5/17/14

Transgender teen's move to a "cottage" at Niantic Prison called "interim" by DCF

A Cottage. An Apartment. Connecticut DCF has used these terms to placate the community and lead us to believe that Jane is now in a homey place with TVs exercise equipment, fluffy bed and a kitchen all her own.

Please. Jane's been moved from one isolation cell to another solitary cell. Looking at the google map of York I would dare anyone to tell a welcoming place exists within its walls.

“She’s deteriorating,” attorney Aaron J. Romano told The New Haven Register

The girl, 16, who has been identified as Jane Doe to protect her identity, is not charged with any crime. State Department of Children and Families officials say she has to be at York Correctional Institution in East Lyme because she allegedly physically attacked staffers and other residents at juvenile psychiatric treatment centers.

He was dismissive of the decision to move her to what DCF officials have called a “cottage” or “apartment” at York. DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt released a statement describing a bedroom, private bathroom and a “programming/recreation area.”

“She is not in a ‘cottage,’” Romano said. “That word creates the illusion of Mother Goose.”

As for it being an “apartment,” Romano said, “She’s in prison! It’s a disgrace to see DCF again attempting to distance themselves from what they’ve done: putting a child in jail. They’re trying to cover it up with their use of language.”

The move was described as "interim" by DCF.

The May 15 editorial by the Hartford Current wants to know exactly how long is interim?

ll parties to the controversy seem to agree that moving the 16-year-old transgender girl called Jane Doe from the mental health unit of York Correctional Institute, where she had been housed since April 8, to a cottage on the grounds of the prison in Niantic is an interim step.

Her living conditions also seem to have been improved.

But the move to the cottage can be considered positive only if "interim" means a very short time.

Jane Doe can't be allowed to languish at York, either in a cell or a cottage, while lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians and advocates continue to argue.

******

Its way past time for Jane to be freed from solitary. Its way past time for her release from prison. Interim has expired.

Get Jane out of prison now.


"Tranny Bingo" Dissembling gay privilege down under

Indi waving the trans flag from Australia 
Transgender woman Indiana (Indi) Kelly Edwards has asked that a group of Australian drag queens change "Tranny Bingo" to a name that is not a defamatory slur. It seems like a reasonable enough request but one we know is difficult to accomplish. Planetransgender has been "taking on tranny" for years. Even though there has never been a moment when we could declare victory, in the process we have changed the way we and others think about the trans community. We have gained respect not just from the gay community but from society as a whole in the UK and the USA. A fact not missed by the drag and gay community in Australia.

The conflagration came to notice when the Herald Sun published a 'news' article "Sydney drag queens fight trans-gender warrior Indiana Kelly Edwards over right to use the word tranny". It wasn't a news article in the sense that it only projected one side of the story spun in a way that made transgender people's objections insignificant and inconsequential.

I will now deconstruct Penny Tration Trans misogynistic excuses he used in the Sun article
“In Australia there are few negative connotations attached to the word ‘tranny’, unlike in America,” he says.
“I think the campaign is being waged by people who are trying to involve American activists in an Australian debate.
“We have events in the gay community called Poof Doof and Fag Tag."


Mr. Tration does not get to nationalize slurs, not in this day and age. He acknowledged that America has come to understand that 'tranny' is defamation but he failed to note the same is true for the UK . Australian gay men have the same obligation to do no harm the same as the rest of the world's gay population.

And apparently a Poof Doof is a gay dance rave and Fag Tag is when a group of gay men take over a normally hetero venue for a night, which has absolutly nothing to do with trans defamation.

Mr Tration continues:
Claims the campaign is being led by a “small group of people who are making a lot of noise. But if you do the research there’s not a lot of support behind it”.

He says the activists argue that when drag queens remove their costumes, they can easily blend into society.

“Well, guess what, when we remove our wigs we become gay boys who have faced homophobia our whole lives,” insists Penny Tration.

Number one, it is a small group of people making noise. In fact we are less than 1% of the worlds population and to the best of my estimate only a 10th of those individuals are in a place or have a will to confront the seemingly endless onslaught by gay and straight people.

Yes the violence and suicides experienced by transgender people is that extreme so our voice might sound weak to you Tration.

But we are so sick of gay people cavalierly using defamation that offends us we're forced to speak up. It's not a popularity contest where the one with most votes wins and its not a freedom of speech issue as the tranny bingo ">petition would lead one to believe. Why oh why don't you call it "Faggot bingo"? Why? Because it wouldn't be amusing for you personally Mr Tration.  You self identify as a gay cisgender male and it wouldn't be 'sexy' for you to use defamation that you hear before someone beats the shit out of you.We will not accept this.

