Pakistan Recognizes Third Gender

Late on Wednesday, the Supreme Court in Pakistan ordered that the government officially recognize a separate gender for Pakistan’s hijra community, which includes transgendered people, transvestites, and eunuchs. The court told the federal government to begin allowing people to identify as hijras when registering for a national identity card. –> more

GENDA – NY State Assembly BILL NO A05710

Imagine having the same rights as everyone else…

Paterson Signs Order Protecting Transgender State Workers

NEW YORK, NY December 16, 2009 —Gov. David Paterson has signed an executive order protecting transgender state workers from discrimination in the workplace. The order is limited because it doesn’t provide protection for those in the private sector. But the governor says today’s signing should be seen as a stepping stone to broader protections.
“As much as I am delighted to sign this executive order I am aware that my action is incomplete. I still demand that the New York senate take up a gender equality bill and pass it immediately,” Paterson says.
That bill is known as the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act (GENDA) and would ban discrimination in housing, employment, and credit for all transgender New Yorkers. It’s been passed in the state assembly but has not been taken up by the state senate.  (wnyc.org)

I Came So Far For Beauty

This post title is from one of my fave songs (originally by Cohen), here’s a version by Stina Nordenstam (link is halfway down the page)

More fuel for the TG assimilation media rocketship:
Winner of the Miss India Transgender pageant Karina Shalini (C) celebrates with runner ups Romi (L) and Padmini.

—————

It’s a pretty cool gesture that the LA Police cut ties with the BSA – Boy Scouts:

The Los Angeles Police Department wants to stop working with the organization that runs its Explorer program for youths because the group is linked to Boy Scouts of America, which bans gays from becoming members. The organization, Learning for Life, was spun off from Boy Scouts of America.

A department official told the Police Commission Tuesday that the Boy Scouts policy is “inconsistent” with the city’s policy of non-discrimination. He suggested that the department manages the Explorer program itself.
Learning for Life officials say the organization does not discriminate and does not take funds from the Boy Scouts.

Learning for life denies discrimination, but there seems to be lots of evidence to the contrary. It’s also interesting that the United Way still openly funds the BSA:

Activists with the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network (CABN), a gay liberation group which has taken the lead in urging the Chicago United Way to cease funding the anti-gay Boy Scouts of America (BSA), are blasting the charity’s decision late yesterday to continue Scouts funding. No reputable charity would embrace an organization that purged racial or religious minorities from its ranks, contends CABN, an affiliate of the Scouting For All Alliance for Human Rights, and that by funding the Scouts, Chicago United Way officials send the message that it will tolerate the Scouts’ bigotry towards Gays. —>more

The DSM-V gets a poke from The New Scientist, and Bilerico with their pants down (again – ‘I think they like it!’)

I’m happy to hear that the APA has postponed completion of the DSM-V. I agree with the overall statement here of The New Scientist. Unfortunately, suggesting ideas for change to BIG PHARMA is like a chihuahua barking at a dragon.

“…the American Psychiatric Association has announced that the publication of DSM-V will be delayed until May 2013. “Extending the timeline will allow more time for public review, field trials and revisions,” says APA president Alan Schatzberg.”

Newly defined mental illnesses could be used to justify locking up certain people for life
Given such high stakes, we should all be worried by the controversy (see “Psychiatrists at war over broadening mental illness definition”). Proponents of some of the changes are being accused of running ahead of the science, and there are warnings that the APA is risking “disastrous unintended consequences” if it goes ahead with plans to publish DSM-V, as the new manual will be known, in 2012.

It doesn’t have to be this way. With the advent of the internet, there is no longer any compelling need to rewrite the diagnostic criteria for the whole of psychiatry in one go. Yes, diagnoses should be revised as new scientific findings come in. But for this, specialists can be assembled when necessary to address specific areas that have become outmoded. Their suggestions can be posted on the web for comment. More research can be commissioned, if necessary. And when consensus is reached, new diagnostic criteria can be posted online.   full article

Oh, and the gay contingent at Bilerico got their pants pulled down again. Go figure. I’m sure they dig it anyway. (see Bilerico article and Questioning Transphobia comments)  I mean, look at the guy’s picture: Would you buy trans-insurance from this dude??

