from the san francisco bay times:

“What shocked me working at the National Center for Transgender Equality…was the sheer level of discrimination out there,” maintains the group’s former Deputy Director Simon Aronoff. “Not letting [transgender] employees use the restrooms…or just blatantly firing them; extreme harassment, police brutality…The discrimination and oppression out there…is just really intense.”

Having left NCTE to do public interest communication, Aronoff maintains, “Particularly for trans folks, communications need to take a leading role, because for us, a really basic battle is public education, public awareness around what our lives are like and what kind of discrimination we face. Those are stories that need to get out there…and more of us need to be comfortable telling these stories in clear and compelling ways.”

the problem is that many trans people don’t tell our stories “out there” because of the sheer level of discrimination “out there”. we don’t want to lose our jobs, we want to be able to pee, we don’t want to be harassed, and we don’t want to be brutalized by the police. of course, those who don’t have a choice in being “out there” take the brunt of this discrimination, while the rest of us watch in horror.

of further interest, simon aronoff mentions at the end of this piece that he stopped using testosterone after 7 years. i’d be interested in what types of side effects are caused by a lack of hormones (assuming he’s not on estrogen now, or produces it naturally). even when i went to a very low dose of estrogen after my bottom surgery, i started experiencing pretty extreme side effects, like night sweats and hot flashes. it’s another catch 22 - transition, and you’re doomed to be a slave to the megapharms.

i installed a bsa 30mm red dot sight on my crosman pink pumpmaster 760 air rifle. technology made sexy and practical.

either i’m just getting into the swing of things, or the shows are getting better. i downloaded and watched the 3rd and 4th episodes of transamerican love story and i really enjoyed them. the third episode had the men go to the beach and work out with a marine dude, while calpernia watched through binoculars from a yacht. now that’s something i could sink my eyes into. then the guys were divided into 3 teams, assigned a rubber boat, and they raced to the yacht. the winners got to spend a little time with callie.

the fourth episode, calpernia provided a little entertainment first while the guys watched, and then it was the guy’s turn. both revealing engagements.

i’ll say now, and for the record, i predicted who would stay and who would go, even down to the order. and i’ll even venture to say that the eventual winner will be shawn. i like him because he seems to fit in with calpernia’s friends and her nightlife buddies, he’s a real down to earth kind of guy, and he’s tall. my second choice is jim, who also fits in. now mike, who has the hottest body by far, just doesn’t seem to offer the intellectual acumen that i personally look for in a man. and while i see what calpernia sees in mark, who also is extremely hot - well, he’s a bit of a chauvinist, and can’t be over 5′6″. and i’m all about the height.

needless to say, if my hubby were in this show, he’d beat them all hands down

no doubt you’ve heard about charlene hastings, the trans woman who was denied elective surgery by seton medical center, the alleged hospital that openly discriminates against, and denies health care for, lgbt persons in the name of some god. and no doubt you’ve heard that miss hastings sued the alleged hospital, and the administration there caved under the weight of their discriminatory practices, and agreed to provide the elective surgery for miss hastings.

if you look at seton medical center’s website, it opens with a little flash animation (which, by the way, i seem to remember is totally against their god’s word as written in their bible - something about false witness as i recall) which reads “respect and compassionate service”, among other bullet points.

apparently, their idea of respect is to deny medical service to trans people, simply because they’re trans, and call trans women “men” and use male pronouns. and their idea of compassionate service is no service at all.

seton later said:

We regret any confusion that may have come from this situation. We want this patient and her physician to know that they are welcome at Seton Medical Center.

in other words, please don’t sue us, we thought we had the right to openly discriminate against you, but apparently it’s against the law, and we don’t want to have to pay lots of money to anyone, especially the to the likes of you. and we’d rather be forced to provide you medical care like everyone else, as opposed to have to actually pay you large sums of money when we lose the law suit.

(more…)

i came across this link on stassa’s blog. it’s an abstract of a study published in the european journal of endocrinology entitled “Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure”. it purports:

Objective: Sex hormones are not only involved in the formation of reproductive organs, but also induce sexually-dimorphic brain development and organization. Cross-sex hormone administration to transsexuals provides a unique possibility to study the effects of sex steroids on brain morphology in young adulthood.

Methods: Magnetic resonance brain images were made prior to, and during, cross-sex hormone treatment to study the influence of anti-androgen + estrogen treatment on brain morphology in eight young adult male-to-female transsexual human subjects and of androgen treatment in six female-to-male transsexuals.

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.

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

the obvious (though still unproven) conclusion? we are not born with gendered brains. the environment in which our brains develop and grow dictate the gendered form in which our brains ultimately take. the sample size is similar to that now infamous BSTc study which many trans people used as “evidence” to show that we are born with “male” or “female” brains. only that study examined the brains of dead transsexuals, *after* they had been using hormones. and according to the european study, that’s *because* the subjects had been exposing their brains to sex hormones, thereby changing their brains.

so there is evidence that we each are born with a “blank slate” brain when it comes to sex, and our hormone mix molds our brain according to the presence and levels of our sex hormone mix, which apparently can change over the course of ones life.

just as i suspected.