Trans News Updates: 1st half 2010

This page links to news of general interest to the trans community during the first half of 2013. This running log of news also serves as a window into areas of media focus and public interest regarding trans issues during 2013. Let us know if you hear of news to include in this list. To access to a wide range of trans news, we recommend "Google News", searching on keywords such as transgender, transsexual, sex reassignment, sex change, gender variance and gender transition.

In an 6-28-13 e-mail alert about this news, Aaron writes: "The Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria is about to get a lot bigger! Our movers have packed up the equivalent of more than 125 bankers’ boxes (158 linear ft) of transgender books, magazines, articles, audio tapes, video tapes, photographs, artifacts, etc. in Northern Ireland, and we expect them to arrive in Victoria sometime around the end of July.

Richard Ekins, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Cultural Studies at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, UK, has most generously entrusted his extensive collection of transgender materials to the University of Victoria Transgender Archives. Originally called the Trans-Gender Archive, the collection was founded by Professor Ekins in January 1986 with the collaboration of the President and the Librarian of the UK-based Self Help Association of Transsexuals (SHAFT). The ground-breaking University of Ulster Trans-Gender Archive collection ceased its connection with the University of Ulster in July 2010, upon the retirement of Professor Ekins, and it is now on its way to the University of Victoria.

The collection is focused on understanding how attitudes and representations of transgender people have developed and changed over time. It looks at three broad aspects of transgender--biology and the body, gender expression, and erotic expression and representation--through the lenses of expert knowledge, as recorded by scientists and social scientists; transgender community member knowledge, as recorded by and for transgender people themselves; and common-sense knowledge, as recorded by and for members of the general public. It is truly a treasure and we are honoured to become its guardians.

"Readers of this blog will know that I'm a keen advocate for ensuring that diverse communities understand and preserve their histories and pass that knowledge on to the generations that follow them. History is not only important for communities to understand their own position in the present; it is also an important source of education for everyone concerned with equality … for ensuring that we learn from and don't repeat the mistakes or brutality of previous generations . . .

These are the reasons why I've been keen to promote the capture of archive material from fast-moving civil rights campaigns, such as trans people, in the digital age. My argument is that communities, now more than ever, must act to preserve material from volatile online platforms, such as Facebook groups, blogs, list servers and even web sites, for the benefit of future historians. The lesson taught by the total loss of the original Press for Change web site is that vital and unique material is very easy to lose. Miraculously in that case the disaster was mitigated by the British Library's excellent UK web archive. That was luck rather than planning, however . . .

One archive that has been in existence for longer than most is the collection begun in 1986 by Professor Richard Ekins of the University of Ulster at Coleraine in Ireland. The Ekins Transgender Archive is probably the most complete academic collection of recent transgender history in the world. It has been collected systematically from newspaper and media coverage in the UK for over 27 years. Now, following his retirement, Professor Ekins has arranged a new home for the archive, to ensure its continued preservation and facilitate new studies.

The new custodian, Professor Aaron Devor, explains . . . (see news item above, from Aaron Devor)"

"The first public condemnation by a transgender activist of OutServe-SLDN’s board of directors’ awkward handling to temporarily fire Allyson Robinson, its executive director, who is also transgender, first emerged as a personal Facebook posting yesterday. Ms. Stabler noticed that OutServe-SLDN opened the stock market on Friday morning sans Allyson Robinson, raising new concerns about the status of her situation within the organization that is in apparent crisis.

She posted the photograph to her Facebook wall with a note expressing grave concerns about the status of Robinson and the perceived maltreatment of a highly visible transgender person. Ms. Stabler gave permission to The New Civil Rights Movement to post her note in its entirety . . .

Just yesterday, 14 OutServe-SLDN chapter leaders, representing 4,000 members, called for the resignation of Josh Seefried, a board of directors, co-chair, who initiated the firing of Robinson on June 23rd and was subsequently reversed the following day. All senior staff have resigned, including three board members, including Brenda Sue Fulton, Beth Schissel and Sharon Lettman-Hicks. The only statement issued to date by the OutServe-SLDN board of directors occurred on June 24th.

Significant challenges remain for LGBT people serving in the military–there is currently no protections for sexual orientation status while serving and transgender persons remain barred to service due to medical disqualification. "

"A study, published last year and conducted at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA School of Medicine, explored the extent to which brain anatomy is associated with gender identity. "The degree to which one identifies as male or female has a profound impact on one's life," the authors wrote. "Yet, there is a limited understanding of what contributes to this important characteristic termed gender identity." Many who live at variance to their birth gender as well as many in the scientific field would heartily agree . . .

Specifically, the UCLA researchers chose to investigate potential neuroanatomical variations associated with transsexualism; in particular, they applied a "whole-brain approach" in which they would compare the thickness of the cortex across the lateral and medial brain cortical surfaces at thousands of surface points. "The cerebral cortex contains approximately 80% of the neurons of the central nervous system and contributes largely to factors such as social awareness, attitudes, and decision-making," the authors wrote . . .

They found the MTF transsexuals, as compared to the control participants, had thicker cortices (outer layers of their cerebellums), both within regions of the left hemisphere and right hemisphere. "Regional gray matter characteristics in MTF transsexuals are more similar to the pattern found in men (i.e., in subjects sharing biological sex) than in women," the authors wrote. "However, we also noticed that brain characteristics in MTF transsexuals and in control men were not fully identical."

The thicker areas within the left hemisphere of MTF transsexuals included the frontal and orbito-frontal cortex (involved in decision-making), central sulcus, perisylvian regions (helps to process language), and paracentral gyrus; and within the right hemisphere included pre-/post-central gyrus (involved in sense of touch), parietal cortex (integrates sensory information), temporal cortex (involved with visual information), precuneus (concerned with reflections upon self and aspects of consciousness), fusiform, lingual, and orbito-frontal gyrus.

"The current study provides evidence that brain anatomy is associated with gender identity, where measures in MTF transsexuals appear to be shifted away from gender-congruent men," wrote the authors."

"CHENNAI: DMK chief M Karunanidhi has demanded that the Centre to do away with the code number nine assigned to transgender people in the gender identity column of the 6th Economic Census forms, since it caused unrest among the community members in the state. The number has a derogatory connotation, especially in this part of the country, when it is spoken in Tamil language.

The DMK leader demanded that steps be taken to rectify the mistake . . . During his previous government, Karunanidhi said, ration cards were issued with the specific letter 'T' to denote transgender people. However, in the economic census form, the numbers one and two have been assigned for male and female categories and nine for transgender people. "The community members complain that the number is used to tease them and with the government itself using it, it further belittles us," Karunanidhi said . . .

Transgender activist Priya Babu said assigning nine for transgender people amounted to insulting the community. "Why can't they use the numbers three or four for us? Why the number nine? It has been a long battle with the administration to secure our rights. They still need to be sensitised about our rights," she said. Little Smile Vidya, a transgender person, said the community had struggled to be recognized as women. But, the government's number coding put them down."

"This week, that momentous news out of washington and the supreme court, the overturn of doma, allowing gay couples to marry, recognizing thei love for one another. Tonight here, we start with a different kind of love story. Two teenagers who completely changed their identities, shunned, targeted and alone.

Until they met each other. And once you meet them, you will never forget them. And you won't forget their mothers, either, who played match maker, supporting their children every step of the way on their long and often painful journey of transformation.

Here's deborah roberts with what every high school has -- the class couple. Reporter: It's friday night in tulsa, oklahoma. 18-year-old katie and 17-year-old boyfriend arin are getting ready for a night out on the town.

The young sweethearts have been dating for more than a year and clearly remember the first moment they met. She walked in and I was like, "who's that girl? "

He was just so handsome. I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. He would look out and see me, and I'd look away we'd be on the dance floor, I'd be dancing, I'd turn around and he'd be there. Reporter: Instant attraction?

Oh, yeah. Instant, yeah. Reporter: Katie and arin are like any other teenage couple in love, except, and it's a big except, they were each born the opposite sex. That's right, arin was born a girl. Katie, a boy. They're transgender. "

"Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong or couldn’t conform to the labels placed on you? For Laverne Cox, she says that was the story of her life - at birth, she was labeled male, but always felt female. Now, she’s living life in her truth.

Cox is enjoying success as an actress and transgender advocate. She currently stars in the new Netflix series “Orange is the new black” and you may remember her from the VH1 reality shows “TRANSform me” and “I want to work for Diddy.”

America is now celebrating pride month for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community amid two key rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court eliminating the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Prop 8 that banned same-sex marriage in the state.

Click on the video to find out why Cox said she is hopeful for the future of her community, but is also concerned about research that shows transgender people are still disproportionately on the receiving end of violent hate crimes in this country."

"Rev. David Weekley hid his identity as a transgendered person for 28 years, until he finally revealed his secret in 2009, becoming one of the first openly transgender clergy serving the United Methodist Church. He shared his story on HuffPost Live.

The reaction from Weekley's parish after he came out reflected many of the challenges the transgender community faces. "I received real mixed feedback from people -- colleagues, parishioners, just friends of the community," he told host Mike Sacks. "While I had a lot of support, there was a lot of pushback. There were attempts made to bring charges against my ministry--to have my ordination revoked."

Weekley, who authored the book "In from the Wilderness: Sherman," transitioned from female to male in 1975, at the age of 24. "When I went to seminary in the '80s, it wasn't safe to be out, whether you were LGBTQ -- those topics weren't talked about, only in negative ways. And so I decided to enter the ordained ministry, serve congregations the best I could, and let them have a chance to know me, then share my story. I thought that would make a positive difference."

But though a number of churches have begun to accept transgender people in the clergy, widespread acceptance is still a challenge, Weekley explained. "

"The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is investigating a shooting involving a transgender woman that occurred Thursday morning in the 6000 block of Eads Street NE, in the District’s East Corner.

Affiliate members of the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU) were on scene as the initial responders, according to an email update sent to members of MPD’s Critical Incident Team by GLLU. The victim was taken to a local hospital and is described as “conscious and breathing.”

The neighborhood in which the incident took place has long been a hangout for transgender individuals, but several high-profile anti-transgender attacks have occurred in the area in recent years, including the shooting death of Lashai Mclean in July 2011, followed by another attempted shooting of a transgender woman two days after Mclean’s death. Other anti-trans attacks that have occurred within a mile radius from the site of Thursday’s shooting include the 2002 double-murder of transgender women Stephanie Thomas and Ukea Davis and the 2012 stabbing of Deoni Jones."

"Waiting backstage for her cue, the doe-eyed fifth grader adjusted her black-and-white polka-dot dress, fiddled with her rhinestone headband and peeked out from behind the curtain. She had no stage fright, having sung and danced countless times before.

But this was no mere act for the school talent show. This was an announcement to the world: that the 10-year-old boy everyone knew as Niko was now a girl named Nikki. "I was so scared," says Nikki, now 12. "But I was like, 'I can do this.'"

Her parents, Marci and Barry, watched from their seats. "We were so nervous," Marci recalls. "She was getting up in front of everybody, all the families, the teachers. It was kind of an out-of-body experience for me."

Marci and Barry are among a small but growing number of the hundreds of families of transgender kids who have made the difficult, even controversial, decision to put their child on medication that, for Nikki, will halt the onset of the male puberty she dreads."

"The United States Supreme Court just ruled that section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Constitution. This decision, in the ACLU's lawsuit on behalf of Edie Windsor, marks a watershed moment in the movement for LGBT equality. It's a monumental victory for Edie Windsor, for married same-sex couples, and for the bedrock American value of equality.

The core provision of DOMA required the federal government to treat the marriages of same-sex couples one way (as though they had never happened) and the marriages of straight couples a different way (respecting their validity in 1,138 federal contexts). The Supreme Court struck down DOMA both because of that unequal treatment and because the federal government had improperly taken over the states' normal role of deciding who is married and who isn't.

The end of DOMA brings important protections for thousands of married same-sex couples all across the country. For Edie Windsor, what DOMA meant was a bill for $363,000 in federal estate taxes after her spouse and partner of 44 years died, whereas her tax bill would have been $0 if she had been a straight widow. For other married same-sex couples, the dismantling of DOMA means getting Social Security survivor benefits, the ability to take family medical leave, access to health care, the right to sponsor a spouse for a green card, and notification when a spouse in the military dies in the line of duty, just to mention a few. No longer will gay couples be relegated to what Justice Ginsburg memorably called "skim milk marriages."

The demise of DOMA section 3 is also a crucial milestone on the road to LGBT equality because DOMA is the last federal law that requires discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. That makes the Windsor decision, which wipes away the core of DOMA, the capstone on decades of work to rid the country of codified anti-gay discrimination at the federal level.

There used to be lots of explicitly anti-gay federal laws. There were federal laws banning the government from employing gay people, saying that companies that did business with the federal government couldn't hire gay people, that lesbians and gay men were not permitted into the country, and of course that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people could not serve openly and honestly in the military. America got rid of all of those laws because we came to recognize how unfair they are, how unconstitutional they are, and how they violate our basic norm of equality.

So Windsor isn't just the death of the core of DOMA, it's the end of official federal discrimination against lesbians and gay men. That's quite something to celebrate!

The Court gave us another milestone today – it restored the freedom to marry in California. Dismissing the appeal by the proponents of Prop 8 (the folks who put it on the ballot) for lack of standing, the Court effectively re-instated the trial court decision from August 2010, which struck Prop 8 down as violating the U.S. Constitution. We congratulate the Perry team on their incredible achievement – persuading the Court to allow California to become the 13^th state (and the District of Columbia) to embrace marriage for everyone.

Much remains to be done to bring the freedom to marry to everyone in America. But the momentum behind the freedom to marry today is unprecedented – just seven months ago, there were only 6 states plus DC where same-sex couples could marry, and none of those marriages were respected by the federal government. Now we have more than double that number, and have federal recognition as well. We made that progress at the ballot box, in state legislatures, in the courts today, and in conversations around kitchen tables all across the country. Here at the ACLU, we are already hard at work on the next chapter of the work to bring the freedom to marry to the entire country. And today's decisions give that broader movement increased momentum."

"In 2013 I was invited by the President to attend a White House Reception in celebration of LGBT Pride Month, in an acknowledgement of my trans-advocacy work. This was a wonderful event; the atmosphere was full of joy from all the recent social advances and full hope for the future. I took my husband Charlie as my guest and, as you can imagine, this was a very special experience for us."

"DENVER — A Colorado school district discriminated against a transgender first grader when it refused to let her use the girl’s bathroom, the state’s civil rights division has determined, a decision gay and transgender advocates say will have an indelible impact on how such cases are handled in the future.

In a sharply worded ruling, the division concluded that the Fountain-Fort Carson school district needlessly created a situation where the student, Coy Mathis, would be subject to harassment when it barred her from the girls’ bathroom even though she clearly identified as female.

Telling Coy “that she must disregard her identity while performing one of the most essential human functions constitutes severe and pervasive treatment, and creates an environment that is objectively and subjectively hostile, intimidating or offensive,” wrote Steven Chavez, the division director, in the decision.

The dispute over whether Coy, 6, should be allowed to use the girls’ bathroom was seen by some as a critical test of how state anti-discrimination laws were applied to transgender students."

"Happy LGBT Pride Month! We are thrilled to announce that the Colorado Civil Rights Division has ruled in favor of six-year-old Coy Mathis, whose school had barred her from using the girls’ bathroom at her elementary school because she is transgender. This is the first ruling in the nation holding that transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms that match who they are, and the most comprehensive ruling ever supporting the rights of transgender people to access bathrooms without harassment or discrimination. The story is featured in The New York Times.

“Schools should not discriminate against their students, and we are thrilled that Coy can return to school and put this behind her,” said Kathryn Mathis, Coy’s mother. “All we ever wanted was for Coy’s school to treat her the same as other little girls. We are extremely happy that she now will be treated equally.”

“This ruling sends a loud and clear message that transgender students may not be targeted for discrimination and that they must be treated equally in school,” said TLDEF’s executive director Michael Silverman. “It is a victory for Coy and a triumph for fairness.”"

"OutServe-SLDN executive director Allyson Robinson was forced to resign by the organization’s board Saturday, and other senior staffers and some board members have quit in protest.

Robinson, the first openly transgender leader of a national LGBT rights organization whose focus is not primarily transgender issues, was hired by OutServe-SLDN last October. The reasons given for the board’s action vary widely, “from fundraising and leadership abilities to personality conflicts to anti-transgender bias,” reports BuzzFeed. Some sources said Robinson recently offered to take a pay cut to avoid layoffs at the organization.

Senior staff members Zeke Stokes, who was director of external engagement, and Gary Espinas, director of chapter and member services, resigned immediately in protest of Robinson’s ousting, according to The Bilerico Project, which originally broke the story. David McKean, legal and public policy director, also intends to leave the organization, but said in an email to Bilerico that he will stay “until I can determine how to resolve matters related to client representation in accordance with legal ethics rules and requirements.”

Board member Sue Fulton has confirmed that she resigned over the decision to let Robinson go, and she accused board chair Josh Seefried of rushing the matter through, BuzzFeed notes. Seefried declined comment. Two other board members, Beth Schissel and Matthew Phelps, have reportedly resigned as well."

"After more than a decade of persistent advocacy by union members and advocacy groups, the Board of CalPERS, which oversees the health plans of California’s state employees, voted on June 19 to include transgender transition-related care in all of their health plans as of January 1, 2014.

CalPERS provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.6 million public employees, retirees and their families, including employees of the state of California and over 3,000 other California employers, including municipalities and non-profits. CalPERS health plans cover more than 1.3 million individuals. The board’s historic vote means that the 2014 HMO and PPO plans managed by CalPERS will include coverage of “Sex Reassignment Surgery and Related Services for Gender Identity Disorder.” CalPERS is the nation’s largest public health benefits fund, making California the largest employer to offer explicitly transgender-inclusive coverage.

The vote of the CalPERS board reflects trends in the private sector, where transgender-inclusive health plans are increasingly common, with strong encouragement from HRC’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI). The CEI, which evaluates Fortune 1000 and other large employers vis-a-vis LGBT workplace policies, has called for transgender inclusion in employer health plans since 2009. Employers have heeded the CEI’s call: in the 2013 CEI survey, 287 major employers reported coverage of basic medical services related to sex reassignment, including surgical services. Numerous other public and private employers, including many universities and colleges, have also removed exclusions in their employee health plans and provided trans-inclusive coverage."

"One of four suspects wanted in connection with a recent attack on a transgender woman in Hollywood has been arrested, authorities said. Police made the arrest Thursday evening, but few other details were immediately available.

Earlier this week, the LAPD announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the men who they believe are responsible for an assault that left the woman hospitalized for a week. The attack against the woman, identified by authorities only as Vivian, took place about 2:15 a.m. May 31 as she was walking on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine Street.

Video released Tuesday by the LAPD shows four men involved in the incident, including a man described as the "primary suspect," who investigators said was responsible for the initial assault. In the video, that man appears to strike the woman from behind with a punch or flying kick, knocking her to the concrete. She appears to lose consciousness.

Three other men can then be seen joining the fray, kicking the victim repeatedly as she lies motionless on the ground. She suffered broken bones and internal injuries, police said."

With her flowing blonde locks, flawless complexion and perfect pout it's hard to believe this 21-year-old used to be a boy called Daniel. But for transgender Dani, competing to be crowned Miss Diamond Queen 2013 is a testament to how far she's come.

Dani, from Barry, South Wales, is now competing alongside 11 other contestants in the beauty pageant which takes place in London on Saturday. For just three years ago, Dani was a man called Daniel, it wasn't until she was 18-years-old that she made the decision to leave her life as a man behind and embrace life as a woman."

[Update at 11:20 p.m.: Following a meeting Wednesday night at its conference, Exodus International went further, announcing it is closing up shop.

“Exodus International, the oldest and largest Christian ministry dealing with faith and homosexuality announced tonight that it’s closing its doors after three-plus decades of ministry,” the organization said in a statement.]

The public statement comes in advance of a Thursday airing of the television broadcast “God & Gays” on Our America with Lisa Ling on OWN, in which Ling talks with Chambers about these issues. In his apology, Chambers wrote, “I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents” . . .

[Update at 11:55 a.m. Thursday: Truth Wins Out executive director Wayne Besen, who has been tracking and opposing “ex-gay” therapies for more than a decade, issued a statement Thursday morning:

“The closing of Exodus is an earthquake that is shaking the very foundations of the ‘ex-gay’ industry. We feel vindicated with our efforts to expose these groups and reveal their great destruction. Although new groups are vying to fill the vacuum, the passing of Exodus casts a huge shadow of doubt on their work and cuts right to the heart of their credibility,” Besen said.]

"Almost a week after joking about the shooting of a transgender woman, radio hosts Lex and Terry have finally announced that they’ll apologize for their comments. 22-year-old Coko McDonald was shot and robbed in April by a teenager who, investigators say, sent text messages within an hour of the attack that bragged about the assault and insulted the victim’s sexuality. McDonald’s assailant is being charged with a hate crime. On June 3, Lex and Terry, who are broadcast nationally by Clear Channel and Sirius XM, said, “There’s a teen that shot a tranny after finding out that it was a man ... I don’t blame him. I would have shot his ass too.”

Only a day after Lex and Terry’s comments, the National Coalition for Anti-Violence Programs released its findings that transgender people, especially transgender women like Coko McDonald, are disproportionately targeted for violence. More than half of U.S. homicide victims in anti-LGBT attacks last year are transgender women. Transgender people are 1.67 times more likely to be threatened and 3.32 times more likely to experience police violence than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer cisgender people. In the face of this ongoing violence against transgender folks throughout the country and around the world, Lex and Terry’s professed support of shooting a transgender woman is horrifying — but, unfortunately, it’s not unusual. Transphobia is rampant in the media. For many trans victims of violence, including those listed here, the press is their most public attacker:"

"Sometimes when I tell people I no longer speak to you they assume it’s because of my difficult and lengthy transition from male to female. That frames me as the problem. I don’t speak to you because I don’t share your values and I don’t like the way you treat people. I needed you to love me as a child. People assume you don’t accept me but the truth is I don’t accept you. I didn’t write this letter to hurt you though. I didn’t write this letter for you at all, actually, and I have no idea how you will feel about it or even if you will see it . . .

I know what it’s like to spend Christmas alone because my family found my presence more awkward than rejecting me. I also know what it’s like to feel bullied, again, as an adult, in the streets, for daring to walk down them. The taunts have become ‘fucking tranny’ and the cruel ‘jokes’ about people like me are now written in newspapers, and circulated nationally. Thankfully I reached some kind of normality. Perhaps you were right about normality, perhaps it is the most important thing . . .

I read a study recently. It compared transgender people who have family support with those who do not. Guess what? Of those who were supported, none faced housing problems, 72 per cent reported life satisfaction and 4 per cent had attempted suicide. Those who weren’t supported gave rather different feedback. Over half faced housing problems and just 33 per cent reported life satisfaction. Saddest of all, 57 per cent had attempted suicide. They don’t print stuff like this in Father’s Day cards . . .

I know it can be hard for parents. I know you probably didn’t know any better. The lack of information about people like me in the media and the way we are demonized by the tabloids doesn’t help. I’m trying to change that now, Father, through dialogue, empathy and compassion. Check out the work I’m doing with All About Trans raising awareness among media professionals. There’s a great deal of progress to be made. Many trans people are still rejected by their families when they transition and fear of this often keeps them from transitioning at all. They miss out on the fulfilling lives that I, and many like me, have been lucky enough to secure."

