Transgender & Intersex: December 2009
Transgender Appointee to Department of Commerce
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 31, 2009 3:00 PM |The National Center for Transgender Equality announced today, Thursday, that Amanda Simpson, a transgender woman with thirty years of experience in the aerospace industry, has been appointed by the Obama Administration as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of...Read More
Youth Gender Identity, Race and Class in the New York Times and In the New Year
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 31, 2009 10:30 AM |The New York Times published an interview on Monday with Vidari DeGuzman, a youth worker at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a service organization for LGBT youth in New York City. Although relatively short, I found the interview revealing about issues of...Read More
The forest and the trees of the trans community
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 29, 2009 2:30 PM |The LGBTQ community is riddled with emotional wounds and animus. Our identity and validity is under constant attack, both by political enemies and personal relationships. Our family ties are often strained with the pain of living an open, honest life,...Read More
Third gender in Pakistan
Filed by Alex Blaze | December 29, 2009 1:00 PM |I posted about a month ago about India's decision to allow people to choose "O" for "other" under gender in voter registration forms. Today, I found this story from Reuters on the Pakistani Supreme Court requiring the government to allow...Read More
Democracy When? For Whom?
Filed by Guest Blogger | December 27, 2009 1:00 PM |Editors' Note: Guest blogger April Rose, a Two-Spirits author, speaker and raconteur on all things trans, lives in New Mexico where she is currently developing a website that will implement her desire to educate people about living with integrity and...Read More
Maryland to Continue Driver's License Gender Marker Policy
Filed by Keri Renault | December 27, 2009 11:00 AM |Morgan Meneses-Sheets, Executive Director of Equality Maryland reports that the Maryland Vehicle Administration (MVA) will not alter its current gender/sex marker revision policy in the immediate future. She released the following email received from the Office of the Attorney General...Read More
Timetables: Trains, Gender, Empathy
Filed by Paige Schilt | December 23, 2009 4:30 PM |Last Christmas, we decided to splurge and spend a few nights at a fancy beach resort. From the moment the clerk ushered us into the "VIP check-in room," I knew we were in for an adventure. Our five-year-old, Waylon, plunged...Read More
Katy Perry offends LGBT people in a bout of twitterrhea
Filed by Jerame Davis | December 22, 2009 9:30 AM |Singer Katy Perry, who is no stranger to controversy with both the religious right and the LGBT community, is at it again. Now, instead of crooning about promiscuous lesbian fantasies or insulting an ex-boyfriend by insinuating he's gay, she seems...Read More
Solidarity: "Transmisogyny" & "Faggots"
Filed by Guest Blogger | December 21, 2009 7:00 PM |Editors' Note: Guest blogger Rachel Dunn is an out and proud trans-lesbian filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Although very supportive of community events, her primary activism comes in the form of fostering and contributing to queer and minority film projects...Read More
Solidarity: "Transmisogyny" & "Faggots"
Filed by Guest Blogger | December 21, 2009 7:00 PM |Editors' Note: Guest blogger Rachel Dunn is an out and proud trans-lesbian filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Although very supportive of community events, her primary activism comes in the form of fostering and contributing to queer and minority film projects...Read More
Videogame Censorship, LGBT, and Birdo (Part III)
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 21, 2009 9:30 AM |This is part three of Austen's three-part series on videogame censorship. Part one dealt with the videogame crash, Nintendo of America's early "Seal of Quality" validation process, and the birth of Birdo as a Mario character. Part two dealt with...Read More
Videogame Censorship, LGBT, and Birdo (Part II)
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 20, 2009 2:30 PM |This is part two of my three-part series on videogame censorship. Part one dealt with the videogame crash, Nintendo of America's early "Seal of Quality" validation process, and the birth of Birdo as a Mario character. Part two deals with...Read More
Situational Membership and Stigma
Filed by Antonia D'orsay | December 20, 2009 1:00 PM |This is a continuation of the following pieces: What is Trans* What is Sex Expression, Role, and Identity: Gender I took a break to give everyone time to digest those pieces and to be ready for the ones coming up....Read More
Videogame Censorship, LGBT, and Birdo (Part I)
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 19, 2009 2:00 PM |It's easy to tick off a few tropes in Nintendo's core cast of characters. Mario, the everyman hero; Luigi, the trusty, goofy sidekick; Peach, the ever-present damsel in distress; Daisy, the strong, independent woman; Bower, the sociopathic villain; Wario, the...Read More
Maryland Democrats use religious right as pawns against transwoman
Filed by Bil Browning | December 17, 2009 7:00 PM |Dana Beyer, senior aide to Montgomery County, Maryland Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, has been caught up in a politically motivated ethics charge being pushed by fundamentalists with the help of Democrats. Beyer, a frequent Bilerico reader and commenter, is a transgender...Read More
