Some of the gender and transgender-related writings we’re reading today …

At Towleroad …

Hillary Clinton on ENDA, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, McCain, and Coulter

At (Ab)Normal Heights …

Donna Rose Comments On The LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee

At Gender and Life’s Paths …

Transgender: Why Don’t We Matter

At Phred’s Blog …

Human hatred on display in Gainesville

At Bilerico Project …

The Gender Anarchist

What Man and What Woman?

And at Intersex Pride …

Elizabeth Reis defames and trivializes intersex people

DSD: North American Medical fascism and manufacturing consent

Catching up on some of the weekend news …

#1 - Saturday on NPR’s Weekend Edition Scott Simon commented on Georgia Fuller’s charge that Riverdale, Georgia city council member Michelle Bruce “pretended to be transgendered, just to be popular” …

“We couldn’t find out how much a member of the Riverdale City Council is paid, but it’s probably not enough to want to make you change your gender to win a council seat — it’s Riverdale, Georgia after all, not San Francisco’s Castro District. Ms. Bruce says, ‘I’m the same Michelle I was four years ago. They’re just trying to distract from the issues.’

… Being transgendered has become a political asset in some parts of the South. Like getting endorsed by Pat Robertson or the NRA, it could have urgent implications for the presidential campaign ahead as both parties try to win votes there. Everyone running for office says, ‘I’m the candidate of real change.’ A transgender candidate can add, ‘and that’s not just talk.’ Rudolph Giuliani famously appeared in drag at a roast in 1997 — maybe that’s why he’s ahead in the polls. Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Jon Edwards — gentlemen, those accents alone may no longer be enough. [Music: "I Enjoy Being A Girl"]

#2 - A journalist asks, Must we respect stupid readers? …

One of the sacrosanct maxims of newspaper journalism is: Respect the reader. But sometimes it’s hard to do. From my phone calls the last couple of weeks:

An irate caller spits bile over our story about a transgender observance. “You people are a bunch of perverts, just like the people you’re trying to make heroes – those transgerderites or whatever they call themselves.”

Hold on, I say. Our job is to reflect the goings-on in our community and that event was news about people who live here.

“I don’t want to hear about them!” she wails. “How dare you give publicity to those kind of people.”

…

Respect the reader. Respect the reader. It’s gotten so I have to mumble those words like a prayer every morning. It is a challenge, after all, to respect readers who luxuriate in blissful stupidity and angry vacuity.

#3 - I don’t know exactly why “intersex advocate” Alice Dreger does things that seem calculated to hurt and offend intersex people (such as delivering a lecture here last June). Earlier this month, Prof. Dreger delivered a lecture at Indiana University entitled, “No Matter How You Slice It? Parsing Intersex,” which prompted this response from Curtis Hinkle of Organisation Intersex International …

That title reveals an insidiously hateful side of Dreger’s character: For someone who prides herself in being ever so clever with words, she had to know how hurtful that title would be to intersex people (especially those who’ve been “sliced” physically and emotionally by the system Dreger represents, and who don’t appreciate being referred to as “it” either).

What reason could she have had to use such an awful title? Now I’m not one to attribute motives without hard evidence, but some folks might suspect Dreger of being in a rage against intersex people for having “turned the world against her”, or some other such imagined injury. Folks might also suspect Dreger of designing that title to ensure that few or no intersex people would attend her talks (given the difficulty in maintaining one’s emotions in the face of such despicable taunts).

Alice Dreger, have you no shame?

#4 - The New York Post reported yesterday about this grisly murder case …

November 24, 2007 — Police are searching for the killer of “Sugar Bear,” a professional drag queen from Brooklyn - whose head was found frozen in the ice of a Long Island pond by skaters in 2003.

The killer had dumped the head, with a single bullet wound in the temple, in the pond in Moriches, where it was found on Jan. 25, 2003, said Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick, commander of the Suffolk County Police Homicide Squad.

The victim’s arms and legs were later found miles away in plastic bags.

It took Suffolk detectives almost a year and a half to identify the victim as Andre Jamal Isaac, 25, of East New York, the grandson of a Vietnam POW.

DNA tests linked the body parts to a torso found clad in a skirt, black body suit and tank top in Far Rockaway, Queens, in December 2002.

