Frank Rich is still “off today” at the New York Times, not that there’s anything wrong with that … since last week readers had Jenny Boylan in his place, and this week Olivia Judson. Change is good.

In the case of both GID (gender identity dysphoria) and obesity, there’s still much to be learned about nature and nurture and how and what happens in the womb …

Suppose you have two groups of pregnant female rats. Rats in the first group can either eat as much regular lab-rat chow as they like, or they can eat their fill of human junk food — cookies, doughnuts, marshmallows, potato chips, muffins, chocolate. Rats in the second group only get chow, but again, can eat as much as they like. After the rats have given birth, continue the different regimens while the pups are suckling. Then give both groups of pups access to the chow and the junk food.

Experiments like this have found that pregnant females with access to junk food ate, on a daily basis, roughly 40 percent more food (by weight) and 56 percent more calories than rats that just had chow. Moreover — and this is the interesting bit — pups whose mothers ate junk food while pregnant and lactating had a greater taste for food high in fat and sugar than those whose mothers did not. The junk-food pups ate more calories and were more prone to gaining weight.

What goes for rats does not necessarily go for humans. Nonetheless, such results are thought-provoking. As everyone knows, humans are getting fatter and fatter. According to the World Health Organization, 400 million adults around the world weighed in as obese in 2005. In the United States, more than a third of women between 20 and 39 are obese, some of them extremely so. For the first time in history, large numbers of obese women are having children.

Being obese during pregnancy is dangerous for the mother and expensive for the health care system. But does it affect the babies?

There are reasons to think it might. The period between conception and birth is crucial — after all, you’re growing from a single cell into a baby. Your heart is being built; your brain is being wired. Exposure to alcohol during this time can disrupt brain development; lack of iodine may permanently stunt growth. Being starved in the womb can lead to health problems such as heart disease later in life, especially if food becomes abundant. So what about overnourishment? Does an “obese” environment in the womb somehow predispose babies to obesity later on?

At the moment, such questions are difficult to answer. Humans are much harder to study than rats, and the phenomenon of obesity in pregnancy is relatively new, so we don’t know much about it yet. Moreover, many factors contribute to someone’s becoming obese, and picking them apart is tricky. Added to that, an “obese” environment in the womb has two separate elements: the nutrients provided by the mother via the food she eats, and the hormonal environment of someone who is overweight. (Being obese can profoundly alter a woman’s hormonal profile.) Again, picking these apart is hard.

But the results of several studies suggest that the very fact of a woman being obese during pregnancy may predispose her children to obesity. For example, one study found that children born to women who have lost weight after radical anti-obesity surgery are less likely to be obese than siblings born before their mother lost weight. Another study looked at women who gained weight between pregnancies; the results showed that babies born after their mothers put on weight tended to be heavier at birth than siblings born beforehand. Since the mother’s genes haven’t changed, the “fat” environment seems likely to be responsible for the effect.

Why might this happen? Perhaps an “obese” environment in the womb alters the wiring of the developing brain so as to interfere with normal appetite control, fat deposition, taste in food, or metabolism. Studies on other animals suggest that parts of the brain that control appetite develop differently under “obese” conditions. And in humans, one study has found that babies born to obese mothers have lower resting metabolic rates than babies whose mothers are of normal weight.

For most of our evolutionary past, the problem has been avoiding starvation. An environment awash with sugars and fats is, therefore, an evolutionary novelty: in hundreds of millions of years of evolution, this is the first time such foods have been abundant. Giant quantities of fats and sugars have not, historically, been available to a developing fetus, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they do have a harmful impact.

If this is right, it raises the alarming possibility that the obesity epidemic has a built-in snowball effect. If children born to obese mothers are, owing to the environment in the womb, predisposed to obesity, they may find staying thin especially hard. Reversing the epidemic may thus rest on helping women to lose weight before they conceive and helping them to eat a balanced, non-junk-food diet while they are pregnant. The well-being of the next generation may depend on it.

Honey, I Plumped the Kids

Some poetry from Ms. Judson (aka Dr. Tatiana), which you can hear in a 2003 interview with Jackie Leyden of NPR …

Beware, for it’s easy to blunder
And be false in what you aver.

Some creatures change sex before teatime,
Some others find two sexes dull,
And that virile male fish has no free time–
He’s got all his kiddies to lull.

When it comes to the topic of gender,
Mother Nature’s been having some fun.
Take nothing for granted! Remember,
You won’t find any rules–not a one!

A bit of word play here, but Autumn’s earlier post brought back memories of this story …

An avid athlete and a transgender person, Tedra Thomsen wants to play
coed softball — as a woman.

But the softball league she plays on won’t allow that.

“This snubs me basically,” said Thomsen, who explained while the sex
she was born with is anatomically male, the gender she identifies
herself with is female.

