US Government rules on Gender Identity

[Sounder]

Thanks for these last two vids Willow. It is interesting that people that are so closely connected to pedophilia, misogyny and mental illness are able to portray themselves as the ones that are taking the moral 'high road'.

[American Dream]

"Kids Will Be Harmed by This": Trump Admin Rolls Back Protections for Transgender Students



MARA KEISLING: The worst-case scenario is what is already happening. Children all over the country are scared by this man. They are really worried that they’re going to go to school tomorrow, they’re going to be bullied. These are kids who have to go to school all the time worried about being bullied by other kids, being bullied sometimes even by educators. And now they have to worry about the attorney general of the United States and the president of the United States bullying them? It’s just not OK.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about President Trump’s decision to roll back protections for transgender students, we’re joined by Chase Strangio, staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT & AIDS Project. The ACLU is representing Gavin Grimm in his Supreme Court case.

Welcome, Chase. Talk about the significance of what’s just taken place.

CHASE STRANGIO: You know, thanks for having me. And yesterday’s action by the Trump administration was really just another example of mean-spirited targeting of vulnerable individuals—this time, transgender young people. The protections that the Obama administration clarified in the guidance last year were incredibly important for this community that is so vulnerable to violence and bullying in schools. What’s important, though, is that as much as the Trump administration may want to change federal law, it’s still in the province of Congress and the courts. And so, yesterday’s actions, while sending a terrible message to the young people who are going to school in this country, young people who face incredibly high rates of suicide and harassment, it does not change the law. And that’s important, because the protections themselves come from Title IX, they come from the Constitution, and the president himself and his executive agencies cannot change that.

More at: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/23/ ... ed_by_this

[Searcher08]

Thanks for these last two vids Willow. It is interesting that people that are so closely connected to pedophilia, misogyny and mental illness are able to portray themselves as the ones that are taking the moral 'high road'.

In the category of "Actually True but would be rejected by The Onion as a ridiculous story idea"

[Luther Blissett]

Congratulations!

[yathrib]

We really need to draw a distinction between people who quite obviously identify as the (biologically) opposite gender from an early age, and pervs for whom it is obviously a paraphilia or a fetish. Most of the latter "discover" this transgender identity much later on, and it appears to be a desire to aggressively appropriate female identity for paraphilic reasons. On the other hand, most of those in whom this is apparent from earliest childhood probably could not fake a biologically congruent persona if they wanted to. I am 99.9999 percent sure that a biological/neurological basis for it will be discovered. We need to look at this as a medical/psychological matter, and not as a "social justice" or religious/moral issue, and make wise judgments accordingly.

[American Dream]

These points remain relevant now more than ever:

There is a huge problem with the way that people are taught about gender in this society. Children are indoctrinated early to believe that there are two sexes, corresponding with two genders, which are both immutable and non-voluntary and completely beyond our control. This worldview is called the gender binary, and it has no room in it for us.

Trying to teach a new perspective to the victims of this extremely aggressive brainwashing can be daunting. In fact, the task can seem downright impossible. The temptation, therefore, is to “dumb things down” for the benefit of a cisgender audience. This situation has given rise to a set of oversimplifications collectively known as “Trans 101.” These rather absurd tropes, such as “blank trapped in a blank’s body” cause confusion among even well-meaning cis folks, feed internalized transphobia among us trans people, and provide endless straw-man fodder for transphobic ‘radical feminists,’ entitled cisgender academics, and other bigots.

Near the beginning of my transition, I myself taught “Trans 101” this way. Because I didn’t know any better. Because I had been taught to think of myself in terms of these same useless tropes, as an “FTM,” as a “female man,” as somebody who was “changing sexes.” Eventually, through a lot of intense discussions and a lot of tough love from people who were more knowledgeable, more radical, and more politically sophisticated than myself, I came to see things very differently.

