“Requirement for corrective surgery before official change is challenged.Sam Berkley and Joann Marie Prinzivall, two transgender people, are suing New York City in an attempt to change a 40-year-old law requiring them to have “corrective surgery” to have their gender changed on their birth certificate….”
Read the full story: Transgender People Sue NYC over Birth Certificate Regulations « Lgbt « Society.
*this originally was a response to a question on a group. I liked the answer and asked if I might post it here. Thankfully Misha agreed.
All the basic books like Gender Outlaw, Gender Trouble, Transgender Warriors, Queer Theory, Gender Theory/Read My Lips, etc, etc, all are very good.
What we’re all saying, including the authors of these books, is that slowly, over the millennia, the powers in society have, since the murder of the last matriarchal tribes in Sumaria, in multitudes of unspoken, subconscious acts, (the acts themselves wern’t subconscious, but their application to gender was), shifted social power to be concentrated in males in the patriarchal system. They have skewed the learned “viral” information we pass on from generation to generation in favor of masculinity as being the gender of socio-political power, and femininity as being the gender of emotional expression and familial cohesiveness. All this applied to individuals based on the shape of their genitals. We know how well this has worked, and it gets reinforced by violence on playgrounds and in bedrooms and boardrooms and homeless shelters, and our religious institutions, etc.
What we face as gender-queer people is a social ignorance. Individuals, in general, have had their ability to self-gender-determination taken from them by a language that expects us, from the day we begin to grasp language, to take responsibility for the determination of the gender of another. Our language and the customs we hold around gender force us to “gender” others. We are given no other language to use, and the English language forces us to continue reinforcing the millennia of training we’ve received on the place “each sex”, has in society, (as opposed to the SE Asian languages where the speaker has no way to “gender” the listener or any others, but the speakers self references allow them to express their own gender (as narrow as that still may be), ie. in Thailand “yes” from a male is “Krap” and “yes” from a female is “Ka”).
None of you will be able to totally change the fact that our society has been brain-washed in this way in your life times. What we can do is to start to take bites out of it. We can be ourselves, we can choose to expose ourselves to the taunts of ignoramus’s, and the askance looks of the curious and confused. We can choose our own gender and the form of expression that it will take as we attempt to describe our internal feelings using unique combinations of the clothing society gives “normal” folk to express masculinity or femininity, (unless you are talented in using a sewing machine and clothing construction).
Every day those of us who wish to do the hard work of changing peoples minds about what gender really is past the shape of the flesh between our legs (intersex inclusive), we will have to stand out there, play in our bands, do our nursing work, bag those groceries, etc, and face those who will scratch their heads at us at best, catch us in the alley and beat the tar out of us or take our lives at worst. And what we will do, by sheer force of numbers that don’t match their stupid theories of what men and women should look like and act like, what we need to do…we will be true to ourselves, we will love ourselves, and we will change society. Not today or tomorrow, maybe long after anyone reading this has passed the expiration of a normal life span, but we will make the world better for our children, for our nieces and nephews, for the little 5 year old down the block who’s still being dressed by his parents, but fantasizing about expressing a different gender …who if he did it today could have his life snuffed, possibly painfully, by ignorant parents who fear what people will say if their child looks weird.
All any of us can do is to support each other in this painful, but blissfully rewarding life that we share independent from the masses of lemmings who secretly hate themselves.
And know this…
If you want a trump card, whether you want to be the best trombone player or the best psychologist, or the best lawyer, or the best at any endeavor your choose, bring your whole self into it, bring your gender queerness into it. A few of you may encounter resistance, possibly even violence, but more of you will be embraced, and loved for loving yourself. It really does show through. Your unique visions will inform and guide your creativity and you will be capable of more and better works which will give you that edge to show the world that if they will stop fucking with our self-concepts and our self-confidence we will make the world a better place. And they will love us. Know that amongst the few in my family who have rejected me, many more have shown me that I’m loved for being me.
Hugs to you all and Namaste, Misha
Misha Elizabeth Balch, LPN, PSN, RC,
http://www.facebook.com/Psychobablishous?ref=profile
Gender Alliance of the South Sound, Founder, and Twice Board Chair;
http//www.southsoundgender.com
Because I always like to see when my brethren in the law do good things for the community…
A former gay High Court Judge, Michael Kirby, has launched an LGBTI Legal Service Center in Brisbane, Australia. The center will provide free legal services to the LGBTI community and also push for reforms.
via New legal service for gay community – Local News – News – City News.
“Not since the glam era of the 1970s has gender-bending so saturated the news media. The difference now is that mystery has been replaced with empowerment, even pride. Consider a few happenings that have blipped recently on our radar…James Franco grace[d] the covers of GQ and Candy [in drag], a transgender student pledged a sorority at Trinity University in Texas and Original Plumbing, a zine for trans-guys, came out with a fashion issue.”
via Transsexuals Are Edging Into the Mainstream – Is 2010 the Year of the Transsexual? – NYTimes.com.
Campaigning under the slogan of, “A Judge for All of Us,” Victoria Kolakowski becomes the nations’ fist transgendered identified judge http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_16505778>The Oakland Tribune has declared her a winner although CNN states that the race still hasn’t been officially called. CNN.com Blogs.