Zoe Brain's Trans 101, with science
Filed by Alex Blaze | December 17, 2009 4:00 PM |We all know what happened last week, and part of the problem with what Ronald Gold said in his post on transgender people last week was that his thoughts are so common. I do hear them quite often, you know,...Read More
Jillian Weiss on Michelangelo Signorile Today at 4:30
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 17, 2009 12:00 PM |UPDATE: The recorded interview of about 20 minutes is attached at the end of the post below. I have been asked to come on OutQ's Michelangelo Signorile radio show on Sirius XM today. The topic will be transphobia in the...Read More
MVA: Driving Trans to a Dead End
Filed by Keri Renault | December 16, 2009 3:00 PM |Pre-operative transgender individuals can change their driver's license gender marker in Maryland without genital surgery. It was a pleasant discovery for me shortly after relocating to the east coast in 2008. The department of motor vehicles requires supporting letters from...Read More
The Advocate: "Beau Bridges on Sex Changes, High Heels"
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 16, 2009 1:00 PM |The Advocate on Monday published an article on an interview with actor Beau Bridges, who portrays a transgender detective on TNT's TV show, "The Closer." The article is written by "Advocate.com Editors," who appear not to have read the GLAAD...Read More
Expression, Role, and Identity: Gender
Filed by Antonia D'orsay | December 16, 2009 11:00 AM |As promised, I will now tackle the concept of gender. Previously, I talked about What is Trans. Then I talked about What is Sex - between the legs it was, and now we come to the between the ears part....Read More
Building The LGBT Alliance: Transphobia in the LGBT Community Part III
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 15, 2009 7:00 PM |There is transphobia in the gay community in the US, and it threatens our political solidarity for the accomplishment of our political objectives, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and marriage equality. Time spent fighting among ourselves represents time wasted...Read More
Proposed Changes: Structural Inequity on Bilerico
Filed by Tobi Hill-Meyer | December 15, 2009 4:00 PM |I responded in clear terms to Ronald Gold's article, explaining exactly how it is ignorant, hurtful, and bigoted. But it's clear from the discussion over the past few days that people weren't just hurt by the post, but a sense...Read More
Surviving a Hoosier transition, part two
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 15, 2009 2:45 PM |In part one I discussed the lead-up to transition: getting trained, getting a good job, and getting financially stable. In a state like Indiana, these three things will pay huge dividends when someone finally makes the decision to transition. I'm...Read More
A Million Miles From Shame
Filed by Donna Rose | December 15, 2009 2:00 PM |I am what many would call a "mid-life" transitioner. That is I, like many, was well into life before coming to a point where I could stop running from my gender gift and start to consider it in healthy, productive...Read More
What is Sex?
Filed by Antonia D'orsay | December 15, 2009 1:00 PM |Number Two in a series of basic concepts that relate to understanding the complex dynamic between the four parts that make the LGBT grouping.Read More
3 Lessons to Take Away from Ron Goldgate
Filed by Bruce Parker | December 14, 2009 2:00 PM |Being a contributor to The Bilerico Project is important to me for lots of different reasons. The primary one is that I passionately believe in what Bil, Jerame, and Alex started out trying to do here. I believe that they...Read More
Don't Avoid The Anger
Filed by Antonia D'orsay | December 14, 2009 11:00 AM |What some people might not know, since TBP has grown over the last while, and always has not merely new readers, but people who have never considered this before, and people who are newly out every day, trying to find...Read More
But, where's my penis?
Filed by Guest Blogger | December 13, 2009 4:00 PM |Editors' Note: Not Aiden is a gay man of trans* experience who prefers to remain anonymous because he's tired of being everyone's token tranny. He enjoys photography, yelling at Project Runway contestants, and the eternal search for a good gay...Read More
The Delusion of Transphobic Labeling
Filed by Keri Renault | December 13, 2009 1:00 PM |There may have been a place of respect for Ron Gold in the LBGTQ community once upon a time long ago, but that place is now far, far away. Mr. Gold's days as a gay leader are done, long gone...Read More
Transphobia in the Gay Community, Part II
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 13, 2009 11:30 AM |When Christine Jorgensen made headlines in 1951, she was viewed as a homosexual by all, including her doctors. She understood her identity very differently. Today, in our LGBT world, the difference may seem abstract, particularly to younger people born in...Read More
Ten Simple Rules for Talking Trans
Filed by Antonia D'orsay | December 13, 2009 10:00 AM |Recently, once again, Bilerico had a post that incited the trans community. That's actually pretty easy to do. Well, the incite the trans community part. As one of the "official angry trannies" of the interwebs, I'm going to give a...Read More
Ron Gold's Post Is Down: What Now?