I haven’t tried to teach Trans 101 since extracting my head from my rectum. But I think the time has come for me to tackle the problem of explaining and defining what it means to be transgender without resorting to cissexist language. It strikes me as I contemplate this task that Trans 101 is generally not only dumbed-down, but also declawed. There are truths that I must speak here that are incredibly threatening to a cissupremacist worldview, that attack its very foundations. But I for one am willing to do that. I am not here to make cis people comfortable or to reassure them that they are still the center of the gendered universe. In fact, I am totally fine with doing the opposite.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

Gender Assigned at Birth

Let’s start at the beginning. A baby is born. The doctor says “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” based on the appearance of the child’s genitals. If the genitalia cannot be easily categorized according to binary standards– that is, if the child is intersex– the doctor makes a decision. Surgery is then generally performed on the unconsenting infant to render its body more socially acceptable.

Whether the baby is intersex or not, the child is then raised as whatever arbitrary gender the doctor saw fit to assign.

“Cisgender” is the term for people who have no issue with the gender that they were assigned at birth. For whatever reason, they are able to live somewhat comfortably within the gender in which they have been cast. No one really knows why so many people are capable of fitting into such arbitrary categories.

Transgender people cannot accept our assigned genders. We know ourselves to be something different than what we were told to be. We do not see the random gender scripts we were given by society as relevant to us. We know that there is a different way, a way of autonomy, self-creation, and self-definition, and that this is the way we must follow, because we can never be happy with the parameters that have been mandated for our behavior and our bodies.

The Binary

All cis people and many trans people are binary-identified. Given the options of “man” or “woman,” we who are binary-identified are able to be comfortable with one, even if it is the opposite of what we were assigned. For example, I am a man who was assigned to live as a woman, therefore I am a trans man. My father is a man who was assigned to live as a man, therefore he is a cis man. Both of us are binary identified, both men, even though he is cis and I am trans.

It is a mystery why so many people are comfortable being categorized in just one of two ways. Just as nobody knows why there are so many cis people, nobody knows why there are so many binary identified folks.

But there are many trans people who are neither male nor female. They cannot be categorized as “either/or.” These people may use terms for themselves like genderqueer, androgynous, agender, or neutrois. They often use gender-neutral pronouns such as “ze/hir/hirs” or “they/them/their/theirs.” They can be both male and female, or none of the above, multi-gender, genderless, or something else completely.

In typical trans 101 discussions, right now I would probably be explaining to you that “gender is a spectrum” and drawing a cute little line graph labeled “m” at one end and “f” at the other. But this would be fallacious, as well as total bullshit. Gender is not a line, it is a huge three-dimensional space too big to be bounded by the concepts of “male” and “female.” Being trans is not always about falling “in between” binary genders, and as often as not, it’s about being something too expansive for those ideas to have meaning at all.

Oppression

This brings us, I think, the most important topic of all, and the topic which is most commonly left out of any Trans 101: transphobia and cissexism and how to avoid them.

“Cissexism” can be defined as the system of oppression which considers cis people superior to trans people. Cissexism is believing that it is “natural” to be cis, that being trans is aberrant. Cissexism is holding the genders of trans people to more intense scrutiny than the genders of cis people. Cissexism is defining beauty and attractiveness based on how cis people look. Cissexism is prioritizing cis people’s comfort over trans people’s ability to survive. Cissexism is believing that cis people have more right to have jobs, go to school, date and have sex, make decisions about their bodies, wear the clothes they want, or use public restrooms than trans people do.

Transphobia is irrational fear and hatred of trans people. Transphobia is Silence Of The Lambs. Transphobia is referring to transgender surgery as self-mutilation. Transphobia is believing that trans people habitually “trick” or “fool” others into having sex with us. Transphobia is believing that we are out to rob you of your hetero-or-homosexuality. Transphobia is trans people being stared at, insulted, harassed, attacked, beaten, raped, and murdered for simply existing.

Not Your Mom’s Trans 101 - Asher

[Searcher08]

Congratulations!

Hey I'm transrace too.
And if you say anything against me I'll get you No Platformed and fired as a hate spewing transracephobic bigot.
I demand to be accepted as a Person of Color.