"The new revisions for the Gender Dysphoria diagnosis in the DSM-5 are mostly positive. However they do not go nearly far enough. The change in title from Gender Identity Disorder (intended by its authors to mean “disordered” gender identity) to Gender Dysphoria (from a Greek root for distress) is a significant step forward. It represents a historic shift from gender identities that differ from birth assignment to distress with gender assignment and associated sex characteristics as the focus of the problem to be treated . . .

However, the fundamental problem remains that the need for medical transition treatment is still classed as a mental disorder. In the diagnostic criteria, desire for transition care is itself cast as symptomatic of mental illness, unfortunately reinforcing gender-reparative psychotherapies which suppress expression of this “desire” into the closet. The diagnostic criteria still contradict transition and still describe transition itself as symptomatic of mental illness. The criteria for children retain much of the archaic sexist language of the DSM-IV-TR that psychopathologizes gender nonconformity. Moreover, children who have happily socially transitioned are maligned by misgendering language in the new diagnosis.

More troubling is false-positive diagnosis for those who have happily completed transition. Thus, the GD diagnosis, and its controversial post-transition specifier, continue to contradict the proven efficacy of medical transition treatments. This contradiction may be used to support gender conversion/reparative psychotherapies– practices described as no longer ethical in the current WPATH Standards of Care.

Finally, the Transvestic Disorder category in the DSM-5 is even more harmful than its predecessor, Transvestic Fetishism. Punitive and scientifically capricious, it only serves to punish nonconformity to assigned birth roles and has no relevance to established definition of mental disorder. The Transvestic Disorder category has been expanded in the DSM-5 to implicate trans men as well as trans women, with a new specifier of “autoandrophilia,” apparently pulled from thin air without supporting research or clinical evidence."

"Despite a number of victories for gay rights plus national polls reflecting a of gay men and women, there is a population within the LGBT community that often feels left out of the national debate.

They are the "T": transgender men and women who still face many obstacles, including employment discrimination and homelessness. They experience them at an early age, too; young transgender people face discrimination in all aspects of life, and many find themselves on the streets . . .

Transgender females tend to get the brunt of the discrimination in the transgender community, says Jake Finney, the anti-violence project manager at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. Nearly half of the shelter's residents are transgender. Finney says many transgender youth have been kicked out of their homes or rejected by their families . . . "

"The battle for transgender rights in Ireland was sparked 20 years ago by Dr Lydia Foy, a transgender woman who wrote to the Registrar General in 1993 requesting a birth certificate identifying her female gender. In 2007 she won a High Court case in which the State was found to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Since then the State has been obliged to provide a mechanism for people to have their gender recognised.

Despite this ruling – and despite the assurance made by Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton last year at the Transgender European Council in Dublin that legislation was due by the end of 2012 – no further progress has been made.

The Government’s legislative programme suggests 2014 is a more realistic date. In January of this year, Dr Foy launched new proceedings against the State. Ireland is the only country in Europe still in breach of the convention on this issue."

"Today marks an important victory for the transgender community, even though it may appear to be a small paperwork technicality. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced that it is now much easier for trans people to change their gender identity on their Social Security records. All that will now be required, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, is for individuals to submit government-issued documentation reflecting a gender change, or a certification from a physician confirming they have undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition.

This is a significant departure from the previous policy, which required documentation of complete sex reassignment surgery. Many trans people never undergo such procedures, either because they are too expensive, because they do not want to lose their procreative ability, or because it simply isn’t an important change for them to make to find authenticity in their identities. The SSA change eliminates this high standard for trans people to obtain the appropriate documentation for the gender that reflects how they live their daily lives.

Though Social Security cards do not display gender, the SSA does maintain that information as data, and it can impact other governmental programs. For example, individuals seeking coverage under Medicaid, Medicare, Supplemental Security Income, or other public benefits could face complications if their gender markers do not match from form to form and identification to identification."

"Today, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders represented a transgender girl before Maine's highest court, arguing that her school had failed in its responsibility to treat her the same as other students.

Following the argument before the Law Court, Jennifer Levi, director of GLAD's Transgender Rights Project, said, “I was pleased to present Nicole’s case to the court today, and have been privileged to represent her and get to know her remarkable, strong, and supportive family. We have a strong case here of a young girl trying to go to school and learn, and the school failing to protect her. I feel confident that we got a fair hearing from the court, and I look forward to their decision.”

As a middle school student in Orono, Maine, Nicole Maines was treated like other girls until a male classmate followed her into a girls' room. The school addressed the boy's bad behavior by focusing on Nicole, forcing her to use a staff bathroom separate from the other girls. Eventually, the parents were forced to withdraw their daughter and her twin brother from the Orono school system and move them to another part of the state where they could go to school quietly and safely.

Nicole also spoke after the argument saying, “I want all transgender kids to be able to go to school and not have to worry about being treated unfairly or bullied. I’ve been very lucky to have a family that’s stood by me and stuck up for me, and I’m really grateful for them.”"

"BANGOR, Maine — Maine's highest court heard arguments Wednesday over whether transgender students can use the bathroom of their choice, and the girl at the heart of the case said she hoped justices would recognize the right of children to attend school without being "bullied" by peers or administrators.

Nicole Maines, now 15, watched lawyers argue over whether her rights were violated when the Orono school district required her to use a staff bathroom after there was a complaint about her using the girls' bathroom.

Maines said after the hearing in Bangor that she hopes the Supreme Judicial Court will ensure no one else experiences what she went though.

"I hope they understood how important it is for students to be able to go to school and get an education and have fun and make friends, and not have to worry about being bullied by students or the administration, and to be accepted for who they are," said Maines, who now attends a high school in southern Maine.

Her family and the Maine Human Rights Commission sued in 2009 over the school's actions, but a state judge ruled that the school district acted within its discretion. Maines is a biological male who from an early age identified as a girl.

At issue is whether the school violated the Maine Human Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation. State law also requires separate bathrooms for boys and girls in schools."

Justices will convene Tuesday and Wednesday in Bangor to hear oral arguments in a dozen cases, including the one known as Doe v. Clenchy.

The incident that sparked the court case began in 2007 when a child, who was born male but identifies as female, was forced to stop using the girls bathroom at the Asa Adams Elementary School in Orono. She was told to use a staff bathroom after the grandfather of a male student complained.

The girl’s parents and the Maine Human Rights Commission sued the Orono School District, now called Riverside RSU 26, and then Superintendent Kelly Clenchy after the commission ruled in the girl ’s favor.

"After years spent fighting in some of the world's worst wars, former U.S. Navy SEAL Kristin Beck says she knows what she wants.

"I want to have my life," she told CNN's "AC360" in an exclusive Thursday night. "I fought for 20 years for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want some happiness."

Beck recently came out as transgender. She wrote about the experience in a book, "Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender." It chronicles her life as a young boy and man, known then as Chris Beck. Beck deployed 13 times, serving in places such as Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. She earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart along the way.

Though she's felt trapped in the wrong body since grade school, Beck didn't come out until after she left the military in 2011. Doing so earlier would have been too big a risk. Transgender men and women are banned from service.

"That's a chance that if I took it, I might be dead today," she said. "There's a lot of prejudice out there. There's been a lot of transgender people who are killed for prejudice, for hatred. When the book came out -- some amazing support and some amazing praises -- but also some pretty amazing bigotry and hatred."

Beck says she doesn't need people to love, or even like, her. "But I don't want you to beat me up and kill me. You don't have to like me, I don't care. But please don't kill me.""

"Her military file has her listed as Christopher Todd Beck, a retired 46-year-old Navy SEAL who spent five years in Virginia Beach, earned a Bronze Star with valor and a Purple Heart and served in three different SEAL commands - including the exclusive SEAL Team 6. What it doesn't say is that Christopher now lives openly as Kristin Beck, a woman who never would have been allowed to serve had she been honest about her transgender identity.

In a memoir titled "Warrior Princess," released Saturday with little fanfare by a tiny publishing company, Beck describes two decades as a member of the Naval Special Warfare command, with seven combat deployments, including service in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Beck describes the internal struggles - believing he was a female trapped in a male body - that began when he was just a boy . . .

It wasn't until after retiring in 2011 as a senior chief petty officer that Beck came out as a transgender woman, identifying as Kristin. Beck now works as a military contractor in the Tampa, Fla. area. One of her previous bosses, retired SEAL and astronaut William Shepherd, wrote the book's foreword, praising Beck's courage.

Anne Speckhard, who co-authored the book, said in an interview Monday that Beck revealed her new identity to former colleagues by posting a picture of herself as a woman on LinkedIn, declaring "no more disguises."

Available as an e-book, "Warrior Princess" includes reaction from fellow SEALs who were shocked but supportive. "Being a SEAL is hard," wrote one. "This looks harder.""

"I want to have my life," she told CNN's "AC360" in an exclusive Thursday night. "I fought for 20 years for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want some happiness."

Beck recently came out as transgender. She wrote about the experience in a book, "Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender."

"After years of discussions, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority will finally discontinue gender-marker stickers on their monthly and weekly trail and trans passes starting July 1.

The discussion came about a year after Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution calling for an end to the gender-marker system. Efforts to abandon the system were largely led by Riders Against Gender Exclusion, which contended the markers discriminated against transgender and gender nonconforming riders.

Philadelphia’s transit system has used the designated male and female stickers since the 1980s. SEPTA will implement a New Payment Technology system in 2014 but announced last year that it would do away with the gender markers before then. Many LGBT activists hailed the end to the policy but some contended the decision should have come years ago.

“It’s long overdue and that it’s still taking so long points to how SEPTA really values the LGBT people who pay fares and taxes to support the system,” said LGBT activist Kathy Padilla. Padilla referenced a lawsuit SEPTA filed in 2009 in Common Pleas Court that claimed the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations did not have jurisdiction to investigate bias complaints against the transit agency.

“SEPTA’s assertion that they are not covered by the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance before the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission to further delay this rather simple change is appalling and should be a warning to LGBT people who might consider working there,” Padilla added. But, she said the new move will finally put SEPTA more in line with the rest of the city’s pro-LGBT policies.

“The progress made by the city of Philadelphia in valuing its LGBT citizens is nothing short of amazing. It’s sad that SEPTA has chosen to resist the arc of history for so long,” Padilla said."

"D.C. Council's Judiciary Committee voted to ease birth certificate rules for people who want to change the name on their birth certificate for gender identity reasons, News4's Tom Sherwood reports.

The D.C. Council is preparing to pass legislation that would make it easier for transgender people to obtain new birth certificates reflecting their change in sexual identity. The new law would ease a costly and bureaucratic system now in effect.

“D.C.’s law as it currently exists makes it really hard for trans people to get their vital records in line with who they really are,” said Andy Bowen, an activist with the DC Trans Coalition who helps fight discrimination in housing and jobs.

The transgender community of about 500 people in D.C. faces tens of thousands of dollars in sex change operations and currently must advertise name changes in local publications for three weeks, Bowen said. “It makes it a financial difficulty for trans people, many of whom are low income and unemployed, and it’s also just archaic and makes no sense," she said.

The D.C. Council Judiciary Committee voted to wipe away a lot of those restrictions on sex identity changes, approving a proposal that would require only a certified statement from a medical doctor and would eliminate the publicity and surgery requirements. “I'm proud that we are doing this during pride week,” Councilmember Tommy Wells said. “It's a time when we recognize equality among all District residents.”

If passed, the new law also would issue a new birth certificate rather than simply amending the old one. Amended birth certificates are clear tipoffs for more discrimination."

"The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals and a coalition of community organizations have successfully removed health insurance barriers for the state's transgender community.

"Because of our leadership, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation issued a bulletin that instructs insurance companies to provide medically necessary care, regardless of gender identity," says VFNHP president Mari Cordes.

Vermont becomes the fourth state where insurance regulators have issued bulletins clarifying that their state laws prohibit insurance discrimination against transgender people. The other states are California, Colorado and Oregon, in addition to the District of Columbia.

The VFNHP launched a campaign to end healthcare insurance exclusions against transgender people when a member approached Cordes and told her that Fletcher Allen Health Care banned transition-related care in its insurance plans.

"It was heartbreaking to me," Cordes says, "that this kind of discrimination could exist in Vermont in 2012.""

"Almost three weeks after booting a transgender woman from the premises and telling her never to return, a contrite Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse is still on the defensive. Managers say they quickly reached out to MoHagani Magnetek -- not her legal name -- to apologize for the incident, which they say started when customers complained to security that there was a man in the women's restroom. Still, calls for a boycott have been circulating on Facebook.

“This has caused me to have a lot of anxiety,” Magnetek said Monday. “If you have ever been publicly shamed and embarrassed in front of everyone you’d know. It’s not just about being held up and being banned from the bar — all eyes were on me and it was a very traumatic experience, so I have not been sleeping well at all.”

Humpy's -- a sponsor of next week's PrideFest -- called the incident "a one-off situation" that caused staff to make a "poor decision.""

"In a message to its staff on Thursday, McGill University announced that it is expanding its “Preferred First Name Procedure beginning on June 10, 2013.

Writes Kathleen Massey, University Registrar and Executive Director of Enrolment Services: “A preferred first name is a name by which one is normally addressed that is different than one’s legal first name. … Starting June 10th, students’ preferred first name will appear in lieu of their legal first name on class lists and will also appear on their McGill I.D. cards, exam rosters and student advising transcripts. … The expansion of the Preferred First Name Procedure will be of special benefit to trans and gender non-conforming students whose legal first name does not align with their gender identity or presentation. It will also benefit many other students, such as those who prefer to be addressed by a nickname or middle name rather than their legal first name.”"

A Philadelphia-based expert on gender-variant youth recently released her first book, and will give local audiences an insider’s view of her work. Dr. Michele Angello, author of “On The Couch With Dr. Angello: A Guide to Raising & Supporting Transgender Youth,” will read from and speak about her new book from 6:30-8:30 p.m. June 12 at the William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St.

Angello, a clinical sexologist and gender specialist, has 14 years of experience working with transgender and gender non-conforming youth and their families. She is an adjunct professor at Widener University and has appeared on talk shows such as “Larry King Live” and “The Tyra Banks Show” to discuss issues regarding the transgender community.

“The primary inspiration was the families I work with and in particular with the children I have been working with the past 14 years,” she said. “They are the most inspirational people I have ever met in my life.” Angello said it is especially satisfying to follow the families and the youth through their journeys of acceptance."

" NOT too many men see breast reduction as the ultimate love token. But for Kirone McCaffrey it was the perfect gift.

Born Kiri, transgender Kirone, 23, has spent the past decade longing to be rid of his boobs but couldn’t afford the £4,000 op. His dream came true only when girlfriend Danielle Brennan, 19, saved up for the surgery . . .

“When I met Danielle I couldn’t believe how gorgeous she was. I panicked about having to tell her the truth.”

Council admin worker Danielle now lives with Kirone and mum Jan, 56, in Dagenham, Essex. She said: “I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to be with him. “It didn’t matter to me at all that he was born a girl as I’d only ever met him as a boy.”

But she hated how upset Kirone was with his looks and decided to give him the ultimate gift. She had £3,000 in the bank before they got together and put more away each month.

She said: “I was determined to make Kirone’s dreams come true, so saved every penny I could. “I don’t earn much but I didn’t care about the money — it was a small price to pay.”"

"Swift on the heels of the news that the SF Pride Board is being not-so-gently urged by Supervisor David Campos to find a way to make good on their failed honoring of Bradley Manning, the organizers of this year's Trans March have stepped up and declared that they will be honoring Manning as one of their own. This immediately calls to question whether Manning actually is transgender, which is not something that Manning has stated publicly. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that Manning has at least struggled with his gender identity, and that his lawyers may even use that in his defense in the court-martial that began this week in Maryland.

Trans March organizers made their announcement via Facebook, as the SF Bay Guardian notes today, and they say that they will be using Manning's given male name, Bradley, in lieu of a female one, at the request of Manning's closest supporters in the Bradley Manning Support Network. As of now, Manning still officially identifies as a gay male, and may continue to, though it's unclear without a direct update from him where his mind is regarding his gender, three years after he said he was questioning it."

"News is reaching me this week of a mini revolt among clinicians over a recent policy decision concerning gender identity services in England.

And the clinicians involved are so worked up that some say they doubt the competence of the chair-designate of their speciality's Clinical Reference Group, Dr John Dean, to safeguard their views.

The spat involves the sudden decision "at the highest level" to shelve collaborative work that had been in progress for over a year to develop unified commissioning and clinical protocols for both the medical and surgical services involved in gender identity treatment in England."

"Alice Purnell OBE is an important contributor to the development of the trans community in Britain.

She was involved in founding the Beaumont Society in the 1960's; founded the Gender Trust in 1990; and instituted a groundbreaking series of biennial conferences bringing trans people and clinicians together that same year.

In this extended interview, on her 70th birthday, Alice speaks openly about her own childhood; the experiences which moulded her approach towards community support; and those pivotal developments in which she had a leading role."

"Michael Singleton, coroner for Blackburn, Hyndburn and Rossendale, delivered the verdict of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at the inquest of Lucy Meadows, 32, who was found dead at her home in March. In his closing statement, he singled out the Daily Mail's "sensationalist and salacious" coverage of Meadow's transformation into a woman, which Singleton described as "character assassination".

After delivering his verdict, Singleton turned to reporters who were covering the inquest and said: "And to you the press, I say shame, shame on all of you".

School authorities wrote to parents to tell them of the plan and that children should now refer to her as Miss Meadows at the start of spring term. The day after news of the teacher's sex-change appeared in the local press, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote an article entitled "He's not only in the wrong body... he's in the wrong job" in which he accused Meadows of not caring for "the sensibilities of the children" and putting "his own selfish needs ahead of the wellbeing of the children".

"Duke University Press will begin publishing a transgender studies journal in 2014. The journal—TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly— will be edited by Susan Stryker, associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Arizona, and Paisley Currah, professor of political science at the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

“We’re really excited to be working with Duke University Press—they were our first choice of publishers because Duke publishes so many other exciting interdisciplinary journals that we hope to emulate, like the feminist journal ‘differences,’ the cultural studies journals Social Text and South Atlantic Quarterly, the queer theory journal GLQ, and the film studies journal Camera Obscura,” Stryker wrote in an email Wednesday. “Paisley and I were thrilled that Duke saw the same potential in our project that we did.”

This is the first nonmedical journal dedicated to transgender studies, said Jocelyn Dawson, assistant manager of journals marketing at Duke University Press.

“TSQ will be instrumental in developing this growing and vibrant field and will advance the editorial mission of changing the way the world thinks about transgender issues,” Duke University Press said in a press release. "

"After years of controversy, the latest version of the “psychiatric bible” — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — has been released.

The DSM-5 (fifth edition)’s introduction, over the weekend at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, marks “the end of more than a decade’s journey in revising the criteria for the diagnosis and classification of mental disorders,” the association says on the DSM-5 website . . .

The DSM-5 eliminates the term “gender identity disorder,” which mental health specialists, along with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists, had considered stigmatizing. It refers to “gender dysphoria,” which focuses attention only on those who feel distressed by their gender identity.

“I think it’s a significant change,” Jack Drescher, a member of the psychiatric association group that recommended the change, said late last year. “It’s clinically defensible, but it reduces the amount of stigma and harm that existed before”. . .

Some LGBT activists applauded the change, while others have questioned whether it goes far enough."

"Audrey Mbugua was born Andrew Mbugua and she now wants her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) to reflect her transformation from male to female. Mbugua has gone to court seeking to get the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) to issue her with a KCSE certificate that reads Audrey and not Andrew. Mbugua explained to the court that her current KCSE certificate has violated her rights by keeping her from getting a job given the discrepancy in her appearance and the details on the certificate.

The examination body's counsel has however asked the court to grant it time to file a response to Mbugua's application given its unprecedented nature, "The matter is tricky and due to the issues raised by the applicant, we need to consult first with the AG and the Registrar of Persons before filing our response," the advocate argued on Monday. Justice Weldon Korir went on to give KNEC three weeks to file its response allowing the examination body time to consult with the Attorney General (AG) Githu Muigai's office and the Registrar of Persons.

The applicant explained that when she sat her KCSE exam eleven years ago she was yet to be diagnosed with the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) also known as gender dysphoria and therefore sat her KCSE examination as a boy . . .

Mbugua has also written to the Registrar of Persons seeking to have them issue her with fresh identification documents that will reflect her current status as a female. The examination body and Mbugua will be back to the Milimani Law court on August 6 for further direction."

"From the time they are born, we put our boys in blue beanies and our girls in pink ones. It’s a societal norm, an expectation even, that you just are what you are born — a boy or a girl. From early on, we divide toys and activities by very distinct gender lines, with superheroes and trucks and muck on one side and princesses and dolls and all things frilly on the other.

Many children land, enthusiastically, on the expected side. Others dabble in both “girl” and “boy” things. But what if your kid, even from an early age, mostly showed interest in doing opposite-gender things? More importantly, what if they wanted to BE the opposite gender — or a less-defined mix of both? And what if they wanted to test those limits in public places, like school? Would you let them?

It’s not, of course, that pat of a process. Parents don’t just decide to let their kids switch genders. But, whether parents are dragged through the process, or if they decide to work it through more openly, more kids are challenging the boundaries of traditional gender, and going public at younger ages.

And they are doing so with the guidance of a growing faction of medical experts who no longer see this as something to be fixed. Last year, the American Psychiatric Association removed “gender identity disorder” from its list of mental health ailments.

Some experts predict that views on gender will evolve in much the same way they have for sexual orientation, since homosexuality was removed as a mental illness nearly four decades ago. Today, the gender spectrum includes those who are transgender, who see themselves as the opposite gender, and those who are gender variant, or gender nonconforming, whose gender is more “fluid.”"

""We know they're hearing us in the Capitol and they're going to keep hearing us until GENDA passes," said Christopher Argyros, 33, of Albany, transgender rights organizer for the Empire State Pride Agenda. He has revved up lobbying before the end of the legislative session on June 20.

Cordes, Gonzalez and Argyros are on the front lines of a spirited drive to pass the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or GENDA, this year. The bill prohibits discrimination based on gender identity or expression for housing, employment, credit and public accommodations and expands New York's hate crimes law to include crimes against transgender individuals.

"This bill is more than a decade overdue, but we're very optimistic this year," said Nathan Schaefer, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, whose GENDA campaign has been endorsed by 600 religious leaders, 30 women's groups and unions representing more than 2 million workers statewide.

To date, 17 states have passed GENDA legislation, along with six cities across New York, including Albany. The Albany County Legislature is poised to pass the measure. A 2011 national poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found 89 percent support it.

The bill passed the Assembly for the sixth straight year on April 30, but has been blocked by the Senate's Republican majority, which has not allowed it to the floor for a vote. It costs the state up to $7 million a year as a result of employment and housing discrimination against the estimated 58,000 transgender New Yorkers, according to a study by the UCLA Law School's Williams Institute."

"With all the forward motion on trans rights, how is it that America is still behind the curve in having and enforcing equality and freedom? If you have ever participated in an event on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, you know what I'm talking about. The memorials of that day reveal that America has a pretty big losing streak. Why do we consistently fail to treat gender-variant people well?