Next week the league’s recreation district will consider a policy on
transsexual athletes — a first for the Chico Area Recreation and
Park District — because of Thomsen’s concerns.

… and …

their knowledge but said the board needed to put a policy in placenow to answer Thomsen’s coed softball application request.

Also Thursday the board unanimously approved a policy addressing the
participation of transgender and transsexual athletes in recreational
sports programs. The policy — which originated when Chico resident
and softball player Tedra Thomsen, a transgender person who expressed
a desire to play on a coed softball team as a woman — states that
transsexual athletes can play in a male or female sport after sex
reassignment surgery, hormone therapy and legal recognition of their
reassigned sex. Medical documentation is also required.

Transgender athletes who don’t meet those requirements are eligible
for participation in female or male recreational sports according to
their birth sex, the policy states.

Thomsen, friends and advocates and attorneys for gender rights — some
who had traveled from San Francisco to attend the meeting — urged the
CARD board to reconsider the policy because it would mean Thomsen
cannot play as a female until undergoing sex reassignment surgery and
hormone therapy. Several said surgery was a drastic procedure and
that Olympic standards were not appropriate for a recreation league.

“I think this is not a time for hard and fast rules that might
protect someone legally, but fairness,” said one speaker in favor of
Thomsen.

CARD legal representative Jennifer Wendell, an attorney with the
Carter Law Office, said the policy — based on standards put in place
by the International Olympic Committee — is the recreation district’s
attempt at balancing CARD’s need for safety and competitive standards
with accommodating Thomsen. She said the policy will not keep anyone
from dressing, acting or being addressed and treated as the gender
they identify with.

CARD attorney Jeff Carter said CARD’s legal team would be willing to
meet with those knowledgeable about transgender issues to further
their knowledge but said the board needed to put a policy in place
now to answer Thomsen’s coed softball application request.

… and that left me wondering if there have been any updates to this story?

I haven’t heard of any … ??

(By the way, if we didn’t “archive” these news stories, they may as well never have happened in many cases.)

Back to Autumn’s post, which also brought to mind this story, speaking of (”tricky”) Libertarians …

Activists belonging to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party continue to mourn the loss of Kent Snyder, a 49-year-old gay political operative credited with propelling the presidential campaign of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) into a national, grassroots movement that raised more than $35 million.

Snyder, who served as Paul’s campaign chair, died of pneumonia on June 26 after being hospitalized for about two months and after running up medical bills exceeding $400,000, according to friends and family members, who said he did not have health insurance.

…

When asked at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday about concerns raised by critics that his presidential campaign did not provide employee health insurance, Paul said only that he doesn’t believe any political campaigns offer health insurance.

“I don’t know of any campaign that has health insurance for temporary and other employees,” he said. “I’ve never had it and I’ve been in this business for 30 years. I don’t know any campaign that does.”

…

Spokespersons for the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain said both campaigns provide full health insurance coverage to their paid staff. A spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign said Clinton also provided health insurance coverage to campaign staffers before she ended her campaign in early June.

I don’t expect, though, I’ll be seeing “full health insurance coverage” coming forth, for me or you, from any of these folks any time soon … Paul, McCain or Obama … three whiffs and we’re out.

Some not quite out of date mood music for this Saturday night …

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Governor Schwarzenegger signs law banning trans fats in restaurants:

California became the first state to require restaurants to cook without artery-clogging trans fats, such as those in many oils and margarines, under restrictions signed into law Friday by the health-conscious governor.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a physical-fitness advocate and crusader against obesity, sided with legislators who said the measure would help get the fat out of Californians who are too dependent on fast food.

Trans fats can preserve flavor and add to the shelf life of foods but have been linked to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

The new law, AB 97 by Assemblyman Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia), requires restaurants to use oils, margarines and shortening with less than half a gram of trans fat per serving by Jan. 1, 2010, and applies the standard to deep-fried bakery goods by Jan. 1, 2011.

If one violates the law, one could face fines of $25 to $1,000 — much like the law in New York City (which fully took effect this month), where one could face a fine up to $2000 for serving trans fats in restaurants.

Eliminating trans fats is all the trend; many restaurant chains have already taken action to, or have committed to, either fully or partly eliminating trans fats from their menus. Some of these restaurants include Wendy’s, El Pollo Loco, Mimis Cafe, KFC, Burger King, IHOP, Applebee’s, Starbucks, Subway, Taco Bell, Denny’s, Panera Bread, Red Lobster, the Olive Garden, McDonald’s and Spago Beverly Hills.

My brother, who lives abroad in Sweden, has mentioned how many describe government there as “mother government” because of the trend to legislate out what are perceived as personal freedoms, and legislate in a lot of government social programs. With that in mind, is this California legislating of trans fats in prepared, restaurant foods an example of government operating as a watchful parent of California’s adult population, or is this government taking an interest in eliminating a hidden food danger that raises health care costs for broader society? — much as how smoking raises the public health care costs of broader society.

