Trans News/ Issues

[kannon]

Originally Posted by EnderD_503

As far as if I would be offended if a trans person had made the joke...yes I certainly would be. Being trans doesn't exempt you from being transphobic or having internalised transphobia, just the way being queer doesn't exempt you from being homophobic and having internalised homophobia. I've definitely witnessed a lot of internalised transphobia and self-hatred coming from trans people, and it's not something I support or see as conducive to establishing trans rights and respect in society. I'd also add that this observation is a big part of what motivated me to try to find trans communities that are more trans-positive, rather than always thinking others have the right to walk all over us and that we don't have the right to say anything about it.

There is a trans comedian named Ian Harvey who makes fun of his voice. I've heard him joke about sounding like a gay man on some talk shows and a promo.

[Corkey]

Making a joke at the expense of oneself is fine and dandy, doing it at the expense of someone who is not the "same" as you is another all together. I sure wouldn't make a joke at the expense of a Femme, or a Butch so why is it acceptable to do it to trans people? It isn't.
Picking ones battles is fine, but it may be Enders battle. I get this.

[weatherboi]

Neil Patrick Harris portrays a sexist, straight, asshole on a top rated prime time tv sitcom. A lot of what he says on that show makes me clutch my pearls. The straight world adores him on that show. Our kids watch it and all their friends watch it and love the show and him. His joke helps support creating a culture of uncertainty when it comes to transitioning just like many of the jokes from his show are at the expense of women and people he values less than, once again supporting sexist oppressive culture.

Predicting how low my voice will get when i go on testosterone will be luck and genetics. It is only gonna deepen so much no matter how much T i take. I know it will eventually settle in to a different range but there is no guarantee my final result will be a deep enough range to pass or to relieve voice dysphoria anxiety. T causes thickening of the thyroid cartiledge in the neck. This is an irreversible change i will be taking on with a result i may or may not be happy with. All this knowledge i sit with has in the past caused me fear and anxiety.

Obviously i am not a teenage boy, the physiology and everything is just different. My everything in the throat area is not as flexible for growth, scarring and tearing because that is what is going to happen. Just like the cartiledge in the rest of my body will do as I work out this late in life to gain muscle mass. Lots of irreversible damages will be caused with sometimes often life affecting consequences fucking around with our bodies to become who we are. 10 years ago a doctor told me that i wouldn't need a hysterectomy while taking T. Now I am told that is not true that T can break down the cervix, atrophy i guess, developing a need for a preventative surgery orrrrrrrr i can just wait for it to become a life threatening situation and take it from there.

Where I live, I have seen a gay man belittle his lover by calling her a fucking tranny when he was mad at her. It is something that happens all the time. I have heard straight men and women refer to transgender women as tranny freaks. If I witness it used hatefully I am probably gonna get angry. If I hear it used by my community I am probably gonna say something depending on who is claiming it. What I am not gonna do is lighten up over it. It is wrong for certain people to claim or use the word tranny. Just like it would be wrong for me to claim and use the word lesbo.

[Linus]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...ef=transgender and yet another example of excessive police force. I can understand giving a ticket or whatever for public drunkness (if that's valid on federal land. I know in Canada there isn't any federal mandated drinking laws and federal land is covered by federal law only). But tasing?

[Ebon]

Appeals court panel rules for Ga. trans woman in job discrimination case...

A federal appeals court panel today upheld a lower court ruling that Georgia transgender woman Vandy Beth Glenn was illegally fired from her job as a legislative editor in the Georgia General Assembly after she informed her employer she planned to transition from male to female.

"The question here is whether discriminating against someone on the basis of his or her gender non-conformity constitutes sex-based discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. …We hold that it does," the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote the opinion for the unanimous panel.

Read the story on oral arguments held before the 11th Circuit on Dec. 1 here.

"There is thus a congruence between discriminating against transgender and transsexual individuals and discrimination on the basis of gender-based behavioral norms.

"Accordingly, discrimination against a transgender individual because of her gender-nonconformity is sex discrimination, whether it’s described as being on the basis of sex or gender," the three-judge panel ruled.

Glenn said today she was "giddy" about the news and especially pleased the panel voted 3-0 in her favor.

"I asked Greg [Nevins, Lambda Legal attorney representing her] if this was a precedent [on a ruling made so quickly after arguments. He said not in matters of national security or presidential elections," Glenn said. "So this is extremely unusual but I think it speaks to the strength of our case."

The state could appeal to the the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals or to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Glenn said she believes the "end of the tunnel is in sight."

"I'm not kidding myself that this is necessarily over, but even if they do appeal the odds are not in their favor," she said.

Glenn mentioned she is going to Disney World in January to run the Disney World marathon.

"I feel I could fly the marathon right now," she said.

