The Media Matters’ Director of Media Relations, Karl Frisch, sent out an email today regarding the recent Tucker Carlson comments on MSNBC (video below).

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In the email, Fisch directed the mail recipients to a webpage, with an article entitled It’s time for MSNBC to address Carlson’s comments :

During a discussion Tuesday night on MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams about Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-ID) arrest for “lewd conduct” and eventual guilty plea, Tucker Carlson described to fellow MSNBC hosts Dan Abrams and Joe Scarborough his assault on a man who he said “bothered” him in a Washington, D.C., public restroom.

Carlson said, “Having sex in a public men’s room is outrageous. It’s also really common. I’ve been bothered in men’s rooms.” Carlson continued, “I’ve been bothered in Georgetown Park,” in Washington, D.C., “when I was in high school.” When Abrams asked how Carlson responded to being “bothered,” as Abrams and Scarborough laughed, Carlson asserted, “I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the — you know, and grabbed him, and … hit him against the stall with his head, actually.” The laughter continued.

Carlson’s comments, coupled with laughter from Abrams and Scarborough, suggested to viewers that physical violence is an appropriate response to an unwelcome overture. This is dangerous and wrong.

…It’s time for them to show [MSNBC that we] don’t find humor in or condone the violence Carlson described.

Contact information can be found on the upper-right side of this page.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Jamison Foser
Managing Director
Media Matters for America

P.S. Click here to spread the word and help hold Tucker Carlson and other media figures accountable.

(Please see the link immediately above for the full letter. )

