i was reading the most recent post on questioning transphobia about angel johnson, and her horrible experience with home invasion. i have to imagine that one of the last things you want to be looking at when you open your front door is a gun barrel.

perhaps i’m paranoid. but i never answer the door if i’m not expecting anyone, especially on the first knock. if the caller is persistent, i may look through the peep hole. or steal a glance through a window. depending on my perception of the threat, i may eventually answer the door. but never without being armed.

i don’t live in the best section of town, as evidenced by the frequency of swat teams in my neighborhood. some may call me paranoid. i like to think i’m prepared.

in his column, savage love, dan savage receives a question about trans relationships, or a lack there of, and posts a wonderful response. excerpts are as follows:

question:

Where can a straight guy find a transsexual woman who is NOT a hooker and just wants to be friends (with benefits)?…

answer:

…It’s nice that you’re willing to be friends with the transsexual you’re fucking, LTL—that puts you above most straight-identified men who are into trans women. But most trans women, hookers or not, want more than that. They want love, companionship, intimacy, and a commitment—you know, all that shit non-trans women want. Be open to an actual relationship, LTL, and you’ll have an easier time finding a non-pro who’s open to you.

you may remember a series of articles in the examiner suggesting that transsexuals are in the mainstream these days, thanks to tv (no pun intended) and the internet. well, i came across the above ad in the phoenix new times, our local free culture & entertainment weekly newspaper – i’d equate it to the village voice, for those who read my blog on the east coast.

on the up side, there’s no “shemale” or “chick with a dick” verbiage, and compared to the rest of the ads for, um, escorts, it’s rather, well, mainstream. is there a downside? i suppose that depends on where you stand on the sex work issue. while i like to imagine that no woman should be forced to engage in sex work, i also understand that for many trans women, especially those of us who are not white and educated, as i am privileged to be, there are sometimes few other options. i just hope she does well, and doesn’t get hurt.

namoli brennet is back, with a new cd and tour. she’ll be in phoenix at mama java’s on july 18th. yeah, i’ll be there. and yeah, i’ll be buying her new cd.

kung fu was probably one of my favorite tv series while it was on the air in the 70′s. maybe two years ago, we picked up the first and second seasons on dvd, and have enjoy watching them. about a week before the recent passing of david carradine, we started watching the series from the beginning again, and when we heard about his death, we went out and finally got the third season.

there are those that thought little of the series, and the philosophies outlined by the characters, referring to it as “zen-lite”, but i thought the world of the series, and david carradine’s performance, along with keye luke who played master po, and philip ahn who played master kan.

i was particularly disappointed to see this kind of gossip, with the tasteless headline “David Carradine’s Friend: He Was Killed by Transsexual Prostitutes”. i mean really, let the man die in peace.

the article, in part, says:

Gunderson says, “I believe he met two Lady Boys in the hotel bar… They are flirtatious, desperate for money and would have zeroed in on a celebrity like Carradine.” Gunderson is convinced the hookers drugged Carradine, hung him and then set about staging what would look like a suicide.

of course, the article hinges on the idea that associating with “lady boys” is inherently bad, and that all “lady boys” are “flirtatious, desperate for money”. of course, there’s no mention of what “loot” the alleged “lady boys” got away with, after allegedly doing their dastardly deed.

rest in peace kwai chang, i will always remember you, your kind and gentle manor, and your eternal wisdom.

the afp news service “reports”:

An Australian court has allowed a 17-year-old girl who believes she is a boy to have her breasts surgically removed, it was reported.

they go on to “report” that:

The paper reported the youth, referred to as Alex, suffered from “gender identity dysphoria,” a psychological condition where a person has the normal physical characteristics of one sex but believes they are the opposite gender.
Family Court chief justice Diana Bryant said the court decided to allow the breast removal because evidence from medical experts, Alex’s counsellor and an independent children’s lawyer “overwhelmingly” backed the move.

for the record, i “overwhelmingly” think the afp are “jerks”.

from an article by dick swabb, a professor of neurobiology at the university of amsterdam:

Sexual differentiation of our genitalia occurs in the first few months of pregnancy while sexual differentiation of the brain takes place in the second half of pregnancy. As these two processes occur at different times, it is theorised that in transsexuality these processes are influenced independently of each other.
…
Everything indicates that during the early stages of development, the sexual differentiation of the brain occurs atypically in transsexuals, and not that they are “simply” psychotic, as a psychiatrist from Limburg recently dared to assert.

i’m not thrilled with some of the wording in the article, as in “Transsexuals are convinced that they were born in the body of the opposite gender…”, but it was an interesting read,

there’s a new facebook event called the international transgender day of visability. and yes, that’s the “correct” spelling. i’m not sure yet how i feel about it. some days, i feel way too visible. other days, i feel invisible. and i’m not sure which is better.

the gay, lesbian, and straight education network released the first comprehensive study on transgender students. they call their study harsh realities: the experiences of transgender
youth in our nation’s schools (links to a pdf). a recap is here. one of the issues they found as result of the study is that trans youth face an extremely high level of victimization in school, even more than their lbt peers.

did they really need a study to discover that?

first of all, they really need to come up with a better name than “the radical transgender agenda”. it just doesn’t roll of the tongue like “the radical homosexual agenda”. but i digress.

apparently, the clara barton elementary school in oxford, massachusetts employs a night custodian who has transitioned over the summer break this past year. this has been seen as “unthinkable” and “mind-numbing” according to this article from massresistance, a radical reactionary “christian” organization, that would apparently rather hate and discriminate against their brothers and sisters.

part of the headline exclaims that the children will be told about the custodian (if they should ask about her) in a “simple and straightforward” manor. of course the radical reactionary christian groups would protest, because they are so used to explaining things in a complex and convoluted manor to keep their flocks, well, confused and uninformed. so yeah, i can see how being clear might cloud their issue. or something.

they also take issue with the letter that was sent out to parents, because the letter was written in “an eerie informational style”, and they go on to call it “orwellian”. i suppose when your head in buried in a single text that was written thousands of years ago, translated dozens of times, and used thou’s and “ye shall’s”, an informational style would be viewed as “eerie”. and when you’re used to twisting things around, being simple and straightforward would be viewed as “orwellian”.

far be it for an educational institution like the clara barton elementary school to, you know, educate.