Some would say that the problem is education: Not enough of us know what gender variance is, or how to treat someone who claims to be in the wrong body. Still others would speculate that the problem is popular knowledge: The majority of us don't believe in a third gender, because everything around us screams "male" and "female." What we do see of gender variance is an exaggerated show. No matter which way you sing it, the fact is that the truth about trans identity remains buried under ages of bias and sexism.

Dr. Michele Angello is a therapist who works specifically with transgender youth and their families and believes in approaching the problem one child at a time. It's true what is said on her website: "When a single child comes out, their entire family will transition, along with their community." Through her interactions with transgender youth and, subsequently, their families, Dr. Angello has led the way in educating entire churches, schools and communities about transgender identity. In her new book, On the Couch With Dr. Angello: A Guide to Raising and Supporting Transgender Youth, she writes, "[T]his book is intended to bridge the empathy gap that many young people experience after coming out as transgender.""

"At first glance, Fallon Fox appears to be just another female mixed martial arts prospect. At 5-foot-7 and 145 pounds, the slender featherweight is dwarfed by her male trainers. But Fox is not your typical female MMA fighter. She is transsexual -- born a male.

Fox, 37, underwent sex-reassignment surgery in 2006. But she did not publicly reveal her gender status until March 4, following a first-round knockout of Ericka Newsome at Championship Fighting Alliance 10 in Coral Gables, Fla.

In the same venue Friday night, Fox (2-0) faces Allanna Jones (2-1) in the co-main event of CFA 11. But since her revelation, Fox has been the subject of a heated MMA debate: Should a transgender female be allowed to compete against women?

Fox's detractors are uncomfortable seeing her punch, kick, choke or disfigure the limb of other female competitors. UFC heavyweight Matt Mitrione was fined and suspended for three weeks after he made offensive comments about Fox. While not condoning Mitrione's conduct, UFC president Dana White agreed with Mitrione that a transgender fighter such as Fox should not be allowed to fight other women."

"Philadelphia, Pa., has joined a growing group of cities – including Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Calif., and Seattle, Wash. – to provide inclusive health care coverage for transgender city workers, thanks to the advocacy of DC 47 member Kathy Padilla.

Padilla, a city worker herself, has been advocating for transgender health care coverage for nearly a decade. She had countless conversations with legislators. She garnered community support. She did hours of research. She asked political candidates to respond to the issue.

In 2002, she and others successfully passed the Fair Practices Ordinance that banned discrimination based on gender identity. But still transgender employees didn’t have equal access to health care and were denied services ranging from mammograms to gender reassignment surgery.

“Having an exclusion in health care is discrimination of a protected class,” Padilla noted.

Last week, Padilla’s work paid off, when City Councilman Jim Kenney’s LGBT Equality Bill was signed into law. The bill offers tax credits to support life partner and transgender health benefits in the private sector and removes anti-transgender discrimination from the city employee health plan, making Philadelphia the largest city to remove transgender health care discrimination from its work force.

“As a city employee, I’m relieved to no longer have to worry over being denied care for necessary services like mammograms or, God forbid, treatment for breast cancer that are routinely denied to trans people,” Padilla said. "

[Congratulations to Kathy Padilla on the success of her long-time advocacy for trans health care for city employees in Philadelphia. The new legislation sets a powerful precedent for other cities to follow.]

"Late this afternoon, Washington Examiner senior editorial writer Sean Higgins posted a column with the blaring headline, “Competitive Enterprise Institute to honor transgender woman at annual dinner,” expressing bewilderment at the libertarian think-tank’s decision to honor transgender economist Deirdre McCloskey with an award.

Higgins attempts to paint the think-tank as a “pretty conservative place” — based on the fact that its scholars often appear on Fox News and have been subject to liberal environmentalist ridicule in the past — which makes him raise an eyebrow at the idea that such an institution would honor one of those transgendered folks.

On the contrary, CEI is well-known for its libertarian politics, taking a hardline stance in favor of legalizing online gambling and seeking more classically-liberal reforms to our immigration system, as opposed to the restrictive desires of conservative think-tanks. Part of that libertarian ideology also includes an apathy towards the things at which social conservatives — a group which presumably includes Higgins — frequently wring their hands.

McCloskey’s transgender identity does nothing in the way of discredit her work or make her any less an accomplished and worthy economist; and to breathlessly bring negative attention to it would seem rather strange. Yet Higgins went for it, posting and bolding the below portions of how McCloskey is described in the award ceremony’s invitation:

Deirdre McCloskey teaches economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A well-known economist and historian and rhetorician, she has written sixteen books and around 400 scholarly pieces on topics ranging from technical economics and statistics to transgender advocacy and the ethics of the bourgeois virtues. She is known as a “conservative” economist, Chicago-School style (she taught for 12 years there), but protests that “I’m a literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive Episcopalian, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not ‘conservative’! I’m a Christian libertarian.”

The horror! He also noted that McCloskey’s picture appears just below that of the esteemed keynote speaker, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Gasp!

Higgins laments that “this not the first time CEI has shown a progressive side on gender politics,” citing their co-sponsoring of the GOProud event at CPAC 2013. How that’s “progressive” as opposed to, you know, fundamentally libertarian in nature? One will never know.

But apparently McCloskey’s transgender-ness baffled Higgins so much that he felt compelled to call CEI and ask for comment. An event organizer reportedly told him it “never occurred” to her that anyone would find something unusual about the institute honoring a woman who happened to be transgender. To libertarians that makes sense but, for whatever reason, Higgins had to get to the bottom of this affront to conservative gender politics. "

"Deirdre McCloskey, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is set to be honored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading Washington, D.C., free market/libertarian think tank, with its annual Julian Simon Award at a major dinner event in June.

CEI advocates for several issues and causes that are associated with the right, like skepticism about climate change, shrinking the size of government and opposing federal regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley. Its scholars and fellows often turn up in conservative publications and on Fox News. Past winners of its annual Warren Brookes fellowship include people like Michelle Malkin, Michael Fumento and the The Washington Examiner‘s own Tim Carney. Liberals often attack CEI, and in 2006 they succeeded in getting ExxonMobil to stop funding the institute.

My point here being that most people would consider CEI a pretty conservative place, although it is actually more libertarian-oriented. It avoids most social issues. With that in mind, CEI’s website for the dinner event — which solicits donations of up to $25,000 (the “tungsten level”) – describes the guest of honor thusly:

In the official invite to the event, McCloskey’s picture appears just below that of keynote speaker Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. (That’s the invitation above. Please excuse the fuzziness of the image, a result of my continuing to use a now-primitive model cell phone.)

This is not the first time CEI has shown a progressive side on gender politics. It had previously co-sponsored an event with the gay conservative group GOProud at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

When I first called CEI regarding this earlier Thursday, an organizer for the event expressed surprise that I was calling at all, saying it “never occurred” to her that anyone would think there was anything unusual about the institute honoring McCloskey."

"The Pentagon formally recognized earlier this month that there are transgender veterans — a step that LGBT advocates say is a long way from open transgender service in the military, but also a significant first step in that process.

In a short letter dated May 2, a Navy official told Autumn Sandeen, a veteran and transgender activist: “Per your request the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) has been updated to show your gender as female effective April 12, 2013.”

Sandeen’s military identification card now reflects the change, a move called “quite significant” by the head of OutServe-SLDN, a national organization for LGBT service members and veterans and their families.

“The fact that a process exists [to change the gender listed] indicates that there are people in the Department of Defense who are aware of the needs of transgender retirees and who are working to see those needs met. And, in that sense, the significance of this symbolic act for our broader work and for our goal of open service becomes I think a little bit more apparent,” OutServe-SLDN executive director Allyson Robinson told BuzzFeed."

"The adoptive parents of a child born with male and female organs say South Carolina mutilated their son by choosing a gender and having his male genitalia surgically removed. The surgery took place when the child was 16 months old and a ward of the state, according to a lawsuit filed by the parents against three doctors and several members of South Carolina Department of Social Services.

The child's biological mother was deemed unfit, and the biological father had apparently abandoned him, according to the suit. So others made the decision.

The child, now 8 years old, feels more like a boy and "wants to be a normal boy," his adoptive mother said.

"It's become more and more difficult, just as his identity has become more clearly male, the idea of that mutilation was done to him has become more and more real," Pamela Crawford said in a video released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is assisting in the case. "There was no medical reason that this decision had to be made."

Marilyn Matheus, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Social Services, said the agency does not have any comment on the pending litigation."

"Professor Jay Ladin made headlines around the world when, after years of teaching literature at Yeshiva University, he returned to the Orthodox Jewish campus as a woman—Joy Ladin. In Through the Door of Life, Joy Ladin takes readers inside her transition as she changed genders and, in the process, created a new self.

With unsparing honesty and surprising humor, Ladin wrestles with both the practical problems of gender transition and the larger moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions that arise. Ladin recounts her struggle to reconcile the pain of her experience living as the “wrong” gender with the pain of her children in losing the father they love. We eavesdrop on her lifelong conversations with the God whom she sees both as the source of her agony and as her hope for transcending it. We look over her shoulder as she learns to walk and talk as a woman after forty-plus years of walking and talking as a man. We stare with her into the mirror as she asks herself how the new self she is creating will ever become real.

Ladin’s poignant memoir takes us from the death of living as the man she knew she wasn’t, to the shattering of family and career that accompanied her transition, to the new self, relationships, and love she finds when she opens the door of life."

""We need to protect each other, love each other," shouted Tiffany Isis Soul, a transgender woman who worked the crowd like a Pentacostal minister. "Don't end your life on the street. You don't know what these men have in mind." . . .

That's one thing the transgender community shares. "Can't have a regular job," Devinity told me. "Gotta use your biological name. Uh-uh. We don't want people telling us who we are. Family kicks you out. 'Bad enough my son is gay. Now he putting on a wig?' "

Devinity knew Ce Ce. Met her on the Detroit Avenue " 'ho stroll." "She told me, 'I just wanna be a woman,' " Devinity said. "Gotta have money to do that. Only way to get it is to jump in and out of cars."

Devinity was on the stroll last night. "I don't enjoy it. I don't take pride in it. I'm just trying to make a living. That part of being a man never goes away." She figures Ce Ce was on a date that went bad. "Couldn't talk her way out of it. She was a fighter. Just 'cause she's a skinny little thing, you can't just run over Ce Ce."

Tracy Jones of the Beyond Identities Community Center is no stranger to hate crimes. "It's a very bad narrative to share, especially since the first knee-jerk reaction is to judge," she said about the Ce Ce murder.

It does capture the outsider life of transgender women. They're not welcome in the traditional world. And they don't fare much better with lesbians and gays.

"There was this one woman -- I couldn't get her into drug treatment," Tracy recalled. "Why? There was no bathroom she could use. She had breasts so she couldn't use the men's room. And the biological women didn't want her in their bathroom."

Tracy looked angry. She offered the perfect quote for Ce Ce's headstone: "The only place I can exist is under the cover of darkness.""

"The leading Queensland psychiatric expert on children with gender identity disorder says the number of transgender children is increasing.

Dr Stephen Stathis said he expected parents of two children would apply to the Family Court for permission for them to be given feminine hormones within the next year and more would follow as others reached puberty.

But he said some desperate parents who were unaware of the professional help available for their anxious transgender children were getting unregulated, unregistered hormones from overseas via the internet.

Dr Stathis, Director of Child and Youth Mental Health Services at Brisbane's Royal Children's Hospital, has seen more than 20 children with GID in the last four years, including some as young as four.

"The numbers are rising and now we're looking at developing a gender clinic," Dr Stathis said. Half his gender identity patients are boys who identify as girls - the other half are girls who identify as boys."

"A transsexual woman has won on appeal the right to marry her boyfriend, a decision poised to rewrite Hong Kong's marriage law.

The appellant -- known only by the initial "W" -- is a post-operative male-to-female transsexual who was refused the right to marry because she did not quality as a "woman" under Hong Kong law.

The Court of Final Appeal ruled 4-1 Monday that the restriction was unconstitutional. The 37-year-old woman -- who had a government-subsidized sex change operation -- had twice lost her case at lower courts.

"I may have born a man but after transgender surgery at a government hospital more than five years ago, I've lived my life as a woman and been treated as a woman in all respects except as regards my right to marry," W said in a statement to local reporters through her attorney, Michael Vidler, according to the South China Morning Press.

"This decision rights that wrong, and I'm very happy the Court of [Final] Appeal now recognizes my desire to marry my boyfriend one day, and that desire is no different to that of any other woman who seeks the same here in Hong Kong.""

"I hope my sons, in growing up with a transsexual parent, have learned to be more flexible and openhearted. I would like to think that this has been a gift to them and not a curse. But, as my sons like to say: it’s complicated.

People have pointed out to me that, despite calling myself a mother, I didn’t give birth to my sons. They’re right, of course. But there is a lot more to parenting than birthing, just as there is a lot more to a novel than its opening sentence. After this long journey from an opposite-sex couple to a same-sex one, my wife and I can say it’s what comes after that counts.

I understand the reluctance many people have to play down the importance of gender, or for that matter, biology, in parenting; a world in which male and female are not fixed poles but points in a spectrum is a world that feels unstable, unreal. And yet to accept the wondrous scope of gender is to affirm the potential of life, in all its messy beauty. Motherhood and fatherhood are not binaries. And that, I’d argue, is a good thing.

Only a small percentage of American households now consist of married couples with children in which only the father works. The biggest outliers in our culture are not same-sex couples, or transgender people, or adoptive parents, or single fathers, but the so-called traditional American families themselves.

What does it even mean, at this hour, to call anybody traditional? Surely it is not the ways in which we conform that define us, but the manner in which we each seek our own perilous truth. "

" Dr. Ray Blanchard knows sex. He is handy with a penile plethysmograph, which he uses to measure a guy's penis to see if he’s turned on. What turns Blanchard on? Science. Why do we care? Because he helped prep the chapter on sexual and gender identity disorders for the American Psychological Associations’ diagnostic bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The APA’s manual of mental disorders is the nexus of the psycho-pharmaceutical industrial complex in the United States. Its reach extends into the workings of insurance companies, criminal courts, and psychiatric care worldwide. It is currently in its fourth iteration, DSM-IV, while the newest update, DSM-5, is being worked on. Blanchard served on the DSM-IV sub-working group for gender identity disorders, which led to him serving as chair of the paraphilia sub-working group for DSM-5 . . .

The doctor likes to flout political correctness, he can’t resist an off-color joke, and his ideas about gender and sexuality are archaic, even by the standards of the peddlers of pathology at the APA. It has been 40 years since homosexuality was removed as a mental illness from the DSM. But given a clean slate, Blanchard said he would still classify homosexual sex as abnormal.

Blanchard is very fond of the word normal, but even he will tell you, its use in sexual psychology is verboten. But he’ll also say it’s a valuable scientific concept – and if you aren’t performing coitus three times a week with your heterosexual life partner in the hopes of spawning progeny, you don’t make the cut. It’s a small club, the normal people."

"Fallon Fox climbed inside the steel cage, past the sign that read “The Beating Will Continue,” and onto a black mat. She followed right jabs with left hooks and kicks flung at imaginary kneecaps, safe, if only for a moment, from the questions and insults and the suffocating fame that descended overnight.

The past month had plunged Fox back into depression, after she became the first openly transgender athlete in mixed martial arts and the most prominent in a professional sport since the tennis player Renée Richards, in the 1970s. Fox did not control the timing of the revelation, which came in a Sports Illustrated article, and could not control the backlash that resulted, the harsh words from Hulk Hogan, the hate spewed by the fighter Matt Mitrione, the confusion voiced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s champion Ronda Rousey."

"Lal, 28, is one of a handful of candidates from Pakistan's "transgender" community standing in national and provincial elections on Saturday. Known as "hijra", a catch-all term for transexuals, hermaphrodites and transvestites but usually indicating someone born male identifying as a woman, they have faced discrimination and ridicule for centuries. Living apart, they have traditionally earned a living as dancers, circus performers, sex workers and beggars

But after a supreme court ruling last year allowing them to obtain national identity cards that recognise them as neither male or female, this election will be the first in which hijras can vote and stand as a "third gender". Candidates such as Lal say it is a sign of change in the country.

"Once people were very intolerant. They laughed at us, harassed us. But now they are much more accepting," Lal, who is contesting in Sargodha, a small, conservative city in the centre of the eastern Punjab province, said."

"In my opinion, there’s never been a better time to come forward as a LGBT individual in an environment that would have been hostile towards it just ten years ago. Things have changed post-Glee, post-Jason Collins, post-Brittney Griner, post-Laura Jane Grace, post-a whole other bunch of positive stuff for the LGBT community that I'm probably forgetting.

However, the T in LGBT – transgender – is probably the least-understood frontier and last to be accepted by the mainstream. But that ignorance may end if more prominent people speak out about it: ABC News editor and producer Don Ennis announced last week that she would be leaving her wife of 17 years, Wendy, and, at 49 years old, starting over as a woman (Dawn), reports the New York Post. And the reveal was full-throttle awesome: She walked into her office on Friday in a “little black dress” and a brunette bobbed wig and announced to colleagues that from now on, she would like to be known as Dawn.

Dawn wrote on her Facebook: “Please understand: This is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my wife and I have been dealing with for more than seven years, mostly in secret.”"

"Who is Taylor Edelmann? He's a 21-year-old Purchase College senior, a native of Bethel, Conn., and a captain of the men's volleyball team. He's a resident assistant, a club co-president and a research assistant. On the off chance he has a spare moment between practices, games and meetings, he's a drummer in a jam band on campus. And, he is formerly a she.

Born a female, Edelmann identifies as a male and has been undergoing a physical transition, via testosterone shots, for more than a year and a half. But Edelmann said that's only a small part of what makes him the person he is.

"The thing is, I'm not different at all," Edelmann said. "It's just, I took a different course of action to get where other people are, and that's totally fine. That's kind of how I see it. It shouldn't really be a big deal.""

"Smith College has been receiving criticism over reports (not confirmed by the college) that a transgender applicant was rejected . . . The college has for many years stated that students who are admitted to Smith may complete their educations, even if they are transgender and start identifying as such while enrolled, despite having presented themselves differently at the time of admission. But until recently, the college's statement on sexual identity said this about admission:

"Is Smith still a women's college? Absolutely. As a women's college, Smith only considers female applicants for undergraduate admission." Now, however, the college's statement reads this way: "How does Smith decide who is a woman? It doesn’t. With regard to admission, Smith relies upon the information provided by each student applicant. In other contexts, different definitions and requirements may apply. For example, the definition of a woman for NCAA competition may differ from the definition of a woman for purposes of admission to Smith or other single-sex colleges.""

"Not so long ago, Toni Bias dreamed of playing in the W.N.B.A. But after starring on the girls’ junior varsity basketball team as a high school freshman, Toni came out as transgender last summer, began going by the name Tony and started transitioning to male.

At the time, California had no policy governing transgender high school athletes. Already finding himself the target of bullies, who often taunt him with “he-she,” Tony feared he would have to endure even more abuse if he pushed to try out for the boys’ team.

“They don’t understand I’m not trying to pretend to be someone else,” Tony, now a 16-year-old sophomore at River City High School in West Sacramento, said. “I’m just trying to be who I was all along.” "

"Issak Wolfe, a senior whose legal name is Sierra Stambaugh, sought the help of the ACLU after his legal name was placed on the ballot for prom queen. He'd believed his male name, which he has used since 2011, would be on the ballot for prom king.

The ACLU sent the Red Lion district a letter making several requests, including that Wolfe be allowed to wear black robes at graduation, instead of the yellow gowns female students wear, and that his male name be read during the ceremony.

The organization also asked for the district to adopt a policy to allow students to run for prom court in accordance with their gender identity and to adopt a broader nondiscrimination policy protecting transgender students."

"Dozens of people gathered in front of Jenny's Bridal in downtown Saskatoon to show their support for a woman who says she was refused service at the store because she is transgender. The crowd cheered as Rohit Singh and her husband approached Saturday afternoon.

"I am damn happier than the day of my wedding," said Singh. "I never thought this kind of crowd would come to support me here in Saskatoon," she said.

Many people at the peaceful protest brought signs. One read "transgender rights are human rights," another read "support transgender rights."

The protesters also circulated a petition to the provincial government that calls for more human rights protection for transgender people."

"On the day after the first Jesuit and the first Latin American was elected pope, I was fortunate to be on the University of Central America campus, a Jesuit school in El Salvador. The excitement on campus that day was electric and the student body was abuzz with energy. But the excitement was not about the new pope. That news seemed like an afterthought compared to the event beginning that day on campus.

Gathered in the school's Segundo Montes, SJ, Auditorium (named for one of the six Salvadoran Jesuit martyrs assassinated at the school in 1989), some 350 people took part in El Salvador's first national conference on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights. The March 14-15 conference, "Felicidad y Diversidad Sexual como Derechos Humanos" ("Happiness and Sexual Diversity as Human Rights"), was sponsored by ALDES El Salvador (Asistencia Legal para la Diversidad Sexual de El Salvador). It brought together lawyers, legal scholars, politicians, faith leaders and LGBT advocates to move forward El Salvador's burgeoning LGBT human rights movement. By the end of the second day, more than 1,000 people had participated in this meeting in San Salvador, the nation's capital. My colleague, longtime Catholic LGBT advocate Loretto Sr. Jeannine Gramick, and I were part of the program, presenting the topic of "Faith Communities as Promoters of Human Rights". . .

Though faith was only a small segment of the conference's program, the participants were keenly aware that the nation's leading Catholic university was hosting the event. Omar Serrano, the campus' vice rector for social outreach, welcomed the conference, saying that it was "an honor" to host the program, and acknowledged that church institutions could do more for LGBT rights, including "asking forgiveness" for previous inaction. All attendees were keenly aware of how faith groups have helped to spread homophobia; being welcomed to a Catholic campus was an important positive sign that was not lost on the participants."

Thursday offering tax incentives to businesses that expand health coverage for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees - a measure hailed as the first of its kind in the nation. The bill extends rights to "life partners" throughout the city code in a wide range of matters, such as medical decision-making; provides gender neutrality on certain city forms; and requires health insurance offered to city employees to cover the needs of transgender individuals, including sex-change surgeries.

"The spirit of the bill acknowledges people's humanity, acknowledges their citizenship and their full rights to participate," said Councilman James F. Kenney, the prime sponsor. "It's another step in the road of civil rights equality" . . .

Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, heralded the vote as another milestone for the city's LGBT community. "I sat there in amazement, awe, and just pure emotion," he said of the vote. "It's one of the strongest pieces of legislation in the country in support of the LGBT community.

Segal compared Thursday's relatively uncontroversial vote to the raucous protests that accompanied the first "gay rights" bill more than 30 years ago, banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Since then, he said, Philadelphia has been in the vanguard of protecting the rights of the LGBT community."

"This month, Tufts University became the 38th university in the United States to include gender reassignment surgery in its student health care plan. These benefits will also include coverage of hormone treatment, which many transgender individuals turn to before or instead of undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Tufts University should be proud of its progress, especially since students will now be able to seek care at their own student health center instead of having to research trans-friendly doctors in the community.

"These are needs that are absolutely a medical necessity," said Michelle Bowdler, the senior director of health and wellness services at Tufts. "It's just about taking care of the health needs of all of our students."

