May 19, 2012
Man enough to be a woman and still rock’n'rolling [theindependent.co.uk]
by Matilda Battersby / theindependent.co.uk
It has been all over the newspapers that Against Me! singer Tom Gabel has decided to live as a woman. The Mail Online’s headline shrieked: “Punk rocker says he is having a sex change operation to become a woman… but he’s STAYING with his wife.” Another read: “Drugs, Sex(uality) and Rock’n'Roll”.
It was quite a surprise that the frontman of a rather macho band (all black jeans, tattoos and growling guitars) should have felt this way. During an interview with Rolling Stone magazine she described plans to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery, after which he will be named Laura Jane Grace. “I’m going to have embarrassing moments,” she said. “But [I'm] hoping people will understand, and hoping they’ll be fairly kind.”
The news reports have not all been “fairly kind” and a couple were not very understanding at all, revealing thinly disguised ignorance about transgenderism. Several made inferences about Gabel’s sexuality and the implications for his marriage, confusing Gabel’s gender dysphoria (where you feel trapped in a body of the wrong sex) with questions about whether being a woman and having a wife makes her gay. Most strikingly, several of the reports lauded Gabel as “the first major rock star” to come out as transgender. While it is undoubtedly the case that in 2012 transgenderism is still a taboo, the statement that it has taken this long for a major musician to “come out” as trans simply isn’t true.
Fans of Jayne County will already know this. Born Wayne Rogers in 1947, County began performing as Jayne in 1979. With a signature track titled “Man Enough to Be a Woman”, County is acknowledged as one of the earliest, probably the first, transgender rock star. Despite never quite achieving the commercial success of some of her peers, the American was a big part of the English punk scene, forming Wayne County & the Electric Chairs in 1977. David Bowie, Patti Smith and Lou Read have credited her with influencing them.
There are more recent examples of high-profile musicians who have changed gender: Mina Caputo, formerly Keith Caputo, singer of heavy metal band Life Of Agony, confirmed last year that she was transitioning. German pop singer Kim Petras is probably the world’s youngest transgender musician (and one of the youngest post-operative trans people, full stop), after having sex reassignment surgery in 2009 aged 16. Jethro Tull keyboardist Dee Palmer (formerly David) transitioned at the aged of 67, long after he’d left the band.
The word “transgender” doesn’t refer to people who have had sex changes. It is an umbrella term used to describe those who identify with a gender which isn’t the one they were born with, or with no particular gender at all, regardless of whether they have sex reassignment surgery or take hormones.
Another famous muso, Antony Hegarty of the Mercury Prize-winning band Antony and the Johnsons, was born male, but is transitioned. “Do I feel female? You know, I feel like a mixture. I feel pretty mixed. I probably would identify as transgender,” he told NME. Similarly, Genesis P-Orridge of 1970s band Throbbing Gristle, sees himself as “pandrogynous”.
It’s not only rock and punk that have a healthy number of trans representatives. Jazz bassist John Leitham became Jennifer Leitham in 2001. Dana International, who won the 1998 Eurovision song contest for Israel, released her debut album soon after having sex reassignment surgery in 1993.
Regardless of whether Gabel is the first rock star to admit to being transgender, he is still brave to go public. The paradox of the music industry is that, despite nurturing talent and putting musicians with unusual or distinct sounds in the spotlight, there is still a perception that artists need to be squeaky clean and conventional if they’re to sell. Record labels have been known to advise against lifestyle choices that are celebrated and accepted in wider society, such as being gay, for fear that fans will no longer fancy their pop stars or believe that one day they can marry them – and that this will dent sales. Their attitude may be repugnant, but you can understand it from a business point of view.
Of all the companies I called, only one would speak to me on the record. That was Brighton-based Fat Cat Records, whose founder, Dave Cawley, spoke very supportively of trans artists but agreed he wouldn’t be surprised if pressure was applied at the corporate end of the industry not to come out.
Several people I spoke to off the record made it clear that the mainstream music scene is not a happy place to be transgender. One industry executive, who did not want to be named, said: “Trans musicians are treated in much the same way as gay artists. The straight men who run the music business aren’t ever particularly comfortable knowing how to work them and there is pressure not to come out.”
I contacted seven transgender musicians for comment, receiving polite refusals from Gabel, Dee Palmer and Justin Vivian Bond, and silence from three others.
