Cristan Williams

Supporting trans, intersex, & NB scholarship with the dual presentation of the indie film, Queen of Cups. Read more.

The Trans Disaster Relief Fund (TDRF) sent out an urgent request for donations to support transgender individuals and other members of the LGBTQI+ community during the current Coronavirus emergency. The transgender community is uniquely at risk during this emergency because of a higher than normal incidence of unemployment, homelessness, and lack of access to quality healthcare. Dr. Paige Padgett with the University of Texas School of Public Health said, “on any given day, the trans community faces significant discrimination.” She… Read more.

Do you fear trans people and want to rationalize the simmering hate you feel? We here at the TransAdvocate have spent almost 2 decades debating and debunking anti-trans nonsense and we've learned a thing or two about the irrational knots bigots tie themselves into when they try to pass off their fear and hate as fact and reason. Therefore, we've put together this handy-dandy list of the BS arguments that you, a budding bigot, are likely to find really, really… Read more.

Anti-trans sex essentialist activists love to pretend that "transgender" is a verb for the same reason anti-gay activists like to pretend "gay" is also a verb. If being gay or trans is a mere matter of behavior rather than selfhood, then people can just stop the behavior that makes them gay or trans. This is the basic idea behind anti-gay and anti-trans conversion therapy. Nevermind that this belief about gay and trans people is… Read more.

JK Rowling has long hinted that she sympathized with sex essentialist so-called "radical feminist" idea that nobody's phenotype is transitioned when trans people medically transition, and thus, trans women are males and trans men are females. However, Rowling has now openly announced her public support of TERF ideology: The backstory for this seemingly innocuous tweet is that a TERF activist, Maya Forstater sued to be given the special right of consequence-free speech. Such suits are a relatively new frontier of… Read more.

Today the Merriam-Webster announced the addition of the singular non-binary pronoun, they. The nonbinary pronoun 'they' has been added to the dictionary. https://t.co/tadl1VdfB0 — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) September 17, 2019 In an interview with the TransAdvocate, Merriam-Webster representative Emily A. Brewster said the following: Evidence for they as it is used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary is increasingly common in published, edited text, as well as all over social media and in daily personal interactions between… Read more.

If you know anything about the queer community, you're familiar with the stereotype of the closeted dude who lives a lie by pretending to be Mr. Manly Man. You know, the guy who can't shut up about how trans people totally gross him out and how he's totally all about straight-cis identity politics? The guy who makes his entire life revolve around the very public promotion of the idea that he's the embodiment of guns, god, and them-there good ol'… Read more.

Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) is hosting the first Job Fair for TransWork on Tuesday, September 10, from 3-5 PM, at the William Way Community Center at 1315 Spruce Street. The Airport, which is owned and operated by the City of Philadelphia, has partnered with TransWork, a program of the Independence Business Alliance, whose goal is to increase access to opportunities for transgender people in the Greater Philadelphia region. Chellie Cameron, Airpot CEO | Source: PHL The… Read more.

Amid rollbacks of federal protections for transgender individuals, a new survey finds Americans have grown increasingly more supportive of rights for transgender people. Sixty-two percent of Americans say they have become more supportive of rights for transgender people over the last five years, compared to just 25% who say they have grown more opposed. Despite the Trump Administration’s ban on transgender personnel joining or enlisting in the military not in their assigned gender at birth, the survey finds more than… Read more.

Known for dropping F-bombs during live TV events, Beto made a promise to stop cursing in public speeches. However, he broke that promise when the topic of bigoted anti-trans laws came up at a recent town hall held in Alexandria, Virginia. Expressing outrage over Republican-led anti-LGBTQI bills, Beto exclaimed, “In Texas, we just evaded a transgender bathroom bill! Seriously! After all the shit – sorry, the STUFF that’s happened!” At that point, the presidential candidate realized he’d just cursed, and… Read more.

The newest claim making the sex essentialist activist rounds is that transition will probably cause you to have a stroke or heart attack. TERFs and other sex essentialist activists, from the political right to the skeptic-bro left, point to a new trans study from the Netherlands: The forthcoming study to be published in March 2019 said that trans women and men may be at higher risk for cardiovascular events and that, "oth physicians and transgender individuals should be aware of… Read more.