While few students will actually use these benefits, Tufts values itself on being an inclusive university that caters to the needs of all its students. While the costs of adding this to the the health plan were minimal, the university did have to fight with its insurance company before finally deciding to switch providers. Most insurance companies do cover hormone therapy, but exclude benefits such as gender reassignment surgery.

Transgender students across the country have been fighting for these necessary procedures to be covered for years, with big-name universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, the University of California system, Yale, Princeton, and M.I.T. among the ones that provide coverage. Several more cover only hormone therapy, and 20 total universities have trans-friendly plans that cover their employees as well as their students.

Adding these benefits to the student health plan had immediate effects on students questioning their gender identity as well. Tom Bourdon, the director of the Tufts University LGBT Center, said that he has seen an increase in students coming to the center seeking advice for these issues. He added that students are saying they feel more safe talking about their gender identity-related problems now that the university has shown its support for their transitions."

"Transsexual Stephanie Dixon was on the verge of quitting Christchurch because of constant jibes about her "man hands". It was costing her clients and forcing her to consider a move to Auckland.

Over the past few months Dixon had gone from seeing about eight clients in her beauty therapist business to one or two a day, after word of her gender reassignment surgery got out. But after her story about dealing with prejudice in Christchurch appeared in The Press this week, Dixon's Papanui-based business Body Redemption has gone into overdrive.

She had at least four new clients booked in before midday on Wednesday and more than 20 emails requesting appointments.

"The phone is literally going non-stop," she said. "I'm just blown away. I've gone from absolutely nothing to thinking 'what am I going to do?' ""

"Issak Wolfe, a transgender York County high school student, will be allowed to attend prom with his girlfriend on Saturday night, according the the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

In a press release to the media, the ACLU and ACLU of Pennsylvania said the Red Lion Area School District will permit Wolfe and his girlfriend, Taylor Thomas, to attend Saturday night's prom.

Red Lion Area Senior High School Principal Mark Shue had threatened to bar Thomas, a 2011 graduate of the school, from attending the prom after she criticized Shue in an online petition.

Thomas launched the petition to urge the school to allow Wolfe to run for prom king. Wolfe earlier this week learned that his name had been stripped from the prom king race and put under the running for prom queen."

"Alternately shunned and harassed, transgender people have waged a long struggle for social acceptance and now health care professionals are trying to take medical and psychological care of transgender patients out of the margins and into the mainstream.

Nearly 200 medical doctors and mental health professionals are expected to attend the inaugural Providers Day on Friday at the Hilton in downtown Albany. It is a new addition to a wide-ranging Empire Conference meant to empower the transgender community that runs through Saturday.

The providers day program, sponsored in part by the University at Albany and Albany Medical College, is meant to augment a lack of training offered in medical schools and clinical training programs. There has been a slow acceptance by the medical establishment of transgender people, who are still considered mentally ill by some traditional practitioners.

"I had to do a lot of self-study, sought help from my colleagues and trained my self because we didn't get any training in transgender medicine in medical school," said Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould, a Yale University-trained family practice physician who works at A.O. Fox Hospital in Oneonta. She is co-chair of the daylong event."We're very pleased that so many people are enthusiastic about coming and learning about transgender care," said Wolf-Gould. "It's a sign that things are changing for the better for transgender people.""

"A recent study from a medical group in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, found that one out of roughly 2,800 people in the capital of Sapporo admitted to suffering from gender identity disorder. In 2011 the Japanese Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry estimated that there were a little over 4,000 people nationwide with GID, but the ratio from the Sapporo study translates to about 46,000 people across the country.

The head of the Japanese Society of Gender Identity Disorder, Mikiya Nakatsuka, comments that he believes the outcome of the Hokkaido survey is closer to what the real total number of GID sufferers is in Japan. He adds that the significance of such data will come when the discussion turns to whether patients should have insurance coverage for treatments such as gender reassignment surgery.

The study was conducted by professor Hiroshi Ikeda of Hokkaido Bunkyo University, and also included researchers from Sapporo Medical University and the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido. In order to reach the number of one in 2,800, they found that the 82 Sapporo natives who were diagnosed with GID between 2003 and 2012 were all born between 1958 and 1994, with the highest concentration — seven people — born in 1985. With a total of 19,314 people from Sapporo born in 1985, they divided that by the seven to reach 2,759. Professor Ikeda says that the study definitely reveals that there are many more people in Japan with GID than first expected."

"A transgender woman whose use of a women's restroom in an Idaho grocery store reportedly upset other customers has been cited for trespassing and banned from the store for a year, police said on Friday.

A Rosauers supermarket in Lewiston asked police to charge 25-year-old Ally Robledo, who was born male but identifies as female, with the misdemeanor trespass charge on Monday, Lewiston Police Captain Roger Lanier said.

"The store security officer said he had been dealing with a problem over a couple days with the person going into the women's restroom and urinating while standing up," Lanier said.

He added that the store had reported that Robledo's use of the restroom made other female customers "very uncomfortable." Robledo said she was being discriminated against."

"I struggled with my gender conflict for 40 years before I had the courage to begin the journey to repair it, once and for all. During those 40 years, I found solace in travel, circling the globe three times, working abroad and living in very different cultures to help relieve my anxiety and stress. It was just easier to be myself outside of my normal environment, and while the pressure was no less intense, my perception of it shifted enough to allow me a respite. I've since learned that I'm not the only one to use this coping mechanism . . .

My theme is that authenticity is a worthy goal, even though at times it is dangerous to be authentic, as when she and I covered our Jewish and American backgrounds while in Pakistan and Iran, or when I buried my true gender for the first five decades of my life. Those situational compromises may have been necessary at the time, but I know I paid a heavy price. That is why I encourage everyone to live authentically, even when there may be serious costs, because in so doing we improve conditions for everyone and that redounds to our benefit in the long-term as well.

Lynn Conway, a friend of mine from Eve Ensler's all-trans production of The Vagina Monologues in 2004, whom I consider one of the iconic role models of the trans community, and who is one of the creators of our modern digitally connected world, is just now coming out fully and reclaiming her position and legacy. I don't know where we'd be today without her -- still waiting in line to submit our batch cards for mainframe processing? -- and her courage in transitioning back in 1968 fills me with awe. I understand her reticence which led her to live a covered life throughout her career in an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, but I'm thrilled now that she's going public, not only for her but for the further impact she will have on the trans community and the larger culture, particularly young women, as well. We need more role models like Lynn, and I'm proud to be her friend."

"A D.C. Superior Court judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order requiring a city funded shelter for homeless women located near the U.S. Capitol to stop denying transgender women access to the facility. The Blade had previously reported about a lawsuit brought upon the shelter by a trans women alleging discrimination.

Judge Geoffrey Alprin issued the order after the executive director of New Hope Ministries, which operates the John L. Young Shelter for Women, chose not to contest a request for the restraining order filed by an attorney on behalf of Lakiesha Washington, a transgender woman who was denied admission to the shelter. D.C. Trans Coalition attorney Jeffrey Light filed a motion seeking the restraining order as part of a lawsuit that accuses the shelter of violating the D.C. Human Rights Act by denying Washington access to the shelter on April 3.

“We don’t do transgenders here,” the lawsuit quotes an employee at the shelter saying when Washington, who was homeless, attempted to enter the shelter. “You have to leave,” the lawsuit quotes the employee as saying.

A decision by New Hope Ministries’ executive director, John Shetterly, not to contest the restraining order followed negotiations between Shetterly and Light earlier in the week, according to a statement issued by the D.C. Trans Coalition. The statement says Shetterly also agreed to provide transgender sensitivity training to the shelter’s staff and was taking steps to provide private bathroom and shower facilities to better serve all shelter clients, including transgender women.

"In a historic election, transgender people are running for office in Pakistan. The landmark comes as Pakistanis prepare to head to the polls in an election that is already historic. The election, scheduled for May 11, is the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan in 65 years.

It is also the first time that Pakistan’s 500,000 “eunuchs” are eligible to run for office, after a 2011 Supreme Court ruling ordered the government to issue transgender people identity cards so that they could register as voters.

In Pakistan, transgender people typically find work as performers at birth celebrations or weddings. Otherwise, work is scarce. Many transgender people can be seen begging for money on the street, the Associated Press reported.

“It is not our destiny to merely dance for others and hold begging bowls. We have a life to live,” Sanam Fakir, 32, told Agence France Presse.

Transgender people have filled in different nominations all over the country, BBC News reported. "People will ask whether we will win or lose in the elections, but I won when my nomination papers were submitted," Bindaya Rana, one of the candidates, told the BBC. "

" Detroit-area McDonald’s recently found itself in legal trouble after falsely claiming its menu items were halal, and New York City employees of the fast food chain went on strike last month to demand a living wage, but a franchise in Washington state is grabbing headlines for actually doing something right: Providing safe, guaranteed access to bathroom facilities regardless of a person’s gender identity or expression.

A Reddit user shared a photo of a Seattle McDonald’s bathroom sign, announcing: We respect the rights of all customers and employees. We believe all people must have access to safe and dignified bathroom facilities regardless of their gender identity or expression. Therefore, the following policy has been adopted for this restaurant at 1530 3rd Avenue … Employees and customers may use any restroom that corresponds with and is based upon the gender identity they publicly and exclusively assert or express . . .

Area franchises make their own policies, and the bathroom notice doesn’t reflect the company’s overall position on transgender rights, according to a McDonald’s spokesperson. But they are supportive of the local policy (at least they are now, while it gets them good press)."

A transgender woman who has been twice turned down by Hong Kong courts to have the right to marry her boyfriend took her case to the Court of Final Appeal, which predictably did not deliver a verdict on Tuesday, the Hong Kong-based Mingpao Daily reported. The court case is the first of its kind in Hong Kong, where transsexual people are forbidden from obtaining a marriage license.

The woman, who the newspaper referred to only as Ms W, has twice lost her suit against the local civil administration, which refused to grant her and her boyfriend a marriage license some three years ago. The lower courts denied her the right to marry saying that marriage implies conceiving children.

Monica Carss-Frisk, the lawyer representing the marriage registration authority in Hong Kong, argued that marriage is between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman and granting a transgender a marriage license is no different than a same-sex marriage, which is outlawed, the news portal chinanews.com reported.

The woman's lawyer, David Pannick, argued that it's ridiculous that the law would allow his client to marry another woman even though she is one.

"I was pushed around for being skinny when I was a kid. Also for wearing an eye patch, for being the smart kid and for always acting like a performer. And did I mention I was called “Petunia”?

It doesn’t take much to make a child feel like an outsider. Most of us have felt that way at one time or another. What can be hard is helping children feel like they belong — like they are part of something bigger than themselves.

That is why I introduced Assembly Bill 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act — to ensure that transgender students are not made to feel like outsiders in California’s public schools. We want all students to succeed. We want every student to have great opportunities.

I should mention that the San Francisco Unified School District — the district I was a trustee for — is a model in allowing transgender students to be themselves, and it has been a positive thing for the district’s students.

Unfortunately, in too many districts across the state, transgender students don’t get that chance to succeed because they aren’t allowed to be themselves in physical education classes, team sports and other important school activities."

"Citing an “appalling” investigation by local officials, the city’s Police Advisory Commission is urging state and federal officials to investigate the killing of Nizah Morris.

“The [PAC] believes that justice can only be achieved by a further review of the Nizah Morris matter by an agency other than the police,” the agency stated in a blistering opinion issued this week. The call for state and federal probes comes more than five years after an earlier PAC opinion assured the LGBT community that the police investigation into Morris’ death was “fair and proper.”

“Police records were ‘lost’ for eight years,” the new opinion states. “Records were redacted or altered. Police procedures, with respect to hospital cases and intoxicated persons, were not followed. Police procedures regarding record-keeping and the logging of information were not followed. Official police business may have been conducted on private cell phones and therefore ‘off the record.’ Discrepancies in records were not followed up. Records are still missing. And the testimony is so inconsistent that we believe perjury might have been committed.”

Morris was a transwoman who was inebriated outside a Center City bar and transported several blocks by police to an area where Morris supposedly said she lived. Within minutes, she was spotted by passing motorists with a fatal head injury, and her homicide remains unsolved . . .

Chuck Volz, a PAC member who was instrumental in writing the opinion, said it’s being forwarded to the state Attorney General’s Office and the U.S. Department of Justice. “A decade has gone by, and it may be impossible to find out who killed Nizah Morris,” Volz told PGN. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The Nizah Morris case is a challenge to our conscience. Even if we don’t find out who killed her, we still have a right to know why the local investigation is such a shambles.”"

"Once banned from the world of mainstream comic books by the infamous Comics Code Authority, LGBT characters now have a stronger presence in the world of superhero comics than ever before, with gay and lesbian heroes like Batwoman, Northstar and Green Lantern Alan Scott openly declaring who they are — and even getting married. Today, DC Comics told Wired that it will continue to expand the LGBT diversity of its superhero universe by introducing the first openly transgender character in a mainstream superhero comic.

In Batgirl #19, on sale today in both print and digital formats, the character Alysia Yeoh will reveal that she is a transwoman in a conversation with her roommate, Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl). Taking care to distinguish Yeoh’s sexual orientation from her gender identity, Batgirl writer Gail Simone noted that the character is also bisexual.

Simone attributed the inspiration for the character to a conversation she had with fellow comic book writer Greg Rucka several years ago at the Wondercon convention, after a fan asked why there were fewer gay male superheroes than lesbian ones. Rucka, who co-created (and rebooted) Batwoman as a lesbian character, replied that it would be a real sign of change for a gay male character to appear on a comic book cover — and an even bigger step for a transgender character to do the same."

"Two days after his 19-second knockout win over Philip De Fries, UFC heavyweight Matt Mitrione has had his contract suspended by the promotion.

In a Monday appearance on The MMA Hour, Mitrione called Fallon Fox a "lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak." In response, the UFC issued a statement saying the TUF 10 veteran's contract has been suspended and he will be investigated.

"The UFC was appalled by the transphobic comments made by heavyweight Matt Mitrione today in an interview on 'The MMA Hour,'" the statement read. "The organization finds Mr. Mitrione's comments offensive and wholly unacceptable and – as a direct result of this significant breach of the UFC's code of conduct – Mr. Mitrione's UFC contract has been suspended and the incident is being investigated. The UFC is a friend and ally of the (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community, and expects and requires all 450 of its athletes to treat others with dignity and respect.""

"Since mixed martial artist Fallon Fox revealed in March that she was born a man, the transgender fighter has been the subject of debate and scrutiny, by the public, by state sanctioning bodies who oversee athletic competition, by the medical community, and of course, by the men and women who populate the sport.

There has been both support for her inclusion from those who say that years of hormone therapy have eroded any muscle mass, strength and bone density advantages she would have had as a man, and arguments against her participation from those who believe the science on such matters is incomplete. And then there's the opinion of UFC heavyweight Matt Mitrione, who not only objects to Fox competing with women, but sees Fox's pursuit as "sociopathic."

That was just one of the choice terms Mitrione used while discussing his feelings on the matter during Monday's edition of The MMA Hour."

"VICTORIA -- CFAX listeners were no doubt perplexed. Last summer, one of the Victoria radio station's news anchors, Sheila Gardner, signed on with a brand-new name.

"For many, this might be a bit of a surprise and some may find it confusing at first," Gardner wrote in a statement carried on the Puget Sound Radio website. "However, for me, it is the conclusion of a long and sometimes painful journey to a future of happiness I have never felt before."

Gardner is, as far as he knows, the only transgender radio broadcaster working in a Canadian city. The 54-year-old is in the middle of a female-to-male physical transformation."

"Born in a family of seven sisters and three brothers, Rana realised she was different at an early age. “When I was 13 or 14, I liked wearing make up and playing with dolls,” she remembers. Her father and brothers would often beat her up when they found her wearing girl’s clothes because she was still a boy – at least officially.

But soon Rana began making friends with the other transgender people in the neighbourhood, who appreciated her identity. “My family ostracised me, what is usual in many cases with the transgender people,” she says. But when she formed GIA and became a full-time activist, she won her family back. “Now my parents are proud of me and say that I am better than all my siblings.”

Rana has a roster of “things-to-do” for the transgender community when she comes to power. From solving the issue of the national identity card, which a significant number of people in transgender community do not have due to absence of parental details, to launching a countrywide census to register the transgender people to make them eligible for schemes like Benazir Income Support Programme.

But even if she does not make it to the provincial assembly, Rana believes its fine because: “It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about saying it aloud that we exist.”"

"The transgender community has stepped up its efforts to be represented in the State Legislative Assembly. Soumya, a Bangalorean, will contest in the May 5 elections from the Gandhinagar constituency as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate and will fight Dinesh Gundu Rao (Congress) and the former police officer Subhash Bharani (Janata Dal-Secular) . . .

Ms. Soumya told journalists here that while other political parties refused to recognise the transgender community, the BSP did. Party leader C.S. Dwarakanath said that Ms. Soumya was the first transgender to contest in the history of Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections and the BSP would make all efforts to pave the way for her entry into the Vidhana Soudha . . .
Ms. Soumya said: “We are treated as castaways as we don’t have family support and no means to support ourselves. We face oppression from the administrative machinery. I want to fight for our rights.” She then narrated the battle she lost over trying to get a below the poverty line (BPL) card. She got her voter ID card after much struggle, she said. "

"Now that he's no longer Secretary of Defense, I imagine that Leon Panetta has very little to worry about, least of all his legacy.

Panetta's announcement just weeks before leaving office that he would bring an end to the policy of excluding women from combat assignments surprised, well, everyone. To call this move historic is to put it mildly. Not long after that, he made history again, bringing a measure of equity to the benefits offered to same-sex military families before leaving D.C. to return to his much-loved walnut farm in California. History will remember Panetta's tenure at the Defense Department favorably for these decisions to change policies that no longer reflected the reality of our wars or, just as importantly, the values of our nation.

As a woman veteran, I was elated with these changes. As the wife of a woman veteran (my wife Danyelle was a West Point classmate of mine and served as an Army officer with honor and distinction), I felt encouraged by them.

But as a transgender veteran, and an advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) service members, veterans and their families, the changes that Secretary Panetta brought about in his last days in office have left me emboldened. Here's why: As the combat exclusion for women comes to an end and open service for gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans edges closer to truly equal service, it becomes more and more obvious that there is no longer any rational basis on which to bar qualified transgender people from serving in our armed forces."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports that Tony Zamazal, a 19-year-old student at Houston's Spring High School, will be permitted to wear a dress, pump-style shoes, makeup and a wig to the school's prom on May 11 after having been previously barred from doing so.

Spring High School officials changed their original position after the ACLU and the ACLU of Texas sent a letter explaining why prohibiting Zamazal from wearing a dress was unconstitutional.

"All I wanted was to get to wear a dress to prom, because I wouldn't have felt comfortable at all showing up in a tux," Zamazal is quoted in a press release as saying. "I'm so grateful that my school has agreed to let me be myself on such an important night." "

"News that government is to amend the Marriage Act - so that transsexuals may marry partners of their choice according to their 'acquired' gender - was greeted with jubilation and relief yesterday.

None, however, was quite as jubilant as Joanne Cassar: a post-op transsexual whose right to marry her long-term (male) partner became the subject of an unresolved seven-year legal wrangle, that ended up in the European Coiurt of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Cassar was unable to contain her enthusiasm on the social networks, at the news that government would overturn an official policy against allowing her the rights, entitlements and privileges that should theoretically have come with the State's official recognition of her 'reassigned' gender" . . .

Joanne Cassar's ordeal began in 2006, when - after undergoing a complex and expensive procedure to change her sex from male to female, and having her birth certificate amended accordingly - she was refused permission to marry on the basis that the Marriage Act prohibited unions between persons of the same gender.

Cassar took the Marriage Registrar to court, and on February 12 2007, after noting that the proposed union did not contravene any provision of the Marriage Act, Mr Justice Gino Camilleri upheld her request and ordered the director of Public Registry to issue the marriage banns.

But the marriage registrar appealed, and in his decision to overturn the ruling last May, Mr Justice Joseph R. Micallef observed that while the Marriage Act defined marriage as a union "between a man and a woman", Maltese law offered no legal definition of either gender . . .

Afterwards, Cassar expressed bitter disappointment at the ruling. "One court allowed me to get married but another took it away from me," she said.

"The Daily Mail out of London is in a lot of public trouble after the suicide of a transsexual elementary school teacher. Lucy Meadows was a teacher at St. Mary Magdalen’s Church of England. Born Nathan Upton, Meadows underwent a sex change over Christmas break, and returned to work as Lucy. After months of harassment, Meadows was found dead in her home on 19 March from an apparent suicide.

While there were other newspapers involved, the tabloid The Daily Mail was among the most slanderous regarding Meadows. The Daily Mail harassed her and Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn attacked Meadows’ transition claiming it would have a “devastating effect” on her students. Of course, no word yet as to how Littlejohn feels about the effect that Meadows’ suicide will have on her students."

"A group, largely pushed to the fringes of society stepped front and centre Saturday at the Provincial Legislature in Regina. Nearly 20 people gathered for the Transgender Day of Visibility Rally to kick off the second annual Transgender Awareness Week in the province.

"This is an opportunity to bring awareness to the community so we can start establishing the services needed by those who are transgendered and start addressing some of the outrageous statistics that exists surrounding the transgendered community," said Mikayla Shultz, President of TransSask Support Services.

She was talking about the high rates of homelessness, unemployment, depression, suicide, and societal rejection that many transgendered people face. "A lack of information and ignorance is one of the biggest barriers we face and addressing that is one of the mandates of TransSask Services," Shultz explained" . . .

"As awareness grows of the transgendered community.... it tends to get better for the transgendered community. Policies start to get made and laws start to get passed to provide protection and to offer services to transgendered people," she said."

An Arizona House panel late Wednesday approved a measure targeting transgendered people who want to use bathrooms of the gender they identify with, voting along party lines to advance a bill that protects business owners who bar the practice. The 7-4 vote concluded an hours-long parade of transgendered and straight people who tried to persuade the panel to oppose Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. John Kavanagh's bill. The crowd broke out in chants of "shame, shame, shame" as the vote on the bill sponsored by the conservative Republican passed.

Kavanagh had radically altered the bill after being faced with an outcry from advocacy groups, but that wasn't enough to keep about 200 opponents from attending a nearly 7-hour long hearing that concluded with several hours of testimony on the bill. "My bill is not about depriving somebody of civil rights," Kavanagh told CBS affiliate KPHO. "My bill is about restoring civility in public baths, public showers, public dressing rooms."

The original bill would have made it a crime for a transgendered person to use a bathroom other than his or her birth sex. The new bill instead seeks to shield businesses from civil or criminal liability if they ban people from restrooms that don't match their birth sex.

"Jae is anatomically a boy. But at the age when most children begin to differentiate between the sexes, the trappings of boyhood seemed undesirable. Jae, whose last name is being withheld at the request of his mother, was perplexed by these differences — as a boy with feminine characteristics, he assumed he must be gay.

Not so. With the help of a supportive family, Jae soon realized the truth: Jae's gender-identity is female, regardless of anatomy. Jae adopted the feminine pronoun "she" and is, in her heart and mind, a girl, now 12.

Jae is one of about 30 transgender or gender-nonconforming children from Chicago and across the Midwest now receiving guidance and support from a pediatric gender-identity clinic launched by Lurie Children's Hospital, the first of its kind in the region and one of only a few such facilities in the country.

