hullo this is veron's alliance tumblr. mostly for ND students but it's cool if you're just here too.
-
A Dad Testifies for His Transgender Teen Daughter →
My name is Wayne Maines, I live in Old Town. I have a 13-year-old transgender daughter. In the beginning, I was not onboard with this reality. Like many of you I doubted transgender children could exist, I doubted my wife and I doubted our counselors and doctors. However I never doubted my love for my child. It was only through observing her pain and her suffering and examining my lack of knowledge about these issues did I begin to question my behavior and my conservative values. I learned that the medical standard of care requires parents seek assistance from a panel of experts. We did this and our team of doctors recommended my daughter to live fully as a girl. We cannot turn back now.
When my daughter lost her privileges at school and both children and adults targeted her, I knew I had to change and I have never looked back.
When we moved to Maine, it was clear my daughter was transitioning from male to female with us or without us. She used the girl’s bathroom with no fanfare; she was confident and very social. Her strong personality helped the entire school transition right along side of her. She was proud and secure with herself and when people asked at the young age of six she openly stated that she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body.
The transformation was amazing, but her happiness would not last. Unfortunately the fears of others would destroy everything that our team of doctors, teachers, school counselors, friends and classmates had work so hard to establish.
I know that it is difficult for some of you to understand the needs of transgender children. You only need to spend some time with these kids to see that they are struggling and suffering beyond your imagination only because they are singled out and misunderstood. They are just like your children and grandchildren; they have the same hopes and the same dreams.
In the fifth grade because of significant negative exposure we had to take drastic measures to protect her from harm, including splitting our family up to go in hiding and we are not the only family that has had to do so. When she was told she could no longer use the appropriate bathroom her confidence and self-esteem took a major hit. Prior to this my daughter often said, “Dad being transgender is no big deal, my friends and I have it under control.” I was very proud of her. It was only when adults became involved with their unfounded fears that her world would be turned upside down. “She came to me crying and asked, “Daddy what did I do wrong? Daddy please fix this?” That is what dads do — we fix things. I had to break her heart and say, “You have not done anything wrong sweetie, but Mommy and I do not know how to fix this, but we will try.”
Continuing to single these kids out is not necessary. Having the opportunity to use the bathrooms of their true gender is essential for these kids’ well being. This bill places transgender children in a position of doom and hopelessness. This bill tells my daughter that she does not have the same rights as her classmates and reinforces her opinion that she has no future. Help me give her the future she deserves. Do not pass this bill.- Wayne Maines, in a testimony against Maine’s proposed bill which would allow the operator of a restroom or shower facility to decide who can use which gender’s restroom based upon “biological sex.”
Originally posted by Joanne Herman at Huffington Post (follow link to read her commentary on this amazing testimony)
Source: xxboy
-
Asexuality = Not experiencing sexual attraction
Demisexuality: Not experiencing primary sexual attraction, only when a strong emotional bond is formed
Grey-A: Identifying in the grey area of sexuality, between asexuality and sexuality
Asexuality ≠ Celibacy
Love ≠ Sex
Marriage ≠ Sex
Sexual attraction ≠ Sexual behaviour
Sexual orientation ≠ Romantic orientation
Asexuality ≠ Slut-shaming
Demisexuality ≠ Slut-shaming
Sexual ≠ Slut
Having sex ≠ Slut -
Transgender detainees cut off from hormone drugs →
SANTA ANA — In the depths of depression, battling hot flashes and desperate about her situation, Monica Freas tried to throw herself from the second floor of the Santa Ana Jail before friends restrained her.
After two decades of taking hormone replacement therapy, the 35-year-old no longer had access to the drugs that made her feel comfortable in her own skin. She begged and pleaded with jailers for months to give her the medication that made her “feel normal” but they refused.
“I just can’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore,” Freas said in a recent interview while in detention on suspicion of being in the country illegally. She rubbed her face and pointed to the stubble on her cheeks. “For years I tried hard to get to that point and for it all to be taken away?”