[kannon]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business...s-lgbt-policy/

Check out the former employee's attitude. She claims trans is against her religion and that's why she wouldn't let the teenager use the women's dressing room. She followed her around the store because she knew "he was a man" and "h"e wasn't supposed to be shopping for women's clothing.

WOW.

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by kannon

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business...s-lgbt-policy/

Check out the former employee's attitude. She claims trans is against her religion and that's why she wouldn't let the teenager use the women's dressing room. She followed her around the store because she knew "he was a man" and "h"e wasn't supposed to be shopping for women's clothing.

WOW.

OMG.

Really?

There are flippin' days when all I can do is say REALLY?

[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by kannon

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business...s-lgbt-policy/

Check out the former employee's attitude. She claims trans is against her religion and that's why she wouldn't let the teenager use the women's dressing room. She followed her around the store because she knew "he was a man" and "h"e wasn't supposed to be shopping for women's clothing.

WOW.

I am really glad that Macy's fired her. That is impressive. Right on Macy's!!

[Corkey]

http://www.bilerico.com/2011/12/glen...d_in_georg.php


More than a coincidence.

[Nadeest]

Interesting

[Soon]

[Nadeest]

Originally Posted by Linus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...ef=transgender and yet another example of excessive police force. I can understand giving a ticket or whatever for public drunkness (if that's valid on federal land. I know in Canada there isn't any federal mandated drinking laws and federal land is covered by federal law only). But tasing?

That was assult, with a weapon, to my mind. Nor did I see any provocation offered by that person, even though the video doesn't show the whole encounter. I hope that those officers are sent to prison, where they belong.

[Soon]

Op-ed: 14 Reasons That Made 2011 Great for Trans People

[Nadeest]

Originally Posted by EnderD_503

Lol, for sure. Honestly, if there is any logic in the American legal system she should be able to win her case easily...but that not to say that there is any such logic when it comes to how legal systems deal with trans people.

Those laws forbidding women to go topless are ridiculous anyways, imo. They should just get rid of it. They do not protect women as the law claims it does, and neither are topless women "obscene" as such a law suggests they are.



Yeah, the cab driver's story is really fucked up, too, imo. I haven't seen much follow up on him online, unfortunately, other than police say they were going to re-interview him. That he didn't even call 911 when he heard her being attacked over the phone is pretty ridiculous. Not to mention that he only called her mother after some time had passed. Even if he hadn't waited around to make sure she was safe, he should have called the cops after hearing her being attacked.

Has anyone heard more about this transwoman's arrest, and what is happening to her now, and her lawsuits?

[Nadeest]

The above question is for woman mentioned in this link: http://news.advocate.com/post/128941...ess-dmv-fiasco

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by Nadeest

Has anyone heard more about this transwoman's arrest, and what is happening to her now, and her lawsuits?

I haven't heard anything about her since November. Even a google search didn't really turn up anything about her since November, and haven't heard of any talk about her elsewhere.

[EnderD_503]

I also wanted to make a separate post to briefly come back to the previous discussion of Neil Patrick Harris and his comments. I'm sure by now people will be rolling their eyes, but his comments are really the tip of a greater iceberg. That people think his comments were limited to a certain character or certain people within the transgender spectrum is something that I still feel denies even general awareness of transphobia in the film industry, and how even representations that transpeople view as inaccurate continue to play off general public anxiety. In that sense, not only are the issues I mentioned before important, but also the cinematic tradition he was catering to...which is what leads to the greater issue of representation.

I ran across these links recently, thought of this thread and thought I'd come share them. They discuss the frequent use of transgender (or, as far as their contemporary terminology, "transvestite" or "transsexual") villains in horror films (or villains in general), including popular films like Psycho and Silence of the Lambs:

http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/film-quotations.html

http://www.glaad.org/2008/10/23/nega...-film-explored

http://www.horroryearbook.com/544026...-killer-movies

[weatherboi]

by STEPHEN IRA on JANUARY 23, 2012





http://www.originalplumbing.com/2012...either-please/



Trans brothers, dear dear dear men, whom I respect and look up to and adore, allow me to quote noted gender theorist Inigo Montoya:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I’m writing this because there’s been tons of talk about this slur recently. Trans men, some of them high profile, using tr*nny, trans women calling them on it, trans men demanding that they have a right to say it, et cetera. So before I start the serious stuff, I want to say that I’m not who you should listen to. This is really a trans women’s issue. You should listen to trans women. But they are already talking, and from your reactions, it’s clear we need to talk about this. From one trans guy to a bunch of others.

I’m not mad, guys. Well, ok, I’m a little mad. But mostly I just want to help fix this. We’ve made some bad mistakes. I used to use this word too, and I own that. I fucked up. We fucked up. Now let’s work to make this better.

Tr*nny is a slur. I think we’ve all agreed on that. Diverse sources, from Julia Serano to Kelly Osbourne, all agree. But for whom is it a slur? We know what image is summoned when we hear n*gger–a Black body. When we hear fag–a queer male body. When we hear d*ke–a queer female body. These words evoke certain identities. There are clear images associated with them. Fags are effeminate. D*kes are too masculine to be proper women. What clear image is evoked by tr*nny?