Our Lady J, a gospel singer who has a growing following and counts Daniel Radcliffe among her fans, launched her musical career after transitioning from male to female. She told me: “There is a responsibility to educate that comes with being trans if you have any hope of surviving. I think this often keeps people from transitioning. There are huge risks, both professionally and personally.”
Joan King, chair of The Gender Trust, has worked as an artist manager in the music industry for two decades. “There is pressure not to come out as transgender in the music industry,” she said. “But I don’t think this is any different from boy bands being told not disclose that they have girlfriends and wives.”
May 12, 2012
Adversity and Strength: Young Cancer Patients Sing “Stronger”
The hemoncology floor of Seattle Children’s Hospital performs Kelly Clarkson’s song “Stronger”
April 30, 2012
National Geographic: A Question of Identity [tvworthwatching.com]
by Eric Gould / tvworthwatching.com
One of the most hard-won achievements in life is finding out and knowing who we really are. For three young people in an upcoming National Geographic documentary, discovering their true selves was just the beginning…
American Transgender is a new work from writer and director Leslie Schwerin that unfolds in verite format, with the subjects speaking for themselves without narration. They recount becoming aware of their differences as children, and then discuss their courageous decisions as young adults to transition through surgery to the opposite sex. American Transgender premieres Tuesday, May 1 at 8 p.m. ET on the National Geographic Channel.
The documentary uses evocative montages of childhood pictures to introduce us to the show’s subjects. Sarah and Jennifer go on to have hormone treatments and surgeries to become Eli and Jim. Alex, a young man, does the same to transition to Clair.
All three talk extensively about growing up having to “act” the role of girl or boy – all while being mocked and feeling trapped and tortured in the wrong body.
One of the most uplifting parts of American Transgender is seeing the support and acceptance the three received from their families before and after the transition process. Coming out as gay – as Alex did as a teenager – is difficult enough, but revealing a desire to change one’s sex presumably doubles the weight.
It’s reassuring to see parents so committed to their children’s happiness. Jim’s mother, Diane, says, “we adjusted our thoughts from “tomboy” to “gay” and we moved on. We were getting used to that, and all of the sudden, (Jennifer) said my name is going to be Jim’.” She laughs, “I was just getting used to gay.” (Jim at right, after transition.)
Making the personal decision is to transform gender is just the first step. The physical difficulties of the process and the challenge of passing for the opposite sex are openly discussed.
Eli talks openly about his frustration during transition, and how after months of treatments, he still was being called “ma’am” by grocery store clerks. And Clair’s story, beginning as it does with her shopping for a wedding dress, takes a surprising, charming turn on which the entire documentary pivots.
In the case of the documentary’s three subjects transition was a success, and each have gone on to new relationships in their new identities. They all experience happy endings, for the most part, whereas some previous documentaries on transgenderism have profiled transitions that haven’t progressed as well.
To its credit, American Transgender is about healthy well-adjustment and not a gratuitous look at alternative lifestyles. These are brave journeys of self-acceptance for people who not only went inward to get to know who they are, but were then able to summon the courage to go forward into a process that included surgery and chemical treatments, knowing there was no guarantee of success.
As Eli (right) says, “I wanted my body to look on the outside how I felt on the inside.”
His close friend, Antonio, another female-to-male transgender, adds, “there’s a choice of happiness and misery. And there’s a choice of being true to yourself, or living a lie.”
It’s worth noting that regardless of gender identity, that’s good overall advice. And in that way, there is something for all of us in American Transgender.
http://www.tvworthwatching.com/BlogPostDetails.aspx?postId=1797
April 29, 2012
Homophobic Much? Maybe You Are Gay? [nytimes.com]
WHY are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?
In recent years, Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader who preached that homosexuality was a sin, resigned after a scandal involving a former male prostitute; Larry Craig, a United States senator who opposed including sexual orientation in hate-crime legislation, was arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct in a men’s bathroom; and Glenn Murphy Jr., a leader of the Young Republican National Convention and an opponent of same-sex marriage, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after being accused of sexually assaulting another man.
One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation” — the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled. Even Mr. Haggard seemed to endorse this idea when, apologizing after his scandal for his anti-gay rhetoric, he said, “I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war.”