It’s always a bit tricky when one takes the Libertarian view of always asking the question of “Should __(fill in the blank)__ be a function of government?” A lot of us want government involved with health issues and healthcare — the questions are instead ones of “How much do we want government involved in health issues?”, and “How much government involvement in health issues is too much involvement?”

And, when it comes to trans fats, I don’t have a good answer where the line is.

Darnit, I never should have shorted that stuff … …

This is from Randall Forsyth’s UP AND DOWN WALL STREET DAILY column (”No Market For Young Men“) in Barron’s yesterday …

ALAN GREENSPAN IS OFF THE HOOK. The biggest bubble in history was not inflated by the Federal Reserve pushing interest rates too low for too long, science has proven conclusively.

No, the boom can be traced to raging testosterone levels of traders on Wall Street and the City of London, according to the results of a new study. And the current bust may be the result of swings in another hormone, cortisol, which is associated with stress.

Those are the findings of a study of hormone levels of City traders by John Coates and Joe Herman of Cambridge University and published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday. Coates also has additional insight in the matter, having previously run a trading desk for Deutsche Bank, according to the Financial Times, which reported on the research Tuesday.

“Steroids such as testosterone and cortisol affect our moods, memories and behavior,” Coates wrote in the FT. Testosterone levels rise when males prepare to compete, and increase further in the winner, but fall in the loser. Higher testosterone levels are associated with greater risk-taking and confidence; winners experience a positive feedback loop of higher testosterone begetting more confidence, Coates explains.

The Cambridge researchers monitored hormone levels in 17 London traders and found those with the higher testosterone levels in the morning made more money that day. Indeed, testosterone “is likely to rise in a bubble and, by increasing risk-taking, exaggerate the market’s upward movement,” they posit.

But, not surprisingly, that can go too far, as the last year or so has amply demonstrated. “Effective risk taking turns into dangerous behavior,” other studies show, they add.

When the markets go against these Big Swinging Dicks — as Michael Lewis called them in “Liar’s Poker,” his classic recounting of the trading floor culture of what was perhaps the most macho firm at the time, Salomon Brothers — they experience a hormone swing.

Cortisol, which has the opposite effect, increases with stress and lowers confidence. “Cortisol is likely to rise in a market crash and, by increasing risk aversion, to exaggerate the market’s downswing,” the Cambridge researchers say.

“In the present credit crisis, traders may feel the noxious effects of chronic cortisol exposure and end up in a psychological state known as ‘learned helplessness’,” they contend. “If this happens, central banks may lower interest rates only to find that traders still refuse to buy risky assets.” In other words, they may be pushing on rather limp string.

All this squares with experience of a top woman portfolio manager, who says her research in brain chemistry finds that men are more prone to hormonal mood swings than women. Men go through testosterone cycles every two weeks, making their swings twice as frequent as a woman’s, she points out. Incredibly, she relates, questions about dealing with her monthly cycle were a big deal for some prospective investors when she was launching her fund.

The real difference between male and female traders, she continues, is that men react to every economic number or report to play a short-term swing. “It’s almost like video games,” she says, breeding an addictive behavior.

Her experience finds women tend to be more contemplative and less eager to jump on every number for a play. Yet, despite the advances made by women in other fields, her impression is that there are fewer female traders and portfolio managers than, say, in 1980, though she adds there are more women in institutional sales on Wall Street.

Coates and Herman suggest that more women on trading desks would temper the irrational exuberance and inevitable crashes. Older men might also help dampen the swings. As pilots are wont to say, “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots.”

Diversity on trading desks would help dampen those testosterone-fueled swings, this female PM says, and it’s something she’s practiced. Gender alone can’t explain her fund’s success, which has produced steady, market-beating returns, even in the first quarter, when it scored double digits while the markets were sucking wind. The key, she says, is a personality type that can deal with failure and get on with it.

That has nothing to do with a Y-chromosome. As Kipling wrote:

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss…

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!”

This story is probably going to anger The Catholic League, the California Catholic Daily, Focus on The Family (CitizenLink), the Pacific Justice Institute, and the freepers — since these groups have already jumped on how wrong a transgender woman’s lawsuit over breast enhansemnt surgery was in the first place — but Seton Medical Center has just backed down on their use-of-facility denial of for a transgender woman’s plastic surgery. It seems that California requires that if you offer a type of surgery to some people, you can’t deny others surgery based on their being a member of California’s protected classes (i.e. race, religious creed, disability status, gender, etc.)

Seems that a denial of plastic surgery services that would be available to anyone else in at Seton’s facility is against the law — likely due to the changes that took effect with AB 1400 (The Civil Rights Act Of 2005); a change to California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (California’s public accommodation law).

