11/4/12

Dar Williams "When I was A Boy"






I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand


I said I was a boy; I’m glad he didn’t check.

I learned to fly, I learned to fight

I lived a whole life in one night

We saved each other’s lives out on the pirate’s deck.



And I remember that night

When I’m leaving a late night with some friends

And I hear somebody tell me it’s not safe,

someone should help me

I need to find a nice man to walk me home.



When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,

Climbed what I could climb upon

And I don’t know how I survived,

I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.



And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.



I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike

Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.

My neighbor came outside to say, “Get your shirt,”

I said “No way, it’s the last time I’m not breaking any law.”



And now I’m in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more

More that’s tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me

That can’t help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat



When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me

Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees

And I know things have gotta change,

They got pills to sell, they’ve got implants to put in,

they’ve got implants to remove



But I am not forgetting…that I was a boy too



And like the woods where I would creep, it’s a secret I can keep

Except when I’m tired, ‘cept when I’m being caught off guard

And I’ve had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way

To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.



And so I tell the man I’m with about the other life I lived

And I say, “Now you’re top gun, I have lost and you have won”

And he says, “Oh no, no, can’t you see



When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked

And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.

And I could always cry, now even when I’m alone I seldom do

And I have lost some kindness

But I was a girl too.

And you were just like me, and I was just like you”
By Dar Williams 

11/3/12

White Wash Won't Fix Transgender Utah DMV Problem


Utah's Transgender Education Advocates (TEA)  ground breaking survey establishes that most gender diverse Utahans are fairly happy with the states driver licensing process.



Or are they? While many on the TEA Board of directors have resigned due to the fallout and the organization issued a public apology for "re victimizing" the transgender victims they have yet to apologize to some of the activists the Board threatened or post the statement from the victim. Transparency = credibility.

What is really at issue at the beginning remains unchanged. The UTAH DMV is perfectly within its rights to make subjective determination about a applicants gender.

Victim Regina Audette statement found on Pride in Utah but not on the TEA website.

"I was the transgender female who was asked to scrub my make up off so they could took my photo. Well it was Thursday afternoon and my brother and I went to get my ID at the DMV at the Fairgrounds and the assistant supervisor and the security officer was laughing at me and so it was my turn to get my picture taken and so I gave them the… proper paperwork and they looked at it told me they need to talk to the supervisor who pulled me in her office and told me to remove my make up because I was altering my identification and so I took the make up off and they took the picture and while I was waiting the assistant supervisor was yelling that wasnt a female that is a man and making the situation that much worse and then my brother and I went to talk to the supervisor and she said that they wernt making fun of us he had to itch his ass and didnt want to do it in front of me and that was their excuse on why they were laughing."

Removing of make up, changing clothes, repositioning hair in a way expressing a gender other than the applicants and the inevitable misgendering is all within the rights, even expected of DMV employees. Until that is rectified history will continue to repeat itself. Utah transgender residents know it.

NO amount of white wash or gay money will rectify this situation. Only righteous and even occasionally abrasive straight forward transgender advocacy will. Although TEA is on track they really need to present the whole story to regain there respectability.

One person commented on the Pride article how bad the Texas DMV is. She's right, our glass house is far from being in order either.

I had a lady misgender me all through the process when I went for my first license after getting my name and gender marker change. I sucked it up that time.

The next time after four years living authentically I got the same lady! I told her quietly I wanted to wait for another clerk. Wouldn't you know it but she started talking loud enough for the whole town to hear asking me why, why would I want another clerk. She was dieing to humiliate and out me using my personality against me.

This time I didn't do no sucking. I told her in a even, firm demanding taxpaying voice I wanted her supervisor, NOW.

Bullshit ended right then and there. We deserve to be treated with the respect every minority expects and gets. Period.

Kevin Crowned Miss International Transgender! wait...Kevin?

Whoops, embarrassing, my transbike just slipped a couple links while pedaling uphill. Who, what? Kevin? Oh its a transvestite beauty contest but there are quite a few conventional 'transgender' contestants? Kevin?



Kevin told Examiner.com ""I'm very proud to be the first here, and I hope my dad will accept me. Because in the family I'm the only boy, and my dad has big expectations of me. I made it. I won the International Queen Pageant, and I believe that my dad will accept me not only as his son but also as his daughter."

Congrats Kevin you are diversity personified and beautiful. You must be a knock out to have prevailed over those Brazilian beauties.