Detectives showed photos of his head to transvestites in Manhattan.

In May 2004, one drag queen told a detective, “Hey, that looks like Sugar Bear.” Another knew Isaac’s real name, and detectives found his mother, Kim Long Jordan, 50, on Long Island.

Jordan gave investigators a key piece of information: One of her son’s pals had seen Isaac just before Thanksgiving getting into a car with a “secret friend.” He was never seen again.

“He went out without a coat and said he would be right back. He left his pocketbook,” she said.

Fitzpatrick said the car was a red, BMW-type coupe with “nice rims” driven by a Hispanic man.

Fitzpatrick asked anyone with information to call the Homicide Squad at (631) 852-6392. All calls will be kept confidential.

Isaac was the grandson of the late Donald Rander, an Army soldier held by the North Vietnamese for five years.

Jordan, a teacher, said her son was a talented female impersonator and dancer who would enter contests from New York to Washington, DC.

“He was a big bear,” she said. “No matter what his lifestyle, he was still a human being.”

Hunt For Clues in Tranny Slay

#5 - Transgender student Andrew Gomez was elected Homecoming King at Pasadena City College earlier this month …

For Sunday, a non-ENDA inclusive edition where we catch up with some of the other recent news …

#1 - AfterElton did a feature on the “TV Landscape Changing for Transgender Characters” …

The portrayal of transgender characters on television these days seems to be sort of a glass-is-either-half-empty-or-half-full situation. For years television has presented a steady stream of “transsexual” prostitutes, murder victims, and other assorted minor characters that usually appeared for one episode and were portrayed as little more than a collection of stereotypes to advance the plot or get a cheap laugh.

A recent example of that aired this past summer on HBO’s hit show Entourage. In the episode “Sorry, Harvey” a secondary storyline centered on Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) trying to get the sad sack mayor of Beverly Hills (played by Groundhog Day’s Stephen Tobolowsky) hooked up with a beautiful woman in order to curry his favor. At a bar to which he takes the mayor, Drama thinks he has succeeded with a woman named Anika — at least until he learns that she is actually transgender.

The mayor turns out not to mind, but the show portrays this as due more to his being so pathetic rather than a message of acceptance. This impression is further underscored by the main characters’ clearly being repulsed at the idea of a transgender person, and by the episode’s big “reveal” when Anika’s male genitalia are shown during a panty-less Britney Spear’s-type incident.

On the “half-full” side of the equation there is ABC’s Ugly Betty. Last season the hit dramedy included Alexis Meade, a transgender character portrayed as self-accepting, not desperate for the approval of a man, and who wasn’t a prostitute. Audiences loved the character.

Already the most diverse network when it comes to LGBT representation, ABC deepened their diversity with two new transgender characters introduced this fall, one each on Dirty Sexy Money and Big Shots. Neither are regulars at this point, and while the Dirty Sexy Money show continues to build on the progress of Ugly Betty, thus far Big Shots is a throwback to more stereotypical portrayals of transgender women. (There are no transgender men – female to male – characters currently on network TV.)

Despite setbacks like the recent episode of Entourage, Mara Keisling, Executive Director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, believes things are improving when it comes to transgender representations on television. “I’m really, really optimistic. Things are changing so much so fast. Oprah has had so many sensitive shows. Montel has done some good shows. Larry King does show after show, and that’s just really educating the public.”

As to what is driving that change, Keisling stated, “It’s just natural that as there are more and more trans people visible in public, that’s going to be reflected in popular culture.”

The rest of that feature can be read here.

Monica Roberts at TransGriot had some thoughts about the role of Dontrelle in Entourage …

It figures that we transsistahs once again get stuck being painted by the hooker brush while white transwomen are seen running a magazine or being the love interest of a US senator.

As the late Esther Rolle said in her Good Times role as Florida Evans, “Damn, Damn, Damn!”

Memo to Hollywood: Is it so hard for you to create an African-American transgender character that fits the reality of the 90% of us who don’t partake of sex work to make our living? Is it that difficult for you to craft an African-American transgender character that isn’t the punchline of a joke or doesn’t end up dead in the first five minutes of the show?

And, by the way, Oprah Winfrey has an upcoming show this week (Friday, 10/12) entitled, “Trangender Families” …

Meet transgender individuals who had the courage to say “this is who I am.” What happens in a family when Dad becomes a woman? Oprah talks with the new American family.