The Catholic League proudly proclaimed in early January that “No Catholic Right to Transgender Surgery!“, and the California Catholic Daily proclaimed to this transgender woman God Made You A Man. It’s nice to see California considers these organizations, from a public accommodation perspective, wrong — I have to admit I’m pleased Seton is changing their policy, and these Catholic religious right organizations are functionally eating their words.

~~~~~
Further Reading:
* Who is Catholic League president William Donohue?

~~~~~
Related:
* This And That: This Week In Gender Identity And Expression
* Chocolate Jesus, Eat Your Heart Out

I just got home from the VA Hospital today, after my gastric bypass. I’m still recovering, but I’ve healed up well so far. Basically, what it means is I feel a tired (and gassy from the laproscopic surgery), but it’s an “I’m feeling better by the day” kind of tired.

I noticed many of you have signed a group card, and I’m really, really touched. And, although I haven’t read all the entries as yet, my eyes welled just reading the little I did. Thank you all for your kind, warm thoughts.

Anywho, I’ll start posting more as I recover more. I see that while I was in the hospital, a ten year old transkid died from suicide, and The Peter LaBarbera slammed on transkids and parents of transgender kids. * sigh * There’s always something to post about.

I wrote this post to educate LGB people about transgender people going into surgery over at PHB, but am crossposting here to a more transgender audience as I wrote it for the broader LGBT community.
~~Autumn~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tuesday is the day I go in for my gastric bypass surgery. I needed to be at or below 262 pounds to be eligible for the surgery (that’s an arbitrary weight set by my surgeon, based on me losing ten pounds between my last appointment and the surgery date). On my friend’s electronic scale yesterday, I weighed 260 pounds. I’m guessing by the way I feel and the way I look, and my continued liquid diet and continued rigorous exercise plan, I’ll be adequately below the 262 pound mark.

The reason one has to lose 10 pounds right before surgery has to do with shrinking the liver. The plan is to do this surgery laparoscopicly, so a shrunken liver facilitates easier access to the stomach and intestines. There is a chance I may need to be opened up fully for the bypass, but it’s not the norm.

The gravity of this surgery is really hitting me. This past two weeks while I’ve been on a full liquid diet, I’ve been craving KFC and In and Out Double-Doubles (double cheeseburgers), the reality is that these foods won’t be part of my diet for a long time to come, and even then only in very infrequent doses — my reduced stomach and my long term health plans aren’t going to stomach junk food. My life is forever changing, pretty much as my life changed when I began transitioning to Autumn on February 6, 2003.

These days, I don’t usually talk about the shape of my genitalia or about my secondary sex characteristics because, frankly, my gender isn’t determined by these. I know I’m female just because I just know — as actually how most people know what their gender is. But, per my birth state’s laws, my legal sex is determined pretty much by the shape of my genitalia. There are some commenters here at PHB, as well as a lot of the religious right community, that are genitalia essentialists — they see me as a man because of the current shape of my genitalia (in the case of commenters here at PHB) now, or see me always as a man because of the shape of my genitalia at birth/because they believe my genetics will indicate I’m male.

[More about going into surgery as a pre-operative transsexual after the fold]

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Some of the gender and transgender-related items we’ve been reading on our daily blog run, all of which may also be found here …

At hiding in plain sight …

Instead, there is only Grannan’s exploitation of her subjects’ confusion and unhappiness. The extent of that exploitation is best illustrated by reference to another woman who photographed outsiders and was accused, in her day, of exploiting them. In fact, Diane Arbus’s freaks are paragons of dignity in comparison. Some of them are even joyful. That’s because Arbus knew all along that she was one of them. Grannan is just a tourist.

Katy Grannan

At dented blue mercedes …

Don’t you just love that phrase, “used to be a man?”

Can You Ever Leave Behind the Evil Twin?

At Righteous Anger …

Now sure I’m all for individual rights, but really why can’t these sissies stop complaining about what genetics cursed themselves with and learn to cope with the reality of the world they were born into.

A TransNational Geographic Outlook

At Bilerico Project …

If progressives want to choose the lesser evil, that’s a position to take, but to claim that an insider politician backed by every establishment figure he can get his hands on is going to heal anything besides his own hemorrhoids is dangerous and embarrassing.

Barack Obama: a transcendent person of color

At Trans Universe …

In the spring of this year, Haworth Press will be releasing a new book called “Trans People in Love,” edited by Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox from Sydney, Australia. This book has 25 chapters, all written by different authors from around the world about their experiences with love. I am one of the contributing writers for this book and my chapter is called, “Sex and the Single Trannie.” In my chapter, I speak about libido and how I vowed not to lose it when I started hormones.

Sex, Love and Transsexuals

(And I say that, of course, without the least discourtesy.)

