It just says it all, don’t it?

I’m the 2006 “Radical Gender Activist.” Never really thought of myself as “radical” before.

What would life to me if I can’t laugh at being singled out as evil enough to raise money to combat by one of the most anti-gay, anti-transgender people on the religious right?

The fact that friend and peer transadvocate.com blogger Marti also found it pretty funny really makes my day.

As a contributing author to the Ex-Gay Watch, I’ve ran across the organization Positive Alternatives To Homosexuality (PATH). PATH identifies itself as:

…a non-profit coalition of organizations that help people with unwanted same-sex attractions (SSA) realize their personal goals for change — whether by developing their innate heterosexual potential or by embracing a lifestyle as a single, non-sexually active man or woman.

SSA — it’s a made-up medical condition. The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association — none of these organizations recognize SSA. The ICD-9-CM and DSM-IV-TR don’t list it as a treatable condition. It’s a term only ex-gay and ex-gay affirming organizations use to describe the homosexual feelings that go along with being gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

If ex-gays use the term for long enough, will it make SSA a recognized medical condition? My guess would be “no.”

Welcome now to another made up condition: Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS). The problem with trying to rename Adult Gender Identity Disorder with HBS — without reforming it within and through the medical system — is that there is no process to create an actual medical treatment model based on HBS. 

 In terms of recognized medical conditions, HBS is as real as SSA.

One can read all about HBS and what “real” transsexuals are like at TS Policy Review and TS Symposium.  Recent articles of “note” (and I use that phrase “of note” loosely) are The Shame of Transgender Inclusion, Transgenderism - Its Societal Impact Upon Those With HBS, and my favorite piece of crap: T Is For Transsexual.

Towards GID reform, I look at the ideas of Kelley Winters, Ph.D., of Gid Reform Activists. The GID diagnoses do need reform, but it would be better to work within the system to do it.  And, in the process of reforming GID diagnoses, perhaps not minimizing non-op’s and pre-op’s human value – as well as other transgender people’s human value — in the process of reforming GID might be a welcome approach.

There is an interesting study I found referenced in the A.E.Brain Blog entitled Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure.  (A PDF of the study’s report is here.) The study used transsexuals to see how introducing “cross sex” hormone introduction impacted brain development and organization.

The report’s results and conclusion statements were pretty interesting:

Results: Compared with controls, anti-androgen + estrogen treatment decreased brain volumes of male-to-female subjects towards female proportions, while androgen treatment in female-to-male subjects increased total brain and hypothalamus volumes towards male proportions.

Conclution: The findings suggest that, throughout life, gonadal hormones remain essential for maintaining aspects of sex-specific differences in the human brain.

It seems the results might impact the theory that the onset of transsexuality is due to a biological condition — such as due to a cross-sex hormone bath in the womb,  or due to some genetic condition.

To verify cross-sex brain structures were preexistant in transsexuals due to biological conditions, it would seem one would need to look at transsexuals’ brains prior to adult introduction of hormone therapy. Otherwise, one can’t be sure that the introduction of HRT wouldn’t have been what caused transsexuals’ cross-sexed brain development and organization.

If one spell checks a document that has a correct spelling of the wrong word for the context of a sentence, spell check won’t see the error.

Case in Point: In post number fourty-nine here on (Ab)Normal Heights, I typoed the word “meat” when I meant “mean.”  I originally had a different tense of “mean” used in that sentence (”meant”), but when correcting the spelling of “meant” to “mean” I deleted the wrong letter.

Then, Veronica on MHB’s message board quoted my post, with the little *(sic)* after the word written as ”meat” that should have been “mean.”

Quoting my quazi-hero Homer Simpson: “D’oh!” 

Obviously, I corrected the spelling of “mean” in post 49, so no one would notice I typoed a word. 

From the Toledo Blade: Males who work as prostitutes a little-known part of sex industry; Most start life on streets as teens:

Heterosexual boys also prostitute themselves to male clients, experts said, but they’re more commonly found hustling in large cities that are runaway meccas.And that blurs the definition of prostitution.