This has been going on historically since the 1990s

[American Dream]

http://www.pmpress.org/content/article. ... 2513405766

Speaking OUT against hate
When I began photographing and collecting stories for Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus, the youth and my peers hoped for, but found it hard to imagine, when LGBTQ rights would be a positive talking point of our political landscape. We could only dream about the day that we would be able to legally marry one another or when A-list trans celebrities would don the cover of house hold magazines.





Over the last decade, these dreams have become a reality. Anti-trans bills were hurting states economically, and anti-LGBTQ rehetoric was shameful. There was so much more work to be done, but we were moving in the right direction.

November 8th, 2016 shook our hope for progress. The recent act of rescinding of Title IX's protection of transgender students protection in schools showed us that this administration does not support our country's youth. RE-legallizing discrimination is ok in their eyes. They had to go out of their way to hurt the trans youth in schools, compromising their safety, mental health, and access to education. This administration sided with the bullies.

Those that oppose this horrendous act are greater in number and we will not sit by silently as our rights get taken away and the protection of our youth get stripped. We must protest, organize, call our representatives, speak up, and speak OUT against hate. We will bend that arc back towards justice so no one, regardless of how they identify, who they love, what they look like, or how they pray will have to live in fear... of going to the bathroom.
___________

Rachelle Lee Smith is an award-winning photographer based in Philadelphia. Rachelle's work in Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus combines her passions for activism and photography.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

[Iamwhomiam]

Knowingly entering false information on an official government document should be an illegal and punishable offense in Canada, just as it would be in the states. Her actions were criminal, imo, and she should be punished accordingly. Perhaps a special law increasing the punishment for such crimes pertaining to sex assignation should be written to minimize the possibility of purposeful misidentification for purely selfish prurient purposes.

[Project Willow]

Knowingly entering false information on an official government document should be an illegal and punishable offense in Canada, just as it would be in the states. Her actions were criminal, imo, and she should be punished accordingly. Perhaps a special law increasing the punishment for such crimes pertaining to sex assignation should be written to minimize the possibility of purposeful misidentification for purely selfish prurient purposes.

Well, the central problem is that there is no objective standard, reflected in the law, for determining trans status. It is entirely subjective and dependent on self report, which is exactly the point she was making in the video. Law must be based on some objective, measurable standard or we get absurd situations like these. Without video evidence like this, you could try to bring charges against her, but how could you ever prove that her internal state at the time was different than what she claims?

No matter how many hormones you ingest, or how much surgery you undergo, you can only ever simulate the opposite sex. You cannot change your underlying biological sex. It seems to me, ID cards should reflect physical sex as this designation is also used in medical emergencies. There are so many consequences to the legal changes the trans community is pushing that haven't been considered. What's worse is we aren't allowed to consider them without being labelled bigots.

[Iamwhomiam]

Screwed up the format so I deleted it and corrected it below.

[American Dream]

Interview about Drugs and Sex and Bathrooms

Dean Spade


OP: What is the most heartening thing you have witnessed in regards to progress being made for trans people in bathrooms?

DS: I think, overall, it is heartening that there are so many more people working on this than there were in 2002. Also, it feels like there are just more trans people and I love that. I think the key thing for us now is to think carefully about what we want our movement to look like. Are we fighting to just have a privileged few of us take our places in the existing racist institutions of the US, or are we part of a broader struggle that would actually benefit all trans people and everyone who is harmed by the enforcement of gender norms? One way this comes up is about the bathroom and sex-segregated facilities. We need to make sure the conversation is not just about the bathroom, but that we take that conversation and use it as a way to talk about how trans people are experiencing violence in all the places where gender norms are enforced through sex segregation, especially prisons, jails, immigration facilities, psychiatric hospitals, group homes, and shelters. The most vulnerable trans people facing the most violence are in these spaces, and if we stick to only thinking about bathrooms and/or mainly imagining the ability of white trans people to access bathrooms at school and work, we will miss the chance to intervene on the most significant sites of violence in trans lives.

http://www.deanspade.net/2016/12/16/int ... bathrooms/

[Iamwhomiam]

Knowingly entering false information on an official government document should be an illegal and punishable offense in Canada, just as it would be in the states. Her actions were criminal, imo, and she should be punished accordingly. Perhaps a special law increasing the punishment for such crimes pertaining to sex assignation should be written to minimize the possibility of purposeful misidentification for purely selfish prurient purposes.