Uriel Freas, who was born male in Mexico and is now known as Monica, is one of about 40 transgender immigration detainees at the Santa Ana Jail who have tried for months to get hormone replacement therapy. She and others have shared their stories with the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center, an advocacy group that has filed complaints with the Department of Homeland Security alleging that jailers nationwide have deprived detainees of “adequate health care” by denying them the therapy. Read about the complaints.
Transgender Americans face high suicide risk
Immigrant rights groups, the American Medical Association and others in the medical community say hormone replacement therapy is not an elective or cosmetic treatment but necessary in cases of gender identity disorder. Those with the disorder feel a strong identification with the opposite sex, which causes intense emotional pain and suffering, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Others question whether taxpayers should fund the treatment for a certain population of immigration detainees. While immigration officials say they don’t know the exact cost of providing hormone therapy to detainees, at least one physician puts the price tag at about $1,000 per person per year for treatment and monitoring.
It is unclear how many transgender detainees make up the estimated daily immigration detention population of more than 30,000 at nationwide facilities because Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials don’t track such figures, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. Currently, the Santa Ana Jail houses about 40 transgender detainees as part of a contract with ICE.
Over the last few months, Santa Ana Jail has become the primary host for vulnerable and special needs ICE detainees — including transgender detainees — for the Los Angeles area, ICE officials said.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-illegal immigration think-tank, said taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the treatment.
“It’s one thing if you have a medication that is necessary for you to continue breathing,” Krikorian said. “It’s not what this is. As important as it may be for the people undergoing the process, it’s not the government’s responsibility to provide them with it.”
Eric Berndt, an attorney with the Heartland Alliance, said the detainees have the right to the medication.
“The U.S. government has a fundamental responsibility to provide for the healthcare needs and dignity of anyone that they take off the streets and put in jail. If we’re going to lock someone up, we need to provide for their basic needs,” he said.
Freas said she’s taken hormone replacement therapy since she was 15 because it transformed her into a woman — something she’d wanted since she was a youngster.
She bought the drugs from friends, on the black market and at a Mexican specialty shop in Pomona before she became incarcerated.
However, six months ago, Freas landed in immigration custody after police gave her a ticket for loitering — her seventh criminal conviction in 14 years, immigration officials said.
She was taken to Santa Ana Jail, where she said she was cut off from hormone therapy even after multiple requests. After that she spiraled into depression and attempted to kill herself in February, she said.
Immigration officials acknowledge that Freas climbed over a railing into a platform at the Santa Ana Jail but said there was no indication she was going to jump.
Freas told Santa Ana jailers she wasn’t serious about committing suicide and instead wanted attention because she’d been disciplined earlier in the day for starting rumors about other detainees, according to immigration officials. She met with a counselor, had a psychiatric evaluation and was given depression medication as a precaution, officials said.
ICE officials said hormone therapy is provided to transgender detainees on a case-by-case basis when health care professionals have determined it to be medically necessary at detention facilities staffed by ICE Health Service Corps personnel.
However, Santa Ana Jail does not have this service. The decision to provide hormone therapy at the Santa Ana Jail is made by the facility’s on-site health care provider.
Santa Ana Jail officials began to give hormone replacement therapy in March at the request of ICE officials, Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said in a written statement.
In an April interview, Freas said only one transgender detainee had received hormone treatment. She said she and others still had been denied, despite numerous requests.
Kice said they have no record of Freas requesting hormone therapy until late April. Freas is scheduled for a medical consultation to determine whether hormone therapy is medically necessary, Kice said.
ICE is working on a policy to ensure consistent treatment at all facilities that house ICE detainees, officials said. The policy would likely mirror the practice that is followed at facilities staffed by ICE Health Service Corps personnel.
Krikorian called the government’s response to the hormone therapy issue a “parody.”
“Hormone therapy for illegal aliens?” he said. “It’s almost like a parody that someone at Saturday Night Live would think of.”
Experts say that denying hormone replacement therapy to someone with gender identity disorder can have medical implications ranging from depression to near death.
Hormone replacement therapy decreases the effects of testosterone and increases feminization, experts say. It is usually administered by injection in prison settings, said Dr. George R. Brown, a professor of psychiatry at East Tennessee State University who has testified across the country on behalf of transgender inmates who have sued state prison systems to get access to healthcare, including hormone therapy.