Meghan Murphy, a Canadian TERF, is suing Twitter for the special right to harass trans women on Twitter. Murphy is represented by Republican operative and past editor of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review magazine, Harmeet K Dhillon. Joining Murphy's suit is Noah Peters, attorney for a White supremacist who previously sued Twitter for not hosting his racist tweets. The TERF lawsuit seeks to have Twitter, “cease and desist from enforcing its unannounced and viewpoint discriminatory ‘misgendering’ rule” and stop “enforcing its 'Hateful Conduct Policy' arbitrarily and in… Read more.

In Texas, one of the trans community's most important activists is about to die. By Phyllis Randolph Frye I sadly write that a long-time fighter for trans rights, Sarah DePalma of Houston, is in hospice and may not last but a few more days. I went to see Sarah yesterday at the hospice --she was not cognizant of my holding her hand or talking to her-- and I learned that she will be gone in a few days. Back in the… Read more.

The Transgender Foundation of America (TFA) announced that the Transgender Disaster Relief Fund (TDRFund.us) would accept applications for assistance from LGBTQI and allied federal workers whose lives were thrown into chaos due to the Trump Government Shutdown. Alexis Melvin, President of TFA said, “Many LGBTQI individuals and our allies are affected by the partial government shutdown. The sudden loss of income through no fault of their own can create very difficult situations and TDRFund.us will provide whatever support we can… Read more.

Speaking to an evangelical news outlet, Mat Staver, president of the multi-million dollar hate group, the Liberty Counsel, said that transgender people shouldn't enjoy the "special right" not to be lynched under a Senate bill that makes lynching people a federal crime. Specifically, Staver is offended that lynching, "involving actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability" would be criminalized. See page 7 of the document below: [su_document url="https://www.transadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/BILLS-115s3178es.pdf"] Staver seemed to claim that… Read more.

Two cisgender women sexually assaulted a transgender woman in a North Carolina public restroom. The cisgender women, Jessica Fowler and Amber Harrell, were arrested for sexual battery and second-degree kidnapping. According to reports, the sexual assault happened at Milk Bar on December 9th, 2018 and the two were charged and arrested. According to the call reporting the crime to the police, the two cisgender women forced the victim against the wall of the bathroom and sexually assaulted her. As the victim was… Read more.

Today we consider a recent article wherein Dr. Kelsy Burke tells us that, “Evangelicals love pegging!” Also, we cover the hysteria at Houston's City Hall over Drag Queen Story Time and talk about how social media crackdowns may affect our community. The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here:… Read more.

Vince Pryor with the Victory Fund joins us to discuss Senator Ben Sasse's (R) latest hand wringing book and the biggest issue effecting us all: the upcoming election. The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes… Read more.

Dr. Littman lies, possibly misleading parents into withholding care from trans kids. Recently the author of a Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) study lied to a credulous Canadian reporter who printed misleading medical and psychological information that can encourage parents to withhold evidence-based care from their children. The following is an excerpt from Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper: Dr. Littman describes the condition experienced by these girls as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD).… Read more.

Yup, we have Kavanaugh-fatigue too and this is how we deal with it. Also, we introduce the new Center for Gender Research and Policy! The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button… Read more.

By Cristan Williams Today, the actual medical group, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released several pieces of evidence-based guidance to support the care and protection of transgender youth. This included a detailed press release, user-friendly info kit, and a citable evidence-based review of the best practices for trans care for youth. A google news search returns one website that's covering AAP's important news while dozens of sites covered a… Read more.

The North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia trans communities are at significant risk of taking a direct hit from one of the region's largest hurricanes of the last 50 years. Hurricane Florence will be a catastrophic disaster and thousands are already displaced due to mandatory evacuations. North Carolina, home of HB2, banns cities from protecting LGBT people from discrimination. Add to that a Trump education and housing department that embraces trans discrimination as a matter of policy, the trans community in… Read more.

Rewrite is a TransAdvocate feature wherein unethical journalism is corrected and rewritten in ways that are respectful of the trans, intersex, and genderqueer experience. Read more.