The clinic is headed up by pediatrician Robert Garofalo and works with children as young as 3, offering comprehensive care for the child and support for family members.

"What's hard for some people to wrap their head around is that this condition actually exists," said Garofalo, an associate professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Many of these families, they really suffer from a sense of isolation. We try to foster healthy childhood development, allowing the children some freedom to decide who they may be," whether it's a gender consistent with their anatomical sex or not.

For years, Lurie Children's Hospital has provided clinical care for adolescent and young adult transgender women, focused mainly on HIV prevention. It became clear over time that there was a need for broader services, and programs specific to gender-nonconforming children began showing up in cities like Boston and Los Angeles.

Garofalo said that last year, the journal Pediatrics published an article about the formation of the Gender Management Service Clinic at Boston Children's Hospital. That, he said, presented an opportunity for physicians at Lurie to expand on the work they were already doing and more formally help transgender children and adolescents.

"I bet in five years, many places will be doing work like this," Garofalo said. "We hope what we're doing acts as a model for others.""

"GLAAD will no longer be an acronym for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The advocacy organization announced Sunday on Melissa Harris-Perry that it is altering its name and broadening its mission to focus more on advocating for equality for transgendered men and women.

“This is a reflection of the work we’re doing today, and a reflection of the work the gay and lesbian community needs to be doing,” GLAAD spokesman Rich Ferraro told MSNBC.com in an earlier interview. “Our name was hindering that in many instances.”

Ferraro also pointed out that shifting societal attitudes created an opportunity to do more. “There have been huge increases in support for gay and lesbians, and for marriage equality. We’ve noticed that trend and wondered how we could use the tactics that the gay and lesbian community had used to get to today’s tipping point [for the trans community].”"

"Smith College, a private women's college in Massachusetts, has rejected Calliope Wong, a male-to-female transgender applicant because a government financial aid document registers Wong as male.

Wong posted the rejection letter to her Tumblr blog, sparking a wave of support on social media sites.

"Smith is a women's college, which means that undergraduate applicants to Smith must be female at the time of admission," the rejection letter, signed by the Dean of Admission, Debra Shaver, reads. "Your FAFSA indicates your gender as male. Therefore, Smith cannot process your application."

Members of Smith College varsity crew team, Smith alumni and students at other colleges pose with signs saying "Trans Women belong at Smith" on Facebook. Hundreds of others have flocked to social media to support Wong.

"I cried the day my papers came back. I still feel like crying," Wong posted on her blog."

"The Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) launched in January a video campaign in hopes of raising awareness about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries.

In her video, Miller speaks about suffering from alienation in her country, but says she has plans to continue residing there.

"I don't have life easy. I feel alienated, always being bashed by society. But that doesn't change who I am or who I want to be. I am Tiana, a transgender. I won't hide my life," Miller said. "I was born in Jamaica and Jamaica is where I plan to stay.""

"Sruthi, 23, is pinning hopes on a quack at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh to end her year-long wait to "transform" into a woman.

"I know the process is painful and there have been instances of death. But I'd rather go through that ordeal than live as an outcaste in my community, waiting for a green signal from surgeons," she says. Sruthi registered for a sex change surgery at Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital a year ago and is still waiting.

"I was advised to head to Kadapa where a "compounder" (quack) would do the procedure for Rs 200 with a recovery time of three days," she says. Many like Sruthi say the inordinate delay in getting sex reassignment surgeries at government hospitals is forcing them to go to quacks. "

" Arizona lawmakers want to prohibit anyone not associated with their birth gender from using public restrooms, showers and dressing rooms in the nation's latest tussle over equal rights for transgender people.

The proposal comes less than a month after the city of Phoenix passed a human rights ordinance prohibiting gender identity discrimination in public accommodations. That measure and the proposed Arizona law represent opposite sides of a growing national debate over equal access to public restrooms for transgender people.

In Arizona, Republican Rep. John Kavanagh wants to make it a misdemeanor for a person to use a public facility associated with a gender other than what's on his or her birth certificate."

"Reserve recruiters dream of people like Morgan Wade walking into their office. She had a sterling service record, was on the fast track to chief petty officer, and qualified in a field where the demand for skilled individuals is high . . . The problem: Morgan Wade is female now, but that is not what was on her original birth certificate. It wasn’t what was in her records when she joined the Navy . . .

She was stationed on the USS Safeguard, a salvage ship based in Sasebo, Japan . . . Unfortunately, during the time on board the USS Safeguard, Morgan’s dysphoria began to catch up with her. “I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be able to deal with my gender issues indefinitely. I did, however, make the decision to make it to the end of my contract” . . .

Morgan left the Navy in 2010. She gave up a $45,000 selective reenlistment bonus, a promotion to chief petty officer, and the diving she loved . . . By December 2011, her transition was complete. In every legal sense of the word, Morgan was female, and her body and soul were finally aligned . . .

With her life back together, Morgan wanted to try to re-enlist in the Navy. “I decided to try to get back in once DADT [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell] was repealed. I knew I would have to get a waiver, but figured I could prove that I was more fit to serve now than I was when I got out.”

That recruiter she found was Petty Officer 2nd Class Kevin Campbell of Navy Recruiting Station Everett, Washington . . . “It is my job to help transition prior-service personnel into the Navy Reserve. Ms. Wade was no exception. I will do my best and continue to help every veteran re-affiliate that I can,” Petty Officer Campbell said . . .

Morgan went through exam after exam to prove she was mentally and physically fit to serve . . . Eventually, they accepted the doctors at the VA examining me and clearing me.” In the end, all of the doctors, psychologists, surgeons, psychiatrists and therapists declared her fit to serve. The package she submitted was almost 150 pages long and documented her exemplary prior service and current fitness.

When her application was denied without explanation in August of this year, Morgan wanted to know why, so she asked for help from her congressman, Rep. Jim McDermott. His office pressed the Navy for answers and received one several weeks later . . .

When Morgan heard the waiver was denied, she simply felt sad. After receiving the explanation, her frustration simmered over. “Now I’m more frustrated and mad. Every doctor that has seen me says there is no physical reason why I shouldn’t be able to serve . . .

Despite rejection, Morgan remains optimistic that someday she will be able to reenlist. “I’m hoping that the new [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association] and the changes regarding gender dysphoria will make it easier to argue that I am healthy and able to serve. I want to finish my career. I loved the job, serving my country and the community. It hurts to be denied that opportunity.”"

"A court in Seoul has ruled that transsexual South Koreans can amend their gender on official documents without having to go through genital-altering surgery, Korea Times reports.

Five transmen filed the case in a district court. One of the five said he had had a hysterectomy but felt that there are medical problems that arise from removing sex organs. He has been living as a man for 23 years. The case will now be heard in the Supreme Court potentially changing the legal rights of trangender people in South Korea."

[Video (with subtitles) of a wonderful 2011 presentation by prominent Chilean trans-advocate Andrés Rivera Duarte; links included here for historical/archival purposes.]

Ian Harvie . . . Harvie, who is relentlessly touring, has appeared on television and radio programs, spoken at numerous universities, and has done comedy all over the country. With his rugged good looks and unassuming comedy, he's dispelled a lot of myths about trans men (while being funny too) . . .

Julia Scotti . . . These days, Scotti's act features a hilarious caricature of Scotti's loud, animated, overbearing mother — which is a more accurate fit, since Scotti is a transgender woman. Her first stand-up gig as a woman was in 2011 at Comedy Works at Georgine's Restaurant in Bristol, Pa., according to a comprehensive profile from Philadelphia City Paper . . .

Alison Grillo . . . Grillo and Mike Motz have recently revived her long-running Jokes ‘n’ Gender: A Variety Show at the Peoples Improv Theater. Performing next on Wednesday, March 28 at 9:30 p.m., Grillo goes all out for the show, playing a “character” that she says is "basically herself, an eccentric Upper East Side socialite with man hands" . . .

Jeffrey Jay . . . An out and proud trans man, Jay weaves his gender identity into his comedy shtick, and told The Advocate in 2011 that "I hope when people watch me do my set they leave thinking, Wow, I just saw a trans person for the first time and he was normal and funny." It's not all fun and games, though. "The thing that sucks about being trans is I am the only gay guy no other gay guys are attracted to," Jay jokes with his audience."

Bethany Black . . . A true triple threat, 34-year-old Bethany Black is generally billed as "Britain's only goth lesbian transsexual comedian," but she's so much more than that. Her darkly sardonic take on the world and her public struggles with everyday mental health maladies (depression, insomnia, etc.) make Black relatable. With her Twitter presence @BethanyBlack, the part-time roller derby girl sends out both realist and absurd bons mots but isn't afraid to take down a fan who uses the slur "tranny." While you have to go to Europe to see her live, you can follow her Tweets from anywhere in the globe. "

"Richard O'Brien, writer of hit musical The Rocky Horror Show, delighted in shaking up the conservative sexual attitudes of the 1970s. His most famous creation, Dr Frank N Furter, brought the house down with his song Sweet Transvestite.

But the show's creator was ashamed about his own long-held desire to be more feminine."I was six-and-a-half and I said to my big brother that I wanted to be the fairy princess when I grew up. The look of disdain on his face made me pull down the shutters. I knew that I should never ever say that out loud again."

For 50 years, O'Brien repressed the feeling. But "you can't just put the lid on things and pretend that they don't exist", he says. I believe myself probably to be about 70% male, 30% female”

So a decade ago, he started taking the female hormone oestrogen - and is happy with the results. "It takes the edge off the masculine, testosterone-driven side of me and I like that very much. I think I've become a nicer person in some ways, slightly softer. For the first time in my life, I've started to put on a little bit of weight, which I like."

He has also developed small breasts. But O'Brien is not intending to go further and have sex reassignment surgery. "I don't want to pretend to be something that I'm not. Anton Rodgers, the actor, said 'you're the third sex'. And I thought that's quite nice. I quite like that position."

"In May, 2013, the paradigm for the way the medical profession view transgender people changes -- soon we will no longer be classified as having a "mental disorder." The American Psychiatric Association's (APA) diagnostic manual is being updated and the "disorder" stigma soon to be removed. Some call this update a historic moment, I don't agree. There's nothing historical about trans people still being labeled with a "mental disorder" this far into the 21st century . . .

Gender Dysphoria, the new name, will have it's own chapter -- a clear, black and white separation from psychiatric disorder ties. The APA also released a position statement and health guidelines on transgender care, hoping for a higher respect for trans patients from medical professionals. Although there are some aspects to the updated APA's diagnostic manual that some transgender advocates find as still harmful, but overall, a considerable improvement. Groups like the International Foundation for Gender Education will be working on our behalf to rid the DSM-5 of the dubious and potentially harmful treatments still remaining in the manual."

[Comment: Although the APA has improved the DSM's language re gender dysphoria, it still retains considerable language that stigmatizes transgender and gender variant people. Thus we should not 'buy' (and not propagate) claims that the DSM is now somehow trans supportive. For more on this issue, see Kelley Winters' GIDReform website. Especially see Kelley's essay of Dec. 5, 2012, entitled "An Update on Gender Diagnoses, as the DSM-5 Goes to Press"

"The General Medical Council, Britain's professional standards regulator for doctors, is interested to examine and possibly pursue up to 39 case histories involving the alleged abuse of transgender patients. That was the headline announcement during a compelling presentation by businesswoman and trans activist Helen Belcher, appearing at a health care conference at the London Lighthouse earlier this week.

The cases, arising from a powerful twitter campaign thought up by Cambridge Liberal Democrat Councillor Sarah Brown in January this year, were part of a dossier of more than 130 detailed responses collected online following over 1000 tweeted patient complaints . . .

The audience listened intently to the presentation. Nobody ever likes to hear documented examples of doctors … professionals whom everyone should be able to trust … acting with such callous disregard for the vulnerable people turning to them for help and advice. Some questioned Helen on how she would continue to carry out such research but I felt compelled to intervene. Clearly Helen had done her part by voluntarily setting up a system to collect evidence of this type … evidence which trans* people had hitherto felt too afraid and distrustful to report. The evidence was plain … backed up by the preparedness of the GMC to pursue 39 out of 98 cases further … a remarkable indication of their strength.

Previous research also makes plain that there has been a serious culture problem among doctors, subjecting trans patients to "inhumane treatment" (to adopt the language of the Francis report). I was at pains to stress that I'm sure the vast majority of doctors are not like this. But I'm equally sure that if you probe a doctor who maltreats trans patients then you'll very likely find that they have a much wider attitude problem, affecting a far larger spectrum of the public.

Trans patients may just be better at flushing out such behaviours, as those disposed to bullying and abuse may feel greater impunity and cover their tracks less well.So passing this off as a problem for a trans businesswoman to research in her spare time is not an acceptable strategy . . .

The evidence is part of the wider cultural problem identified by Francis. And it is the job of the regulators, professions, and NHS commissioners contracting such doctors to deal with it … not a patient group. It is clear where the buck stops. Now, it is time to deal with the medical profession's dirty linen."

"The weirdest aspect of being in the early stages of transitioning from female to male is the unavoidably public “social transition”. I never had to come to terms with how I felt since I’d always felt trans – see my previous post. What scared me was telling everyone else. But if I wanted to get the medical ball rolling, on the NHS in my case, I had to be living fully ‘in a male role’ first, including being out at work and having official documents to prove it. Re-reading that sentence makes terms like ‘male role’ and ‘prove it’ sound absurd, but that’s a whole different can of worms. In the meantime, I’ll explain why social transition is infinitely scarier than jabbing a needle in your thigh every fortnight."

"A teenager born a girl but living as a man has defended now dating his mother's 31-year-old best friend.

Bobby Fransis Barnes, 19, from Worcester, has found romance with mother-of-three Donna Price - who used to be his babysitter. Bobby, who works as a barber, is waiting to have female-to-male chest reconstruction and sex-reassignment surgery on the NHS as soon as possible . . .

Bobby's mother Tracey has always supported him in his quest to change sex, and now supports his relationship with her old friend Donna. She said: 'He was misbehaving one day when he was little and I said "What do I have to do to make you behave?" he told me that he wanted to have a boy's haircut and a boy's school uniform like his brothers and so that's what I did.'

'It has never been a secret. I always said not to lie about anything, just be honest. 'When he got with Donna, who already knew about everything, I felt a relief because it wasn't just me anymore' . . .

Bobby, who like the rest of the family spent most of the interview grinning, said: 'From day one I always felt this. It just came naturally. 'It has been a bit of a struggle, but with my mum's support it went quite smoothly. 'I got a bit of gip at school, but the more I have explained to people the better it has been' . . .

He has already had hormone treatment for two years, which means he has a man's voice and he said others going through a similar thing should not conceal their feelings.

'Don't be scared to tell anyone because there is support for people out there. 'It isn't just you on your own. I want to inspire the young people. 'People think they're alone but I have had lots of support from my family and friends.'"

"Around 70 protesters gathered at People’s Park Tuesday evening to protest the death of Kayla Moore, who died in Berkeley Police Department custody. Wielding banners and chanting slogans, protesters marched from People’s Park to the police station Downtown, face-to-face with police in riot gear. Though the protest was nonviolent, the crowd remained confrontational, calling for “vengeance for Kayla Moore,” among other loud chants.

Moore, a transgendered individual who identified as Kayla, was originally identified as Xavier Christopher Moore by Berkeley Police Department. Berkeley police had been called to detain Moore after responding to a disturbance call. According to a statement from Berkeley Police Department, Moore “began to scream and violently resist,” later dying while under restraint.

Maxine Holt, who handed out fliers during the protest, said that she was participating partially because of local media coverage of Moore’s death, which she called “disrespectful.” “I hope the cops release info about her death, that the coroner releases info and that the matter gets investigated,” Holt said.

Officer Jennifer Coats, spokesperson for Berkeley Police Department, stated on March 11 that an investigation is ongoing. The Alameda County Coroner’s Office has not yet released an official cause of death for Moore."

"If high schools (and even junior high and middle schools) haven’t yet thought about how they would handle a situation in which a transgender student wanted to play a sport, they’d better start.

The department didn’t state when the guidelines take effect, or how a school would make a gender determination. In recent years, a few state school athletic associations, such as Washington, Oregon, Illinois and Colorado, have approved allowing students who physically are one sex but identify as another to compete on teams of the sex with which they identify . . .

While female-to-male students are free to compete on boys’ teams, depending on the state, a male-to-female transgender must either be examined by medical professionals to determine that the identification is “sincere,” or be undergoing approved hormone therapy and/or reassignment procedures. Perhaps this is a seen as a safety issue, but I would guess that, like most rules, they’re drawn up to make sure the competition isn’t gaining an advantage through any loopholes, like a 6-foot-5 male declaring female identification merely as a plot to get a ringer on the girls’ basketball team . . .

No matter how upset people might get over the mere existence of transgender students, or their participation in sports, schools nationwide are going to have to think about how they will handle the situation. Just shutting out transgender students is not an option. An attorney writing for the National Federation of State High School Associations’ magazine made it pretty clear that if a school tries to prevent a transgender student from participating outright, it will risk losing a lawsuit based on Title IX, the Americans with Disabilities Acts, or various non-discrimination laws."

"This one-day conference is designed for new or experienced medical and mental health providers who are interested in the care of adult and pediatric gender-nonconforming, transgender, and transsexual people and their families. There will be medical and mental health tracks, and opportunities to explore the importance of interdisciplinary teams to coordinate care for this patient population. The programs will run concurrently with The Empire Conference, an informational and networking conference for transgender people at the Hotel Albany in Albany, New York on Friday, April 26, 2013; and share the keynote speaker, Dr. Milton Diamond of the University of Hawaii."

3-11-13: New Yorker (March 18 issue): "About a Boy ‒ Transgender surgery at sixteen", by Margaret Talbot
"For high-school seniors like Skylar—who live in prosperous suburbs, have doting parents, attend good schools, and get excellent grades while studding their transcripts with extracurricular activities—the hardest part of the college application is often the personal essay. They’re typically asked to write about some life-changing experience, and, if their childhood has been blessedly free of drama, they may find themselves staring at a blank screen for a long time. This was not a problem for Skylar.

Skylar is a boy, but he was born a girl, and lived as one until the age of fourteen. Skylar would put it differently: he believes that, despite biological appearances, he was a boy all along. He’d just been burdened with a body that required medical and surgical adjustments so that it could reflect the gender he knew himself to be. At sixteen, he started getting testosterone injections every other week; just before he turned seventeen, he had a double mastectomy. The essay question for the University of Chicago, where Skylar submitted an early-action application, invited students to describe their “archnemesis (either real or imagined).” Skylar’s answer: “Pre-formed ideas of what it meant to have two X chromosomes.” No matter what people thought they saw when they looked at him, Skylar wrote, he knew that he “was nothing along the lines of a girl.”"

"In researching my article for The New Yorker about transgender adolescents and their quest for earlier and earlier physical transformations, I spent some time on YouTube, where you can find thousands of videos chronicling the gender switches of young people. The videos offer a mash-up of youthful identity struggles, self-promoting confessionals, and thoughtful explorations of gender and its discontents. Often shot in poster-covered bedrooms or in the family basement, on wavering Webcams, they range from diary-like accounts to pop-ballad-accompanied photo montages and practical tutorials on subjects like makeup for M.T.F.s (male-to-females) or binding (compressing breasts) for F.T.M.s."

"Yesterday Gay Star News, a British online publication which offers "LGBT global news 24-7" posted this poll prominently on the front page of their web site.

The back story to why they should have thought to ask such a question is a complex court case in Scotland, which has all the makings of a car crash. And, yes, that last link really is an article from Gay Star News themselves, in the same week, demonstrating that they fully understand just what a complex case it is . . .

Gay Star News' crass online poll revealed that their readers have a curious idea of where the risk equation might tilt for them.

This would suggest to me that a slim majority of lesbians and gays think they have some sort of compelling reason to need to know their partner's gender history. Given that you can't 'catch' gender dysphoria from having sex with a trans person it is hard to understand.

What would it be that gays and lesbians fear to the extent that would override a trans person's possibly very real concerns about privacy about their past medical condition, and how disclosure might harm them? If there is fear in the air at all, who should be feeling it?

There is a term for this … certainly as far as cis-gender lesbians are concerned. It is called the Cotton Ceiling. And it has been widely debated online in the past. I recommend you check out this and this and this. Google for 'cotton ceiling' and there's a whole lot more . . . Whether theories like the Cotton Ceiling explain a feeling among LGB folk that unknowingly having sex with trans people might be scary, there is no excuse for the lack of insight in publishing such an ill-considered poll at this time though."

While recognising the complexity of individual cases and the potential for misreporting of court proceedings by the media, we express our extreme concern that it appears Scots Law has been used to criminalise a female-to-male trans man in part for presenting to a sexual partner in accordance with his male gender identity without revealing his gender reassignment status.

We consider it essential that trans people's right to privacy about their gender history be upheld in all areas of their lives. They must not be placed in fear of imprisonment simply for non-disclosure of their gender reassignment status to a sexual partner.

We are aware that a sexual partner may become distressed upon later revelation of a gender reassignment status, however there are many common occurrences where later revelation of aspects of a non-trans person's history or current circumstances can cause severe distress to a partner and lead them to regret entering into the sexual relationship. Some typical examples are revelations about marital status, income, religious or political beliefs, medical conditions, previous convictions and sexual history. Whether to reveal such personal information to a sexual partner may be regarded as an issue of personal morality. Non-disclosure is not usually criminalised as 'obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud' where a partner is distressed by later revelations of such types. We therefore regard it as unacceptable to criminalise trans people for simply living in accordance with their gender identity and not revealing their gender history to a sexual partner."

" A transgender Scottish man was sentenced for obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud yesterday (6 March).

Chris Wilson, 25, from Aberdeen, was accused of failing to tell two teenage girls his gender history and real age. The Edinburgh High Court heard one of the girls was aged between 15 and 16 when she first met Wilson in 2008, when he was 20. The possibly underage girl found out the truth when another girl from Stonehaven emailed her a copy of Wilson’s passport – which gave Wilson’s birth name Christine. The two kissed but it went no further.

The second girl was 15 when she became friends with Wilson two years later, but told him she was 16, the legal age to have sex in the UK. Wilson, who said he was 17, started a relationship with the girl and they eventually had sex.

His defense layer Shelagh McCall said her client is transgender, identified as a man from a young age, and is hoping to undergo gender reassignment therapy."

"If she qualifies for the tour, Gold Canyon’s Bobbi Lancaster would be allowed to play. The LPGA several years ago rewrote its rulebook after players voted to remove the so-called “female at birth” requirement. And she would become the latest in a small but growing list of athletes who have crossed or blurred gender boundaries, including Fallon Fox, who on Tuesday came out as the first transgender athlete to compete in mixed martial arts.

Bobbi readily acknowledges she is raising questions about ethics, fairness and even simple physiology. She has questions herself. Although the physical changes of hormone treatment have been measured, there is little understanding of the practical effects on an athlete.

She also hopes to inspire others. Her game, and her life, are not about smashing someone else’s expectations. They’re just about being Bobbi, who doesn’t “buy into the lie anymore, the lie that there’s something wrong with me.

"The family of a 6-year-old transgender Colorado girl who was banned from using her school's girls' bathroom are disappointed that the school district is refusing to enter into mediation talks with them so she could return to the school, according to The Colorado Springs Gazette.