Sorry, it may be a cliche, but I couldn’t help but think of one of Dan Akyroyd’s signature lines on SNL (”Jane, you ignorant, misguided slut!”) when I read this from crusader Christopher Zehnder in the California Catholic Daily writing about transwoman Charlene Hastings’ suit against Seton Medical Center …

I am often a little amused, and more often bemused, by some of the comments California Catholic Daily receives on its stories. Having engaged in Internet discourse on a few sites, I have long come to expect little from it; for it mostly seems a screaming match across an abyss. It’s not that Internet discussions are vehement (I do not object to vehemence), or that they are uncivil or downright rude, but that they are so cliché. One feels, at times, that he is being assailed by hurled bumper-sticker slogans. And then there are the inapt responses, made without regard to the obvious opinions of the other party in the discussion.

We received one such response to an article we published about a man who claims he is a woman, has received treatments to become a woman, and is suing a Catholic hospital because it wouldn’t accommodate him in his continuing transformation. (See “God made you a man,” Jan. 8, 2008.) In response to the article’s insistence on using male pronouns when referring to the “transsexual” Charlene Hastings, one commentator wrote the following: “Regardless of your religious beliefs, Ms. Hastings deserves the simple courtesy of referring to her as the woman she is, legally, emotionally and psychologically, not as ‘he’ and ‘him.’ I am appalled at such blatant disrespect by this supposedly Christian publication.”

I fully understand why the commentator might be offended by what she deems our discourtesy. I fail to understand, however, why she would think it discourtesy – at least, why she would think that we intended any discourtesy by referring to the putative female Hastings as a he. It would certainly be discourteous if we thought that Hastings had a claim to a female identity and refused to grant it to him. But the fact is, we don’t think Hastings can justly make that claim. What’s more, we think calling Hastings a she would be tantamount to a lie; and no one should expect someone to speak what he thinks is a lie.

In fact, it would be disrespectful for us to refer to Hastings as if he were a woman. In doing so, we would – by our own lights – be degrading Hastings by playing along with his self-delusion. If a sexually abused woman, for instance, insisted on calling herself (because she was abused) a slut, it would be highly disrespectful of us to agree with her. Moreover, it would immoral of us to do so, for we would be aiding and encouraging her in holding on to a destructive self-appraisal.

The rest of “Not peace, but a sword” can be read here.

I was also reminded of the rest of Aykroyd’s line — “Once again, you missed the point entirely.” From a story in Pink News …

While state law in the USA does allow religious hospitals to refuse to perform abortions, there are no specific exemptions for elective transgender surgery.

Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Centre in San Francisco, told the paper this is not the only such incident. “Seton and other hospitals in the area have put up significant barriers to care for transgender people.

“There’s simply no religious exemption in the Unruh Act,” Wertz said about California’s law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

“We’re talking about a type of care that’s OK for one class but not another.”

Hastings’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said the is case not just about the hospital’s religious procedures but also about civil rights.

“It is about transgender people being able to use businesses and other facilities on an equal basis as other people. If you took out ‘transgender’ in the lawsuit and replaced it with ‘African-American,’ this would be a no-brainer,” he said.

The hospital does allow female patients who are not transgender the right to breast-enlargement surgeries.

For Sunday …

#1 - Grammatically speaking, trans goes transitive: An excerpt from a book review today in the Boston Herald …

Tommy Kaczmarek, Glenn Feldman and Malvina Lathan are among the most prominent boxing judges in the world, and must have scored close to a thousand title fights between them. The book manages not only to get all three names wrong, but transgenders two of them.

#2 - In Baltimore, you can yo your own way …

Baltimore, a city that for years clung to the word “espantoon” to describe what the rest of the world calls a “nightstick,” has always gone its own way with the language. Now comes an innovation, out of the city’s middle schools, that offers a solution to one of the more annoying aspects of English.

That’s the pronoun you use when referring to someone else. It might be “he,” or it might be “she,” but if you don’t know, it gets complicated or cumbersome. Sometimes you’re stuck with that “he or she” business that saps the energy out of just about any sentence.

Enter “yo.” This is a word that’s perfectly familiar in the sense of “yes,” or “hey,” or sometimes “you.” It used to be an Army term, and then it was Rocky Balboa’s, and now it’s a staple of African-American slang.

But Elaine Stotko, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, began hearing of kids here who say “yo” to indicate another person of whatever gender, and after pursuing survey work over two years has nailed that usage down. Now she has a paper in American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society.

Some examples: “Yo handin’ out papers.” “Yo threw a thumbtack at me.” “She ain’t really go with yo.”

A little further study showed her (showed yo - it can stand in for “her” and “him,” too) that this use of the word doesn’t show up in other cities; kids in Washington say “youngin’” in a general sense, but typically that’s reserved for boys.

Ms. Stotko thinks it’s a great invention: “Why are we always forcing people into categories? Our society needs to change and stop dividing people on gender.”