I couldn’t agree with Jamison Foser and Karl Frisch more. I know I sent off a message to MSNBC about my feelings on Tucker Carlson’s comments, as well as about the laughter at the violence Carlson described by show host Dan Abrams, and fellow panalist Joe Scarborough. MSNBC needs to clarify what the organization’s position is regarding violence towards LGBT people — MSNBC needs to clarify their position on “gay panic” justifications for violence.

~~~~~
Related:
* The Advocate: Tucker Carlson admits to assaulting man in restroom
* Huffington Post: MSNBC, Tucker Carlson and the Bathroom Assault… (with further info about the story, and contact information for the key players)

Some of the trans-related news we’re reading today, Friday …

#1 - Bathrooms have been in the news recently (here, here) in North Carolina …

In the past, an activist might picket City Hall, burn a draft card or occupy a segregated lunch counter. Now there’s a new cause: public restrooms.

Bathrooms — how and where they are built, and who should use them — are an urgent topic on college campuses across the Triangle and nation.

Three N.C. State University students have proposed installing lockable, unisex restrooms in all new campus buildings as a convenience for transgender students, the disabled, nursing mothers and single parents with children of the opposite sex. They seek to join at least 17 universities, including UNC-Chapel Hill, in mandating a gender-neutral john.

“There’s been a real push to support diversity on campus,” said Madeline Goss, a senior and male-to-female transgender student. “I go to the bathroom and I don’t get a second look. But there was a time when people walked out when they saw me in the bathroom.”

…

Goss settled on the restroom idea in a summer technical writing class. The assignment: find something on campus you’d like to change and draw up a report to make it happen. When she began becoming a woman in the spring, she met confused faces and dirty looks when she used a men’s room. Two classmates joined her in the project, and they saw potential for unisex bathrooms beyond N.C. State’s transgender population, which is small and hard to gauge.

Disabled people often have caregivers of the opposite sex. Mothers may not be comfortable taking a son into the women’s room, or sending a small child into a men’s stall alone. The students’ proposal envisions bathrooms with doors that can be locked, something that might appeal to sexual assault victims. And nursing mothers need a place to themselves.

Goss, senior Ashley Winfree and junior Karen Achtyl spent the summer poring over plumbing codes and state regulations, finding allies in advocacy groups and investigating campuses nationwide. They found policies supporting gender-neutral bathrooms at the University of Arizona and University of California-Berkeley.

At Arizona, students can choose restrooms based on perceived identity than biological gender, and the students seek a similar provision here. New restrooms would go in new buildings, those getting major renovations or anyplace possible.

…

Students rally for gender-neutral johns

#2 - Autumn posted a story yesterday of one teacher in transition. From North Carolina, here’s a another teacher story …

A teacher at a Durham private school underwent a sex change over the summer, sparking a debate among school administrators and at least one parent over how to approach the issue in class.

Leslie Webster has taught music at Duke School for Children for 12 years as a woman but started the new school year Wednesday as a man.

The parents of all 460 students at the private elementary and middle school, which isn’t affiliated with Duke University, received a letter this week notifying them of Webster’s sex change and outlining plans to inform students on Sept. 4.

…

In his letter to parents, [headmaster Dave] Michelman called Duke School “an open, accepting community that honors diversity in many aspects.”

“Leslie’s transition is making him more content,” Michelman said in the letter. “Leslie’s feeling of peace can only translate to the children having a better (classroom) experience with him.”

Parents picking up their children from school Wednesday said they hadn’t yet talked to their children about Webster.

Parent Doesn’t Want Children to Learn of Teacher’s Sex Change

#3 - From Seattle, a story on trans kids and the Gender Odyssey Family Conference which begins today …

Five-year-old Zach stands barefoot in the middle of his bedroom, faced with a dilemma: Should he wear the pink dress or the powder blue? Both are long princess-style affairs, the first displayed on a hanger held by his mother, Rebecca, the second, slightly wrinkled, pulled from the top of a dresser by Zach himself.

“Or would you rather wear your witch’s outfit?” his mother asks him, nodding at a black polyester costume in the closet, its neckline trimmed in orange.

“No,” Zach says. “I think I want the blue one.” He dashes out of the room with dress in hand, returning half a minute later, his pink T-shirt replaced by a tight crushed-velvet bodice. Zach bounds around the room, smiling, wisps of blond hair breaking free from the French braid that trails down his back.

It’s that playful exuberance that Rebecca and her husband, John, hope their son never loses. “But we’re concerned that this piece of him will get lost, if other children aren’t able to respond to him well,” says Rebecca, 39, who asked that her family’s real names not be used.

Of course, most parents dream of the best for their children. But Rebecca and her husband are a certain kind of parent: They’re raising a boy who wants to dress in girls’ clothes. And that places them in largely uncharted territory. Is this a passing phase or something central to Zach’s identity?

A compass of sorts may await the family this weekend, when mother and son participate in a local conference called Gender Odyssey Family. The event at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center will be Seattle’s first conference for parents raising “gender-variant” kids, or those children who fall outside what’s traditionally defined as “boy” or “girl.”

The conference will offer 23 sessions over the course of the weekend, some geared toward entire families and others focused specifically on gender-variant teens.

…

“Whoever he becomes, that’s OK because that’s who he is”

#4 - COSMOS magazine from Australia has a feature on intersex …

AFTER YOUR NAME, what’s the first thing you’re asked on most forms? It’s almost always whether you’re ‘male’ or ‘female’, right? Gender is so basic to our identity that few of us stop to even think about it. However, for a significant proportion of the population it’s not so black and white. Consider these real-life stories:

There once was a boy named Bruce. As a baby he lost his penis in an accident and was surgically transformed into a girl called Brenda.

Then there’s Kylie. She was told that she was born with deformed ovaries that were surgically removed at age four. As a young woman, she discovered she was actually born with testes and male chromosomes, though she has only ever considered herself female.

Tony was also technically born as a genetic male but, because of his atypical genitalia, the doctors at the time decided he would be better off assigned as a female. By the time he turned seven, his phallus had started to grow. Doctors subsequently removed his testes to prevent him from masculinising any further; but the truth was he had always felt like a man, not a woman. When he turned 30, he chose to live his life as a man.

Zoe was born a male but always felt like a female. She did her best to accept her male form and identity but found the effort to maintain the charade became increasingly difficult and stressful over the years. Then, aged 47, her body spontaneously began making the transition into a female … and the relief was enormous.

SO WHAT’S THE STORY? Is gender merely a state of mind, an attribute that can be switched over with a bit of surgery and positive thinking? We think of our gender as something ‘given to us by nature’; but could it have just as much to do with ‘nurture’?

The issue of gender is not as sharply defined as most people believe. As the stories of Bruce, Kylie, Tony and Zoe make clear, the boundaries that separate masculine and feminine can sometimes be difficult to delineate. And science attests to that.

…

Intersex: The space between the genders

There’s also a companion article, Intersex: Case studies, co-authored by Zoe Brain.

#5 - The quote(s) of the day, from the Washington Blade’s Bitch Session …

It’s transgender people that need the gay and lesbian movement to succeed not the other way around. They are a minority within a minority who couldn’t get very far without us yet they always arrogantly fail to recognize that! Learn some humility instead of being so damn uppity!

To the transgender activist who had the gall to say that gays and lesbians can’t move forward without them: The fact is transgender activists have opposed gay rights legislation in the past simply because they weren’t included! Despite their being as bad as Christian conservatives or selfish brats, we often managed to succeed without them! They should thank us for forgiving them for this and allowing them to retard our progress by including them now!

The Palm Beach Post said of the initial crime:

Palm Beach police Sgt. Jennifer Sandman, who interviewed the teen on the morning of the incident, testified at Monday’s trial in juvenile court that he seemed arrogant and told her he beat the transsexual until his hand was sore.

And…

A witness on the beach that night, a mechanic from Lake Worth, testified that the teen forced her to kneel in the sand while he punched her and slammed her head into a lifeguard stand where he was sitting. The impact shook the stand, he said.

In a previous article, the Palm Beach Post reported of the crime:

The teen says that she got into their car, and performed oral sex on him in the back seat while his friend drove. They ended up near a lifeguard tower on the island of Palm Beach after midnight. According to the 17-year-old, the woman was on top of him when he saw something he didn’t expect under her bikini bottom.

Just as they were about to have sex, he says, he saw she was actually a pre-operative transsexual. She already had breast implants, but her other surgery is not scheduled until later this year.

She denies any sexual activity with the teen and has a different story. But a witness saw what happened next: The teen shouted for help, dragged her through the sand, beat her head against the lifeguard stand and punched out her front teeth.

But the judge in the case said it wasn’t a hate crime, under Florida state law:

“In many ways it appears from the testimony that was presented here that there are two victims in the case,” the judge said.

The judge felt the other victim was the 17-year old who did the beating.

The sentence for the beating was handed out this week:

The teen who severely beat a pre-operative transsexual on Palm Beach after he discovered she was a man from the waist down was sentenced to probation Thursday.

Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc rejected recommendations from prosecutors and the Department of Juvenile Justice, who said the teen was likely to commit more crimes and should be locked in a high-security residential program.

Blanc said he didn’t believe the teen’s argument of self-defense, and that there was no excusing the violent beating that got him the charge of aggravated battery. But he disagreed that the teen, now 18, is a threat to public safety, and withheld adjudication on the case. The circumstances of the case were so unusual that he is unlikely to find himself in a similar situation again, Blanc said in court.

Beat a transwoman who isn’t fighting back until he knocks out her teeth — until his palms become sore — no jail time.

I guess in the eyes of Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc, a transwoman’s life and health isn’t worth very much — not even worth jail time for the perpetrator.

It looks like the “gay panic” defense worked again.