Coy Mathis, a first-grader who had been attending Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain, Colo., is now being home schooled after the school told her in January that she could not longer use the girls' bathroom. Fox31 reports that the school told them Coy's only options were to use the nurse's bathroom, the boy's bathroom or the staff bathroom.

Coy was born a boy, but identifies as a transgender female and had been attending the school since 2011, however her parents say not until January of this year had the school confronted them with this. So, her parents, Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, filed a complaint against Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 with the Colorado Civil Rights Division in February with the hopes that the school would change its stance, according to The Denver Post.

"Three years ago, Bianey Garcia was on 86th Street in Jackson Heights with her boyfriend. It was late at night, and they were holding hands and kissing. A van slowly pulled up next to them, and they quickly realized it wasn't any regular van: Garcia says that eight police officers got out and pushed her to the ground, and one of them snatched her purse. "Some condoms spilled out," she says, adding that the police officer told her, "You're a fucking prostitute. You're doing sex work." She was not, but was arrested anyway.

Garcia, 23, who has long dark hair and a hesitant smile, is a transgender woman. And her story is hardly unique among transgender people in New York City, who are routinely profiled and wrongfully arrested for prostitution or loitering for the purposes of prostitution, and often plead guilty out of fear of abuse in jail while awaiting their court date. "Even if you don't work in prostitution, they think you are one," says Garcia, now an organizer at Make the Road New York, a community support and outreach non-profit based in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. "I felt so very scared. I pleaded guilty so I could go home.""

"A state administrative law judge has ruled in favor of a transgender Iowa City women who filed a civil rights complaint after a sheriff’s deputy ordered her to leave a women’s restroom at the Johnson County Courthouse.

Jodie Jones, 56, says she attended a court hearing in November 2011 while dressed in female clothing, according to a ruling and report issued Tuesday by the Iowa Civil Rights Commission that Jones provided to the Press-Citizen. Jones told the commission that Deputy Susan Henderson followed her inside the restroom and yelled that Jones needed to immediately leave. Jones complied but said she told the deputy she had the legal right to use the restroom of her choice and alleges that Henderson replied that she would not let her use the restroom “regardless of what the law is” . . .

In a ruling issued this week, Administrative Law Judge Heather Palmer concluded there was probable cause supporting Jones’ claims of discrimination on the basis of gender identity, sex and sexual orientation in a public accommodation. The Iowa Civil Rights Commission in February had recommended that the judge rule as such after an investigation . . .

The next step after the administrative law judge’s ruling is the conciliation process, in which the commission attempts to negotiate “the best settlement for the complainant and the people of Iowa,” according to the commission’s website."

"A couple of months ago an enormous controversy arose when the New Statesman republished an article by the writer Suzanne Moore on the power of female anger. Most people seem to agree it was a well written piece … worth a second reading. However, the article contained a line about women being angry with themselves for, among other things, not having the ideal body shape - "that of a Brazillian Transsexual". I'm not writing now about the massive controversy which followed. It was awful on so many levels . . .

It seems to be the rule that the real injured parties in these stories are quickly forgotten. They are just the kindling. The inferno is about powerful people and how they act and feel.

Look back on the coverage of the Suzanne Moore / Julie Burchill affair and you'll find precious few trans voices … the people accused of threatening freedom of speech. With magnificent irony, their speech is hardly heard.

The irony of this was in my mind when I turned up to sit on a panel in London last week, chaired by the Rt Hon Shaun Woodward MP. I was attending the launch of a report: "The Night Is Another Country" - A human rights report on the impunity in a culture of violence against transgender women in Latin America.

The other guest speakers on the panel (beside Shaun and myself) were Marcela Romero (pictured above), the regional coordinator of REDLACTRANS; Monica Leonardo, the author of the report; and Sue Breeze, Head of Equalities at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Besides our contributions on the topic of industrial scale violence against trans women across many Latin American countries, the audience were also shown clips from a short film which accompanies the publication of the report. The trailer is here (with subtitles)."

"As head of Georgia’s small state athletic commission last year, Andy Foster sat through an Assn. of Boxing Commissions discussion he believed was a bizarre waste of time: How to deal with post-operative transgender athletes. Now, Foster is the executive officer of the California State Athletic Commission and the topic has never been more relevant.

Transgender female fighter Fallon Fox told Sports Illustrated on Monday that she was a man before undergoing surgery in 2006. Fox has won two pro women’s mixed martial arts fights, including a recent knockout victory in Florida, where she is scheduled to fight again April 20 . . .

While the International Olympic Committee and NCAA have established standards for post-operative transgender athletes to compete, combat fighting is a different situation, California’s Foster says, and will require more extensive scrutiny by the state athletic commission’s medical advisory panel.

Currently, the Assn. of Boxing Commissions has aligned with the IOC policy, under which males who become females are not eligibible for athletic competition unless they have undergone sex reassignment surgery and two years of hormone therapy (testosterone suppression). The ABC additionally notes that transgender athletes are subject to standard testing for testosterone and steroids. The NCAA has a softer position, not requiring surgeries and demanding just one year of testosterone suppression.

The California commission "is going to have to decide how it will handle transgender athletes,” in a meeting that will take place by early next month, said Russ Heimerich, spokesman for the athletic commission’s parent agency, the Department of Consumer Affairs."

"After going through horrible abuses in their home countries, thousands of transgender people enter the United States every year in hopes of finding safety, acceptance and a better life. Taking great risks to enter, undocumented trans people have the further challenge of having only one year to declare their intent to seek political asylum and slowly move on from the pain of their past.

Crossing Over, a documentary film directed by Isabel Castro and produced by Katrina Sorrentino, is one of the first films to ever explore the stories of undocumented transgender women seeking political asylum in the United States. The film tells the stories of three women from Mexico living in Los Angeles: Brenda, 44, a matriarch in the trans community who is HIV-positive; Francis, 42, who's been in the United States for 15 years and is trying to lead a normal life; and Abigail, 28, who's putting herself through community college and struggling to move on from the demons and persecution of her past."

"As a society we’re generally very underinformed about trans issues and people. I can’t tell you how many well-intentioned people have shared their confusion with me about which pronoun to use and which questions are appropriate. It’s much the same place we were in the conversation about gays and lesbians a generation ago, when Miss Manners (a k a Judith Martin) was asked by an anxious letter writer: “What am I supposed to say when introduced to a homosexual couple?” Her perfect answer: “How do you do?” "

" Fallon Fox is bracing herself for controversy, and as the first on-record transgender female fighter in mixed martial arts, she's going to get plenty of it. On Monday, the 37-year-old Fox (2-0) revealed exclusively to SI.com that she's a transgender fighter -- the first on record, male or female, to compete in the combat sport. Fox won her second professional bout with a 39-second knockout (via knee) last Saturday at Championship Fighting Alliance 10 in Coral Gables, Fla.

Fox, who underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2006 along with the supplemental hormonal therapy, is scheduled to fight again for the CFA on April 20 in the semifinals of its eight-woman featherweight tournament. However, Fox's license approval is now under investigation with Florida's Dept. of Business and Professional Regulation.

"Our department is currently investigating allegations pertaining to the information provided on [Fox's] application," wrote Sandi Copes Poreda, Director of Communications for the DBPR, which oversees the Florida State Boxing Commission."

"A Colorado school's ruling over a transgender child has sparked questions that could affect schools all over the country. Which bathroom should be used by a child who identifies as a different gender from his or her body? Where's the line between accommodation and discrimination? At what point is a child old enough for that to even be an issue?

The case focuses on Coy Mathis, a 6-year-old born with a boy's body. She identifies as a girl, and her family is raising her as a girl. In kindergarten, she used the girl's bathroom with no problem, the family says. But this year, with Coy in first grade, the principal called to set up a meeting to discuss bathroom use. In advance of the meeting, the family asked what the policies are.

"We were told that there were no written policies and that the options would be for Coy to use the boys' restroom or the staff bathroom or the nurse's bathroom for the sick children, which were both on the opposite end of the building," Coy's father, Jeremy Mathis, said on CNN's "Starting Point" on Thursday. That "would stigmatize her, having to be the only one having to go to a different bathroom, so we weren't OK with that."

The family contacted the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. When an attorney with that group could not work something out with the school, the group filed a state civil rights complaint on the family's behalf."

"Of all the rumors floating around about just why Pope Benedict XVI is hanging up his camauro, one has taken on a life of its own. According to several well-placed vaticanisti—or Vatican experts—in Rome, Benedict is resigning after being handed a secret red-covered dossier that included details about a network of gay priests who work inside the Vatican, but who play in secular Rome. The priests, it seems, are allegedly being blackmailed by a network of male prostitutes who worked at a sauna in Rome’s Quarto Miglio district, a health spa in the city center, and a private residence once entrusted to a prominent archbishop. The evidence reportedly includes compromising photos and videos of the prelates—sometimes caught on film in drag, and, in some cases, caught “in the act.”

Revelations about the alleged network are the basis of a 300-page report supposedly delivered to Benedict on December 17 by Cardinals Julian Herranz, Joseph Tomko, and Salvatore De Giorgi. According to the press reports, it was on that day that Benedict XVI decided once and for all to retire, after toying with the idea for months. He reportedly closed the dossier and locked it away in the pontifical apartment safe to be handed to his successor to deal with . . .

The existence of a gay-priest network outside the fortified walls of Vatican City is hardly news, and many are wondering if it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of sex scandals. In 2010, investigative journalist Carmello Abbate went undercover with a hidden camera to write a shocking exposé called “Good Nights Out for Gay Priests” . . .

Because so much of the secret lives of gay priests is actually not so secret thanks to Abbate’s exposé and subsequent book, Sex and the Vatican, many are wondering what else could be hidden in the alleged red-covered dossier. Vatican elite have also been loosely tied to a number of other secular scandals during Benedict’s tenure, including the ultra-tawdry affair between former Lazio governor Piero Marrazzo and several transvestite prostitutes, including one named “Brenda” who was found burned to death in 2009. At the time that Marrazzo’s relationships with the transvestites were discovered, his driver reportedly told investigators that several high-ranking priests and even cardinals were customers of Rome’s elite transsexual circuit . . . "

"Domaine Javier had already been accepted to California Baptist University’s nursing program with a dual scholarship in music and academics when she came out as transgender on an episode of MTV’s “True Life” in 2011. Months after the show aired, Javier received a letter from the university accusing her of fraud: She had listed her gender as female on her admissions application, an identity claim California Baptist refused to accept. Shortly after that, Javier was expelled. Now, nearly two years later, Javier is suing the university for violating California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and breach of contract.

California Baptist, like many other religiously-affiliated institutions, bans same-sex relationships through a policy on “sexual conduct outside of marriage,” but there is no such language prohibiting the enrollment of transgender students. And while Christian universities have successfully defended against anti-gay discrimination suits on religious grounds, it’s less likely that they can make the same case for an anti-transgender policy, Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in sexuality and gender law, told the Huffington Post. ”While the position against same-sex sexual relations in some religions is widely known, I don’t think the same is true for positions regarding gender identity,” she said."

"Donnie Collins' journey from female to male will continue, thanks to a college fraternity that raised money for sex-change surgery.

Collins, a 20-year-old sophomore at Boston's Emerson College, learned soon after he joined the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity that his insurance company declined to cover surgery to remove breast tissue to flatten his chest. Phi Alpha Tau members, defying the conventional stereotype of a fraternity, launched a campaign on an online fundraising site -- Indiegogo.com -- with a goal of collecting the $8,100 needed for the procedure, scheduled for May.

"We see Donnie as a brother and we want to support him in this endeavor," Phi Alpha Tau Chapter President Jon Allen told CNN affiliate WBZ-TV. "We are here less to raise money, and more to tell a story ... of transformation, and a story of self-discovery, and the story of brotherhood," the online appeal said.

The response was overwhelming, resulting in almost $16,000, according to the frat's website. The money left over after the surgery will be donated to the Jim Collins Foundation, an organization that helps "fund gender-confirming surgeries for transgender people," the group said."

"Donnie Collins never had to endure the hazing or the homophobia sometimes associated with all-male fraternities and Greek life.

The brothers at Phi Alpha Tau at Emerson College in Boston not only embraced the 19-year-old transgender student when he rushed the fraternity last year but have raised the money Collins needed for "top surgery" to remove his breasts.

When they heard that Collins' insurance would not pay for such sexual-reassignment surgery, they launched a campaign to help him out.

The men posted a video on the fundraising site IndieGogo.com and have now raised nearly $17,000. Since the surgery costs only $8,100, Collins has asked that the additional money be donated to the Jim Collins Foundation (no relation), which provides financial assistance for sex-reassignment surgeries."

"What do you do when your child feels like they were born in the wrong body? On this episode of Katie, you’ll hear the deeply personal stories of three transgender children and their parents, and their journeys to understand the psychological, physical, and social process to become their authentic selves. Meet Coy Mathis, a transgender girl who at only six-years-old is fighting alongside her parents for the right to be fully recognized as a girl in school. Katie will explore how medical advances are being used earlier and more safely to change the biological process of puberty, and she will introduce a beautiful woman who struggled for her father’s acceptance and has an important message about gender identity."

"Turkey is currently a buzz with talk about Nil Erkoçlar, an actor who has graced the stage alongside famous names such as Berna Laçin and Kadir İnanır, and who recently underwent a sex change operation to become a man. The 26-year-old actress-turned-actor said that throughout his life he never felt like a woman, but instead always identified as a male. Erkoçlar’s mannerisms, the way he talks, the way he walks, and the way he sits all identify him as a man.

The story of how Erkoçlar came to change his gender is a long one, which began at the age of six. “I was not like other girls. I didn't play with Barbie dolls, but hung out with boys,” he said, stressing that when he was born he was a girl "only physically." He said he never wanted to wear dresses when he was a little girl, and always rejected the feminine role he was born into as he felt himself to be a boy inside. However, he never told his story to anyone. “When I entered into adolescence everything hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that I liked girls, but I had a women’s body. This was really hard for me,” Erkoçlar said.

Although he was physically a very beautiful woman, he felt no connection to how he looked. “I never wanted to be like that, [with a woman’s body]. I wanted to change my body and become free again,” he said. Eventually Erkoçlar decided to undergo an operation, as what he was going through had become unbearable for him. "

"Trans-men are reticent, a hardly visible group among the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community. Most people do not really know who they are. On the sidelines of the 5th Bangalore Queer Film Festival, this often misunderstood group of people shared details of their struggle to live as they are.

“The term ‘transgender’ in common parlance is used by most only to refer to trans-women (men to women). There is hardly any public understanding or any knowledge about who these trans-men are” said Gee Ameena Suleiman, a film-maker and a researcher whose docu-fiction Kalvattukal, protraying their lives, was screened in the fest last year. Gee also said, “As trans-men, apart from our personal battles in the society, we face a double oppression - firstly being born as a women to find our economic and social independence in the society shaped by patriarchy and secondly as trans-men.”

Unlike the trans-women, most of the trans-men, with very few exceptions, are still not ready to disclose their real identities to the world. Most of them leave their native places to find their lives in cosmopolitan cities to escape from the public scrutiny or gender policing so they can continue to live their lives as they are."

"I am not a writer but I found it my social responsibility to highlight their issues. I think the government should take the required steps to give these citizens of Pakistan, regardless of their sexual orientation, equal rights. Make separate schools and colleges for transgender people where they can get proper education and learn skills, other than dancing, that can be used as a source of income and dignity for them.

With that, there should be a chapter on transgenders in the syllabus of elementary schools that teaches the children of tomorrow the value of tolerance, gives them a sense of acceptability and respect for the third gender.

Only if we start right away will they have their rights afforded to them in the future. We need to work fast, all of us so that we can make sure that the blood of these people does not stain our hands forever."

"I can clearly remember the evening in late 1999 when the very first email from Professor Lynn Conway plopped into my inbox. In those days much of my spare time was consumed as a vice president of the Press for Change campaign, doing advocacy work, editing the campaign's fast growing web site, and responding to requests for help and advice from the people who found us that way . . .

As online collaborators, my contacts with Lynn Conway after her approach in 1999 concerned a transatlantic movement to change the status of trans people . . . We faced different challenges in our respective countries but, at times, the threats were global. We shared ideas. We planned strategies to counter the lies about our lives. Yet never in that time did the opportunity arise to meet my distant friend. I visited the United States periodically on business, but it's a big place. Opportunities never presented themselves.

This month, however, I needed to travel to San Francisco for a conference. And, because I didn't want to fly straight back from such a distant destination, I came up with the idea of travelling across the US, coast to coast, by train. The trains connect in Chicago … tantalisingly close to where Lynn is retired in Michigan. My itinerary required a two day stopover. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a remarkable woman."

"An important meeting of minds took place in San Francisco earlier this month, with encouraging signs for revising trans related classifications in the forthcoming 11th Edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

I was there to participate and influence the discussions as an international adviser to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) . . . With me were the WPATH Board of Directors and members of WPATH's ICD working group from countries around the world. We were also joined by representatives from the World Health Organisation's project team responsible for this section of the revision effort, including one of their senior Human Rights lawyers.

People were taking part from countries as far apart as Canada, China, Venezuela, Bahrain, Argentina, Cuba, Australia, South Africa and Turkey … some via video links from their home countries, but most in the room. The UK and Europe contingent included contributors from Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain . . . Overall there were just over 30 of us taking part in the day and a half of sessions, which took place over Sunday 3rd to Monday 4th February . . .

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is the standard set of definitions of diseases and health interventions used throughout most of the world except the United States. It is published by the World Health Organisation (a specialised agency of the United Nations) and has to be ratified by the health ministers of all 193 WHO signatories (the 'World Health Assembly') before each new revision is published.

In order to ensure the World Health Assembly ratification goes smoothly an immensely rigorous process is followed, gathering consensus worldwide, before a draft is submitted for ratification. For this reason, the process currently underway is expected to run until late 2015. It is not considered likely that the new ICD-11 will be published earlier than 2016.

Unlike the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which many trans readers will be familiar with, the ICD covers the full range of everything that clinicians concern themselves with, including acute and chronic medical conditions, health prevention and wellbeing interventions, mental health conditions, and supportive therapies. For trans people this broader scope opens opportunities that are not present in the DSM, which is concerned only with defining Mental Health conditions . . .

The present edition (ICD-10) has been in use since 1992. Transgender-related classifications have been included for almost 50 years. A classification for 'Transvestism' was first included in a chapter on 'Sexual Deviations' in the ICD-8, published in 1965. Transsexualism was added to the same chapter in the ICD-9, published in 1975. The ICD-10 (prepared in 1990) then added a whole raft of additional categories, including 'Dual-role transvestism' and 'Gender identity disorder of childhood' all under the new parent category 'Gender Identity Disorders'.

These long intervals between updates, during times of massive social change, underline why the present revision process is significantly overdue, and especially important to get right. The next chance may not be for another generation."

"The last time transgender teen William Copeland wore a dress was to his aunt’s commitment ceremony. The 5-year-old caved to parental pressure but on his terms: no bow in the back and only for the vows, not the reception. “Big mistake! Huge mistake!,” his mother Laurie Copeland winces. “Why did he need to wear a dress to a lesbian wedding? They wouldn’t have cared if he’d worn a tux.”

Despite any early missteps, if you could special-order a family for a transgender child, it would be the Copelands of Creve Coeur. Inside the soft yellow walls of their two-story home, an 11-year-old rescued Lab named Alex lies on the carpet, surrounded by comfortable chairs in which parents Ken and Laurie and sons William and Daniel, 23, gather to tell the story of William’s transition. "

"In recent days, Thailand’s transgender community has surfaced in media reports, covering topics ranging from an offensive IKEA advertisement to a political campaign aimed at the untapped “kathoey” (male-to-female) voting bloc.

Pongsapat Pongcharoen, a U.S.-educated police general from the Pheu Thai Party, launched this sleek, upbeat campaign video on YouTube to appeal to the capital’s ‘third sex’ in his campaign to become Bangkok’s next governor. The video features a cheery mosaic of Bangkok’s demographics, including a number of kathoeys. As the first political campaign video to openly court the transgender vote, it may be a prescient move by Pongcharoen who is ahead in the latest poll."

"A dozen elderly women are gathered inside the pink house, set on a narrow dirt road in a dusty suburb of Jakarta. Together they sew, bake and chat. On first sight they look like a group of benevolent grandmothers, but the sunken cheeks and deep lines on some of their faces tell stories of hardship.

All of these women are "waria", a term used for Indonesian transgender people, and the house in the country's capital has been hailed by activists as the first old person's home for that gender community."

"Public school officials said on Saturday that they are ready to implement new state guidelines that allow transgender students to use bathrooms and play on sports teams designated for their preferred genders, among other provisions . . .

Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, said in a phone interview that his members have known about the impending guidelines for some time and that he does not expect districts to have any significant problems implementing them.

“These are complicated issues, and we need to respect every child,” Scott said. “We need to ensure that everybody has a right in school to feel that they have a place. . . . In that regard, it’s absolutely imperative.”

The education department’s 11-page document laying out the guidelines does not specify when they take effect, though Scott said he presumed they are effective immediately . . . "

"They said, 'Sweetheart, you are a boy. You need to be a boy.' (I just felt like), 'No. I want to be (like her).'

That little boy grew up. And - though not quite as simply as this sentence makes it seem - found that he was able to become what he dreamed. Erika Falls is finally, as she says, herself."

"The remarkable story of a young transgender man trapped in a girl's body, who made the decision at age 16 to become a boy. Aiden Kaplan is now a 20-year-old college student. What's even more amazing, he documented his transsexual transition on Facebook. For the first time, Kaplan is telling his story.

This story evolved in the wake of a story Eyewitness News did of fired transgender teacher who just became public at age 59. READ PREVIOUS STORY Her only regret is that she didn't do it sooner.

Aiden Kaplan, born Meghan, did make a change early as a teenager with the full support of his mother. "It's the best feeling to look down and feel my body matched my brain," said Aiden. It's an extraordinary journey that 20-year-old Aiden Kaplan decided to make public on Facebook, documenting his transition from a girl, Meghan, to a boy. "

"Within three months, Hamilton’s voice began to change. His sex drive increased and he was constantly hungry. Over the course of a year, he gained 30 pounds of mostly muscle. He also gained a newfound sense of vitality and joyousness. “More than anything, what contributed to my joy was the feeling I was living authentically,” Hamilton says.

Hamilton’s exuberance is in line with what local Licensed Professional Counselor Jan Beckert sees with her transgender clients. The feeling of authenticity outweighs any number of possible negatives a transgender person may be facing.

“Family rejection, past abuse, poverty — no matter what else they’re dealing with, the transition is the most important thing,” Beckert notes. “It makes them feel like they are themselves.”"

"With a free pancake supper, Metropolitan Community Church of Dallas kicked off its new Gender Journey project, whose goal is to make the church radically inclusive of the transgender and gender-nonconforming community.

To the Rev. Colleen Darraugh, the church’s senior pastor, radical inclusion means having an ongoing program, providing a safe space, networking and catching people wherever they are in their journey to discovering what gender means to them.

“We’re looking at providing a safe environment to explore what it means to have gender, gender identity and gender expression, to be two-spirit or questioning,” Darraugh said."

"Transgender people have consistently been subject to health care coverage policies that arbitrarily cut off access to the care they need. State policymakers in Oregon, however, have recently stepped up to end this kind of discrimination . . .