Well, the central problem is that there is no objective standard, reflected in the law, for determining trans status. It is entirely subjective and dependent on self report, which is exactly the point she was making in the video. Law must be based on some objective, measurable standard or we get absurd situations like these. Without video evidence like this, you could try to bring charges against her, but how could you ever prove that her internal state at the time was different than what she claims?

No matter how many hormones you ingest, or how much surgery you undergo, you can only ever simulate the opposite sex. You cannot change your underlying biological sex. It seems to me, ID cards should reflect physical sex as this designation is also used in medical emergencies. There are so many consequences to the legal changes the trans community is pushing that haven't been considered. What's worse is we aren't allowed to consider them without being labelled bigots.

Well, the central problem is that there is no objective standard, reflected in the law, for determining trans status. It is entirely subjective and dependent on self report, which is exactly the point she was making in the video.

Yes, I understand this and find it why such a law is unworkable, it lacks an objective standard for legally determining trans status and as long as that remains the case, as you write below, allegations of lying are unprovable.

Law must be based on some objective, measurable standard or we get absurd situations like these. Without video evidence like this, you could try to bring charges against her, but how could you ever prove that her internal state at the time was different than what she claims?

No matter how many hormones you ingest, or how much surgery you undergo, you can only ever simulate the opposite sex. You cannot change your underlying biological sex. It seems to me, ID cards should reflect physical sex as this designation is also used in medical emergencies. There are so many consequences to the legal changes the trans community is pushing that haven't been considered. What's worse is we aren't allowed to consider them without being labelled bigots.

It makes sense to me to use one's sex at birth for life-long identification, with consequential gender specific modifications somehow noted, but we do have hermaphroditic births, so there's that situation to consider as well.

Well, it's a shame some trans folk are so unyielding. I imagine their complaint going something like, "You're not a trans person, so you are unqualified to speak to the matter"?

[American Dream]

Linda Harvey: ‘Pro-Gay Messages’ In Schools ‘Resemble The Grooming A Pedophile Does Before Molesting A Child’



Today in WorldNetDaily, far-right columnist and political activist Linda Harvey applauded the Trump administration’s decision to rescind strong guidelines protecting transgender students in schools and criticized Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for saying that protecting “LGBTQ students” should be a “key priority” for her department and “for every school in America.”

DeVos, according to Harvey, “revealed that she’s a supporter of the destructive homosexual and gender confusion agenda,” and should resign over her “defense of these unconscionable behaviors.”

Harvey added that “the false pro-‘gay’ messages schools broadcast to children resemble the grooming a pedophile does before molesting a child,” claiming that when “these deviant desires are positioned to children as normal and natural, vulnerable kids more readily accept same-sex seduction by an adult or older peer.”

America’s new education leader showed her true colors on morality last week.

She revealed that she’s a supporter of the destructive homosexual and gender confusion agenda. America needs to pray for a change of heart by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s newly confirmed secretary of education.

Unless DeVos moves away from defense of these unconscionable behaviors, she should resign from this position. Her school choice advocacy is laudable, but we need a leader who also supports sexual integrity for every child.

America doesn’t need a Department of Education anyway, but if it must exist, could it please not do harm to children? Could we at least not have a federal agency promoting sodomy to 11-year-olds in the guise of “civil rights” or “anti-bullying” programs? Or so-called “inclusive” sex education?

…

In fact, the false pro-“gay” messages schools broadcast to children resemble the grooming a pedophile does before molesting a child. When these deviant desires are positioned to children as normal and natural, vulnerable kids more readily accept same-sex seduction by an adult or older peer.

Is DeVos OK with setting children up for this? Many of today’s clueless educators are.

…

DeVos must believe these identities and behaviors are acceptable for children, and that boys invading girls’ showers is a “right” to be defended for some confused students. As such, she displays either woeful ignorance or jaded insensitivity.