~~~~~
Related:
* The Bilico Report: Trans hate crime is “justifiable”?

Gary Suraci, the principal of Ulster BOCES Career and Technical Center in Port Ewen, N.Y., is undergoing a sex change. Now, instead of being Gary Suraci he will be Genna Suraci.

High School Principal Genna Suraci has began her transition from male-to-female.  If one is a teacher or a principal and doesn’t plan to change schools as part of one’s transition, then it’s nearly impossible to keep one’s story out of the media.

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Some don’t seem to be able to come to grips with the news.

“Why would you want to change what God made you?” one Port Ewen resident asked.

Whatever faculty, parents, and students might think about Principal Suraci’s transition, the local CBS affiliate reported:

[School Superintendent Martin] Ruglis said Saraci’s job was protected by law. Effective immediately, Suraci will be addressed as “Genna.”

Thank goodness for local and state anti-discrimnation laws.  To bad ENDA isn’t federal law now – I can only hope it becomes law with this congress.

Some educational institutions just don’t plan for the inevitable reality that transgender students will likely sooner, rather than later, show up at their schools.

At Duke University last weekend, a…

…transgender student who is awaiting sexual reassignment surgery and was temporarily granted access to a female restroom while living in a male wing of Craven Quadrangle relocated Monday, officials confirmed.

Last Spring, Residence Life and Housing Services gave the student the option to either go through Room Pix or choose different quarters with a private bathroom. Using Room Pix, the student chose an available room in Craven Quadrangle House B-a male wing which uses a community bathroom.

Perhaps the most difficult to comprehend part of this story is how little Duke University planned for the eventuality that at some point they would have a transgender student living in a dorm room:

University officials said RLHS had no pre-existing policy for transgender students, and deals with special housing needs on an individual basis.