It’s a compelling theory — and now there is scientific reason to believe it. In this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we and our fellow researchersprovide empirical evidence that homophobia can result, at least in part, from the suppression of same-sex desire.
Our paper describes six studies conducted in the United States and Germany involving 784 university students. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.
The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds — long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.
Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.
What leads to this repression? We found that participants who reported having supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation and less susceptible to homophobia. Individuals whose sexual identity was at odds with their implicit sexual attraction were much more frequently raised by parents perceived to be controlling, less accepting and more prejudiced against homosexuals.
It’s important to stress the obvious: Not all those who campaign against gay men and lesbians secretly feel same-sex attractions. But at least some who oppose homosexuality are likely to be individuals struggling against parts of themselves, having themselves been victims of oppression and lack of acceptance. The costs are great, not only for the targets of anti-gay efforts but also often for the perpetrators. We would do well to remember that all involved deserve our compassion.
Richard M. Ryan is a professor of psychology, psychiatry and education at the University of Rochester. William S. Ryan is a doctoral student in psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/homophobic-maybe-youre-gay.html?_r=1
April 29, 2012
Gender identity and children who struggle with it [washingtonpost.com]
By Janice D’Arcy / washingtonpost.com
Gender nonconformity is a new term for many of us, but for some families it’s an issue that has gone unrecognized for too long.
Increasingly, more families with children who struggle with gender are speaking out and asking for more rights and more inclusion.
One high-profile story last year involved a mother and her transgender 7-year-old petitioning to join the Girl Scouts. Other families joined Anderson Cooper a few months ago to talk about their experiences onhis talk show.
Sarah Feliciano, who has lived in a transitional housing space for homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth, is a transgender female who became homeless after her mother rejected her decision to live as a woman. (Whitney Shefte – The Washington Post)
Experts are also beginning to pay attention to these children. In March, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a collection of studies on children and adolescents with gender identity disorders.
“Gender non-conformity refers to any individual, adult or child, who does not abide by our culture’s socially defined binary gender boxes,” Diane Ehrensaft told me.
Ehrensaft is a developmental and clinical psychologist and author of “Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-nonconforming Children,” (The Experiment, 2011). She is the featured speaker for tonight’s inaugural event in the Human Rights Campaign new speaker series, Equality Talks. (Details on that D.C. event are below.)
I asked her to define some of the terminology used when we talk about gender and children, and describe how parents can better support these kids, whether at home or in the community. Here’s our Q &A:
Can you explain how a parent might recognize gender non-conformity in a child?
It may involve a person saying he or she does not feel in synch with the gender listed on the birth certificate; it may involve the girl who says she will never, ever wear a dress, even when she’s supposed to be a bridesmaid or flower girl dressed in frills.
A parent will recognize it just by paying attention — it is the child who in one way or another says a transgressive “no, I don’t want to” or “no, I won’t” or “no, I can’t” to social expectations about gender, and it is the child who in one way or another says, “But here’s the way I’m going to put gender together creatively for myself, based on my own needs and desires.” If a parent can’t see it, it may be because the child has already figured out that it’s not going to be okay in the family, and therefore hides it, and that is never good for a child’s sense of well-being and confidence in who they are. Another reason a parent may not recognize it is that it hasn’t yet surfaced in the child, and may just show up at a later date.
Many children, especially toddlers, seem to arbitrarily and temporarily reject certain clothes or rules. How might a parent know when a child is going through a temporary phase or if he or she is expressing a more deeply ingrained view of him or herself?
Almost all children, at one time or another, do something that is outside the conforming gender box. A sister may think it’s fun one day to put on her brother’s football uniform. A little boy may ask to have his toenails painted red like his mommy’s.
This is to be differentiated from the child who consistently, persistently or even insistently crosses gender lines in either presentation, activities or declaration of what their gender is. Those latter children will fit the category of gender-nonconforming children. Some parents will still ask, in these situations, “But couldn’t it just be a phase?” The answer is yes, but as more time goes on and the child continues to express in gender-nonconforming ways, it is far more likely that the child is not going to outgrow the gender nonconformity, at least for the foreseeable future. The real challenge for both parents and professionals is knowing that we may have to live in a state of not-knowing for awhile, and in the meantime leaving all gender doors open.