Los Angeles police investigators are seeking five suspects in connection with an particularly vicious attack on a transgender woman in Hollywood. The the 25-year-old, 125lb victim, was bloodied and battered sustaining a broken jaw and cheek bone and cuts on the head from a bottle. Full story at Los Angeles Times.
In honor of his win as Mister International Leather, Tyler may not be Goth (actually, there’s not much known about him) but he’s hot. The video has jock strap flashing — just saying:
The article from the Advocate can be accessed here: http://advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/06/01/Trans_Wheelchair_User_Wins_IML_2010/
Winner Tyler McCormick Mr Rio Grande
First Runner up Lance Holman MrSan Francisco
Second runner up: Jack Andrew Duke Mr Texas Leather
Sir, dude, man, or hey-fucking-you; but you doesn’t has to call me, she.
Thanks for the invite, James. For those who don’t know me, my name is Bryl R. Tyne, pen name at the moment, but future legal name. I am an author, editor, marketing manager, advertising coordinator, graphic artist, handyman, mechanic, college graduate, abuse survivor, spouse, parent, grandparent, child, sibling, and so much more I could never list it; and I am F2M transgender.
As with any of the above descriptions, it took me awhile to figure each of them out. A few examples: When my current employer said, I couldn’t possible know how to edit for I worked in advertising and production, I searched for a publishing company that would value my strengths and found one. When my ex, the devil himself, said, I would never amount to anything for I didn’t, at age thirty, have a high school diploma, I sought out a community college to earn my GED and eventually attended a private college and earned my four-year degree in Communications also, including amassing a number of managerial positions along the way and even owning my own company at one time. And when my children said, I could not be a man for I had labored to give them life, I decided it was time I stopped trying to prove my worth to anyone but myself.
First, you must know one thing about me, which I firmly believe: I abhor labels. Why? Simply because labels bind you, constrain you, box you in. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand the thought of being stamped any "thing" in particular. But alas, we don’t live in a perfect world.
Took some serious consideration to realize why I’m a jack of all trades, though, but I finally came to the conclusion. I can be anything I strive to be. But that answer doesn’t satisfy a label-happy society, does it? So, I sat down with myself a few years back and took an internal inventory. What did I uncover? Well, I realized, despite my best efforts, I was indeed amassing a gigantic list of labels to call myself. However, the question then became, Why? Once I found the correct question, the answer was obvious. I was hiding the fact that I was afraid. Terrified of what others may think of me, how much I stood to lose if the truth be known. I also realized two other very important aspects. I wasn’t getting younger and I was tired. Tired of trying to conform, tired of putting on a front, tired of running. Running away from "Me".
So, I decided, despite all I abhorred, that I did in fact need a label. One that says, "Oh! That’s you," and I picked up a pen and began to write. In a six-week span, I wrote a 77K word novel about a young person with a major identity crisis. Full of fantasy and guardian spirits, men loving men, and women loving women . . . and no one was ever going to publish this crap, I thought, at the time. Of course, I was mistaken. Not that that manuscript will ever clutter a publisher’s desk, but searching for a publisher who might accept such a work opened my eyes to a world I, up until that point, never knew existed.
"Oh! So, you’re an author," you say.
No. If I must choose a label, I would say, I am a transman.
One, who happens to have experienced more in my forty plus years than many other people experience in a lifetime . . . and from it all, I write some pretty damned good, and sometimes funny, stories about men loving men, women loving women, and men loving men who believe they are women, and every combination of gender and sexuality one could imagine.
We’re here, everywhere really. Many of you have transwomen or transmen as neighbors. You may even work alongside one of us, undergo medical care from one of us, be taught by one of us, have your groceries packed or your drinks served by one of us, and not know we were born into bodies that don’t "fit" who we are. Would knowing change anything? Would slapping a label on our foreheads help you choose how to treat us? I doubt it. But again, I may be mistaken. So, here I am, Bryl R. Tyne, transman, author–Oh, you know the rest.
I invite you to check out my latest story, the first in the mini-series The Zagniel Diaries, titled Forsaken, which will be available next week from Untreed Reads Publishing.
Later.
Bryl R. Tyne is a wrangler by nature and a writer by choice, published with Noble Romance Publishing, Ravenous Romance, Dreamspinner Press, STARbooks Press, and Untreed Reads Publishing. You can find out more about Bryl at: bryltyne.com
Lab mouse by Rama
Apparently men and women are not that different after all. In fact, the sexes are so similar that women have to fight their entire lives just to remain women — at least on the genetic level.
Remember this study was done on mice…people ain’t mice. Also, as reported by PopSci.com there’s nothing in the study that suggest a genetic way to go from M2F. According to the journal Cell, which published the results of the study, researchers “switched off” the FoxL2 gene which works by suppressing a male gene, Sox9. When the female suppressor goes away the male gene asserts itself, signaling overian cells to become types normally found in the testes. The female began to produce equivilant amounts of testosterone as normal male mice. The studies authors’ think the data might be a step in explaining transsexualism.
It’s still very speculative, but it’s possible that this approach could produce an alternative to surgery and the removal of gonads — ovaries and testes. ~ Co-author Robin Lovell-Badge
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