David Finkelhor is a sociology professor and director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

In 2004, he analyzed national crime data for the U.S. Justice Department to glean what he could about juveniles in the sex trade. He defines prostitution as sex exchanged for cash or “another marketable commodity, such as drugs.”

“If it’s for a place to stay, not so much,” he said, although “that doesn’t mean those kids aren’t being exploited.”

Using sparse and admittedly outdated national data, he found that law enforcement identified 229 juvenile prostitutes, mostly in larger cities, from 1997 to 2000.

But chief among his conclusions about underage prostitution is this: There simply isn’t enough data to draw many conclusions.

Most cities, including Toledo, don’t track such arrests. Even those that do often fail to report such basic information as a prostitute’s age.

Plus, police don’t always agree on how to handle young hookers, male or female. Where one cop sees a teen criminal, another sees an underage victim.

After decades as a youth probation officer and now administrator of Lucas County’s juvenile lock-up, Tony Garrett knows many of the area’s most troubled teens.

Some are boys like Kia: open about not only their sexual orientation and preference for dressing as a female, but also their involvement in prostitution. And then there are the boys in detention who have sold sex mainly to survive.

The common denominator, said Mr. Garrett, is that they’ve been abused, neglected, or rejected at home.

“They come in as victims,” he said.

I served 20 years in the US Navy; I contributed as an employed member of society until my disabilities made it so I can’t work anymore, so I “work” doing what I can as a transgender activist.

So, stories like this one in the Toledo Blade make for hard reading — What would have happened to me if my parents kicked me out of the house as a teen for being transgender? Thank goodness it didn’t happen to me, but it does happen to others — How does one go about meeting the varying needs of gay and transgender youth on the street when some chose prostitution, and some engage in survival sex?

I keep asking questions I don’t know the answer to — and this last one seems to fit that category.

Crosswalk has an interesting article up from the 27th of this month entitled Can the Left Successfully Change the Moral Price Tags? Dr. Tony Beam (Pastor, Conference speaker, Professor, Talk Show Host, and Columnist) is trying to make a case that the political left is trying to use Evangelical Christians, and doing it by changing the subject from abortion and same-sex marriage to Affirmative Action, justice for the poor, and concern for the environment.

I guess the bizarre part of the article is that he didn’t see that the right similarly engaged in what he says the left is doing 20-some years ago with the advent of the Moral Majority. Isn’t manipulating of Christians to promote a particular religious take on left or right sided politics equally as bad?

And really, is one supposed to give up caring for the poor to fight harder to prevent gay and lesbian marriages? One can find many scriptures in the New Testament directly arguing for people to take care of the poor, but I can’t find one direct Biblical reference to preventing same-sex marriage; a lot more scriptures arguing against divorce and remarriage than ones arguing against homosexual remarriage.

I had a real strange experience at the Southern Comfort Conference last Summer. The person who signed me into the conference knew my name from transgender community work I do, and acted like I was a celebrity — she said she was excited to meet me. To say I was surprised is an understatement — I see myself working from behind the scenes most of the time — someone who barely arises to the point of any notice. When eye-popping recognition occurred another four or five times at the Conference, it dawned on me I was drawing some attention online to myself, whether I wanted it or not.

Since then, I’ve became a regular contributing author on the Ex-Gay Watch, and have guest posted and diarized on Pam’s House Blend. My profile has raised some since my experiences at Southern Comfort.

So with my growing profile, today I reached a new milestone — Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth (AFT) profiled me as a “radical gender activist,” and he’s listed me as a reason as to “why [Americans For Truth]’s work is so important.”

Apparently, I’m not only a “radical gender activist,”, but I’m also a “transvestite,” someone who is “still a man,”, and someone who has a gender-confused identity. Well heck, better keep them kiddies away from me — I’m going to give ‘em TRANSVESTITE! Sheesh.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that I’m apparently so evil and a threat to Christians everywhere that he’s using his post on me as a reason to raise money for his “ministry.” My head is spinning with that bit of news. Timothy Kincaid at the Ex-Gay Watch sent me a message today saying:

Welcome to the Club!!!