While the GOP in Texas has recently made it clear that they intend to persist in promoting the various lies that support transphobic "bathroom bills," they've taken their anti-trans hysteria further by claiming that various cisgender Democrats running for office are perhaps transgender. Perhaps most well known is the specularly failed attempt to make a photo of Beto wearing a 90s-era grunge dress while in his punk band Foss a political issue. Self-described "deplorable" and "Tea Party Original" GOP candidate for Texas… Read more.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the decades-old organization that issues the international standards for medical and psychological care for trans people, responded to the media hype over a "study" that purports to have discovered a new pathology it calls "Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria" (ROGD), saying ROGD, "is distinct from the gender dysphoria observed in individuals who have previously been described as transgender." The "study" (such as it is) asked largely anonymous commenters from 3 anti-trans sites"In recent years,… Read more.

TERF activist censors Radical Feminist voices to sneak hate into the classroom. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) activist, Sheila Jeffreys has written a new academic book that claims to inform readers of the various ways TERF culture, "has all been disappeared from history." Chief among those Jeffreys' claims to have the power to disappear TERFs from history is an "influential men’s cross-dressing rights movement which enforces men’s access to lesbians wherever we seek to meet or network." To support this fact claim,… Read more.

The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. We welcome Koomah to discuss the largest Intersex IGM protest ever and talk about news you won't hear anywhere else! Read more.

Alex Jones, recently banned from various platforms such as Facebook and YouTube for, in part, his dehumanization of trans people, accidentally revealed that he watches trans porn on his phone. In a recent commercial for his various health aids, Jones unexpectedly shows the camera the open tabs on his iPhone. At the 00:37 mark, Jones reveals that he was watching a porn video titled, Naughty Tbabe Marissa.   Jones now joins the never-ending ranks of right-wing homophobes and transphobes who are eventually outed as hypocrites… Read more.

The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: google"]Google Play [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://soundcloud.com/cristan-williams/sets/transadvocate-podcast" target="blank" style="flat" background="#f54917" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: soundcloud"]Soundcloud [su_column size="1/5"]… Read more.

Today we talk about some problems with PRIDE celebrations, including anti-trans hate groups infiltrating Pride celebrations in San Fransico, Boston, and London. Also, we discuss news you're not hearing anywhere else! The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5"… Read more.

Today we talk to a community news reporter who uncovered a story straight news refuses to cover: a cis woman is beaten in Colorado for being "trans," told that she didn't belong in Trump's America. Additionally, we have Gwen Smith's Gender Nation and updates from TransAdvocae Divisions in Brazil and the UK. The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people.… Read more.

We’re all doomed, so say the pundits… and we all know they never engage in hyperbole, right? Also, Dylan Forbis, the first out trans man to run for public office in Brazoria County, crashes the pod to update us about what the changes he’s making to the Texas Democratic Party. The TA Podcast is an intergenerational show featuring a trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial that considers the issues affecting the lives of trans and intersex people. … Read more.

Annnd we're back! A trans Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, and Millennial are kleepin' it real and discussing what you need to know about transition and why everyone is suing the makers of Androgel! Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: google"]Google Play [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://soundcloud.com/cristan-williams/sets/transadvocate-podcast" target="blank" style="flat" background="#f54917" size="5" center="yes"… Read more.

Here’s how Slate begins its article on the concerning trend of autistic people being diagnosed as trans: Gender specialists first noticed decades ago that a large number of people who seek treatment for gender dysphoria also seemed to have autistic traits. Research on this phenomenon goes back to at least the 1990s, when the first case study of an autistic child with gender dysphoria (then called gender identity disorder) was published. As studies investigating the co-occurrence (or correlation) between gender dysphoria and… Read more.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, like HRC before them, is throwing the transgender community under the bus. Members of the Caucus Board encouraged candidates in the current election to support and seek the endorsement of the anti-transgender group, the Baptist Ministers of Houston Area and Vicinity (there are several variations of their name). The Baptist Ministers of Houston Area and Vicinity (HBVHAV) ran false anti-transgender advertising during the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) fight, falsified petitions… Read more.

The anti-trans movement created a new pathology they're shopping around to various (mostly right-wing) news outlets. It's called "rapid onset gender dysphoria" and you catch it from websites like DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Reddit. A great takedown of this internet illness was published by the Advocate and I encourage you to check it out. Having said that, I want to focus on the more obvious, yet overlooked flaws of this concocted condition: it asserts itself to be both "rapid onset" and "gender… Read more.