Her son is a transgender person, so there’s a personal interest in the question, but still, yo is on to something here. Yo is on to “yo.” And it just might catch on, hon.

One size fits all

Read the rest of this entry »

If y’all haven’t noticed, I tend to save personal news for the weekend, and really only mention stuff that will likely be pretty public, or will be especially significant. On the weekend before Xmas, the news was about my likely tattoo being likely inked on cable television. This week, this “fill-in blogmistress’s” news is about scheduled surgery in February.

For those who don’t know, I’m pretty significantly overweight. And just to give y’all an idea of how overweight, my blog photo is from about 50 pounds ago. So, I consulted with doctors and other medical providers at the Veterans Administration (VA). The conclusion was that I met the eligibility requirements for gastric bypass surgery. I jumped through the hoops — now, surgery is scheduled, with it predicated on me losing 10 more pounds between now and my scheduled surgery on February 12th.

[More details on my upcoming surgery after the fold]

Read the rest of this entry »

I take synthetic estrogens as a part of my treatment for transsexuality. I know first hand how powerful hormones can be towards shaping or reshaping a body.

And, my female-to-male (F2M) brothers know testosterone is more powerful a hormone than estrogen is — most F2M’s see changes in bone structure and muscle mass in very short order when on male androgens (testosterone being a male androgen), and as a result usually become “invisible” in their target sex well within two years of starting hormones.

Is that “cheating?” No, for transsexuals it’s treatment for a recognized medical condition. Using anabolic steroids to improve performance in sports is another matter — it’s trying to get an edge over one’s competition by the use of drugs.

Health Insite says:

Anabolic steroids are synthetic substances related to the male sex hormones (androgens). They promote the growth of skeletal muscle (anabolic effects) and the development of male sexual characteristics (androgenic effects)…

In the San Francisco Chronicle reports this morning that Barry Bonds indicted on 4 perjury counts, obstruction of justice — the alleged lying was over Barry Bonds’ alleged use of steroids.

The perjury case against former Giants star Barry Bonds is built on documents seized in a federal raid on a Burlingame steroids lab and positive drug test results indicating that baseball’s all-time home run king used steroids, court records show.

Bonds, perhaps the greatest hitter of his generation, was indicted Thursday on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. He is accused of lying under oath in December 2003 when he told the grand jury that investigated the BALCO steroid ring that he had never used banned drugs.

The 43-year-old free-agent outfielder faces arraignment Dec. 7 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, months of legal proceedings - and a federal prison term of about 30 months if he is convicted at trial, legal experts said.

In the indictment, federal prosecutors said Bonds lied when he denied using a long list of banned drugs, including steroids, testosterone, human growth hormone and “the clear,” the undetectable designer steroid marketed by BALCO.

Bonds also lied when he testified that his longtime personal trainer, Greg Anderson, had never injected him with drugs, the government contended. The trainer, who was imprisoned for contempt of court after he refused to testify against Bonds, was freed Thursday night, hours after Bonds’ indictment was unsealed.

The one thing that seems clear from the indictment:

…if you do want a conclusion you can jump to, it is that Bonds is retired from baseball, whether he likes it or not.

The five-count indictment blows so many holes in Bonds’ desirability to other teams that it is unfathomable that another team would be willing to sign him, either in December, March, June or ever. Never mind whether he is still a salable commodity to the average fan - no team is going to sign someone who might have to take a few weeks off during the middle of the 2008 season to go on trial. Even the most benign viewing of the events of today undercuts Bonds’ ability to make himself attractive to another team. His new uniform is a suit, his support staff is [attorneys] John Burris and Michael Rains, and 762 is the home run record for the foreseeable future.

[Sports commentary on the indictment after the break]

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… verse processes.  Back pain, that is …

Back pain affects one in four Americans and is the most common form of physical disability. An estimated 80 percent of all Americans will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives.

Now, a spine specialist says you can blame that bad back on your ancestors …

A spine specialist trying to figure out why people so often have bad backs says he has come up with a new theory about when and how early humans evolved the ability to walk upright.

The uncannily human-looking backbone of a 21 million-year-old precursor of humans and apes gives the first clue, said Dr. Aaron Filler of the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

A major change in the vertebrae that allowed this pre-human to stand upright and carry things also made it easier to crush and strain the spongy discs between each vertebra, Filler, a medical doctor with a doctorate in anthropology proposes.

That, in turn, explains why back pain is a leading cause of disability, he said.

Writing in the journal Neurosurgical Focus on Sunday, Filler said one main clue was a bone feature called the transverse process, which sticks out from the side of the hollow, round vertebrae, Filler said in a telephone interview. This is where muscles attach to the spine.

“The vertebra is transformed in a way that literally reverses the mechanics of the spine,” Filler said. “The bone lever of the vertebrae gets switched from bending the spine forward to bending the spine back.”