In Oregon, the director of the agency overseeing insurance regulation is permitted to reject plans that contain “provisions which are unjust, unfair or inequitable.” This kind of authority is also vested in insurance regulators across the country, in states including Alabama, Wisconsin, and South Carolina—just to name a few . . . Every state can end discrimination against transgender people in health insurance. The time to act is now."

"The New York Times reports that in the last few years, several elite U.S. universities have begun to cover sex reassignment surgery and/or hormones for transgender students. On the one hand, it's great that they're reporting news like this, and after years of extremely disrespectful coverage of transgender issues, it feels like a victory that their "balance" is limited to noting that "the idea still seems radical to plenty of people." On the other hand, not a single trans-identified person is quoted.

But what I really want to highlight here is how this kind of article utterly fails to connect some really big dots, leaving readers with a very narrow picture of reality . . . the arguably much more important big-picture story here that the Times obscures is about how economic disparities get magnified in our society: Only those transgender youth privileged enough to get into schools like Princeton or Stanford will have access to full health coverage that will enable them to align their gender presentation with their gender identity–which can have important reverberations down the line for their job and life prospects."

"Being the first African-American transgender woman to produce and star in her own television show was something au courant to Laverne Cox. Even on the heels of making history by being the first black, transgender woman to appear on a reality television program, it was something to grapple with. In 2008, Cox starred in VH1’s “I Want To Work for Diddy," which garnered her the starring role in the spin-off show,“TRANSform Me," which she also produced.

Cultural pioneers are typically showered with appreciation and accolades, but Cox received the opposite. The responses she received from peers and fellow members of the transgender community were discouraging and overwhelming, but Cox continued to prevail, pursuing her dreams as an actress."

"Krolikowski says in October of 2011 that school officials brought her in and confronted her. "They said, 'are you a drag performer, are you a female impersonator?'" Krolikowski said, "they gave me all these different things, so finally I said 'I'm transgendered and I identify as a woman. Then everybody's jaw dropped, and then, I said, 'Oh God, what did I do?'"

Krolikowski said that someone told her "it sounds like you're worse than gay", and it took all her strength not to cry.

Krolikowski claims she was told to tone down her appearance, and did, but was fired anyway. When September came, she was not going back to school for the first time in 32 years . . .

"My time is running out. I'm 59 years old and I want to live the way I was intended to be," adds Krowlikowski, "which is as a woman." Krowlikowski has had breast implants, has started hormone treatments, and plans to have more surgery. She says she doesn't want people to look at her as a freak, because she didn't get to do all the things that girls got to do.

Krowikowski says she has been overwhelmed by support from thousands of current and former students who have signed an on-line petition on change.org. She doesn't have long-term plans but does have an immediate goal - to attend Lady Gaga's Born Brave bus tour that is coming to New York later this month. "

"The Viet Duc Hospital and National Hospital of Paediatrics in Hanoi and Children’s Hospital No. 2 in HCM City will be responsible for preparing their facilities and personnel to meet the ministry’s licensing criteria by March 31.

According to the Ministry of Health, Government Decree 88, issued in 2008, contained provisions on gender reassignment. In 2010 the ministry issued a circular guiding the implementation of some articles in the decree. However, no hospitals had offered to provide examination services for gender assignment, despite existing laws allowing people to seek sex change operations.

The Ministry of Health requested the HCM City Department of Health to instruct Children’s Hospital No. 2 to redefine a previous male local in Binh Phuoc Province as a woman following the decision. Pham Van Hiep was originally recognised as a woman by Chon Thanh District’s People Committee following her gender reassignment operation abroad.

However, the provincial people’s committee decided to over-rule the district recognition of Hiep’s obvious gender change based on their interpretation of Government Decree 88 which banned people with no gender ‘problems’ from having the right to change gender."

"Chicago will soon be home to one of the only medical clinics for transgender and gender-variant children in the country. The Gender, Sexuality and HIV Prevention Center based out of Lurie Children's Hospital is launching a Gender Identity Clinic, filling a major gap in gender-affirming care in Chicago.

The clinic, which is up and running but has yet to officially launch, is the first of its kind in the city and one of few resources for gender-variant kids younger than 13. Through the clinic, children dealing with gender identity issues will have access to everything from endocrinology to psychology

"As a unit, the family is not always ready to embrace terms like 'LGBT' or 'transgender,'" said Dr. Rob Garofalo, director of the Center. "I think coming to Lurie allows people to come to a place where services are hopefully increasingly culturally competent, without threatening the developmental trajectory that these families have to go through" . . .

In past years, Chicago families with transgender kids often found medical and mental health services piecemeal. While many of the city's LGBT organizations offer youth services, most of those services are designed for kids ages 13 and older. Some families flew to Boston Children's Hospital or Children's Hospital Los Angeles, which both have gender clinics for children. But for families without the time or means to travel, finding specialists that understood gender issues and kids presented a serious challenge.

" A recent incident outside a gay bar in Nashville illustrates how confounding our perceptions of gender identity and sexual orientation can be. Hamilton was standing with his girlfriend when a gay man, who’d had too much to drink, approached him. “He was talking me up, and then Sarah and I started holding hands,” Hamilton recalls. “And then the guy’s like, ‘Wait — you’re together?’”

After Hamilton acknowledged he and Sarah were a couple, the other man looked Hamilton up and down, and said, “No, you are gay, gay, gay!” “Basically, he was saying, ‘You don’t know who you are,’ and ‘This poor woman doesn’t know you’re gay,’” Hamilton says, of this man’s incorrect perception that Hamilton was a non-transgender man either pretending to be straight or unaware that he was gay.

Quickly, Hamilton inserted a reality check: “I said, ‘Actually, we are gay. We were a lesbian couple before. I transitioned, female to male. We’re together — we’re queer.’”

We all want to paste on quick labels, to put people in boxes: gay, straight, whatever. But, as Hamilton’s Nashville experience made clear, first impressions can be deceiving. Hasn’t everyone had that moment where we make a snap decision about some random guy walking down the street? “There may be something about him — maybe he’s what you’d consider effeminate, or he dresses or styles his hair some certain way you’d consider ‘gay-looking,’” he says. “But maybe he’s not gay, maybe he’s just a well-dressed dude, or he might be trans: you don’t know.”"

"Yesterday, pianist Sara Davis Buechner published on the New York Times website a brave and moving account of her experiences as a transgendered person. "As David Buechner, born in the northwest suburbs of Baltimore in 1959," she writes, "I became an internationally known concert pianist. But from the time I was a child, I understood that I was meant to be Sara."

As David, she won gold at the 1984 Gina Bachauer competition and bronze at the Tchaikovsky competition in 1986, and performed as a soloist with top-ranked ensembles including the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras.

What she goes on to say, however, is that after her gender reassignment surgery, her once-flourishing career stalled out — at least in the United States. Buechner's story has much larger ramifications than its impact within the classical music community, but her assertion that she was rendered unemployable in her home country is troubling, to say the least . . .

It's a thought-provoking piece, and particularly so when you ponder how, for generations now, openly lesbian and gay artists, presenters, academics, critics, managers, publicists, label employees and so many others have made homes for themselves within classical music. Societal progress has been a very hard-won battle — and movingly chronicled of late in Alex Ross' "Love on the March" piece in The New Yorker — but I can't fathom a classical music business in the 21st century in which gays would have to hide their identities for fear of professional recrimination. But what Buechner is saying is that progress on LGBT issues, at least in the American classical music community, still stops at the LGB part of that equation — and that's sobering."

"In the United States, once I came out as Sara, I couldn’t get bookings with the top orchestras anymore, nor would any university employ me. In Canada, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver hired me for a piano professorship in 2003, and in 2008 I earned tenure. After moving, I was able to marry the Japanese woman who’d been my longtime partner at a wedding before 125 family and friends.

I see signs of progress in the United States; some American insurers have recently begun to cover transgender surgery. There is less need for an exotic flight to a dangerous operating room abroad. We have emerged in numbers at last, and are no longer invisible, discardable or silent. We clamor for our civil rights and are gaining respect and understanding. My generation has done its reading, listening, learning. Times are changing. In the recent election, for the first time voters in two states approved the right to gay marriage.

In 2003 I hadn’t played as a soloist with an American orchestra in nearly five years. But when I crossed the border to Canada, I found plenty of orchestras and recital presenters who were happy to book me. The success of my performing career in Canada has helped me rebuild a reputation back home. I’ve played twice now with the San Francisco Symphony, and also with the orchestras of Buffalo, Dayton, Seattle and others. I am confident I will once again play with the elite groups in Cleveland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York, earning the same good reviews that David Buechner once did. A new generation of conductors, composers, chamber players and music executives has come of age, and they don’t ignore my agent’s calls as their older colleagues once did."

"In 1973, Conte underwent surgery to transition from male to female. By then, she had changed her name, including the name on her legal birth certificate — an extraordinary effort at a time when transgender people, born into bodies that betrayed the gender they identified as rightly their own, were generally vilified and regularly shunned. Conte's family disowned her after the surgery.

When Conte became socially and politically active in Arvada during the 1980s, she did not mention the first 40 years of her life . . .

In late 1991 or early 1992, Conte's adversaries surreptitiously passed the hat to collect funds to pay a private investigator to look into her background . . . "We thought maybe she was a criminal who'd relocated, or in witness protection. Her transfer from a man to a woman had nothing to do with her performance. Nonetheless, it created the scenario that ruined her political career" . . .

Conte briefly hosted a talk show on 850 KOA-AM but left, dismayed by the station's promotional ads asking "Is it a man? Is it a woman?" She went on to work as an investigative reporter for the progressive station 88.5 KGNU-FM.
Survivors include her best friend of 50 years, Sandra Lamb of Arvada, and a nephew. A military funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Fort Logan National Cemetery, where Conte will be buried . . .

Joanne Conte, a former member of Arvada City Council who was outed as transgender by her fellow council members, dies at age 79."

"The third-biggest party in Poland’s parliament nominated a transsexual woman for the job of deputy speaker on Thursday, upsetting conservative lawmakers who said they would try to block the appointment.

The nomination of Anna Grodzka, a 58-year-old who completed a sex change three years ago, will test attitudes in Poland, a devoutly Catholic country where traditional moral values often clash with new, liberal ideas about sexuality. The opposition Law and Justice party said it opposed Grodzka because she lacked the experience need for the job. But one of the party’s lawmakers had previously said Grodzka had a “boxer’s face,” and questioned if she could really be considered a woman.

Speaking to reporters in parliament after Janusz Palikot, the leader of her ultra-liberal party, the Palikot Movement, announced he was putting her name forward for the role, Grodzka said she was ready to take on the challenge."

"Mark Krolikowski has shoulder-length brown hair. He likes to wear multiple earrings and French manicure his nails. Students call him Mr. K. Krolikowski, 59, taught for 32 years at St. Francis Preparatory School, a 140-year-old Catholic institution in Queens, New York.

Until August. That's when the school laid him off. He alleges that he was discriminated against because he is transgender and that the school's attitude toward him changed in the eight months after he came out.

He recently filed a lawsuit saying the school and its principal, Leonard Conway, broke the law with his termination and that as a result, Krolikowski has been financially and emotionally distressed."

"An official from the Ministry of Justice said that they would protect and support transgender people and were currently waiting for the NA’s approval of some new regulations relating to the issue."

"Director of the Legal Department of the Ministry of Health – Mr. Nguyen Huy Quang - said that Mr. Pham Van Hiep who is now Ms. Pham Le Quynh Tram can ask the Ministry of Health to perform gender determination tests."

"Vietnam’s one and only transgender citizen whose gender transition was officially recognized after gender reassignment surgery is about to have her recognition revoked, reports Thanh Nien News. The Vietnamese Ministry of Justice reportedly stated that Pham Le Quynh Tram’s recognition isn’t applicable because of a law prohibiting gender reassignment post puberty. The ministry also pointed to the fact that her the surgery was completed in Thailand and not at an approved Vietnamese hospital.

In 2009, Tram had her name and gender change recognized by the Chon Thanh District, after undergoing gender reassignment surgery. The accredited acceptance allowed Tram’s official documents such as passport and driver license to list her gender as a female, Pink News reported.

Last week, the People’s Committee of the southern province of Binh Phuoc ordered the local Department of Justice to revert to recognizing Tram as a male and to refer to her as Pham Van Hiep, her birth name. In addition to the Department of Justice rescinding Tram’s initial recognition, the officials who first approved it are reportedly ordered to be penalized. "

"The Oregon state Health Plan and its Healthy Kids Program will soon begin covering medically-necessary care for young people experiencing gender dysphoria on Oct. 1, 2014, making Oregon the first state to ensure coverage of transgender kids under Medicaid.

Beginning October 1, 2014, services covered by the new health care plan will include not only mental health counseling and pediatric evaluation, but also medication, procedures, and follow-up care related to the suppression of puberty, according to Jenn Burleton, Executive Director of Portland-based TransActive, an education and advocacy group that supports transgender and gender non-conforming youth and their families.

“Pubertal suppression provides transgender adolescents the option of avoiding unwanted, irreversible, and deeply distressing changes that come with birth-sex pubertal development,” said Burleton, in a statement. “Far too often trans adolescents experience increased suicidal ideation as a result of these changes and the indifference of others about the impact these changes have on trans youth.”"

"Transsexuals in Hong Kong are now seeking gender-changing surgery at a much earlier age than two decades ago, and those coming forward are more likely to be women seeking to become men.

"It seems that more and more patients are in their 20s," said Dr Albert Yuen Wai-cheung, chief of service at Ruttonjee Hospital's department of surgery and the only specialist performing sex reassignment surgery at the city's public hospitals.

"In the past, they were in their 30s. Now they are quite young, still studying," Yuen said. "With more information available, more are willing to see doctors." Also, women undergoing sex change operations to become men now outnumber men wanting to become women.

A spokeswoman for the Hospital Authority said that between April 2010 and August 2011, seven patients - five of them women - underwent sex reassignment surgery at Ruttonjee."

"Thailand’s transgender residents are displeased with Swedish furniture retailer Ikea because of a new ad they say is “disparaging” and “disrespectful” to their way of life . . .

In the ad, a middle-aged man shops in an Ikea store with his long-haired, willowy, minidress-wearing partner. The partner is chatting in a sweet, high voice when she suddenly lets out a low-pitched exclamation upon seeing the discount section. Eventually, when the partner starts shouldering some heavy boxes, the man turns tail and runs . . .

In an open letter to Ikea, the Thai Transgender Alliance lambasted the ad as “a parody of a weirdo” that “perpetuates a misunderstanding of transgenderism as a ‘deceitful and deviant lifestyle.’ ” The video is “negative and stereogypical in nature,” according to the group, which also called it a “gross violation of human rights and freedom of expression.”"

"Thai Transgender Alliance have sent an open letter to IKEA to complain about a 'negative and stereotypical' advert. The offending advert, called Luem Aeb (meaning 'forget to deceive'), was broadcast on Bangkok's sky train system from 28 December 2012 to 13 January 2013 and on YouTube.

'The MTF transgender/transwomen character is openly mocked as being "deceitful",' read the open letter to IKEA from Thai Transgender Alliance. 'The transgender content of the advertisement is negative and stereotypical in nature, perpetuating misunderstanding transgenderism as human sexuality for "deceitful and deviant lifestyle".'"

"Tides are slowly turning for Chile’s LGBT community. Last July, the country passed its first anti-discrimination legislation in response to an anti-gay murder in Santiago. Later in the year, Chile elected its first openly gay politician, a municipal councilman. And after announcing her candidacy for Congress, transgender activist Valentina Verbal hopes to break another glass ceiling. If she wins the election she’ll be South America’s first transgender legislator . . .

Verbal, like Piñera, is a member of the center-right National Renewal Party (RN), an unexpected choice for an LGBT advocate. However, transgender rights, Verbal argues, can just as easily be addressed through a more conservative party.

“The ideas of the center-right rest on the idea of basic human freedom . . . Because of this, it seems logical that it is not enough to simply defend political and economic freedoms, but also to do the same with cultural freedoms, including the right to decide on sexual orientation and express freely gender identity.” "

"TransGriot Note: While the GL community was justifiably jumping up and down excited because President Obama mentioned them in his second inaugural address, an 11 year old transkid in the western US was writing her own essay on this inaugural day that also happened to fall on MLK, Jr Day.

Sadie's essay highlights who we adult transpeople are really fighting for when we push for trans human rights here in the United States and around the world. Let's redouble our efforts to make trans human rights a reality for Sadie Croft and ourselves."

"The world would be a better place if everyone had the right to be themselves, including people who have a creative gender identity and expression. Transgender people are not allowed the freedom to do things everyone else does, like go to the doctor, go to school, get a job, and even make friends.

Transgender kids like me are not allowed to go to most schools because the teachers think we are different from everyone else. The schools get afraid of how they will talk with the other kids' parents, and transgender kids are kept secret or told not to come there anymore. Kids are told not to be friends with transgender kids, which makes us very lonely and sad.

When they grow up, transgender adults have a hard time getting a job because the boss thinks the customers will be scared away. Doctors are afraid of treating transgender patients because they don't know how to take care of them, and some doctors don't really want to help them. Transgender patients like me travel to other states to see a good doctor.

It would be a better world if everyone knew that transgender people have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else. We like to make friends and want to go to school. Transgender people want to get good jobs and go to doctors like they are exactly the same. It really isn't that hard to like transgender people because we are like everyone else."

"Religious leaders of a relatively unknown branch of Catholicism plan to ordain a transgender man to the priesthood on Saturday in Minneapolis. One of only a half-dozen or so transgender clergy members in Minnesota, Shannon T.L. Kearns will set about starting the state's first North American Old Catholic Church congregation following his ordination at Plymouth Congregational Church.

Established in 2007, the North American Old Catholic Church is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, though Kearns says he hopes to attract disenchanted Roman Catholics to his new, more liberal-leaning Minneapolis congregation. "Church should be a place that welcomes all people and should be about working for justice in the world," Kearns said during a recent interview. "That's just a really important message to get out" . . .

Heather White, a religion professor at the New College of Florida who has written extensively about gay and transgender issues, estimates there are fewer than 100 transgender clergy in the United States. For the past decade or so, only a handful of faith groups -- mostly mainline Protestant denominations -- have allowed openly transgender people to serve as clergy, she says.

"With the newness of having clergy who are transgender, [for Minnesota] to be on the cusp of this developing trend is exciting," White said. "Just as feminists challenge the idea that God could only be male ... having a person who has had experience across the gender divide, that transgender experience ... will help us both to loosen our fixed idea that God is only masculine by maybe loosening our fixed idea that gender only comes in two forms.""

"No matter who you are, who you love or where you come from, Ian Harvie will make you feel as though you are family. Everyone will be able to relate to his observations about life, relationships, and the routine challenges we all face from day-to-day. His wickedly funny stories are couched in an amiable personality that could put any audience at ease, while his folksy, ingenuous delivery almost – but not quite – tempers his zinger punch lines, making them not just hilarious but seriously twisted.

Even if he wasn’t so witty, without even trying, Ian could set an audience on it’s ear, opening up new realms of irony. He could be your brother, your best friend’s boyfriend or a merely a clean-cut preppie trying his hand at stand-up, but he’s not. In fact, there’s a good reason Frontiers Magazine referred to Ian as “Quite possibly the most unique stand up comic in the country”…Ian’s not “just” a queer comedian – he’s the world’s first FTM transgendered comic… which, when put into context, will make his anecdotes about his own phobia of public restrooms all the more side-splitting!"

"Jazz, an 11-year-old transgender girl, says she want to help other transgender kids. In an ABC profile aired this weekend, Barbara Walters looked at how puberty affected Jazz's quest to live as a girl.

“What part of being transgender hurts you the most?” Walters asked. “My genitalia,” Jazz answered. “Because right now I feel like a girl. But when I look down there, it reminds me.” “And that must feel very bad for you,” “Yeah,” Jazz said.

To counter the effects of puberty, Jazz is on hormone blockers. “The medication stops testosterone from entering her body, essentially pausing her natural male development,” Walters explained. “They block any facial hair I might get or armpit hair, maybe like just so I don't look like a boy, or even getting a deep voice also,” Jazz said.

The next step is whether to give Jazz the female hormone estrogen. “I wish I could take that right now,” Jazz said. “I want boobs.”

Jazz added that she agreed to the interview because she wants to help other transgender kids.“I want to help those kids become the person they are. And I want to tell the parents that they should still love them no matter what,” she said."

"For the first time, a man and a transgender woman were married under a huppa in Israel this week. The couple, a blonde-bombshell and her husband, whose identity was not revealed, walked down the aisle to the cheers and tears of their friends and family, and with a Channel 2 television crew in tow.

Bride Arizona wore a white dress, or, rather, a light pink one. “It’s the same one Jennifer Lopez wore to the Oscars… This is a special wedding, there are no rules here!” she said, showing off in front of the camera crew, hours before the big moment.

Arizona was born as Erez, one of four siblings, into a traditional Jewish family. The process of becoming Arizona included hormone treatments, breast implants, and numerous surgeries, all to get that glam feminine look. “I want to be Hollywood,” she said at the salon she runs near Tel Aviv.

“Every man that likes transgenders would have loved to stand in his [her husband's] shoes, but not everyone has the courage to do it,” she said. Her previous boyfriend, whom she was with for eight happy years, ultimately couldn’t deal with her desire to become a woman, and left her. That was when despair hit, Arizona said, when she felt she’d never find love again.

She had men chasing her, men who told her they were crazy about her, but who wouldn’t even meet her in public for a cup of coffee. One of her friends talked to Channel 2 about the illicit world of transgender individuals, and the high numbers of men who prostitute them for sex.

But the man under the huppa, her husband, was different; married with three children prior to their relationship, he came through for her, she said."

"Barbara Walters will sit down with 12-year-old Jazz on 20/20 tomorrow, a young girl whose life seems like every other kid her age, only Jazz was born a boy but identifies as a girl. What’s more, Jazz has been living as a girl from an early age.

From the brief preview of the interview, which you can watch above, Jazz seems to be one of the most well-adjusted kids we have ever seen, forget the fact that she is transgender.

Jazz has the support of both of her parents, who have identified her as a girl on her birth certificate and even had Jazz record a video explaining that she thinks like a girl and is a girl, but with boy parts, that she is encouraged to share as soon as she makes new male friends. The segment will also deal with the concerns now that Jazz is entering puberty.

You can catch what is sure to be an incredibly interesting and informative edition of 20/20 tomorrow at 8 PM."

"Is the furore which has followed Julie Burchill's column on transsexual people a "tipping point" for awareness and acceptance? Watch the Channel 4 News online debate.

First Suzanne Moore caused outrage with a piece in the New Statesman in which she wrote that women were angry with themselves for "not having the ideal body shape - that of a Brazilian transsexual."Then writer Julie Bindel accused the "trans-cabal" of "running a witch hunt every time they get offended".

Ever since then, the issue has dominated headlines and social media. But at Channel 4 News we wanted to move beyond the mudslinging and onto a real debate over the issues in our Google+ Hangout. What is it like to live and work as a transsexual person in the digital age?"

[A truly remarkable multi-person discussion (via Google+ video) about the media's defamation of trans-people during this period of trans-emergence. Note especially the comments by Paris Lees.]