The TransAdvocate Q & A is where we answer your questions. If you’d like to submit a question, go to our contact page and send it in. Today’s question is: Is it responsible or okay that I'm taking a hiatus from trans advocacy? Answering today’s question is Cristan Williams and she writes: My short and very unnuanced answer is: “Of course!” Neglecting ourselves while giving to everyone else isn't compassion. The circle… Read more.

Having learned that the mainstream publication The Atlantic has paid professional anti-trans concern troll Jesse Singal to write about trans issues, I want to address his well-worn arguments before he can make them. To do so, I will assert and then substantiate a few things: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV Gender Identity Disorder (GID) diagnosis is critically flawed and has harmed people. A DSM-5 Gender Dysphoria (GD) diagnosis is very different from the DSM-IV concept… Read more.

Today we have as a guest podcaster, Ali Lozano, Outreach Director for Laura Moser running for Congress in the 7th district! Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: google"]Google Play [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://soundcloud.com/cristan-williams/sets/transadvocate-podcast" target="blank" style="flat" background="#f54917" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: soundcloud"]Soundcloud [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://player.fm/podcasts/transadvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#ea3b4c" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon:… Read more.

The TransAdvocate Q & A is where we answer your questions. If you’d like to submit a question, go to our contact page and send it in. Today’s question is: I'm pre-transition and my gender dysphoria makes my life miserable. I’m not in a position to transition yet, so how do I deal with my dysphoria? Answering today’s question is Cristan Williams and she writes: Basically, I've handled gender dysphoria in the same way I've handled PTSD after a sexual… Read more.

We've seen out trans people running and winning elections throughout the nation recently and today the TransAdvocate welcomes our guest host Dylan Forbis, an out trans man running for a seat in the Texas House! Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: google"]Google Play [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://soundcloud.com/cristan-williams/sets/transadvocate-podcast" target="blank" style="flat" background="#f54917"… Read more.

The TransAdvocate produced a short documentary to examine the political right's propensity to focus on bathrooms when it comes to trans equality. The reality is, the political right always focuses on bathrooms, privacy, and sexual safety concerns when taking a stand against equality, no matter the oppressed population. This documentary examines, from a historical perspective, why this political rhetoric works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHzrPGyiwqo Podcast Extra Transcript In Illinois, one of the states that joined North Carolina in suing the Obama Administration for… Read more.

Having observed numerous conversations predicated on fundamental misunderstandings concerning trans advocacy, I put together this TransAdvocate 101 to compliment our Trans 101. If cis and trans advocate communities wish to better communicate, we need a foundation from which informed conversations may take place. Therefore, I will succinctly: Describe the three fundamentals informing our approach to trans advocacy; Describe the differences between the cis and trans experience as it relates to “gender identity;” Describe the difference between Gender Dysphoria and Gender Identity… Read more.

As readers might be aware, the UK media is engulfed in a new and ongoing round of media-created trans panic of the same type that lead to the death of Lucy Medows in 2013. Already, media hysteria coupled with the concern trolling homunculus that is all things "gender critical," has pushed a trans teen caught in the UK media's crosshairs to desperation. Riding the wake of this media madness is Linda Bellos, a sex essentialist "radical feminist" who took to an… Read more.

This week, we take a look at Pastor Andres Savage who coerced an underage girl into sexually servicing him on the outskirts of Houston. But, before we do that, let’s look at the bad advice Pastor Andres Savage gives out to queer people: The good pastor called gay people “wicked” and said, “God does not approve of homosexuality as a proper way to live.” During one sermon, the pastor relayed the way he helped a gay man live a life… Read more.

You can hear anti-queer people bloviating nonstop about who they think we are and after a while, this psychological erasure is can take its toll. Today we remember who we are with: A new segment examining the avalanche of sex abuse scandals in the anti-queer movement. Ray Hill's 2007 Transgender Unity Banquet speech on remembering who we are. An essay by the radical feminist John Stoltenberg titled What the trans moment has to offer radical feminism. And Gwen Smith’s Gender… Read more.

If "Resistance" means anything, it means removing those from power who act to oppress us. This means that YOU --yes you-- are needed in the fight to ensure that those who are running for political office will fight for justice and equality. Below are the registration dates for the US political registration dates, primaries, and runoffs. Under these dates is a form that will allow you to register. Upcoming Registration, Primary, & Runoff Dates   State Primary Date Runoff Primary… Read more.