You know as well as I do: it’s the image of a trans woman. A “male” body, or rather, a body doctors would assign as male, in women’s clothing. A person attempting–and always failing, in these images–to be female. That’s what the image has historically been, and with only a few tiny changes, that’s what the image is now.

Whenever I have this debate, I suggest people google “tr*nny.” I stand by that suggestion. Click over the image tab and you’ll see trans women and drag queens galore, a few car parts, and fabulously enough, a picture of Kate Bornstein with a photoshopped mermaid’s tail, but almost never a trans man. When you do see trans men online associated with the slur, they’re almost always calling themselves tr*nnies. They’re not having the word pinned on them by cis people. This distinction is excruciatingly important.

The fact that cis people don’t call trans men tr*nnies very often illuminates two important things about trans male experience: the degree to which are and have been invisible, and what a weird place we stand in as female-assigned men in a patriarchal world.

The invisibility is a big part of what’s scary about being a trans man. We’re so unspeakable that there isn’t even a common word used to degrade exclusively us. When we look into history for gender variant people, we see trans women, and we see this word used against them. We see few trans men, and just like those historical trans men are mostly invisible, so are the structures of oppression used to keep them down.

Reclaiming tr*nny feels like a way to have a history. But that word was never our history. It feels like a way to name and confront those invisible oppressive structures. But it doesn’t do that work, because while the structures that oppress trans women have many elements in common with the ones that oppress us, they’re not the exact same ones.

That’s because, like I said, trans men are in such a weird position in relation to patriarchy. To the patriarchal eye, we seem to following the sexist imperative that being a man is better than being a woman, which of course the patriarchy is all for. But we’re doing it by violating another central patriarchal imperative: that people with vaginas are women.

So we move through this sexist world in a peculiar manner–able to wield our male privilege when we’re allowed to function as men, but subject to a particularly painful brand of transphobic and homophobic sexism when we’re understood as women.

Sure, sometimes trans guys get called tr*nny. But let’s please be real: It’s not that often, and it’s a recent phenomenon. Maybe we’ll get to the point where it’s a common enough slur against trans men that we can start to have the reclamation conversation. But man, I hope we don’t. It’s depressing and comical, us wanting our very own slur.

Sure, you might have a trans woman friend who doesn’t mind you calling yourself a tr*nny. This is because women, like men, don’t always agree with one another!

Sure, you may be very attached to the word “tr*nny” as a part of your identity. You can identify as anything you want! But if it is absolutely imperative for you to use that word, and you using that word makes trans women feel unsafe around you, I’m not sure what to tell you. Maybe you should do some work within yourself, trying to discover why you have such an intense need to own a word that makes people feel unsafe. All of which is to say that, ultimately, your identity is your identity, but you don’t need to share all of it with everyone if it makes them feel unsafe.

Raise your hand if you’re a young white trans guy who went/goes to a liberal arts college and is reading this on his Macbook. (My hand is raised.) Please know that most people who get tr*nny used against them on a daily basis are poor trans women of color. Please try to remember that working to include poor trans women of color in our movement is like, one of the most important things we need to do right now.

Which is more important, working to make trans women feel comfortable and safe in our community, or using a word that makes us feel all tingly and transgressive?

Resist transmisogyny. You do not need someone else’s slur to connect with your own history. Stop using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

Stephen Ira is a writer and an activist who was assigned West Coast and showbiz but identifies as East Coast and books. He writes poetry, fiction, and essay-shaped objects which have been published in Spot Literary Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, and can be found on his own blog, Super Mattachine.

[Nadeest]

I can tell you that I'm a transwoman and I don't like or want that term applied to me. I'd be upset, in fact, if someone called me that. Mind you, I'm not a transwoman of color, nor am I young. I am, however, poor (at the moment) and in late middle age. When I hear the word 'trannie' I tend to think of an automobile transmission. I hope like hell that I don't look like one of those!

[1ladyface]

Hi All,

A close friend of mine is blogging for

originalplumbing.com

as Inmate 12004. He's a transguy and is in jail for 3 months because he recently got his 3rd DUI. He's an alcoholic and is currently in recovery. He's writing to shed some light on the transmale incarceration experience and to open up a dialogue around the issue of substance abuse in the queer community.

I think of OP as a really supportive community but there have already been a couple comments from epic DBags who have made some unfounded and spectacularly inaccurate assumptions about him. Regardless, what Inmate 12004 needs right now is love and support, not d-baggery. Are you a transguy? Or an ally? Have you or a loved one struggled with substance abuse? Please take a minute to contribute something meaningful and kind to the discussion.

lots of love (sans d-baggery),

a somewhat saddened ladyface