Abrupt discontinuation of the therapy can have dire consequences for patients, Brown said. Physically, those cut off from the medication develop prominent facial hair, spontaneous erections and breast development reversal, he said.
“However, the greatest concern in terms of negative consequences is the psychological changes,” Brown said. “There’s depression, moodiness… possibility of suicide and auto castration.”
In extreme cases, transgender detainees deprived of estrogen have castrated themselves to get rid of the testosterone and have suffered extensive bleeding, Brown said. The cost of a hospital stay for auto castration could be anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000, he added.
“If you can get past all the stigma and look at it from a purely fiscal standpoint, it makes no sense,” he said. “It’ll ultimately cost the system more money to block them from having access.”
Carolina, born Manuel, Zelaya-Ortega, said she endured sleepless nights, migraines and depression after she was deprived of hormone replacement therapy while she was in immigration detention at the Santa Ana Jail.
“It became a mental issue for me,” said Zelaya-Ortega, who spent about 10 months in detention until January, when a judge granted her immigration relief. “It’s a medical problem. I needed hormones.”
The 50-year-old, who had taken hormone replacement therapy since she was a teenager in Honduras, said she and other transgender detainees petitioned the jailers numerous times for the therapy but to no avail.
“There was one gal who kept saying that she wanted to kill herself,” Zelaya-Ortega said. “For me it wasn’t that bad but for others it was a real emergency.”
Most transgender individuals in detention are suspected of being in the country illegally. Others are legal immigrants who are suspected of committing a crime that has made them deportable.
However, many who came to the United States to escape persecution from their native countries are eligible for asylum as long as they apply during their first year, according to immigration law.
Freas fled her native Mexico at age 15 with an aunt, crossing into the United States illegally because both feared she’d be killed. She said her father beat her regularly because she was too feminine.
Whether transgender refugees crossed legally or illegally into the U.S. doesn’t have much bearing in gaining immigration relief, said attorney Berndt. It becomes more complicated if the transgender individual fails to apply for asylum after they’ve been here longer than a year, he said.
That was the case for Zelaya-Ortega, who crossed illegally into Calexico in 1988 and attempted to apply for asylum that same year. But she said a notary scammed her out of hundreds of dollars and she missed the one-year window to make the petition.
Instead, Zelaya-Ortega avoided deportation and can stay in the United States legally after a judge determined that she would likely be persecuted and tortured if deported to Honduras. Her attorney submitted her story about rape, torture and abuse at the hands of her father, military and police officials, which helped to ultimately convince the judge to issue a “withholding of removal and relief under the convention against torture” — an international accord.
That essentially means that immigration officials are not allowed to deport Zelaya-Ortega because she’d likely face torture.
Freas has a story similar to Zelaya-Ortega’s. Both say they tried to find regular jobs but ended up resorting to prostitution to make a living and to pay for the hormone therapy they bought in the black market. A good portion of transgender individuals resort to selling their bodies for money because they’re unable to find work because of the way they look, transgender experts said.
The two also found it increasingly difficult to negotiate the trauma of life-long abuse and found solace in methamphetamine, which ultimately got them in trouble with the law and put them at risk for deportation.
Their stories aren’t uncommon for transgender people, Berndt said.
As long as they have a good attorney, many transgender immigrants fleeing persecution and fighting deportation have a very good chance to stay because of the international convention against torture, he said.
Theo Lacy Facility in Orange, which formerly housed transgender detainees, had a policy of giving them hormone replacement therapy if their medical examiners determined they needed it for gender identity disorder, medical officials there said.
Like Theo Lacy, the California’s prison system also administers hormone therapy to inmates with the disorder. Officials there take it a step further, giving the therapy to inmates with the disorder even if they hadn’t taken it before their incarceration.
“California really does have the best policies that exist but that doesn’t say there isn’t room for improvement,” Brown said.
Earlier this year, a California prison inmate born male but who lives as a female filed a lawsuit against the state seeking sex reassignment surgery so she can be assigned to a women’s prison, according to news reports.
Prison officials had provided her with female hormones since her 2003 incarceration.
Freas doesn’t want surgery, just hormone therapy. She said she’d be willing to pay for it herself if she had the money.