While we've seen it before, we sometimes don't see the political forest for the trees. The TransAdvocate crew reviews both local and national news and Dr. Gillian Frank helps us recognize the political tactics that are being used against the trans community by noticing that the exact same tactics were used against numerous other groups. Also, get a trans scholarship or get help recovering from a disaster. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: … Read more.

It turns out that basically everyone running the anti-trans campaign against Houston's equal right's ordinance is a sexual harasser, pedophile, or sex abuse apologist. Also, we answer your questions in our 2017 year-end special! On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon:… Read more.

Today’s show focuses on self-care as a form of Resistance, plus the local and national news and Gwen Smith's Gender Nation. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin. Music: Whole Cloth by Daniel Birch & Ben Pegley & The End by The Doors Parade Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5"… Read more.

Today’s show focuses on dealing with fear, both personally and as a community. Moreover, we present an audio essay performance piece titled The Real Housewives of Gilead: The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t as Fictional as you Thought. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin. Music: Lurking Beneath the Surface, Lurking Beneath the Surface by Daniel Birch & Ben Pegley Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat"… Read more.

The podcast crew reviews national and local politics and discusses some of the nuances of community, transition, and detransition. Also featured: the first installment of Gwen Smith’s Gender Nation and bonus material. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank" style="flat" background="#17c9f5" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: google"]Google Play … Read more.

As previewed in the last TransAdvocate podcast, the hip-hop artist known as MIC created an amazing tune about the TransAdvocate, trans advocacy in the US, and the radical feminists who bravely stood by their trans siblings (in the face of sex essentialist violence and attempted murder) and helped inform what became known as "trans advocacy" today. MIC namedrops numerous early radical feminists and feminist organizations, early trans activists and, of course, the TransAdvocate itself. MIC presented this work to the… Read more.

The TransAdvocate crew records live in Houston's Montrose. Today's topics include the stupidity of the Trump administration, an awesome hip-hop track the rapper MIC did for the TransAdvocate, and we talk about World AIDS Day coming up on December 1st. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/transadvocate/id770213655" target="blank" style="flat" background="#020201" size="5" center="yes" icon="icon: apple"]iTunes [su_column size="1/5"] [su_button url="https://goo.gl/app/playmusic?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Ibp6nzo3pqgvih4gvoyzfohu5pe?t%3DTransAdvocate" target="blank"… Read more.

We have the largest trans archive still in the community's hands and we share with you some of the recent acquisitions from the last couple of weeks. This invariably wraps back around to current political narratives about trans people and we notice that anti-trans politicians seem to have a few skellies in their own closets! On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin. Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here: [su_column size="1/5"]… Read more.

On this #TransDayofResilience, did you know that we can make the political machine work for us? Learn about how a trans community fought off dozens of "bathroom bills" and how a Texas trans community produced the biggest queer political event of the year in one of America's largest cities. On top of that, hear one of the most powerful Texas Republican politicians support the trans community and hear from America's first out trans judge. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin… Read more.

For many years, the trans community's one event was a memorial service and while we now celebrate numerous aspects of trans lives, November 20th remains the trans community's oldest community tradition. What follows is the 2017 Remembrance Booklet produced by the Transgender Foundation of America's TDOR data collection project: [su_document url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/booklet.pdf" width="440" height="640"] Violence against trans people remains a defining aspect of trans lives and the Trans Day of Remembrance is our community's opportunity to bear witness to end-result of the anti-trans hate… Read more.

This week's podcast is an audio essay: On The Make It A Slur Campaigns: Are Misogynist, Homophobe & TERF Slurs? By: Cristan Williams Narrated by: Nikki Delgado Duration: 25 minutes Essay Summary: Anti-equality activists, seemingly from the left and right, have worked together to make certain feminist and queer language taboo. In this audio essay, the TransAdvocate takes a deep dive into the ways in which anti-equality activists work together to coordinate efforts to control the… Read more.

Into the nexus of the 'gay alt-right feminist' movement I received notice that an opinion leader in the sex essentialist activist community had linked to one of my articles titled, You Might be a TERF if... The article lists explicit instances of ideological hate and real-life violence (up to and including attempted murder) carried out in the name of a form of sex essentialist 'feminism' that developed in the US during the mid-to-late 1970s. The Feminist Current, a site substantially dedicated… Read more.