Read the rest of this entry »

J. Michael Bailey wrote the book The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, which was published in 2003. Dr. Bailey and the transgender community have both been dealing with the shockwaves ever since publication.

Reviving the controversy in the past few weeks, Alice D. Dreger, Ph.D., wrote a paper for the Archives of Sexual Behavior entitled The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age, with the New York Times reporting on the controversies surrounding Bailey’s book and on Dreger’s paper in their article Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege.

The general spin in the blogosphere since the New York Times article has been published echoes the sentiments expressed in the Times article:

To many of Dr. Bailey’s peers, his story is a morality play about the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom. Some scientists say that it has become increasingly treacherous to discuss politically sensitive issues.

What makes Bailey’s perspectives on transsexuality a particularly sensitive issue for transpeople is found in his theories of why transsexuals exist: Either a male-to-female (M2F) transsexual has autogynephilia (is sexually aroused by the idea of being female), or “he” is a male homosexual who needs to be a woman to be comfortable being sexually attracted men. {Bailey’s book completely ignores the existence of female-to-male (F2M) transsexuals}. That’s it — if you’re a M2F transsexual, Bailey says it’s solely because of your sex drive, and you’re either one type or the other.

And, given that perspective of what one of two conditions must exist for one to identify as a male-to-female transsexual, it should come as no surprise that he consistently refers to transwomen like me as “transsexual men.” Bailey has essentially relegated transsexuality to the functional status of a paraphilia, stigmatizes transsexuals and the accepted treatments for transsexuals, and exposes transpeople, like me again, who want civil rights furthered for transpeople to further societal resistance.

Adding to Bailey’s impact on transgender civil rights activism, Gary Barlow (in a 2005 Chicago Free Press article) said of the Bailey book:

…Bailey alleged that transgenders are “especially motivated” to shoplift and that prostitution is “the single most common occupation” among transgenders.

Sandra L. Samons, Ph.D., L.M.S.W., said this of Bailey in response to the recent New York Times article:

Not only did I find his premise and many of this comments and conclusions to be questionable or outright erroneous and offensive to transgender people, but also to therapist colleagues, in that he essentially stated that any therapists who did not agree with him had been duped by transgender people, who are generally manipulative in their efforts to accomplish their ends and naive therapists (meaning anyone who did not concur with his premises) had been taken in by them.

…I think it should not be overlooked that by making the kinds of assertions he made, negating and invalidating the opinions of any colleague who disagreed with him, he too engaged in this kind of approach, and did so before others reciprocated in kind. On that basis, I found many of his comments and assertions to have gone beyond offensive to being unprofessional.

Samons, like many others, recognizes that some of Bailey’s critics have stepped out of bounds in their impassioned reaction to what he wrote, but at the same time believes he should have been able to anticipate the firestorm he would bring down upon himself by making the assertions he made — one has to wonder if at least on a certain level, that was exactly what Bailey hoped to accomplish with his book.

Frankly, I’m concerned that Bailey’s “rehabilitation” in the mainstream press will have the secondary effect of his transsexuality theories being accepted as gospel — not because the theories are tested, but because a number of transactivists were passionate to the point of overzealousness in attacking his theories. Bailey — the author and researcher — should have his theories on transsexuality evaluated based upon whether Bailey’s psychological construct for transsexuals holds up when compared to a statistical samplings of actual transgender people. My guess, given recent studies on the brain structures of transpeople and recent genetic studies on mice that indicate gender is based on more than one’s natal genitalia, is that Bailey’s dichotomic model of transsexuality won’t hold true for all transsexuals. I know it doesn’t hold true for me.

Next month, the World Professional Association For Transgender Health (WPATH) holds their Biennial Symposium. It’ll be interesting to see if any statements about the Dreger paper and/or the New York Times article comes out of that event.