What happened at this southern school was predictable. A parent complained to the school about his daughter using the same bathroom as the transgender student:

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This past Monday morning, the student was moved to an one-person room that had an attached, private bathroom.

This all could have been avoided. It’s not as if universities are in the dark about transgender students. The EdgeBoston/Bay Windows just reported this morning that…

…a survey of the nation’s universities and public school districts to examine their policies related to gender identity and expression. One of the key findings of the survey was that among the top 25 schools on the 2008 “America’s Best Colleges” list compiled by U.S. News and World Report, two-thirds have non-discrimination policies covering gender identity or expression. Of the 278 colleges and universities surveyed, 147 have trans-inclusive non-discrimination policies.

Transgender students are here, and are coming out in enough numbers that “two-thirds [of surveyed universities] have non-discrimination policies covering gender identity or expression.”

Putting the transgender student and the concerned parent through the mess Duke put them through by failing to develop a plan is just unconscionable. Duke should have been prepared for transgender students, and they were not.

I watched MSNBC’s Live last evening, and was surprised to see that Tucker host Tucker Carlson admitted to “hitting against a wall” a gay male who propositioned him in a public restroom. It sounded like he was laughing at his becoming violent against someone who wasn’t violent towards him, or to anyone else.

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Why didn’t Tucker just call the police about the incident, vice becoming violent?

I haven’t liked Tucker for awhile now. I’m a transgender woman, and I found the Carlson’s reaction on the Morning Joe show a few weeks back to Susan Stanton’s transition pretty offensive. Now, Carlson’s admission of becoming violent against someone who didn’t physically harm him or others is — and laughing about it — just incredible.

I like actual variance in perspective in reviewing the news. I’ve liked watching Hardball, Tucker, and Countdown because I’ve gotten a full spectrum of views on current events. With Tucker’s comments on transgender people, and his admitted violent response to a gay man who propositioned him in a public restroom, I’m finding it more and more difficult to watch Tucker. I know I’m not making it a point to watch his show anymore.

And frankly, Joe Scarborough and Dan Abrams laughing about the violence was pretty disturbing as well.

In my opinion, Tucker Carlson should be apologizing for his violent behavior. I understand that the gay man who propositioned him in a public restroom was offensive, and probably engaged in unlawful behavior. However, physical violence as a response — after a break where Carlson took the time to go and get a friend to assist him in accomplishing the violence against the restroom propositioner — strikes me as a “gay panic” defense. Certainly not a laughing matter.

~~~~~
Further reading:
* Media Matters: Carlson claimed that after incident in a public bathroom, he assaulted the man who “bothered” him
* Pam’s House Blend: Media Matters: Tucker Carlson says he assaulted man who made pass at him in restroom
* Republic Of T: Tucker Carlson. Gay Basher.

~~~~~Update~~~~~
The original Media Matters story was updated to show how Carlson has now changed his tune:

Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.

Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

So the difference is now that he says he was assaulted, whereas before he was saying he was propositioned.

I don’t know that I believe the updated story.  The updated story sounds like a way to justify his violence — if the propositioner was violent in the first place, why didn’t he say so when he first related the story?

The best headline I’ve seen this week was over at YourHub.com, with this title:

Broomfield gal shows ladies how to pee like a man

The article begins:

When I was seeking out a list of all the woman-owned businesses involved in the Boulder Farmers’ Market (which by the way — who knew there were nearly 30 of them?), Katie Bauer, Boulder Market Manager, wrote back. She suggested I also get in touch with the BCFM’s accounts receivable lady, Karen Diamond, who owns her own business called Go Your Way.

Of course, I immediately sought her out to learn more. When I clicked on her Web site, goyourway.net, it hit me: This Broomfield gal promotes a device that allows women to pee standing up. Not sure if you caught my blog on the Magic Cone, but my perceptions of this kind of device are forever changed, thanks to this lengthy yet eye-opening interview with Diamond.

From there, interviewer Brit Horvat talks to the product distributer Karen Diamond about how her business is growing.  She says in the interview:

On a serious note, they are useful for transgendered people.

So, even after the funny headline, there is a serious side to this story.  I can imagine at least a few of her customers are transmen, and I can imagine a post-op transwoman or two would find the product useful as well — it’s not just bio-women who may find this device useful. 