Most vertebrates are oriented forward, to walk on all fours. The transverse process is at the front of each vertebra, facing the animal’s belly. This is true of monkeys, too.

But in humans and in the 21 million-year-old fossil of a creature called Morotopithecus bishopi, a tree-dwelling, ape-like creature that lived in what is now Uganda, the transverse process has moved backward, behind the opening for the spinal cord.

Great apes, such as chimpanzees, share this feature.

‘THE UPRIGHT APE’

The fossil was discovered in the 1960s but no one noticed the important change until 1997, when paleontologist Laura MacLatchy of the State University of New York at Stony Brook reported on the remarkable features of Morotopithecus.

“That means that upright posture bipedalism goes back 20 million years, not just 5 or 6 million years,” said Filler.

In his study and in a book published last week called “The Upright Ape — a new origin of the Species,” Filler argues that this common ancestor, and ancestors going back many millions of years before, walked upright. Homo sapiens, the human species, continued upright, while apes evolved back toward all fours, he argues.

“When you look at most ape species, their spines and most of their bodies still look pretty monkey-like,” Filler said.

He also said humans evolved a new structure of muscles that pull the body from side to side while standing.

“This is very important for carrying an infant or child,” Filler said. “From the point of view of back pain, now we have big muscles doing this heavy work that never did before. They can get torn and strained.”

The backward orientation also allows the cushiony discs to get crushed, Filler said. “In most animals the vertebrae get spread apart when they carry infants on their backs when on all fours,” he said.

What further differentiates humans from apes is the positioning of the place where the spine attaches to the hips, said Filler, who dissected the backbones of dead gibbons, chimpanzees and macaque monkeys and compared them to bones from living and extinct species of other animals and fossils from various pre-humans.

Sunday edition …

#1 - Trans people (metis) don’t have it easy in Nepal …

On the day Nepal’s MPs and rights activists were to interact with the gay community and discuss the inclusion of their rights in a new constitution, the police assaulted and stripped five young men in a park here because they were carrying condoms.

‘Five men, whose ages are between 19 and 25, were sitting in Ratna Park (Saturday) evening when they were accosted by four policemen led by a sub-inspector,’ said Sunil Pant, president of Blue Diamond Society (BDS), Nepal’s only gay rights organisation.

‘Though the men were metis (transgenders who prefer to dress as women), they were not in drag but dressed in jeans and T-shirts,’ Pant said.

‘However, the policemen made them strip naked and searched their bags. When they found condoms in the bags, they first abused the men, accused them of being sex workers and began beating them up with batons,’ he added.

One of the five managed to run out of the park and call a BDS official, who was also roughed up when he tried to intervene.

‘Alex Chamling (an HIV/AIDS educator at BDS) was badly beaten up when he tried to stop the policemen from assaulting the youths,’ Pant said.

Though Chamling dialled 100 for help and two policemen arrived on the spot, Pant said they remained ’silent spectators’.

The incident came on the day BDS, with the help of the Dutch government, was scheduled to hold a meeting between metis and politicians from Nepal’s leading parties as well as human rights activists.

With the multi-party government having pledged to hold an election in November, to be followed by a new constitution, Nepal’s lesbian, gay and transgender community is lobbying to have the new statute protect gay rights.

In Nepal’s feudal society, where sons are preferred to daughters, homosexuality is taboo. Though the gay community supported the pro-democracy movement last year that ended King Gyanendra’s 15-month direct rule, it has not received any support from the new multi-party government.

Policemen regularly harass and assault gays, organisations refuse them jobs and their families disown them.

The Maoist guerrillas, who are now in the government, are anti-gay, terming the community perverts and an aberration.

Saturday’s assault coincided with the Nepal visit of two officials of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

This year, for the first time, the HRW is compiling a report on the state of gay rights in Nepal and the plight of the community.

‘It was shocking,’ said HRW’s Scott Long, who spoke with some of the victims. ‘We also spoke to the police and they admitted that they make a regular practice of beating up metis. It’s a major human rights issue.’

Long also said that the police attitude that carrying condoms was illegal and tantamount to prostitution was ‘a threat to the health of everyone in Nepal’.

‘The constitutional revision process is offering a real opportunity for change to all the marginalised sections,’ he added.

Nepal police assault youths for carrying condoms

#2 - British Army officer Captain Jan Hamilton is battling the MOD …

The first transsexual officer in the Armed Forces is set to sue the Ministry of Defence for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination.

Jan Hamilton, a former male captain in the Parachute Regiment who is now living as a woman, will lodge court papers claiming she was sexually discriminatedagainst and unfairly dismissed in April from a £45,000-a-year post.

Captain Hamilton, 42, had been due to become head of media relations for the British Army in Gibraltar in May.