Meet Happy Couple Deborah Trans and Robert Cis. Address: San Quentin



Reading the excellent huff Post peice in which Mara Keisling And Cecilia Chung Discuss How The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Affects LGBT People, I became curious. What is it really like for a trans person behind bars and having only spent a couple over nights in my misspent youth locked up way before transition, I decided to learn a little about the elephant in the trans room.

These two, sisters and brothers had the misfortune and missteps to end up where I might have, had not my higher power intervened  Robert and Deborah come on about half the way through but its well worth watching the whole thing.



This is number two of a four part series. Watch it then the other parts`. Its like eating potato chips. You can't eat just one, you have to go back again and again.

In no way do I wish to romanticize prison or suggest it is a viable alternative to our lives outside. From my experience being locked up I will tell you it was like my wings had been cut. I was repeatedly humiliated, not by other prisoners because I was segregated, but by the guards who found no end to the enjoyment sadistic bastards.

According to the Huff Post article most of the times LGBT prisoners are raped its the guards doing it. To anyone who has spent time in the Army this should come as no surprise when you think about it, in terms of the power structure.

And its brutal. Extremely brutal. Read more on the Huffington Post.

Facing Mirrors: The Paradox of Being Trans in Iran

Source The Guardian (link below):One of the many astonishing paradoxes about life in the Islamic republic is that transsexuality has been legal since a fatwa was issued in 1987 by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Indeed, Iran permits more sex-change operations than any other country, except Thailand, and has long subsidised such surgeries. But, though transsexuals may have the support of the government, they remains highly controversial figures among the public.



Des Buford, Director of Exhibition & Programming at Frameline, spoke with FACING MIRRORS director Negar Azarbayjani and producer Fereshteh Taerpour. (6/18/2012)



Directed By:Negar Azarbayjani
Produced by: Fereshteh Taerpour
Starring:Shayesteh Irani - Ghazal Shakeri - Homayoun Ershadi - Nima Shahrokh Shahi - Maryam Boubani - Saber Abar - Hengameh Ghazian

The religious ruling (allowing SRS) was issued thanks to the activities in the 1980s of Maryam Khatoon Molkara, a campaigner for the rights of transsexuals in Iran, who wrote to Khomeini asking him to determine their fate. Molkara had herself previously been a man, and worked for the state TV before the Islamic revolution in 1979. In the mid-70s, she started to write to Khomeini, who was in exile, asking for religious authorisation for a sex-change operation. In 1987, after a decade of campaigning, she went in person to the home of Khomeini, by then the country's supreme leader, and came back with a fatwa in hand that allowed transsexuals to choose their sex. More at The Guardian

A few years ago while Iran was still accessible via the Internet I became engrossed with the human struggle inside the country. Sadly after the Green Revolution began the goverment responded to closing the electronic border effectively isolating Iran from the world. This movie is a watershed for transgender people as it gives us a look behind this Islamic curtain.


KOMO Seattle Spearheads Attack On Evergreen College Trans Student


The right wing is on the offensive and Komo Seattle, a mainstream media source, is showcasing it with this misgendering misinformational 'news' video.

KOMO has done more that compromise its integrity, they have become the bigot.

At issue is a transgender woman right to use public accommodations as provided by law.



This might come as a surprise to Joseph Backholm. According to a poll I conducted following the original story, asking whether its OK to sauna with minors the vast majority placed the needs of the children above all else, regardless.


Fifty percent said no, not under any circumstance, thirty percent thought if the law provides for it AND privacy can be assured they felt it was OK. The remaining responded yes, if it was lawful.

Clearly the vast majority of trans people are in agreement with Joseph Backholm on that count. If this trans person was in fact exposing her original plumbing to minors it would have been unacceptable.

But there are only allegations of this gross impropriety, yet to be determined in a court of law. And that takes us back to the KOMO story.

This may very well be the worst anti transgender 'news' report, ever found in mainstream media. The disembodied sound bites from the University spokesman never expressed dismay at following the law, but they were were presented as such by KOMO. The video was edited so sound bites seemingly attributed to parents were in fact the voice of leader of the virulently anti LGBT group, the Family Policy Institute of Washington.

The reporter shaking her head in disgust, stated they hadn't been able to 'track down' the trans woman, as if tracking a predator. Evidently despite their best skills at tracking, they were unable to hunt down any of the parents either.

The framing of the KOMO 'news' article is symptomatic of transphobic reporting found in lesser 'conservitive' Faux News reports, blogs and right wing radio all which in a seemingly concerted effort have launched this simultaneous attack to convict this trans woman for simply exercising her rights under the law.