WTO “Battle in Seattle” 10th Anniversary

It’s been a decade since a week of unrest turned the world’s attention to the “Battle in Seattle.” Producer John DeGraaf looks back at the World Trade Organization Protests. Here’s a preview of DeGraaf’s documentary, “The Whold World Was Watching.” Check out this documentary which aired yesterday.

“Let them eat cake!” Did she really say that? Who knows – Marie must have felt just awful when they were throwing things through the window and making all that rucous.

Obama: “Eight years of policies … have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

I came across this article a when I began blogging almost a year ago: TENDENCIES – The Vulgar Game. In the face of a deep recession, fashion houses have started to proclaim a false modesty. By Sameer Reddy | Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan 10, 2009 full article

Reddy writes: As unpleasant as it might be to accept, greed, avarice and unrestrained lust are built-in elements of the human psyche. When people have enormous amounts of disposable wealth, these darker qualities tend to surface, manifesting themselves in diamond-and-ruby encrusted cellphones (Vertu, over $300,000), and 1200-horsepower, color-shifting sportscars (Dimora Motorcar- Natalia SLS, $2,000,000).

Alfred Dimora

Natalia SLS

Well, for one thing, Reddy does write for Newsweek which qualifies him as sycophant of the aristocrats. But these jesters are allowed to slam the ruling classes because the media networks routinely deploy double speak to create a facade called ‘freedom of the press’.

The business of incorporating doublespeak began in earnest around the time of the famous WTO Seattle Summit ( more later), but here, Reddy goes on to nail the emo-double-speak for this conservatist rag:

…the richest segments of society, who played a major role in ruining things for everyone else, are simply paying lip service to a public notion of what is expected of them.

This wanking about the ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ bling-boasting upper crust is going to increase exponentially during this wave of recession, but lets recap a tad so I can make this a bit more cohesive:

The multinationals began dissolving the middle class for real back in 1988 when (in Canada) they paid to have Brian Mulroney elected and pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement into a hole where it wouldn’t really fit. And in those days, they didn’t even use lube. When Mulroney’s Conservative party began slipping dangerously in the polls pre-election, the business boys (CCCE) blithely took out $6 million in advertising including full page ads in every major Canadian newspaper to soothe the voter into liking free trade. The newspaper copy read like a Sesame Street book – Free Trade is soo good for Canada. Just relax, it won’t hurt, we promise.

(Prime Minister Brian) …Mulroney liked hearing the influential voices around him. Many of those voices belonged to members of the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI – now called CCCE), whose members are the chief executive officers of the 150 largest corporations in Canada. As Mulroney was to learn, the BCNI had been methodically mapping out a free trade strategy for him–or whoever else happened to be prime minister–for quite some time. Mulroney was being weaned as the new lapdog for Ronald Reagan under the guise of Security and Prosperity Partnership, which was nothing more than the next stage in annexing Canada to the United States Republic. Partially quoted from this article in The Multinational Monitor.

After the FTA was passed in ‘94 the sluice gates opened and companies began dissolving, merging and expatriating, closing manufacturing operations etc. etc. etc. For the first year it was a bit of a shock to people and then in the following years the working classes were subjected to the effects of closures and layoffs and successive waves of corporate restructuring— bankruptcies, mergers, takeovers, and downsizing. It was like every day in the paper huge layoffs and closures all over the country. Then publicly owned enterprises in strategic sectors such as energy and transportation were being transferred en masse to the private sector.

Then years later, the CCCE took off the gloves.

They came right out with tails blazing and held their first public meeting: The World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999.

lesbian, transsexual, gay, lgbt, transgender,ftaa, global trade,

In Honor Of The 10-year Anniversary of WTO Seattle Bash Back

Seattle WTO

And then the summits became routine, and the dissolving middle class began protesting for real.

The corporate world rulers built a security wall around them at the Third Summit of the Americas: Quebec City, Canada April 20, 2001. This was more of a symbolic statement, a line in the sand. The intention was to make a division, a caste.

And then at APEC ‘97, the next public display of this pseudo aristocracy of CEO’s. With the gloves off – the RCMP following direct orders from the Prime Minister’s office, ignored our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and confiscated the protesters signs – using pepper spray on a non-violent crowd.

Wall

Hey, if you’re dissolving a middle class, that means eventually the upper middle class will be switching to knockoffs too. So where does that leave us now?