Pam’s House Blend: Larry Craig - GOP sexual hypocrite with a ‘wide stance’
Excerpt:

A little recap for schadenfreude lovers. It was a bad time for cruising for homophobic Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), who pleaded guilty on August 8 to a disorderly conduct charge after his arrest in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in June.

An undercover officer just happened to be investigating complaints of lewd behavior and cruising in the men’s restroom there when Craig decided to repeatedly leer between the cracks into the stall the officer was in, then proceeded to enter the adjacent stall and play footsie and gesture under the partition for sex. Larry, btw, learn to flush.

AEBrain: I’d Forgotten to Post about this one
Excerpt:

DRAM - dynamic random-access memory - is the “memory” on your PC or laptop. It’s cheaper to make than SRAM, Static RAM, which maintains its contents even when switched off. The memory in your mobile phone is SRAM, the addresses are still there even when you change the battery. The Hard Disk on your PC is also SRAM, essentially. When your system “boots up”, the saved contents in it are loaded into the blank DRAM of the computer’s memory. It’s blank, because if DRAM isn’t refreshed every 64 milliseconds, it loses its contents.

This work implies that the long-term memory in rats - and thus presumably all mammals, and probably all vertebrates - is DRAM. It has to get refreshed every few days (at most) by some form of inate mechanism. Interrupt the mechanism, and memory will fail.

News 10 [Lodi, CA, USA]: Lodi Woman Sees Face of Jesus on Fence
Excerpt:

Emily West was doing some meditating over the weekend in her sister’s backyard in central Lodi when something caught her eye.

“I looked up and saw the face of Christ in the fence and I said, “Whoa,” West said.

Shakesville: Zuh?
Excerpt:

Last night I was talking to a young man who works with me at my night job. On Sunday he told me he was going to go talk to the National Guard recruiter, as he was thinking of joining. Last night, he told me that they had turned him down because he has a felony on his record. He said the recruiter told him that before the election last fall, they would have taken him, but because the Democrats won the election, we might be pulling out of Iraq. Therefore, word has come down to no longer accept felons.

East Valley Tribune [AZ, USA]: Transgender band changes venue after protest threat in Scottsdale
Excerpt:

Initially, Psychic TV had been slated to perform at the Fifth Estate nightclub, 6820 E. Fifth Ave. in Old Town Scottsdale, but bar owner Tom Anderson on Friday abruptly canceled the show, saying he’s concerned about threats of protests and disruptions by transgenedered activists and is worried about patrons’ safety.

Anderson banned transgendered people from the bar last fall after receiving dozens of complaints from female customers, who objected to having “men in dresses” using the women’s restroom. There also were problems with having transgendered people using the men’s restroom, because men harassed them and took their pictures, Anderson has said.

On Monday, Anderson said he decided to cancel after receiving messages from potential protesters who invoked the Stonewall Riots, a series of clashes in 1969 between gays and transgendered bar patrons and New York police. The event is considered a key moment in the gay rights movement.

Philadelphia Weekly: Savage Love (Advice Column)
Excerpt:

…I’ve come to terms with the fact that my mentality doesn’t match up with my vagina. But now most male clothes don’t fit, and my male peers don’t take me seriously because of my body, even though I wear my hair short, wear no makeup and go by a male nickname. I’m not a lesbian. I like boys. I just wish I could be one of them too…

Delhi Express News Service: Eunuch arrested for mutilating 27-yr-old man’s penis in S Delhi
Excerpt:

On August 14, according to Kumar, Bijli called him over for some work at 10 pm. At Bijli’s house, Kumar alleged he was given tea laced with sedatives.

“I woke up three days later on August 17, and found myself lying near the toilet at Bijli’s residence. I was lying in a pool of blood,” Kumar said in his complaint to the police. Kumar managed to limp out of the house and seek help.

“I went to the police station the same day. They, however, refused to register a case,” Kumar told Newsline.

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

(click image to go to NASA page on the eclipse for local times)

The Onion, a fake news outlet, has this take on why gays in the military can’t serve openly:

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(‘Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat,’ Says General)

Are transfolk also a precious resource the military must protect from serving?

Sometimes transgender people in America seem to believe their stories are the only trans stories.  Here are some recent stories from around the world.

1. From Nigeria: Court tries 18 for cross-dressing.

Eighteen Nigerian men accused of dressing up as women during a party at a hotel went on trial Tuesday before an Islamic sharia court in the northern state of Bauchi.