Your final initiation as Ex-Gay Watch contributing author is when the kooks and haters run an attack piece on you.

But raising money over me! Timothy — did they do a fund-raising campaign over your articles?

*sigh* From this point forward, I’m nicknaming myself “Evil Autumn.”

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Cross-posted on Pam’s House Blend.

I can’t retell this story and do it justice, so I’m going to excerpt a piece of it:

Talk about The Crying Game! For the past month, Scottsdale club owner Tom Anderson of Anderson’s Fifth Estate and local “diversity activist” Michele De Lafreniere have been engaged in an epic donnybrook of penile proportions. Seems De Lafreniere has been kickin’ up a shit storm after being tossed out of Anderson’s on Saturday, November 25. De Lafreniere, who claims to be a transsexual woman, says she and five other transsexual buds were 86′d permanently that night.”He [Anderson] came up to me and my friends and said, ‘We don’t want your kind here anymore,’” screeched De Lafreniere to this woodpecker. “He’s got a lot of apologizing to do.”

The catty clubbinista insists she’s a longtime Anderson’s devotee, and has been hitting the nightspot every weekend for five years, even before assuming a female identity. Since Anderson’s turned her out, she’s been on the warpath picketing across the street from the club on Saturday nights; sending e-mails to promoters; calling up local station Mix 96.9 to demand it stop hosting events at Anderson’s; e-mailing Clear Channel (which owns Mix 96.9); petitioning the local ACLU in hopes it’ll pick up her much-threatened “class action lawsuit”; and tweeting to any local media outlet that’ll listen, including this malevolent magpie.

Yet Anderson coos a different tune, one not unlike Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” or Ray Davies’ “Lola.”

“I never said ‘I don’t want your kind in here,’” Anderson assured this avian. “I’m tired of being made out to be some Aryan Brotherhood bigot. I have no problem with different ways of life at all.”

So if Anderson ain’t no Mr. Homophobic, why tell trannies to hit the bricks? According to Anderson, De Lafreniere and her faux female friends were constantly using the chicks’ loo, and not just for potty. They were also hanging at the sinks as female patrons applied eyeliner, etc. Anderson said he was so overwhelmed with complaints from female customers that he had no choice but to ban the brokeback bitches.

The article goes on. . . . .here’s a link to the aritcle Tranny-Gate.

So is Michele De Lafreniere the Rosa Parks of the transgender community? There is a lot of parallels between the bathroom aparthied transgender people experience and the bathroom segregation black men and women faced in an earlier time, although transpeople are crossing the “sex barrier” by which many public restrooms are segregated, and blacks crossed the “color barrier” to use the restroom associated with their sex, but reserved for white people.

I guess the real difference is found in the venues that Rosa Parks and Michele De Lafreniere were/are fighting their battles in. Rosa Parks came from a position being an upright citizen trying to equally use public transportation, and could claim some moral authority as a church going woman. Michele De Lafreniere was attempting to use the women’s restroom in a bar, and can claim some civic authority by her participation in Scottsdale’s Human Relations Commission (that’s in the part of the article I didn’t excerpt). If it were a women’s restroom in a public library that Michele De Lafreniere was attempting to use, then I think she would have a better back story than the one she has. As it is…a bar? No, Michele isn’t going to go down as the transgender Rosa Parks.

At what point does it become safe to discuss transgender issues with kids under 18?  Well, Focus On The Family (FOTF) has an article out entitled Teacher Says Transgenderism a Viable Lifestyle, which states:

A teacher in a Newton, Mass., elementary school has come under fire from parents for telling her third-grade class that transgenderism is a viable lifestyle choice for some people.

Obviously, the FOTF think it’s a bad idea to talk transgender people with kids of any age.

