman of colour, from the later-proved-to-be-faulty assumption that she was not only a sex worker, but a stealthy deceptive one at that. The incoherence of this, that she was somehow both immediately and obviously trans, and yet able to fool a man into thinking she was cis, should be immediately obvious to anyone with even a quarter of a functioning brain. And yet.

Transphobia doesn’t work on the level of literal sense, instead it proceeds along a path mapped out long before, relying more on a cis common sense of how things “should be” (and therefore are) than on any real knowledge of trans lives. And so, this trope appears again and again and again – in Kellie Telesford’s trial, she was described as possessing a man’s strength (ludicrously unlikely given the time she’d been on hormones), yet simultaneously she was able to deceive the defendent into having sex with her.

The point is then, trans women do not have stable position in cis-sexist discourse, moving instead through incoherently contradictory counter-propositions as needs permit, but all the while denied an authenticity and truthfulness for our identities which cis gender normative people take for granted.

Originally Posted by Julia Serano

As a transsexual woman, I am often confronted by people who insist that I am not, nor can I ever be, a “real woman.” One of the more common lines of reasoning goes something like this: There’s more to being a woman than simply putting on a dress. I couldn’t agree more. That’s why it’s so frustrating that people often seem confused because, although I have transitioned to female and live as a woman, I rarely wear makeup or dress in a particularly feminine manner.

Despite the reality that there are as many types of trans women as there are women in general, most people believe that trans women are all on a quest to make ourselves as pretty, pink, and passive as possible. While there are certainly some trans women who buy into mainstream dogma about beauty and femininity, others are outspoken feminists and activists fighting against all gender stereotypes. But you’d never know it from the popular media, which tends to assume that all transsexuals are male-to-female, and that all trans women want to achieve stereotypical femininity.

Trans people—who transition from male to female or female to male and often live completely unnoticed as the sex “opposite” to that which they were born—have the potential to transform the gender class system as we know it. Our existence challenges the conventional wisdom that the differences between women and men are primarily the product of biology. Trans people can wreak havoc on such taken-for-granted concepts as feminine and masculine, homosexual and hetero-sexual, because these words are rendered virtually meaningless when a person’s biological sex and lived sex are not the same. But because we are a threat to the categories that enable male and heterosexual privilege, the images and experiences of trans people are presented in the media in a way that reaffirms, rather than challenges, gender stereotypes.

THE TWO CHOICES
Media depictions of trans women, whether they take the form of fictional characters or actual people, usually fall under one of two main archetypes: the “deceptive” transsexual or the “pathetic” transsexual. While characters of both models have an interest in achieving an ultrafeminine appearance, they differ in their abilities to pull it off. Because the “deceivers” successfully pass as women, they generally act as unexpected plot twists, or play the role of sexual predators who fool innocent straight guys into falling for “men.”

Perhaps the most famous example of a “deceiver” is the character Dil in the 1992 movie The Crying Game. The film became a pop culture phenomenon primarily because most moviegoers were unaware that Dil was trans until about halfway through the movie. The revelation comes during a love scene between her and Fergus, the male protagonist who has been courting her. When Dil disrobes, the audience, along with Fergus, learns for the first time that Dil is physically male. When I saw the film, most of the men in the theater groaned at this revelation. Onscreen, Fergus has a similarly intense reaction: He slaps Dil and runs off to the bathroom to vomit.

The 1994 Jim Carrey vehicle Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, features a “deceptive” transsexual as a villain. Police lieutenant Lois Einhorn (played by Sean Young) is secretly Ray Finkle, an ex–Miami Dolphins kicker who has stolen the team’s mascot as part of a scheme to get back at Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino. The bizarre plot ends when Ventura strips Einhorn down to her underwear in front of about 20 police officers and announces, “She is suffering from the worst case of hemorrhoids I have ever seen.” He then turns her around so that we can see her penis and testicles tucked behind her legs. All of the police officers proceed to spit up as The Crying Game theme song plays in the background.

Even though “deceivers” successfully pass as women, and are often played by female actors (with the notable exception of Jaye Davidson as Dil), these characters are never intended to challenge our assumptions about gender itself. On the contrary, they are positioned as “fake” women, and their secret trans status is revealed in a dramatic “moment of truth”. At the moment of exposure, the “deceiver’s” appearance (her femaleness) is reduced to mere illusion, and her secret (her maleness) becomes the real identity.

In a tactic that emphasizes their “true” maleness, “deceivers” are most often used as pawns to provoke male homophobia in other characters, as well as in the audience itself. This phenomenon is especially evident in TV talk shows like Jerry Springer, which regularly runs episodes with titles like “My Girlfriend’s a Guy” and “I’m Really a Man!” that feature trans women coming out to their straight boyfriends. On a recent British TV reality show called There's Something About Miriam, six heterosexual men court an attractive woman who, unbeknownst to them, is transgendered. The broadcast of the show was delayed for several months because the men threatened to sue the show’s producers, alleging that they had been the victims of defamation, personal injury, and conspiracy to commit sexual assault. The affair was eventually settled out of court, with each man coming away with a reported $100,000.

In the 1970 film adaptation of Gore Vidal’s novel Myra Breckinridge, the protagonist is a trans woman who heads out to Hollywood in order to take revenge on traditional manhood and to “realign the sexes.” This apparently involves raping an ex-football player with a strap-on dildo, which she does at one point during the movie. The recurring theme of “deceptive” trans women retaliating against men, often by seducing them, seems to be an unconscious acknowledgment that both male and heterosexual privileges are threatened by transsexuals.