As far as taking off your wigs goes. Using the homophobia that you have encountered does not give you license to use defamation that hurts another minority. Not all gay Australian men are endeared by as 'faggot'

This drag queen didn't change before leaving the bar
and was called a "Dirty Tranny" as he was being beaten in a McDonald's.
Welcome to our world Alexei Paige.

Indi appeared on the Australian morning show Tenlive Tuesday. After the hosts warmly welcomed Penny Tration to the show and talked about how fun tranny bingo is they looked over to Indi as if to say, well I guess we have to hear from her for it to be story and allowed her a moment to speak.



Indi told planetransgender ""firstly for the record I never claimed it (the moniker 'transgender warrior'). [It] was imposed on my by the Herald Sun who interviewed Verushka Darling."

Saying that she felt she was up against a seasoned performer she wanted to explain that "Privilege in context of this interview I was actually referring to cis gender privilege. it seems we are being dictated to by people who have cis gendered privilege on what is or isn't offensive or harmful to us. As key stake holders I feel we should at the very least have a say in this. What I am hearing from gay men and /or the drag community is that we don't and we need to shut up. IMO its not their call to make. I would in this case and all things considered err on the side of safety."

So one of the largest Australian gay media sites is hosting a conversation about the word 'tranny'. Reportedly, some trans people aren't allowed to speak. Guidetogay.com denies these accusations saying the comments might appear to disappear after they are indexed by Facebook.



The Charing Cross is delighting in defaming transgender people. Here's what you can do about it. Write a review on the facebook pages of the establishments that are hosting 'tranny bingo' and ask your friends not to patronize them.

Coopers Hotel Facebook
The Town Hall Hotel Facebook
The Charing Cross Waverley Facebook
The Sugar Mill Sydney facebook
Please sign the Petition asking that "tranny" not be used for commercial gain




How do you feel Carrera's photo shopped naked Life Ball posters?

There's a few different ways a person could react to artist David LaChapelle's posters of Carmen Carrera. According to LaChapelle, the posters are inspired by the Life Ball’s theme, “’The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and Hieronymus Bosch’s utopia of a diverse society, living together passionately and peacefully, as if the Fall of Man had never happened and people had never been expelled from Paradise.”

“Gender lines are blurred and every person is unique in how they see themselves,” LaChapelle explained in a statement. “For me the body is more than something to be looked at as an object of sexual gratification. The body is a beautiful housing for the soul that we are celebrating in this picture.”

Carrera points out that the artwork’s statement, “I’m Adam, I’m Eve, I’m Me” has a special resonance for her. “Your gender should not matter in your heart or in the way you express your personality... My message is: beauty has no gender. At the end of the day beauty is beauty.”

The Life Ball is an annual HIV/AIDS charity event that this year will take place on May 31 in Vienna, Austria. It seeks to showcase the variety of ways and expressions individuals are using to fight HIV/AIDs.

When trans people look at those images, we invariably feel shock that a trans woman would allow her body to be put on display in a way which plays to haters memes. Especially so soon after she and Laverne Cox tore Catie Couric a new one for having the unmitigated gall to ask if they had sexual reassignment surgery.

Imagine Cuoric is feeling a little but put apon right about now. And how will this affect media coverage in the future?

In any case it  sends a really mixed message to the media erasing the advocacy they had accomplished just months before. For most of us in the real world it makes a world of difference how people perceive us, so in that sense her posters did us no favors.

The low road....

The Daily Mail wasted no time taking the conversation to the lowest denominator, and if you read the comments, its clear they reached their intended audience. But in the end its a waste of time trying to appease the haters, but giving them ammunition to take shots at us?

So what is the "Life Ball"? I  don't think I've heard of it before and if I had I didn't pay it any mind and probably wouldn't have now, were it not for Carrera's posters. It looks like a huge gay party fundraiser, HRC style but lets give it a chance.  I downloaded to Scribe the sites info........




5/14/14

Houston Mayor capitulates to haters throwing transgender people under the bus?

Mayor Parker capitulated to haters allowing businesses owners to subjectively
discriminate and demonize transgender people after amending her proposed
"human rights" ordnance.

The pressure was too much for Mayor Annise Parker. The mayor a political aspirant for state office appeased the haters changing her proposed human rights ordinance Tuesday to allow proprietors to decide if a person is truly transgender. This will allow proprietors to subjectively bar trans people from public accommodations.

This is an outrage. What if the bill were to be amended to allow business owners to determine if a person was white enough to use their public accommodations.

Who wait, that was how it used to be in Houston? So Parker please remind me again why you call this a human rights ordnance?

The amendment  didn't appease opponents who protested after Parker's announcement.
Look at these people Parker. These are the people you are giving permission to
discriminate against us.