Dozens of residents shouted abuse and hurled stones at the men as they were escorted into an armored prison vehicle after the hearing, prompting police to fire tear-gas at the crowd.

The men, mostly in their 20s, were arrested in a Bauchi hotel on August 4. Police say they were dressed as women, which is illegal under the state’s sharia penal code.

The offence is punishable by up to a year in prison and 20 lashes by cane.

…The 18 are not formally charged with homosexuality, which is illegal in Nigeria and considered immoral by the vast majority of people, both Muslims and Christians.

2. From Turkey: Activists Warn: Increase in Police Torture

Different sexual orientations targeted

Transsexual Esmeray has claimed that she was beaten in front of the Beyoglu Police Station on 5 June.

On 16 June, a group of homosexuals were subjected to police violence at the Tekyön bar in Beyoglu. According to an eye witness, people were beaten with truncheons and pepper spray was used.

3. From Russia: Kidnappers snatch Peruvian transsexual

A former police officer and a friend must have been surprised to find the woman they snatched on a Moscow street turned out to be a pre-operative transsexual.

The 30-year-old Peruvian, Ronald Victor Garcia Barbosa, was hailing a taxi after attending a transvestite party in a nearby nightclub when the incident occurred, the Moscow Times reported Friday. Police said Barbosa looked like a woman, with silicone beast implants and feminine attire.

Police said they suspect that the two had been kidnapping and extorting money from prostitutes and pimps in Moscow for several weeks before Tuesday’s incident.

4. From Argentina: Buenos Aires Transvestites Push Neighbors to Share Rose Garden

Transvestite prostitutes working one of Buenos Aires’s toniest neighborhoods are squaring off against wealthy residents who say they shouldn’t ply their trade in a public park where children romp.

By day, the Rosedal, or rose garden, is a favorite destination for parents taking their children to amble around a lake, buy popcorn and rent rowboats. At dusk, transvestites wearing tank tops, knee-high boots and shorts saunter in, waving and winking at drivers in passing cars.

Feministing: Friday guest blogger: Julia Serano
Excerpt:

Much of the transgender community’s initial outrage over Bailey’s book centered on the fact that it was presented to the public as a work of science…

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD): Dignity, Respect, and Equal Treatment (O’Donnabhain Trial Concludes)
Excerpt:

“I hope that this case sends a clear message that transgender people deserve dignity, respect, and equal treatment not just for our medical care, but in all aspects of our lives - just as every human being deserves dignity, respect and equal treatment.

“I also hope that this case addresses some of the misunderstanding, bias, and prejudice transgender people face in our lives every day. Because what’s really at the heart of this case - and my story - is a basic misunderstanding about the critical importance of being able to express my gender identity. It’s something everyone should be able to do.”
–Rhiannon O’Donnabhain

KTAR.com [AZ,USA]: Anderson’s Invites Transgender Band To Play
Excerpt:

KTAR uncovered an interesting twist in the case of the Scottsdale bar owner who’s banned transgenders.

Anderson’s Fifth Estate has invited Psychic TV to play on Monday. Tom Anderson said he’s made special bathroom arrangements for transgenders on that night only.

“Yeah, isn’t that a contradiction in to my style,” said Anderson.

SFist: A Bi-Transgender Fight
Excerpt:

You know you’ve made it in San Francisco as a marginalized group when you start getting in fights with other marginalized groups — so a local bisexual advocacy/social group is under fire for their policies excluding certain transgender persons.

Transgendered - My Journey To Womanhood: Telling My Sister I’m Transgendered
Excerpt:

…So I decided to take the easy way out and email her, we do not live close to each other so I thought this might be the best way. I sent Her a email but gave her plenty of warning not to read past the first paragraph if she couldn’t handle the truth of who her brother was. I told her in brief the truth about my being transgendered. I didn’t go into great detail but she got the point. I was so scared and for two days I cried and wished I could take the email back, I thought the worst. I should say that she doesn’t have access to a computer everyday, so two days was not really that bad to wait for a response, but it felt like a life time to me. I got home from work Monday to find a email from her. I sat there for what felt like hours afraid to push the read email button. Then before I even had the courage to open it I received a phone call from her. The first thing she said was ” I Love You ” or at least that was the first thing I remember her saying, as I was kind of shocked to hear her voice…

Los Angeles Times: The Gospel and hate crimes
Excerpt:

…There might be rational reasons to question the wisdom of this [federal hate crime] legislation. But the argument that it endangers the 1st Amendment rights of these pastors is certainly not one of them.