On one hand, how much do you tell an eight year old about transsexual experience, or about cross-dressers who only dress as women part time? I don’t talk about the details of gay or heterosexual sexual activities with eight year olds; I don’t imagine sex reassignment surgery details are something an eight year old needs to know too much about either. Or how do you explain to children about people who don’t want to change their sex, but want to dress in clothing associated with the other sex only occasionally? I’m not sure what the substance of an age appropriate discussion on transgender people would sound like.

On the other hand, talking about transgender people with kids is the same thing as talking about gay and lesbian people and relationships with kids. Like being gay or lesbian, being transgender isn’t contagious, and telling eight-year olds about being transgender isn’t going to turn them transgender adults. The other thing is this — how does me and my peers being trans instantly turn us unsafe people around children, or even unsafe to talk about to children? It’s the same problem gay men have — gay men are perceived to be pederasts and pedophiles just because they’re gay, even though the studies indicate that adults that identify aren’t more likely to be pederasts and pedophiles. Just because someone is trans doesn’t mean that the someone is dangerous around kids.

So what does one say? I think I’d need to talk to some experts before I had a discussion around kids about my being transgender.

For those who don’t think same-sex (gender neutral) marriage is a transgender issue too, take a look at the question they ask of all couples wanting to wed in Clark County, Ohio:

“Do you solemnly swear you are not a transsexual…”

The article further goes on to state:

…That might seem surprising in an age when the political spotlight is on gay marriage. In 2004, Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment declaring marriage a union between one man and one woman. But this section of Clark County’s marriage oath dates back to 1987. That was the year Stark County Probate Judge Denny Clunk wrote a landmark opinion denying a marriage license to a woman and her fiancé, who was born female but had a sex-change operation to become male. The ruling held that chromosomes, not genitals, determine sex.

Under Ohio law, the sex noted on the birth certificate is what counts when marriage licenses are considered. And that part of the birth certificate can’t be changed. So in the Stark County case, both applicants were considered to be women.

David Mattes served as Clark County Probate judge at the time of Clunk’s ruling. He said he figured he’d nip any potential problems in the bud by adding a line to the oath.

“It’s been there ever since,” Mattes said. (emphasis added)

But when the article mentions one can’t change one’s birth certificate, that’s true in Ohio. The article doesn’t mention that in about half of the states in the United States, one can change one’s birth certificate if one has sex reassignment surgery (SRS). If one does have a changed birth certificate then, does Ohio under the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution recognize the sex on the birth certificate, and thus recognize one can enter into a relationship with one man and one woman as a transwoman or transman? I don’t know.

Quoting Mara Keisling of NCTE:

Every trans person who’s in a relationship, regardless of what their gender is or ever was, they’re either in a same-sex relationship or in an opposite sex relationships that somebody could claim was a same-sex relationship.

Some examples — from the perspective of the transsexual partners– that go to the point of Mara’s statement: Same Sex, Opposite Sex. Depending on who is looking at the relationships and under what circumstances, both examples are seen as same sex relationships by somebody.

Gamora! Where are you when the world needs you!

(Click image to view story)

Cross-posted from a Pam’s House Blend diary entry:
——

San Diego’s Boy Scout camp is in the news again. For those not aware, in 2003 U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. ruled that the Boy Scouts’ below market lease of public parkland (one-dollar a year at the time of the lawsuit) in Balboa Park (the “Central Park of San Diego“) violates the Constitution. Specifically, it’s one of those “separation of church and state” things.ACLU volunteer attorney Matt Stephens said in 2004:

Those who read what I post at the Ex-Gay Watch and The View From (Ab)Normal Heights know I tend to point out logical fallacies in people’s arguments. Well, many ex-gay and ex-gay affirming organizations — such as NARTH and Exodus International– rely heavily on Statements Of Conversion. This is where a person asserts that he or she used to believe one way, but now has a rejected that previous belief, and now because he or she has personally experienced belief in both sides of a particular argument that he or she is now a topic authority. This is a version of Argument From Authority — where the speaker is claiming to be, or has been asserted to be an expert, and it’s implied that because the person is an expert he or she should be trusted..