“But that’s impossible because I’m detained,” she added.
She said she was speaking out for herself and others in detention because she hopes to spark a change.
Krikorian, who heads the Washington, D.C.-group that believes in restricting legal and illegal immigration, said he hopes advocates push the issue into the spotlight.
“If anything is going to torpedo the efforts by the administration to weaken enforcement or change detention to make it more appealing to the detainee, this is the issue that will do it,” he said.
(via anarchoawesome-deactivated20110)
Source: MSNBC
-
GSM or LGBT? →
stifledthoughts:jizzykram:petitandrogyne:deadlegsonwheels:
GSM stands for Gender & Sexuality Minority
I prefer it to LGBT because GSM is more inclusive
Basically any gender or sexuality that isn’t considered heteronormative could go under GSM. As well as lgbt the following genders/sexualities could go under GSM.
This is not a limit just all i can think of so far. Any others let me know.
- Genderqueer
- Genderfuck
- Genderless
- Bigender
- Third gender
- Pangender
- Androgynous
- Asexual
- Demisexual
- Polysexual
- Polyamorous
- Pomosexual
- Pansexual
- Genderfluid
WOWZA
I HAVEN’T BEEN THIS PLEASED SINCE I DISCOVERED GENDER NEUTRAL PRONOUNS
awesome!
I fucking like this
-
Let them grow to be whatever they want to be, as long as they’re good. Let them blossom into whatever they want to be. Support them 100 percent.
–Oscar Viveros, father of transgender teen Andii who recently won Prom Queen at her South Florida technical school.
He doesn’t have the pronouns down yet, but says he views his child as a “straight female.” I think there are a LOT of misconceptions about cultural and class issues with gender diversity - i.e. that you have to be white and middle to upper class to get it and be accepting. Experience tells me this is far from the case and I think Mr. Viveros speaks for himself.
(via Transgender McFatter senior crowned prom queen)
(via xxboy)
Source: miamiherald.typepad.com
-
The story of America’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community is the story of our fathers and sons, our mothers and daughters, and our friends and neighbors who continue the task of making our country a more perfect Union. It is a story about the struggle to realize the great American promise that all people can live with dignity and fairness under the law. Each June, we commemorate the courageous individuals who have fought to achieve this promise for LGBT Americans, and we rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
–Presidential Proclamation—Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month | The White House
Follow the link to read the whole proclamation, in which Obama talks about what his administration is doing and has done for LGBT Americans. To be clear, he, like the rest of the world, is basically using LGBT as a stand-in for “gay and lesbian” and maybe other queer sexualities. Every time I read the misuse/overuse of this acronym I want to throw something at a wall…
but I really like this particular paragraph that I’ve quoted, which opens the whole proclamation.
(via xxboy)
(via xxboy)
Source: whitehouse.gov
-
Petition to remove Crossdressing as a mental disorder from the DSM-5 →
(via justjasper)
Source: transqueery
-
Presidential Proclamation--Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month →
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2011 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.
BARACK OBAMA
Holy fucking shit our president is awesome.
(via countriesinspace)
Source: jerfrey
-
xxboy:washingtonpostinnovations:
More great work from the WP’s award-winning videojournalist Whitney Shefte.
The Wanda Alston House in northeast Washington is a transitional housing space for homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) youth. Eight to nine people between the ages of 16 and 24 live in the house at any given time and there is wait list of 10 to 25 more all the time. I produced this video story about the house, focusing on a transgender woman named Sarah Feliciano. Sarah moved to the house in March after staying at Ronald Reagan National Airport instead of sleeping on the streets or in a shelter. She was initially shunned from her mother’s home after revealing her desire to live as a woman, as Sarah, instead of as a man, named Guy. This story tries to take a look at the struggles these GLBT youth face, especially those are transgender, and the solutions that this house helps provide for them.
The description alone sets this high above most of non-trans media/journalism pieces on trans people!!
Source: whitneyshefte
-
feminine = qualities traditionally expected of women but can be possessed by anyone
girly/womanly = pertaining to girls/women
not the same thing.
(same goes for “masculine” and “manly”)
(via buttnutt-deactivated20110930-de)
Source: homoeroticsubtxt