Also, one cautionary note about “phases.” Often, in referring to our children, “phase” actually has a negative connotation — ”Don’t worry. It’s just a phase, he (she) will get over it.” With gender, holding on to the notion of phase might unwittingly transmit to your child that who your child is is not okay with you. Perhaps a better way to think about it is with “cross-section:” ”I don’t know who my child will become, but this is who my child is now at this cross-section of his or her life.”
How early might a child experience gender nonconformity?
We are seeing babies as early as the last quarter of the first year of life showing signs of gender nonconformity. Typically, it tends to show up first in the toddler and preschool years as children learn what gender is and develop language and activities to express themselves.
What are some of the most important ways a parent can guide a child through this experience?
The most important way a parent can guide a child through this experience is by always remembering that parents have little control over their children’s gender identity, but tremendous influence over their child’s gender health.
To ensure that health, a parent can listen to what their child is saying or showing about his or her gender expressions (how we act and present ourselves) or gender identity (how we identify as male, female or other) and open a space for that child to feel free to create his or her own unique authentic gender self, what I call the true gender self.
Just as the flight attendant instructs parents to administer oxygen to themselves before helping their child, the challenging task of raising a healthy gender-nonconforming child can often best be done by first reaching out for the social “oxygen” of parent support groups, listservs, educational services and informed gender specialists so that the parents are not going it alone in affirming their child’s true gender self.
You plan to talk tonight about gender creativity and gender expansiveness. Can you briefly explain what those terms mean?
Gender creativity is the thread each of us uses to create a true gender self that is a combination of nature, nurture and culture, a construction that I call the gender web. Like fingerprints, each of our gender webs will be unique to us, but unlike fingerprints, the gender web does not stay permanently the same, but can evolve and change over the course of a person’s lifetime. Gender creativity is the force within us, if allowed to express itself, that will both build and replenish the gender web as we grow.
Gender expansiveness is the opening up in both the culture and within ourselves all the permutations and combinations gender might take, without privileging one type over another. We often refer to gender expansiveness in terms of gender acceptance or gender diversity.
Ehrensaft’s talk tonight will be at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington at 6 p.m. It will also be broadcast live on the Equality Talks Web site.
March 25, 2012
Where Is The Physician Outrage? [whatever.scalzi.com]
by Anonymous Doctor
Originally published on Whatever (http://whatever.scalzi.com)
Right. Here.
I’m speaking, of course, about the required-transvaginal-ultrasound thing that seems to be the flavor-of-the-month in politics.
I do not care what your personal politics are. I think we can all agree that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.
I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.
In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.
After all, it’s our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.
Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it’s the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation. They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women’s bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.
It is our responsibility, as always, to protect our patients from things that would harm them. Therefore, as physicians, it is our duty to refuse to perform a medical procedure that is not medically indicated. Any medical procedure. Whatever the pseudo-justification.
It’s time for a little old-fashioned civil disobedience.
Here are a few steps we can take as physicians to protect our patients from legislation such as this.
1) Just don’t comply. No matter how much our autonomy as physicians has been eroded, we still have control of what our hands do and do not do with a transvaginal ultrasound wand. If this legislation is completely ignored by the people who are supposed to implement it, it will soon be worth less than the paper it is written on.
2) Reinforce patient autonomy. It does not matter what a politician says. A woman is in charge of determining what does and what does not go into her body. If she WANTS a transvaginal ultrasound, fine. If it’s medically indicated, fine… have that discussion with her. We have informed consent for a reason. If she has to be forced to get a transvaginal ultrasound through coercion or overly impassioned argument or implied threats of withdrawal of care, that is NOT FINE.
Our position is to recommend medically-indicated tests and treatments that have a favorable benefit-to-harm ratio… and it is up to the patient to decide what she will and will not allow. Period. Politicians do not have any role in this process. NO ONE has a role in this process but the patient and her physician. If anyone tries to get in the way of that, it is our duty to run interference.
3) If you are forced to document a non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound because of this legislation, document that the patient refused the procedure or that it was not medically indicated. (Because both of those are true.) Hell, document that you attempted but the patient kicked you in the nose, if you have to.
4) If you are forced to enter an image of the ultrasound itself into the patient chart,ultrasound the bedsheets and enter that picture with a comment of “poor acoustic window”. If you’re really gutsy, enter a comment of “poor acoustic window…plus, I’m not a rapist.” (I was going to propose repeatedly entering a single identical image in affected patient’s charts nationwide, as a recognizable visual protest…but I don’t have an ultrasound image that I own to the point that I could offer it for that purpose.)