Filed by Rebecca Juro | December 12, 2009 4:00 PM |Around 9pm Friday night, Ronald Gold's first and only post as a Bilerico contributor has been removed from the site and his contributor status has been withdrawn. Gold's post had amassed over 300 comments, virtually all of them negative. In...Read More
My last post at Bilerico?
Filed by Brynn Craffey | December 12, 2009 12:30 PM |I had intended to begin, "This will be my last post at Bilerico," for I had intended to resign. But a person I respect deeply here at Bilerico has urged me to reconsider. More on the final straw pushing me...Read More
Ronald Gold, You Hurt Us
Filed by Tobi Hill-Meyer | December 12, 2009 11:00 AM |Note: In this post I am specifically addressing Ronald Gold's article, even though I understand that is only half the problem. I am working on a second post detailing the problems in Bilerico's current approach to dealing with situations like...Read More
Transphobia In the Gay Community
Filed by Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | December 11, 2009 4:00 PM |This is Part I of a two-part series Recently, an icon of gay activist history, Ronald Gold, posted a transphobic diatribe on The Bilerico Project. I had looked forward to learning something from Mr. Gold about our history, and...Read More
What Is Trans*?
Filed by Antonia D'orsay | December 11, 2009 3:00 PM |The title here is chosen for a reason. It is not "What is Transgender?". It is not "what is Transsexual". It is not "who is Trans?", although that will be talked about. What is Trans*? The first thing I am...Read More
"Yes" to the reality of transgender
Filed by Guest Blogger | December 11, 2009 2:00 PM |Editors' note: Suzanne Clayton lives outside of Washington D.C. and is active in the local transgender community. Since 2007, she blogs about her experience transitioning from male to female. Transgender: not a disease, but a normal variation on the human...Read More
The Greg Grunberg Story: An Update
Filed by Rebecca Juro | December 10, 2009 7:30 PM |Once my response to Greg Grunberg's email about my post regarding his tweets about Chaz Bono that many transpeople and allies found to be transphobic hit The Bilerico Project, things started happening pretty quickly. Bil got in touch with Rich...Read More
"No" to the notion of transgender
Filed by Ronald Gold | December 10, 2009 4:00 PM |This post has been removed. See: Upon further reflection and deliberation, if you want to know more....Read More
Stilettos, Sissy Boys, and the Limits of "Gender-Neutral" Parenting Advice
Filed by Paige Schilt | December 09, 2009 2:30 PM |Last week, PBS Parents featured a blog titled "Gender Appropriate Toys." It begins promisingly enough with a critique of parents who enforce binary gender norms in their children's toys and activities. The author (Kristen of Supersisters) suggests that boys should...Read More
"Heroes" Star Greg Grunberg Tweets Transphobia
Filed by Rebecca Juro | December 06, 2009 4:30 PM |UPDATE: Greg Grunberg e-mailed a response to this post. Read the message and Becky's response in this post. Since I started using Twitter several months ago, I've built up quite the list of personal friends and aquantances as well as...Read More
Can A Transsistah Get Some Love This Holiday Season?
Filed by Monica Roberts | December 03, 2009 4:00 PM |It's the start of the Christmas holiday season. From now until January 1 there will be nonstop Christmas music played on the radio airwaves and our favorite Christmas cartoons playing for a new generation of younglings. We'll have Christmas trees...Read More
Am I intersexed? Who cares!
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 03, 2009 3:00 PM |Did you get a genetic test to see if you're intersex? I get the question once every few months, usually from a well-meaning and honestly curious person. It's an interesting question, as well as a bit of a hot-button issue...Read More
Apathy and silence are luxuries of the privileged
Filed by Cassandra Keenan | December 03, 2009 1:00 PM |So, there it was, a perfect chance to fill a glaring silence as my hairstylist and her colleagues snipped away at us customers. I sat in the salon chair thinking, Why yammer about the weather when I have something much...Read More
Surviving a Hoosier transition, part one
Filed by Austen Crowder | December 03, 2009 10:37 AM |Believe it or not, I think that Indiana's not a bad place to transition. Mind you, that assumes that you mind your P's and Q's, and carefully make plans for your process, but the laws of the state combined with...Read More
Death Be Not Proud - RIP Christine
Filed by Donna Rose | December 02, 2009 7:00 PM |Until my father's death almost a dozen years ago I had never had to experience death in people I knew, or friends, or family. There were aunts and uncles and distant relatives who I never knew who died but to...Read More