~~
Joanne Herman, columnist for The Advocate, contributed significantly to this article.

~~~~~
Further information regarding J. Michael Bailey:

* KQED (Public Radio): Transgender Theories
* Northwestern Chronicle/J. Michael Bailey: Academic McCarthyism
* Aaron S. Greenberg, JD and J. Michael Bailey, PhD: Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation
* New York Times: Gay, Straight, Or Lying: Bisexuality Revisited
* Washington Blade: Report on bisexuality study angers gay activists
* The Advocate: Kinder, gentler homophobia

Egads.

If there’s ever been an issue I’m very informed about but not qualified to render an opinion on, it has to be on the book and the controversies surrounding psychologist J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism.

I’m not a scientist, but instead am a transgender, amateur research librarian. I’ve read a lot about the controversies surrounding this book and the author, am familiar with the theories behind the book, and am familiar with many of the players involved in the controversies.

Alice D. Dreger, PhD, an intersex advocate who isn’t intersexed herself, recently wrote a paper entitled The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age. In the paper, she concluded, per a New York Times accounting of the four year history of controversy surrounding the book:

…that the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.

I don’t know what to make of the whole story.

Through my own personal experience with being a transsexual, I know the transsexual dichotomy that Dr. Bailey describes is too limited. He essentially states that male-to-female transsexuals either are transsexual because they experience autogynephilia, or because they are homosexuals who are uncomfortable being with a man as a man. Although, no doubt, there are those with autogynephilia, and those who transition because they have homosexual feelings and are uncomfortable being with a man as a man, these two causations alone don’t seem to accurately describe the personal experiences of many transsexuals. I know those two choices don’t describe my personal experience.

When all is said and done on J. Michael Bailey’s theories of transsexualism; however, one can see he only sees possible psychological causes for transsexualism. Genetics and brain studies indicate other possible causations for why transsexuals exist.

In the meantime, the pot has again been stirred on this seemingly never ending story regarding Bailey’s theories and book. I’m sure I’ll be reading about this most recent controversy at some conservative Christian oranizations’ sites soon — no doubt talking about how fucked up in the head they believe transsexuals are.

~~~~~
Further reading on other theories:
* Sexual Identity Hard-Wired by Genetics, Study Says
* Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
* Brains And Hormones
* A Discussion on the Relationship Between Gender Identity And Prenatal Exposure to Diethylstilbestrol (DES) in 46XY Individuals
* Britain - Which of these women were born men?

The Bilerico Project: Denied AIDS Medication, Trans Woman Dies in ICE Detention Center
Excerpt: Apparently, the Los Angeles Daily Journal is reporting that a trans woman named Victoria Arellano died July 20 in San Pedro, California, after being denied AIDS medication and improperly treated for AIDS-related infections at an immigration detention facility. The report says that Arellano (who was detained in a men’s facility) is one of 62 people to have died in federal immigration custody since 2004 and describes systemic problems with health-care delivery in detention centers nationwide, with detained immigrants having little to no legal recourse.

Trans Group Blog: Victoria Arellano
Excerpt: Mind you, my complaints about the way various media outlets cover trans issues aren’t directed at the trans people who are often featured in these articles: their intentions are for the most part good, & they are trying, in their own way, to raise awareness of trans issues in general, all of which is much needed. It’s not that it was a terrible article in terms of The Big Picture, but I’m tired of journalists/media writing a piece that is pretty much like every other piece about a trans person (choosing someone professional, white, with a traditional narrative including surgery & the like) & presenting it as if it’s a revelation.It’s not a revelation. I’d like to get the bar set a little higher, & to start pressuring media to cover more types of trans people, in more situations, with more of the kinds of issues that come up…

City Limits Weekly: Who Are Homeless Youth?
Excerpt: When the results come in from New York City’s first survey of homeless youth, service providers hope finally to understand who these elusive teenagers and young adults are, how many they number, and how to intervene before chronic homelessness becomes an accepted – or inevitable – part of their identities.

Completed last week under the auspices of the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, the survey aims to put a credible number on this size of this population, which over the years has been estimated at anywhere from several thousand to tens of thousands. Since the beginning of July some three dozen volunteers and employees of social services groups asked a series of questions of homeless people from age 12 to 24 who agreed to participate. On the street and at youth program sites, respondents answered questions about sexual orientation, previous home life, sources of income, educational attainment and more. In addition to counting the population, the survey seeks to illuminate the contributors to and outcomes of youth homelessness – with the goal of helping public and nonprofit agencies better house and care for these young people.