"Organisers of the gathering of more than 100 transgender people and supporters said the column – for which the Observer has apologised and which has been removed from its website – was "transphobic hate speech" and a "deliberate baiting" of a community that is already the subject of widespread social abuse and ridicule.

"The Burchill piece was a deliberate baiting," said Martha Dunkley, a member of TransLondon. "It was straightforward, transphobic hate speech for which, had she been targeting another group, she would have been arrested. It threw us back into the days when we could be the objects of violence and ridicule with impunity."

The protest was the culmination of a row sparked by Suzanne Moore, who wrote in an article that women were, among other things, angry about "not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual". Moore subsequently became involved in an increasingly heated row on Twitter with members of the transgender community, which concluded in her leaving the social media site. Burchill's column was in defence of Moore, her close friend.

The protesters said they are seeking a full apology from the Observer and reassurance that they will take steps to ensure that the Guardian Media Group's publications "will never again be used as a platform for hate speech". "We are aware of the Observer's withdrawal of Burchill's article from their website, but feel that this response does not give adequate reassurance that the paper will not publish transphobic content in future," Sarah Savage, an organiser of the protest, wrote in an open letter to the paper.

"Furthermore, we do not feel that the paper has adequately acknowledged the role of transphobia in the media in perpetuating and erasing the day-to-day discrimination and violence which we as a community face as a consequence of such attitudes as those expressed in Burchill's article. Instead, the paper has opted for an erasure of the incident without addressing its cause," she added."

"Calvo, 56, has long since transitioned to becoming a woman and her depression lifted. She turned into an activist in the LGBT community and then the Democratic Party. And this weekend, she'll head off to Washington, D.C. to attend President Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony and take her new seat on the Democratic National Committee.

Calvo becomes the second transgender member of the DNC, after New Jersey's Babs Siperstein. She's the first to actually be elected by local party members to the governing body of the Democratic Party since Siperstein was appointed by then-national Chairman Tim Kaine.

For Calvo, it's a welcome recognition of both her work on behalf of the Democratic Party and her role as an advocate for transgender people, who she said are still struggling to be accepted in the mainstream. She noted that a recent study showed that 41 percent of transgender people had attempted suicide and that they have high rates of poverty and unemployment.

Calvo, who now lives in Gresham, has been active in the state Democratic Party since 2006 and is currently the party's treasurer. Fellow party officials describe her as outgoing and able to strike up a conversation with just about anyone. "She's somebody you would like if you had a chance to interact with her and keep an open mind," said Frank Dixon, the party's first vice-chairman."

"Transgender activists, who say crime against the community is massively underreported, have approached the state government for an "end to brutality". Activist Lakshmi Tripathi met women and child development minister Varsha Gaikwad last week and demanded policies for the inclusion of transgender and gender nonconforming people. She said discrimination against them encouraged atrocities on the community. "Physical, sexual and mental abuse is regular and prejudice ensures that such crimes virtually go unreported."

Tripathi told TOI the community had no safe spaces and recounted instances of policemen abusing community members. The government had invited her and NGOs working in the field of women's safety and empowerment for consultation on laws related to crime against women."

"Until late last week one of Europe’s most progressive nations had one of the continent’s most repressive policies on transgender people. Swedish law had required all transgender people to undergo sterilization if they want to legally change their sex. In a Dec. 19 decision, the Stockholm Administrative Court of Appeal overturned the law, declaring it unconstitutional.

Sweden’s 1970s-era statutes on sexual identity mandated that any person who legally wanted to change their sex must be sterile. Transgender Swedes had to go through gender reassignment surgery to have their legal documents updated, and to comply with the law, they were also sterilized, whether or not they wanted to be."

Burchill gave Toby Young "permission to reprint the article the Observer has seen fit to unpublish. This is the full text."

"The Observer has removed a controversial column by Julie Burchill, in which she attacked transgender people, from the internet, and editor John Mulholland has published an apology, admitting that the newspaper "got it wrong". Burchill, a freelance writer, wrote in an Observer column on Sunday that transgender people were "screaming mimis", "bed-wetters in bad wigs" and "dicks in chicks' clothing".

The column, published online on guardian.co.uk's Comment is Free website, has been taken down with the link now directed to a statement from Mulholland in which he apologises for the offence caused in what has become a "highly charged debate".

"We have decided to withdraw from publication the Julie Burchill comment piece 'Transsexuals should cut it out'," he said. "The piece was an attempt to explore contentious issues within what had become a highly-charged debate. The Observer is a paper which prides itself on ventilating difficult debates and airing challenging views. On this occasion we got it wrong and in light of the hurt and offence caused I apologise and have made the decision to withdraw the piece.""

Julie Burchill's over-the-top rant has exposed the dangerously-hateful side of transphobia to the wider public in the UK. No reasonable person can help but sense the violent rage lurking just beneath the surface of her now-infamous newspaper column. With calls for the investigation of Burchill and the Guardian for publishing hate-speech, it seems the Guardian removed Burchill's article from it's website a few minutes ago. In case you missed reading the article on the Guardian's site, here are some excerpts:

"The brilliant writer Suzanne Moore and I go back a long way . . . I have observed her rise to the forefront of this country's great polemicists with a whole lot of pride – and just a tiny bit of envy . . .

With this in mind, I was incredulous to read that my friend was being monstered on Twitter, to the extent that she had quit it, for supposedly picking on a minority – transsexuals. Though I imagine it to be something akin to being savaged by a dead sheep . . . I nevertheless felt indignant that a woman of such style and substance should be driven from her chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of dicks in chicks' clothing . . .

Here's what happened. In a book of essays . . . Suzanne contributed a piece about women's anger. She wrote that, among other things, women were angry about "not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual". Rather than join her in decrying the idea that every broad should aim to look like an oven-ready porn star, the very vociferous transsexual lobby . . . picked on the messenger instead . . .

To be fair, after having one's nuts taken off . . . it's all most of them are fit to do. Educated beyond all common sense and honesty, it was a hoot to see the screaming mimis accuse Suze of white feminist privilege; it may have been this that made her finally respond in the subsequent salty language she employed to answer her Twitter critics: "People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me . . .

To have your cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women – above natural-born women, who don't know the meaning of suffering, apparently – is a bit like the old definition of chutzpah . . . Shims, shemales, whatever you're calling yourselves these days – don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you . . . Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet. You really won't like us when we're angry."

"Julie Burchill's controversial column about transsexuals is now the subject of an inquiry by The Observer's readers' editor. The article was published in yesterday's newspaper (January 13) after appearing online the evening before on The Guardian website. Headlined "Transsexuals should cut it out", the piece has received much criticism for its content and use of transphobic language.

The piece referred to "a bunch of dicks in chicks' clothing", and argued that "a gaggle of transsexuals" criticizing her friend Suzanne Moore's writing was like "the Black and White Minstrels telling Usain Bolt how to run". Burchill's piece was ostensibly written in support of The Guardian columnist Moore, who had offended some by writing in an essay reprinted by the New Statesman that society pressured women to have the body of "a Brazilian transsexual".

Moore wrote a column last Wednesday arguing that criticisms of her as transphobic were "irrelevant" given the wider social picture. This piece prompted further criticism, which led Moore to suspend her Twitter profile. Burchill's piece made repeated reference to the "trans lobby" and suggested that transsexuals have a "relationship with their phantom limb", while also denigrating transsexuals by referring to "women - real and imagined"."

"The dispute began when Suzanne Moore wrote a piece for The New Statesman about feminist fury in modern Britain. Buried in the middle of it was a sentence that read, “[Women] are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.” Personally, I wasn’t offended by the phrase “body … of a Brazilian transsexual” – but then it’s not my place to decide what’s offensive and what’s not when it comes to transgenderism. I’ve not been born in the wrong body, fought for years for the right to change it, undergone complex surgery and then suffered the bigotry of others. Some of those who did find Moore’s line unamusing asked her on Twitter if she could redact it. All Moore had to do was apologise for potential offence caused (the old “get out clause” for not actually correcting anything). Instead she made a “robust” defence of herself that climaxed in a tweet that could easily have been written on a toilet wall: “People can just f*** off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them.”

So, the crisis started when the feminist Moore refused to show any grace towards a minority that, by all standards, has it pretty rough. Lesson number 1: being a liberal doesn’t automatically make you a polite and sensitive person. Lesson number 2: when commissioning Julie Burchill to compose a rebuttal, don’t say, “And you can write whatever you want…”"

[This over-the-top rant by Julie Burchill self-exposed the dangerously-hateful side of transphobia to the wider public in the UK. No reasonable person can help but sense the violent rage lurking just beneath the surface here.]

The journalist came under fire for a line in an article in the New Statesman titled, Seeing Red: The Power of Female Anger, which was published on 8 January. In it she wrote: “[Women] are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.”

She then defended her use of the phrase “Brazilian transsexual” – which many considered to be offensive – not least because Brazil has an appalling record on transphobic hate crime. During a heated exchange . . . Moore defended her use of the word, before finally tweeting: “People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them” . . .

"If you are a woman of a certain inclination, google “Calm Down Dear” and wind back the footage to April of last year. David Cameron, more cocksure than he is at present, directs the phrase at Labour MP Angela Eagle during Prime Minister’s Questions in a debate over health policy. He says it more than once, so bowled over is he with his own Wildean wit. It’s a shame really since it’s actually a catchphrase of that peculiarly mega-loaded film director, Michael Winner. Still, this being the House of Commons, Cameron’s own frontbench are convulsed. Beside him is a man not quite as beside himself as the others – Nick Clegg, looking as he so often does, wistfully wishing he were elsewhere. The Liberal Democrat leader may have few senior women in his own party but in that hollow where his heart used to be, he intuits this is not the way to address female colleagues.

Many of us do. Many of us don’t feel calm but angry and perturbed that the humour embraced by Fragrant Dave is that of a previous generation (Benny Hill?). That may well be what being a conservative means: conserving the worst of things as well as the best of them. I speak, of course, as a humourless “feminazi”. Anyone who takes offence at being patronised should “grow some” as they say . . .

We cloak our vitriol in humour. I get it. I do it too. Caitlin Moran’s bestselling How to Be a Woman is a brilliantly funny read because it is so warm and not really very angry towards men. We can all be dudes. But former Sex Pistol John Lydon’s chant , “anger is an energy”, is still my cri de coeur. The cliché is that female anger is always turned inwards rather than outwards into despair. We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual. We are angry that men do not do enough. We are angry at work where we are underpaid and overlooked. This anger can be neatly channelled and outsourced to make someone a fat profit. Are your hormones okay? Do you need a nice bath? Some sex tips and an internet date? What if, contrary to Sex and the City, new shoes do not fill the hole in your soul? What if you aspire to another model of womanhood than the mute but beautifully groomed Kate Middleton? What if your anguish is not illogical but actually bloody spot on?"

[This powerful essay could have had lots of positive impact. Instead it'll be remembered for triggering a viciously transphobic backlash by feminists against those who objected to Moore's inclusion of demeaning remarks about "Brazilian transsexual(s)". There's a deep lesson here.]

"A time-lapse video showing the transformation of a transsexual from male to female (MtF) over a period of three years has gone viral online. The video, constructed from several photos, shows a progression of facial changes from masculine to feminine. The video, posted by YouTube user iiGethii, explains that the pictures track the facial feminization surgery (FFS) of the transsexual user in her mid-20s. The video compresses a transformation spanning three years into one minute, 43 seconds.

The YouTube user writes: "This video is of me going through a 3 year transition (roughly one thousand pictures). I have had FFS [facial feminization surgery] during the process. I started roughly around when I was 20 -- 21 years of age. I use to have my own channel a while ago where I'd post videos, but removed it. Here I am again making a return."

The time lapse commences on December 8, 2009 with a photo showing a handsome looking male youth with dark hair that falls to his shoulder. We watch as the masculine, square jawline softens and the entire face assumes feminine features — narrower with high cheekbones and arched eyebrows that impart an appearance of grace and beauty as opposed to the relatively rugged masculine looks.

The video was posted to YouTube in October and has attracted more than 450,000 views. Most commenters appear pleased with the results:

FishFoodLP comments: "Attractive as a man, attractive as a woman. Some people have all the luck, I swear..."

BrooklynRider comments: Congratulations on your transformation. You look beautiful." "

"Vanessa Van Durme, Belgian writer and performer, has a knack for picking the right word. After all, she’s had some practice. Van Durme became Belgium’s first transsexual before the vocabulary for the transition existed.

“It wasn’t that simple then,” she says over the phone from Belgium. “It was a big, big struggle because you couldn’t even pronounce the word, because it didn’t exist at that time.” Now, at the age of 64, she has told her story in three different languages all over the world.

Van Durme will perform her one-woman show, Look Mummy, I’m Dancing, at this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver. The performance is a 90-minute monologue that tells the story of a young boy who was happiest when dressed in his mother’s clothes, wearing red lipstick and dancing.

The show is simply staged, just Van Durme in a pink slip, a table and two dolls, one male and one female. She transitions between her two parents’ voices and her own child’s voice. In a way, she says, the show is a tribute to her parents.

“They’re lovely people. I had lovely parents, working class people. I thought, what was it for them, having a child like me in the ’60s? It wasn’t a simple thing. They were full of understanding.”

She has performed the show 250 times so far, all over the world, including four times in Canada already."

[Be sure to watch the video excerpts from Vanessa's amazing show, at the end of the article.]

"At the recommendation of the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) Values-based Benefits Subcommittee (VbBS) on Thursday, December 13th 2012, and subsequently approved by the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC), on January 10, 2013, it was confirmed that beginning October 1, 2014, the Oregon Health Plan will cover the cost of pubertal suppression evaluation, treatment and monitoring for youth diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria by a qualified mental health provider . . .

• Mental health counseling (applies to children, youth and adults)
• Evaluation by a pediatric specialist in advance of pubertal suppression treatment
• Procedures, medication and follow-up monitoring related to pubertal suppression . . .

"The $1,000 “out-of-pocket” monthly cost of pubertal suppression treatment is out of reach for most families," said TransActive Executive Director, Jenn Burleton.

"Pubertal suppression provides transgender adolescents the option of avoiding unwanted, irreversible and deeply distressing changes that come with birth-sex pubertal development", Burleton said. "Far too often trans adolescents experience increased suicidal ideation as a result of these changes and the indifference of others about the impact these changes have on trans youth."

"Thanks to this common sense, safe and medically recommended action by the Oregon Health Plan, lives will be saved and TransActive is extremely grateful to have been able to play a part in this victory and to be a regional and national center for providing the care needed by these kids and their families.""

"Regulators in Oregon and California have quietly directed some health insurance companies to stop denying coverage for transgender patients because of their gender identity. The states aren't requiring coverage of specific medical treatments. But they told some private insurance companies they must pay for a transgender person's hormone therapy, breast reduction, cancer screening or any other procedure deemed medically necessary if they cover it for patients who aren't transgender.

The changes apply to companies insuring about a third of Oregonians and about 7 percent of Californians, but not to people on Medicare and Medicaid or to the majority of Californians who are insured through a health management organization, or HMO. Advocacy groups said the action is a major step forward in their long battle to win better health care coverage for transgender Americans.

"It's just a matter of fairness," said Ray Crider, a 28-year-old transgender man from Portland. "I just never felt that I was like anybody else. I see everybody else being taken care of without having to fight the system." Officials in both states said the new regulations aren't new policies but merely a clarification of anti-discrimination laws passed in California in 2005 and in Oregon two years later."

[Jennifer Finney Boylan contribution to the We Happy Trans authors project. A wonderful video discussion.]

"There are a group of people in the UK who experience horrific abuse at the hands of people who are ostensibly responsible for their care. You might think that after the horrific revelations of the last few months that I am referring to children who are abused by those charged with caring for them, but no. I’m talking about trans* people. If you are a trans* person, not only are you required to live and behave a certain way to access treatment, but the situation is compounded by the fact that many trans* people are reliant for life saving treatment on the very doctors who perpetrate this abuse. They are prevented from speaking out to try and improve the system through the fear that if they are honest, they will forever be denied the treatment they need.

In most areas of medicine, the first stage when you identify that something is wrong is to visit your GP, discuss the problem, work out if treatment is necessary and then discuss with your doctor about what that treatment should be. From the stories shared on yesterday’s twitter hashtag #transdocfail, and from the stories I’ve heard from my partner and trans* friends, doing this with gender dysphoria would be the single worst thing to do.

"If you read the Guardian, you may well have come across this article discussing how a Dr Richard Curtis is under investigation by the GMC over allegations of medical misconduct when dealing with people from the transgender community. It sounds serious, doesn’t it? But it’s worse! . . .

This is being treated by both the press and the GMC as very serious indeed. There’s just one problem: both the press and the GMC are institutionally transphobic. The GMC’s accepted standards of care are routinely and systematically broken, and even the standards that are apparently established border on cruel and unusual punishment. What Dr Curtis has apparently been charged with is treating his transgender clients as human beings with a right to self-determination, and for this he is pilloried by a transphobic GMC, and pilloried by a transphobic press . . .

If you’re not aware, the GMC has either recommended or mandated (I’m not entirely sure) a rather cruel and unusual process for undergoing transition via the “official route” in the UK. It requires convincing a GP to refer you to one of a limited number of seriously underfunded Gender Identity Clinics. This normally involves a referral to your local mental health practitioner, whose job appears to be to ensure that “that tranny ain’t insane”. The Gender Identity Clinic (normally known just as a GIC) then gets to basically do what it likes depending on the philosophy of the myriad of psychiatrists and “gender identity specialists” employed at the clinic. If you’re lucky, and you can find an understanding GP, get referred to an understanding mental health unit, and then get referred to one of the apparently remarkably few understanding psychiatrists at the GIC, you might -might – be permitted to transition. It’s a truly barbaric system, but the GMC and the GICs insist that they are only trying to stop people making a life changing surgery due to a person “misdiagnosing” them."

"History has many moments. Points in time where a minority decides it has finally had enough, turns and bites the hand that oppressed it. There’s Rosa Parks, refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus (1955). There’s gay youth finally turning on New York’s finest homophobes (1969) following a raid on the Stonewall Inn. (1969). There’s Indian women, taking to the streets to give voice to decades of anger in the wake of a brutal rape (2012).

Times, places, incidents, details: all may vary. What stays the same is a certain sense of ultimate outrage: the last straw, after which everything must change.

Listening to the trans community today, in the wake of reports that Dr Richard Curtis, the principal independent route to treatment for trans issues is being investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC), one cannot help but sense something in the air. Something, perhaps, with a whiff of Stonewall to it: because a lot of people are saying, very loudly, very clearly, that they have had enough."

"1. Cisplain: To explain, without ever having felt the necessity to investigate the issue, that there are only two genders which are fixed and invariable for every individual at birth. Usually assumes equal lack of introspection on the part of transgender people who are likely to have spent their whole life questioning what gender means. The cisplainer is often shocked and angry when their cisplanation is not taken as absolute fact, criticized or even rejected altogether.

Some trans people also engage in cisplaining never having felt empowered to question the predominate cisgenderism of the society they were brought up in. This has been compared to a form Stockholm Syndrome.

An article is published in a newspaper describing how an individual, who was born male sex, has transitioned to a different gender. One of the first comments will cisplain: "You can have as much surgery or medical treatment as you like but you'll always be a man (or woman)"."

"Transsexuals in Hong Kong are now seeking gender-changing surgery at a much earlier age than two decades ago, and those coming forward are more likely to be women seeking to become men. "It seems that more and more patients are in their 20s," said Dr Albert Yuen Wai-cheung, chief of service at Ruttonjee Hospital's department of surgery and the only specialist performing sex reassignment surgery at the city's public hospitals.

"The experience of gender diversity is gaining greater social visibility, and with this an increase in empathy . . . In recent years, more transgender persons are publically acknowledging the transformations that have brought them to a more integrated life. Acclaimed filmmaker Lana Wachowski, for example, was born Larry Wachowski. She transitioned during the hiatus between her work on the "Matrix" film series and the later movie "Cloud Atlas." In a recently published interview Wachowski observed, "I chose to change my exteriority to bring it closer into alignment with my interiority."

Many Catholics regret that official statements of the Catholic church continue to support rigid notions of human nature, especially in regard to male and female gender. Here church leaders, consciously or not, continue a strategy that distances them from the genuine experience of many active church members. Official statements often mention the extravagant conduct of sexual exhibitionists or drug-addicted sex workers as typical of transgender persons. Hiding in plain sight are the many mature transgender Catholics in our own parishes. To remain willfully ignorant of, or contemptuous toward, this part of the human community exhibits a startling lack of compassion."

“Latino/a transgender people often live in extreme poverty. According to a National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) survey, twenty-eight percent of transgender Latinos reported a household income of less than $10,000 a year, which is nearly double the rate for transgender people of all races, more than five times the general Latino/a population rate, and seven times the general U.S. population rate. For non-citizen Latino/a participants, the poverty rate was 43 percent. The unemployment rate for Latino/a transgender people is 20 percent . . .

There are multiple challenges– housing, jobs, and medical care– exacerbated in the trans community,” Martinez says. A 2011 NCTE survey found that though discrimination was prevalent for all transgender participants, transgender prejudice — combined with constant and institutionalized racism — was especially devastating for Latino/a transgender people and other people of color.

The lack of medical care in the transgender community is also an overwhelming problem. The Human Rights Campaign reports transgender people can be denied coverage regardless of transitioning needs because of the way in which health insurance contracts are written. Twenty-three percent of Latino/a transgender people reported being refused medical care."

"“I seemed to need to pass through a certain kind of fear before I could embrace a fuller vocation to contribute to conversations on trans and wider LGBT equality in and outside ecclesial contexts, as well as to explore these themes in academic contexts.”

That's how Cameron Partridge, a Massachusetts-based Episcopal priest-turned-university chaplain, describes his motivation to engage in advocacy and political action since transitioning from female to male over a decade ago. The subject of a compelling new Religion & Politics profile, Partridge is reportedly one of just seven openly transgender clergy in the Episcopal church. Since 2011, he's also served as chaplain to Boston University, giving him the distinction of being one of the first transgender chaplains at a major U.S. university, too."

"As a generally liberal mainline denomination, the Episcopal Church is perhaps poised more than most Christian groups to grapple with the complexities of gender identity. Over the past four decades, the church has slowly begun changing its canons to prohibit exclusion on the basis of several categories, including race, gender, and sexual orientation. According to Integrity USA, an Episcopal LGBT advocacy organization, the first openly gay clergyperson was ordained in 1977. In the mid-2000s several clergy came out as transgender, and the first openly transgender Episcopal clergy were ordained.

During the 2012 General Convention in July, the church overwhelmingly passed groundbreaking resolutions barring discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression in access to lay leadership and the ordination process. Partridge was grateful. “What makes me most proud of this summer’s General Convention vote was the collaboration and sense of community that built momentum towards it,” he said, citing several advocacy groups who pushed for the resolutions. “Through all the intensity of the Convention, we were uplifted by community—to me it truly felt like the communion of saints.”"

"He is the wildly successful transgender model that even Kate Moss has described as ‘beautiful.’ Now Andrej Pejic can add Elle cover ‘girl’ to his vast list of achievements as he graces the cover of Serbian Elle’s January issue.

The controversial model, who has hit the catwalk dressed as both sexes, is the first transgender model ever to be on the cover of Elle. Dressed entirely in Jean Paul Gautier, the shoot features Andrej as both a man and a woman."