The Houston Chron reports
Mayor Annise Parker and supporters of her proposed nondiscrimination ordinance announced a compromise Tuesday in hopes of deflecting controversy over a small provision that had dominated discussion on the measure.

A paragraph specifying that no business open to the public could deny a transgender person entry to the restroom consistent with his or her gender identity had outraged conservatives. Church and Republican political leaders have used the clause to claim the ordinance "provides an opportunity for sexual predators to have access to our families."

Members of the gay, lesbian and transgender community were equally outraged, however, by a clause that would give businesses an out if the defendant had a "good faith belief" that the person's claim of being transgender was disingenuous.

The proposed amendment would remove that paragraph of the expansive ordinance. Transgender people barred access to a restroom still would be able to file a discrimination complaint to the city's Office of Inspector General under the process outlined for all protected characteristics, such as race and veteran status.


"The base ordinance is still the same," Parker said. "It says you can't discriminate."



How about if you ammend it to allow a propritor to decide if you are too gay and allow him to bar you Parker?

5/11/14

Trans teen Jane Doe's 33rd day in solitary despite the Govenors call for her transfer. Why?

"I can’t take another month of this." Jane Doe tells Governor Malloy. She's talking about her confinement to solitary which amounts to nothing more that torture.



The below is the letter Jane sent to Malloy via Cool Justice:

Dear Governor Malloy,

"I am writing you to let you know that today is my anniversary. I have been sitting in this prison for a month now and there is no plan to get me out. I am suffering in here. I’m having trouble sleeping and I’m not eating much. I cry in bed every night. I can’t be myself in this place. I feel forgotten and thrown away. As you probably know, these feeling are not new for me. This is the way my life has been going since I was a little kid. My lawyer says that Commissioner Katz is the only one who can fix this but when I wrote her a letter it didn’t help. She has given up on me. If you’re her boss you can do something, right? Everyone says I need to be somewhere where I can get help and Katz keeps telling everyone that she is working to get me out of here but I don’t believe her. I think this is just another one of her stories that isn’t true. I want to call her a liar but people tell me that I shouldn’t say that about someone important like her. All I know is that she has said a lot of things about me that aren’t true. She was on TV telling people I blinded someone and broke their jaw. That was a lie. She said that she never asked that I go to Manson. That was a lie. She told everyone that I should be going to that new girls program at Riverview. That was a lie. Now she is telling people she is trying to get me out of here but nothing is happening. I hear people talking and they are saying that I am going to be here till I’m 18. I am done with DCF. They just want to make up stuff about me so that everyone thinks I am some kind of wild animal. Is it Ok for them to do this? To just lie about me and throw me in prison and forget about me? If I was in charge I wouldn’t let this happen. If you’re the Governor then you are in charge of everyone who works for the state. DCF is supposed to be helping me, right? If this is helping me then I’m all set with being helped. I would be a lot better off being on my own. It seems like you’re my last chance to get out of here. Don’t forget about me. I can’t take another month of this."

Jane Doe

Governor Malloy told Katz to get her moved...

Malloy spokesman Andrew Doba said in an emailed statement, “the Governor has spoken with (Department of Children and Families) Commissioner (Joette) Katz, and the Commissioner agrees that Jane Doe must be moved to another setting as quickly as possible.

But Jane Doe's attorney hasn't seen anything hopeful yet saying...

“I think the DCF is playing a game, they’re stalling for time to keep her in there, they are refusing to negotiate,” Bloomfield attorney Aaron Romano said Friday. “They are not sitting down at the table with Jane Doe’s lawyers. The only person who can make anything happen at this point is Governor Malloy. My phone line is open.”




Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says transgender service ban "...should be reviewed"

AP:  The prohibition on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military "continually should be reviewed," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Sunday.

Hagel did not indicate whether he believes the policy should be overturned. However, he said "every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it."

A panel convened by a think tank at San Francisco State University recently estimated that about 15,450 transgender personnel serve in the military and in the National Guard and Reserve.

But its not going to be easy especially since most of enlisted common areas are communal more than likely making sexual reassignment surgery a prerequisite.

In 2010, Congress passed legislation allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. Hagel said the issue of transgender serving in the military is more complicated. He said "these issues require medical attention" that at times cannot be provided in austere locations.


ABC US News | ABC Entertainment News

I served on mountain tops and lived in caves before I transitioned. It can't get much austere than that. However, that was before the end of don't ask don't tell and long before the word 'transgender' was ever said by a secretary of defense. Did we have females with us? Yes, we did. They changed the jobs classification from combat to admin after I reenlisted. How did they do? Not so well generally speaking but that had more to do with racism, sexism and cronyism than their actual abilities as soldiers.