Coco Chanel: “I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.” Perhaps it’s time for them to reconsider why they’re in the game.

Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn "Kai and Luzia" (2003)

Mona Kuhn’s photos are a dreamy delight of nude photo art, and a testament to the synchronous relationship between photographer and subject. | monakuhn.com | Scott Nichols Gallery | 13-minute audio interview for Lens Culture.

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Since then, the event has grown to encompass memorials in dozens of cities across the world.

more about "Today is the Transgender Day of Remem…", posted with vodpod

”Candy” launched in London: The first fashion magazine ever completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transexuality, cross dressing and androgyny.

”Candy” is the first fashion magazine ever completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transexuality, cross dressing and androgyny, and it was launched last night in London. A limited edition of 1000 copies, the publication is promising to shake the fashion world, and pushes people to take on the persona of what they always wanted to be.

more about "”Candy” launched in London: The fir…", posted with vodpod

Transgender woman forced to perform oral sex, prison guard gets four month jail term.

Courage comes in many different forms. For Esmeralda a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico who faced horrific circumstances in immigration detention, it came in the form of seeking justice. Kept in a segregated cell with other transgender detainees, Esmeralda never realized that her experience in detention would match the trauma of discrimination she had faced back home. But her story is also one of hope for change.

An immigration official forced Esmeralda (formerly Mayra), a transgender woman, to perform oral sex on him while she was in the custody of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. The official later resigned and was sentenced to four months in jail. After reporting the abuse, Ms. Soto suffered various forms of retaliation and often feared for her life. Ms. Soto, who came to the U.S. seeking asylum, had also been raped by a male inmate while detained at a jail in her native Mexico. She currently resides in Southern California.

sources:
Breakthrough.tv | Portraits Of Courage

Antony Hegarty – on “Everglade”

Antony Hegarty:

“They’re actually entwined, those two ideas – being born into the transgender community, my experience of being in my body has been quite alienated. I felt I was stuck inside this thing. I have been searching my whole life for a place where I belonged, and ‘Everglade’ is about my realisation that I do belong. I am at home. I am a part of the sunlight and the water and the trees. My body stopped crying for home, I stopped feeling alienated. I stopped having such cruel thoughts in my head, that I was alone and would always be alone. [from an interview in Plan B Mag. Dec. 2008]

“A few years ago I was lying in a canoe at a friend’s house in upstate New York, flat out on the water, and looking up at the trees above me, and suddenly was struck by imagining that each of the leaves was an eye. ‘Everglade’ is addressing that alienation, seeking to re-connect with that perpetually watching world.”
[from an interview in Plan B Mag. Dec. 2008]

Everglade – Studio version:

Lyrics:

When I’m floating in the water
And your eyes are lilies all around
When I’m lying sweetly in my bed
The sun plays crystal with my eyes

Then I stop
My body stops crying for home
My limbs stop weeping for home

When I’m peeping in a parlour of trees
And the leaves are winking all around
I’m home, my heart sobs in my veins
But brains they play the softest games

Fingers kiss the string
Mouth taste the blade
Of everglade (x3)

Antony and the Johnsons – Everglade – [Live] Laiterie Strasbourg – April 2009

“I wanted to make a marker in time, marking the incredible loss we’re all feeling as we deplete the world, the only world we know, the only world we will ever know. Heaven is not elsewhere; this is all we have. We’re at such a critical point with it, not only in the physical sense but also on a threshold of feeling. This has preoccupied me throughout my adult life, and it has reached critical mass in terms of my wanting to take it as a clear theme for this group of work, at this particular point in time. I set myself a task to be really clear about it, to write and talk unmediatedly, to set down a marker in time to show directly how I’m feeling, and that’s what Another World is.”

“My favorite song is “Everglade”, just because it feels like the most recent song I wrote, and it really describes how I feel today. It’s a song about me peering out and looking at the leaves, and the leaves have eyes in them, and they are looking back at me. Everything is more alive than ever and yet, I’m sitting with a very beautiful world, but I’m still aware of a brokenness in me. And it’s about sitting with these two things at the same time — brokenness and a beautiful world.” [from an interview in The Tripwire Feb. 2009]

**full interview from Tripwire: here
** full interview from Plan B mag over at bunnyrabble