5) Do anything else you can think of to protect your patients and the integrity of the medical profession. IN THAT ORDER. We already know how vulnerable patients can be; we invisibly protect them on a daily basis from all kinds of dangers inside and outside of the hospital. Their safety is our responsibility, and we practically kill ourselves to ensure it at all costs. But it’s also our responsibility to guard the practice of medicine from people who would hijack our tools of healing for their own political or monetary gain.
In recent years, we have been abject failures in this responsibility, and untold numbers of people have gleefully taken advantage of that. Silently allowing a politician to manipulate our medical decision-making for the purposes of an ideological goal erodes any tiny scrap of trust we might have left.
It comes down to this: When the community has failed a patient by voting an ideologue into office…When the ideologue has failed the patient by writing legislation in his own interest instead of in the patient’s…When the legislative system has failed the patient by allowing the legislation to be considered… When the government has failed the patient by allowing something like this to be signed into law… We as physicians cannot and must not fail our patients by ducking our heads and meekly doing as we’re told.
Because we are their last line of defense.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/03/20/guest-post-a-doctor-on-transvaginal-ultrasounds/
March 24, 2012
Why Women Make Better Bosses [livescience.com]
by David Mielach / livescience.com
Women make better bosses. That’s the finding of a new survey, which found that women in management positions lead in a more democratic way, allow employees to participate in decision-making and establish interpersonal channels of communication.
“In line with known gender differences in individual leadership, we find that in workplaces with more women managers, more individualized employee feedback is carried out,” Eduardo Melero, study author and a professor in the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid department of business administration, said. “Likewise, we can see evidence, although weaker, that in these workplace decisions are made more democratically and more interpersonal channels of communications are established.”
Those interpersonal channels of communication facilitated increased communication between management and employees in companies with women in management positions. This has a twofold benefit for these organizations. First, these companies are able to make more well-informed decisions, since employee feedback will be utilized in the decision-making process. Additionally, employees will also have the feeling of contributing to and having their opinions heard at work.
“Women managers seem to be more inclined to use these types of practices, individually, as well as promoting them among the rest of the management team,” Melero said. “And as such, a management team with more women could be more effective (keeping all other factors constant) when implementing them.”
The research, which is published in the Journal of Business Research, was based on data from the Workplace Employment Relationships Survey, a survey of workplaces in the United Kingdom. Melero analyzed this data by looking at the number of women in management positions in companies and the leadership tactics employed at those companies.
March 21, 2012
Turns Out Being Born a Woman Is a Major Financial Mistake [jezebel.com]
by Cassie Murdoch / jezebel.com
As if being a woman wasn’t difficult enough—what with all the not having control over important decisions about our own bodies, making less money than our male colleagues, and, yes, let’s play the childbirth card—we are also routinely hit with financial penalties just for having the balls to be born with a vagina. That’s right, women pay more for everything from razors to houses to health care for no reason other than that we are women. It’s like our own personal vagina tax, and it sucks.
In fact, it’s enraging. You might think such gendered pricing practices would be illegal and we wouldn’t even have to worry about them, but alas they are not. Of course, there are federal civil rights laws which project against discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, but the same cannot be said for the sales of goods and services. Some states and cities have their own statutes, but they often don’t make much of a dent in these kinds of widespread problems.
In fact, this problem is so pervasive that often we don’t even notice it’s happening—we just accept the cost of items as a given, sort of like the air around us. But there are lots of little ways we’re charged more than men. Marie Claire has a detailed run-down of how this plays out, and they point specifically to dry cleaners, who often charge women three times as much to clean shirts which are virtually identical to mens’ dress shirts. They justify this by saying that these “blouses” require extra labor to press. Hmm, seeing as I wear a larger shirt size than some of my male friends, yet their shirts fit on the pressing machine, this hardly seems possible.
Then there are things like haircuts and women’s toiletries, which are typically priced higher than their men’s counterparts, despite the fact that, even though they are all wrapped up in them purty pale pink packages, they are virtually the same products. (Maybe pink ink is just astronomically expensive?) Obviously retailers don’t like to admit to it, since if they did, we’d come running at them, nails filed to a point and extra-gentle razors in hand, demanding a refund, but it is happening.