But after she refused to turn up at a medical examination dressed in a male uniform – which her lawyers argue would have been ‘humiliating and demeaning’ – the job offer was withdrawn.

Her lawyers have, to no avail, repeatedly sought an informal meeting with her Army bosses to settle the issue out of court. Captain Hamilton has now been without a salary for four months and has racked up several thousand pounds in legal bills.

Captain Jan, the transsexual Para, sues the Army for unfair dismissal

The Daily Mail first reported on Capt. Hamilton this past March.

#3 - The July 23rd issue of Newsweek magazine has a feature on men playing women in films …

A white actor wouldn’t dare put on dark makeup to appear black today—Angelina Jolie took a lot of heat for slightly darkening her complexion to play Mariane Pearl in “A Mighty Heart.” A non-Asian actor would never get away with taping his eyes and assuming a silly accent to sound Chinese, as Mickey Rooney did in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961). Even fat activists complain when actors don fat suits for laughs, as Gwyneth Paltrow found out when she artificially bulked up for “Shallow Hal.” So it would seem logical that drag today, especially when the man playing the part is straight, is both misogynistic (notice how the “women” in these movies are always awkward and ugly) and homophobic (notice how they also flutter and flounce like a stereotypical gay man). So why is it still OK for male actors to wear dresses?
…

“Good drag is used knowingly for its transgressive qualities,” says Barrios. “But films like ‘Big Momma’ and ‘Hairspray’ don’t want to be attuned to whatever transgressiveness they may contain. Drag is just an easy way to get laughs without extending themselves beyond putting on some latex.” And when drag becomes more about latex than subtext, it’s not funny at all.

Drag Hags

#4 - The Orlando Sentinel has a feature on Gina Duncan’s long journey …

Former Merritt Island football star Greg Pingston is completing a transgender change to Gina Duncan.

They still talk about the tackle around Merritt Island. Greg Pingston, the baddest player on the baddest team in the state, zeroed in on his victim.

The kid was returning a kick up the sideline in front of the Mustangs’
bench. Pingston locked on to him with his tackling radar.

He angled in at full speed, plunged his helmet into the runner’s chest
and drove upward. The runner’s entire body jolted into reverse.

“His chin just exploded with blood,” receiver Mike Garo recalls. “It
was the perfect tackle they’d always taught us, but it went beyond that.

“All the guys went nuts. It was totally tribal.”

Pingston hopped up and walked away. After the game he showered, went
home and hoped nobody would be around.

He went into his parents’ room and walked to the closet. Then he put
on one of his mother’s dresses.

“I felt like I could breathe,” Pingston says.

He didn’t know why. He just knew a woman’s clothes felt as natural as
any football jersey he’d ever worn.

Three decades later, it’s his old teammates who are gasping for air.

“Oh, my God, that’s Greg’s voice!”

“Can you believe that?”

Those reactions were left on the office voice mail. A couple of guys
had heard the news and called to listen to the greeting. They didn’t
hear the beep and realize their comments were being recorded.

It was a little much to process. The anchor of Merritt Island’s
state-championship team, the homecoming king, the player everybody
measured his manhood against had become . . .

A woman?

“What an ugly woman he’ll make.”

The voice mail ended. The shock waves roll on.

Football player becoming a woman

#5 - What causes heart attacks …

Anger really can trigger a heart attack. But then, so can getting sick, being too hot, being too cold, air pollution, lack of sleep, grief, overeating, natural disasters, exercise and sex.

In fact, simply waking up is the worst thing you can do if you’re trying to avoid a heart attack.

Heart attacks, strokes and cardiac arrests seem to come out of the blue, but actually most occur upon rising in the morning, according to the July 2007 issue of the Harvard Heart Letter.

Before waking, our bodies release stress hormones into the bloodstream to give us the energy to get out of bed, but this also strains the heart slightly. That bump can cause a cardiac event if one’s arteries already are rife with festering cholesterol-rich plaque.

The dehydration that normally occurs after a night of sleep also puts a plaque-plagued circulatory system at risk. Also, heart medications wear off during the night.

A bout of anger can increase the chances of having a heart attack up to 14-fold for two hours following a flare-up, the Letter states.

Sex to Earthquakes: What Causes Heart Attacks

And if you think meditation helps …

There’s no definitive evidence that meditation eases health problems, according to an exhaustive review of the accumulated data by Canadian researchers.

“There is an enormous amount of interest in using meditation as a form of therapy to cope with a variety of modern-day health problems, especially hypertension, stress and chronic pain, but the majority of evidence that seems to support this notion is anecdotal, or it comes from poor quality studies,” concluded researchers Maria Ospina and Kenneth Bond of the University of Alberta/Capital Health Evidence-based Practice Centre, in Edmonton.

They analyzed 813 studies focused on the impact of meditation on various conditions, including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and substance abuse.

No Clear Evidence Meditation Can Boost Health: Study