The TransAdvocate podcast crew discusses the Intersex Awareness Day with pioneering intersex activist and TFA board member, Koomah plus a review of upcoming events. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, Alexis Melvin, & Koomah. Here's more information on events and issues covered in this podcast: Events: Every Monday night trans meeting, HTGA at 7:30 10/26/17: Intersex Awareness Day 10/29/17: Gender Reel Houston presents: Both 11/4/17: The 25th annual Transgender Unity Banquet 11/18/17: Houston Trans Day of Remembrance Topics: Transexual Menace Historic… Read more.

Buck Angel: "Not everyone is in a position to be treated respectfully so we must care for our own..."   Many members of the Gulf Coast trans, intersex, and genderqueer community have lost everything. Trans, intersex, and genderqueer individuals can experience extreme difficulties in natural disaster situations. The TransAdvocate's parent organization, the Transgender Foundation of America has organized a community disaster relief fund. The fund will directly assist Gulf Coast trans, intersex, and genderqueer survivors recover from this… Read more.

Help the Gulf Coast trans community affected by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey:     Many members of the Gulf Coast trans, intersex, and genderqueer community have lost everything. Trans, intersex, and genderqueer individuals can experience extreme difficulties in natural disaster situations. The TransAdvocate's parent organization, the Transgender Foundation of America has organized a community disaster relief fund. The fund will assist Gulf Coast trans, intersex, and genderqueer survivors recover from this disaster. The Texas Gulf Coast trans community… Read more.

The Trans Exclusionary (self-identified) “radical feminist” lawyer Cathy Brennan sent, via her attorney, a cease-and-desist letter, asserting that the following statement from a TransAdvocate story titled, Fake “Radical Feminist” group actually paid political front for anti-LGBT James Dobson organization is false and must be removed from the story: This is not the first time TERFs have worked with anti-feminist/LGBT groups in targeting transgender kids. In 2014, TERF attorney, Cathy Brennan and her “radical feminist” organization worked with the anti-abortion/LGBT group the Pacific Justice Institute… Read more.

A cisgender man connected with a Florida Christian convention accosted a cisgender woman with a Bible as she exited an "All Genders" restroom at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando.  The man, shouting about Biblical interpretations of gender while waving his bible around wildly, apparently assumed the cisgender woman was a transgender woman who was participating in a nearby LGBT media convention. The incident came to light when the hotel publicly apologized to the LGBT media convention, on behalf of the… Read more.

Johns Hopkins was an early pioneer in American trans care until anti-LGBT activist Paul McHugh began working at the hospital. In 1979, McHugh was able to end trans care at Johns Hopkins and later wrote that it was his goal to force the closure of the hospital's gender program saying, "It was part of my intention, when I arrived in Baltimore in 1975, to help end it." McHugh went on to describe his professional assessment… Read more.

Bathroom Bills & The Dialectic of Oppression: From the KKK to anti-feminism: examining the Southern roots of the anti-trans "bathroom bill" movement. By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams While Republican delegates dutifully cheered their presidential nominee for promising to keep queer citizens of the US safe from ideological marauders and GOP convention speaker Peter Thiel was booed by North Carolina delegates for calling the "great  debate" a distraction from America's real problems, a trans schoolboy had to sue his school because he was being forced to wear a green… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Almost without exception, all news stories covering the US Attorney General's suit against North Carolina omits the rather significant fact that when North Carolina took federal money tied to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and Title IX, they signed a contract with the federal government explicitly agreeing to not discriminate on the basis of “gender identity”. Unlike what you may have heard, this breach of contract is… Read more.

On Monday, May 9th, the United States Attorney General, Loretta Lynch came out swinging against North Carolina's commitment to discriminating against trans people. The speech that AG Lynch gave is incredibly striking and stands as a singular moment in the history of trans advocacy. While numerous sites will pair soundbites with their own commentary and others will inevitably misrepresent her words, we at the TransAdvocate wish to simply let the AG's words… Read more.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has given the State of North Carolina until Monday, May 9, 2016, to cease discriminating against trans people: Both you and the State of North Carolina (the "State") are in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964... Specifically, the State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees and both you, in your official capacity,… Read more.