New York Times: Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege
Excerpt: Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory. The central figure, J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has promoted a theory that his critics think is inaccurate, insulting and potentially damaging to transgender women. In the past few years, several prominent academics who are transgender have made a series of accusations against the psychologist, including that he committed ethics violations. A transgender woman he wrote about has accused him of a sexual impropriety, and Dr. Bailey has become a reviled figure for some in the gay and transgender communities.

Northwestern University: The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age
Abstract excerpt: Dissatisfied with the option of merely criticizing the book, a small number of transwomen (particularly Lynn Conway, Andrea James, and Deirdre McCloskey) worked to try to ruin Bailey. Using published and unpublished sources as well as original interviews, this essay traces the history of the backlash against Bailey and his book. It also provides a thorough exegesis of the book’s treatment of transsexuality and includes a comprehensive investigation of the merits of the charges made against Bailey that he had behaved unethically, immorally, and illegally in the production of his book. The essay closes with an epilogue that explores what has happened since 2003 to the central ideas and major players in the controversy. (Complete article at link)

United Methodist News Service: Judicial Council to review transgender clergy issue
Excerpt: The United Methodist Church’s top judicial authority will again be considering questions about sexuality — including the case of a pastor who switched gender from female to male — when it tackles a full docket at its fall meeting.

…The transgender case involves a ruling by Bishop John R. Schol of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, who in May reappointed the Rev. Drew Phoenix as pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baltimore. Mr. Phoenix, 48, had been minister at St. John’s for five years as the Rev. Ann Gordon. After surgery and hormone therapy in the past year, the pastor changed his gender to male and adopted a new name.

Leonard Link: Hormone Treatment for Transgender Prisoners: Court Refuses to Expand Wisconsin Case to Class Action
Excerpt: U.S. District Judge Charles N. Calvert, Jr., issued a ruling August 7 refusing to expand a pending lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s recently-enacted statute concerning hormone treatment for prisoners. The case, originally brought by Lambda Legal and the ACLU on behalf of five transgender Wisconsin inmates who were threatened with cutoff of their hormone therapy when the statute was set to go into effect, claims that cutting off the therapy would be cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment. Lambda/ACLU hoped to expand the case to include two additional transgender prisoners as named plaintiffs, both of whom have not been allowed to start hormone therapy in prison, and to get the case certified as a class action on behalf of all present and future TG prisoners in Wisconsin who may be affected by the new statute…

Blabbeando: Chile: Transgender character erased from Chilean version of Argentinean soap opera
Excerpt: …it’s no surprise that Chile is set to launch their own version of “Los Roldan,” renamed “Fortunato,” which promises to follow the original story-arc - with one key difference.

Clarin reports that while the character of Laisa will survive under a different name (Judy), the part will no longer be that of a transgender woman or even be played by a woman.

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe: The Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Excerpt: Well… okay. I’m starting this blog for several reasons.

One, I need to have a place to vent about being trans. My friends are sick of hearing about it. Two, I feel a twinge of guilt. I never was involved much in any trans community, real life or online. Now that I’m stealth, this probably isn’t going to change. But I’ve know that my path is often tread; we transition and fade into the crowd. For many, this is the ultimate goal. And I’m unapologetic about going stealth and publicly swearing off any connection to transsexuality. But the problem is obvious- if we all transition and disappear, who’s left? I feel that the “I just want to transition and get on with my f*cking life already” type’s voice is somewhat lost.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m far from a “transgender warrior” …

My activism, as it were, mainly takes the form of the somewhat occasional, usually brief letter to the editor by me or my alter ego.

But, they usually (always so far, but maybe I need to write more often) are published.

So, I was a bit disappointed yesterday when I encountered, omg …

The Lansing City Limits

Sorry, “We do not print letters from writers living outside the area … ”

That came by way of … a postcard, no less.

Well, that letter was about this story about Lansing resident, Alice Dreger, doing her thing in a Barnum & Bailey setting.

Okay, my two cents worth may not impress. — but, heck, how provincial can you be, Lansing State Journal?

Props, to another “out-of-towner”, Curtis Hinkle, for his “Circus Freaks and Alice Dreger’s Hermaphrodite Show” piece at OII.

Alice Dreger occupies center ring tomorrow evening, June 6th, D(reger) Day, at the Psychology Building at MSU.