Americans For Truth’s President Peter LaBarbera is using a Statement Of Conversion in his recent article Great News: IL Student ‘Trans’-formed by the Christ of Christmas!

Long story short, suburban Chicago high school student John identified last year as transgender student Joanna, but now has converted back to John. From Peter LaBarbera’s telling of the story:

God intervened and John was “born again” through faith in Jesus Christ, he told his student newspaper.

Now “transgender” Joanna is no more and John is reestablishing his true, God-given male nature at his high school. His newfound reality is precisely the sort of story that homosexual/transsexual activist groups like GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) do not want other teenagers to hear. Because GLSEN knows that such stories undermine the “gay” myth that people are born GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered), and that such aberrant identities are mere natural and innocuous “orientations.”

The problem with resorting to a tale of conversion as a tool for arguing is that other stories exist. For example, I’ve gone from fundamentalist Christian to agnostic to non-fundamentalist Christian, while also in my life going from identifying as a boy, to identifying a transsexual teen, to identifying as a cross-dressing teen, to identifying as an ex-transvestite, to realizing I needed to explore my gender with a professional therapist, to now identifying and living as a transgender/transsexual-identified woman. Is John more of an expert on transgender and ex-transgender experience because of his life conversions, or am I more of an expert due to my life conversions?

The reality is that one can’t draw wide conclusions by means of Statements Of Conversion. John’s and my conversions make us each a little more knowledgeable about transgender issues than John Q. Public (and Joanna Q. Public), but our conversions alone don’t make us authoritative speakers on transgender issues.

If we want to draw wide conclusions, we need to ask:

- What do studies and research reveal?
- What do the subject matter experts in the field think?
- What do the professional organizations state about a topic in their position papers?

It goes without saying that the experts don’t agree with the broad conclusions Peter LaBarbera draws from John’s conversion testimony. (To read up on what some of the experts say, one can read the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, the American Psychological Association’s Answers to Your Questions About Transgender Individuals and Gender Identity, and info about Gender Identity Disorder (GID) on Gid Reform Advocates.)

Peter LaBarbera in his piece further states:

But, of course, change is possible, because God is in the business of changing repentant sinners. If the Christ of Christmas can turn around the lives of drug addicts, murderers, and drunks, He certainly can save men and women — and adolescent children — trapped in gender confusion and homosexuality.

And Peter LaBarbera is an expert on the change is possible dogma because…?

I’ll end this on that rhetorical question.

From the Los Angeles Times:

“I love the homeless. Unfortunately they’re really interfering with the quality of life.”
–Former Mafia defense lawyer/current Las Vegas Mayor Mayor Oscar Goodman, who once proposed shipping homeless to an abandoned Nevada prison 30 miles outside of Las Vegas

The article added:

In this land of twinkling casinos and quick riches, Las Vegas is struggling to solve — once and for all — its most unglamorous problem. During Goodman’s watch, the city has tried what some say are among the country’s harshest tactics against the homeless, including a short-lived city ordinance that outlawed feeding them in parks. A ban on sleeping within 500 feet of feces was repealed in September, weeks after it was adopted. Last month, Goodman shut down a park after a homeless man stabbed another to death.

“The city is endlessly playing a game of whack-a-mole,” said Lee Rowland, an attorney for the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully sued last month to overturn the anti-feeding ordinance. “Anytime a population of homeless people becomes visible, they’ll just shut it down.”

Las Vegas beat out Los Angeles and New York in a recent survey of what cities were meanest to the homeless — Las Vegas is only the fifth meanest to the homeless in the country.

Meanest city? Sarasota, Florida.

And remember this statistic:

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Coalition for the Homeless released a report last week that found that up to 42 percent of the nation’s homeless youth identify as lesbian or gay.