Once again, news media around the globe proves that they'll promote just about anything anti-trans, without verification. Zinnia Jones released an in-depth analysis and debunking of YouTuber Joey "Salads" Saladino's "transgender bathroom experiment" wherein Saladino dons a bad wig so that he can stage and film what he presents to be the actual fear of (cis) women when they encounter what's supposedly a trans woman in the women's bathroom. The UK's Daily Mail --the same news… Read more.

While it's well and good to call out those who denigrate trans people in the media, it's time to take it a step further. Making Money with Media What cis privilege looks like. Chances are that you've seen the clueless being used to generate ad revenue for corporate media interests. Have you ever wondered why the press has a habit of asking cis people what their thoughts are regarding trans people? A Guardian op-ed recently opined on this exploitative practice: Here’s how it… Read more.

By Autumn Sandeen & Cristan Williams Anti-trans activists in both Mississippi and North Carolina have passed laws that effectively remove trans people from public life. Making it legal on a state level to discriminate against trans people in employment, housing, goods, and services while making it illegal for trans people to use public hygiene facilities that correspond with their transitioned status ensures that trans people cannot function within society. We at the TransAdvocate believe that the evidence shows that erasing trans people from… Read more.

The TransAdvocate is pleased to announce the launch of a new program aimed at making a decades-old intersectional trans, intersex and genderqueer inclusive radical feminism more accessible. The TransAdvocate, in partnership with the Transgender Archive, launched The Conversations Project on New Year’s Day 2016. The Project seeks to inspire discourse through its community group, a journal, interviews and the publication of a book-length collection of collaborative essays from radical feminist… Read more.

A 2011 Swedish study proves that trans people are more suicidal due to transition, are likely rapists and that trans women exhibit male socialization. Or does it? Perhaps you've heard that a Swedish study found that trans people who access medical care are more likely to commit suicide. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, former Johns Hopkins chief psychiatrist and anti-LGBT activist Dr. Paul McHugh cited a Swedish study to make the following fact assertion: A 2011 study… Read more.

A recent study found that the gender identity of trans children is as implicit as the gender identity of cis children. A study with 32 transgender children, ages 5 to 12, indicates that the gender identity of these children is deeply held and is not the result of confusion about gender identity or pretense. The study, led by psychological scientist Kristina Olson of the University of Washington, is one of the… Read more.

On August 22, 2015, the NY Times ran an article by Richard A. Friedman titled, "How Changeable Is Gender?" One might be excused for mistaking the piece as an earnest call to the medical community for better interventions for the trans community. Alarmingly, Friedman warns readers that science has found that post-operative transsexuals are at significant risk of suicide and moreover, maybe medical treatment isn't actually the right approach after all, especially for trans kids. Friedman gravely recounts a scientific study that… Read more.

Or not. Perhaps you've seen this image floating around the Internets today:   As InfoWars reports, "The California Green Party is attracting controversy after posting an image on its official Instagram page which promotes 'free slaps' to be metered out to ‘straight white men’." However, when this image came out, the California Green Party didn't have an Instagram account. In fact, the first time the image showed up on the internet was when it was posted to 4chan. If… Read more.

Tumblr TERF, radfem-momma apparently thinks it's okay to threaten trans kids with murder as long as you lie about the reason.   BACKSTORY: This post has to do with Tumblr TERFs trying to make the abuse a trans kid experienced by adult MichFest TERFs seem somehow okay. The abuse was witnessed by multiple individuals, specifically members of the Lesbian Avengers and a MichFest performer and member of Sister… Read more.

The yearly struggle the trans community experiences with MichFest has been taking place for so long, some of us have trouble remembering why MichFest's "womyn-born womyn" policy was such a painful issue for the feminist and trans communities in the first place. The very notion of "woman-born woman" is now so ubiquitous that many of us have forgotten that its roots span all the way back to when MichFest's organizer took part in attacking a feminism that was trans… Read more.

Catharine A. MacKinnon is a lawyer, teacher, writer, theorist, and activist. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (long-term). She holds a B.A. from Smith College, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale. Professor MacKinnon specializes in sex equality issues in political theory and under international and domestic (including comparative and constitutional) law.… Read more.