Northwest Florida Daily News: China Bans TV Show on Cosmetic Surgery
Excerpt:

The Chinese government banned television shows about cosmetic surgery and sex changes Friday, less than two weeks after shutting down a talent show that regulators deemed coarse.

A headline on the Web site of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said would no longer allow “shows about cosmetic surgery, (or) sex changes that involve public participation.”

Moldova.org: Monkeys harass Kenyan women
Excerpt:

A trouble-making gang of monkeys is frustrating Kenyan villagers by destroying crops and harassing women.

In the Seattle Times‘ article Brothers force Scouts to reveal scope of abuse, two adults who were abused as children by a Boy Scout Leader obtained from the Boy Scouts its entire archive on sexually abusive Scout leaders.

The numbers (emphasis added):

…the Boy Scouts have ejected at least 5,100 adult leaders nationwide for sexual abuse allegations since 1946. And the files reveal that despite efforts to keep potential abusers from joining, the problems persist: In the past 15 years alone, the organization has kicked out leaders for such allegations at a rate of once every other day.

The 45 boxes of files are not public because of a strict court order that prohibits the Stewarts and their lawyers from disclosing specific cases. But a statistical summary of the files, provided by the Stewarts’ attorneys, shows the problem is larger than previously known.

But here is the really disconcerting part:

The secrecy of the files has also meant that the Boy Scouts have kept them from their own sex-abuse advisers, a group of respected experts first convened in the late 1980s to help craft a youth-protection program.

During the past 15 years, the group repeatedly suggested that the Boy Scouts study the files to see whether their prevention measures were working, said one adviser, David Finkelhor, who heads the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. But the Scouts’ lawyers rebuffed the recommendation, Finkelhor said.

Pretty damn scary bit of info, if you ask me. It’s reminiscent of how the Catholic Church has handled their priest abuse scandals.

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Related:
* Boy Scout director: child porn creep
* Young winger: lefties get your hands off of my Boy Scouts
* Boy Scout Discrimination Back In The News
* Atlanta Boy Scouts inflated black scout numbers for $$
* Philly city council votes to terminate rent-free deal for Boy Scouts

Simmering just out of media view for most of us news watchers who don’t live in Washington DC is a story about Virginia Grace Soto.  She’s a natal female, yet she was housed with male inmates for days in a DC jail.

DC’s Metro Weekly reported this about the story:

Despite being strip searched and having female genitalia, Soto’s androgynous appearance led to assumptions that placed the 47-year-old in a male facility where she had to shower with four other men. Her pleas to be moved to a female facility were repeatedly ignored.

Anonymous government sources shared an internal report with The Washington Post last week, which reported that D.C. officials plan to fire three corrections officers involved in the mix up.

But that’s simply not enough, says local transgender activist Ruby Corado, who says she hears stories like Soto’s all the time.

”It’s the perfect example of how not having a plan on how to deal with individuals that do not fit in the binary gender of this society, of being male or female, creates [problems],” she says.

The Washington Post reported three were to be fired over the mix-up:

Virginia Grace Soto, 47, was arrested July 14 and thought to be a man despite her repeated protests otherwise, according to two internal reports by D.C. police and the Department of Corrections obtained by the Washington Post.

Although Soto came in contact with at least nine jail employees, only three are being terminated. Government sources wouldn’t disclose their names yesterday, but one was said to be a supervisor.

The corrections officers “failed to comply [with] standard intake search policies as mandated,” a 73 - page internal report by the Corrections Department says.

“We want to send a signal that this behavior will not be tolerated,” said a high-ranking D.C. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the termination proceedings are underway. “They should have taken the right precautions to verify the sex of person. And she should have been treated with a lot more respect.”

It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine how this prisoner felt after being segregated into a facility for the wrong sex. 

If it was bad for Virinia Grace Soto, imagine being a jailed pre-operative or non-operative transperson.  Being segregated into the wrong facility is what happens to all pre-operative or non-operative transpeople whenever jailed or imprisoned.

Again, It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine how transgender prisoners feel after being segregated into a facility for the wrong sex; it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out how many transpeople are treated by law enforcement in general.

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Related:
* Ex-Cop sentenced to 24 years for assaulting transsexual
* Transwoman + Police = Scary
* Supervisors could settle transgender groping suit