"K" is an intersex, trans and sex worker rights advocate. I interviewed K about their sex work experiences, how the needs of sex workers might be respectfully addressed and the ways in which feminist frameworks interface with the experiences of sex workers. Cristan Williams: How long have you been involved with sex work? K: I’ve been in different types of sex work and I think that it’s important to… Read more.

Some of you might remember that Germaine Greer, a TERF the Radical Feminist Andrea Dworkin took to task for trying to pass off patriarchy as feminism, made some small waves for appealing to the patriarchal vagina smell trope in order to claim that trans women aren't real women. However, what's making waves throughout the UK is that Green Party activist Beatrix Campbell, along with numerous other activists, are appalled that the trans community dared think they had the same rights… Read more.

TERFs battle over who has the correct vaginal odor in order to determine female validity. I've noted many times that while Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) like to speak on behalf of Radical Feminism, the type of so-called "gender critical feminism" they offer is at war with the roots of Radical Feminism. For example, pioneering Radical Feminist opinion leader Andrea Dworkin was supportive of trans women, ensuring that her 1980s-era pro-woman… Read more.

While her mom talks to CNN to profess her love and support, Leelah's Reddit posts paint a homelife defined by bullying and fear. Much has been written about Leelah Alcorn's suicide note* which identifies conversion therapy and unsupportive parents as contributing factors to what happened to Leelah. Under the weight of public condemnation, Leelah's mother, Carla Alcron told CNN that "e told him that we loved him unconditionally. We loved him no… Read more.

Gender Critical Feminism (GCF) is a euphemism for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF). There is no ideological difference between the TERF and "Gender Critical Feminist" (GCF) movement; they are one in the same. GCF teaches that because sex is a natural binary, intersex people are actually just deformed men and women and trans people are always the sex they were assigned at birth. As Janice Raymond’s acolyte Sheila Jeffreys wrote, “sex” is fixed and referring to trans women with female pronouns is… Read more.

It has long been asserted that the iconic TERF opinion leader, Janice Raymond, played a part in bringing an end to the public and private coverage of transgender medical care, resulting in measurable death and suffering within the trans community. Unsurprisingly, Raymond rejects any assertion that she has blood on her hands. Over on TheTERFs.com, Raymond objects to the following assertion: “It was only after the NCHCT published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that… Read more.

Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings recently published a book for trans kids titled, I Am Jazz. The beautifully illustrated story is based on the real-life experiences of Jazz. Laverne Cox said that the book is an “essential tool for parents and teachers” and that “I wish I had had a book like this when I was a kid struggling with gender identity questions.” Cover: I Am Jazz I had an opportunity to both review the… Read more.

In what has to be one of the most facepalm-inducing interviews I've ever watched, Canadian school board trustee, Sam Sotiropoulos attempted to explain why he's not a bigot for promoting bigotry. The above interview occurred after Sotiropoulos posted a few transphobic tweets. Psychiatry expert: ‘scientifically there is no such thing as transgender’ http://t.co/huWbDpd6bl Where's Bill C-279? http://t.co/4JRejJhuW6 — Sam Sotiropoulos (@TrusteeSam) August 30, 2014 The article Sotiropoulos promoted states, "Dr. Joseph Berger has issued a statement saying that from a medical… Read more.

In the post announcing #TERFweek, we specified goals for the week. These goals were: Raise awareness about this movement of hate and the groups it forms. Educate people about its tactics. Collectively speak out against its bigotry. Encourage the Feminist, Radical Feminist and Lesbian communities to speak up about the aggressive colonization their communities have faced at the hands of this movement. #TERFweek has accomplished this and so much more. Actual Radical Feminists stepped forward to share their painful… Read more.

In the middle of a cool August night in 1991, Nancy Burkholder was thrown out of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) because she’s a trans woman.  Burkholder was Janis Walworth’s friend and she was outraged that MWMF’s would engage in anti-trans discrimination. Walworth, a cisgender radical lesbian feminist,  immediately began to educate MWMF attendees about trans people. After coping with threats of violence and dealing with having her consciousness-raising… Read more.

What follows is a continuation of my interview with Radical Feminist lesbian icon, Robin Tyler. In the previous piece, Tyler talked about being beaten by TERFs for trying to protect a trans woman from their assault. In this portion of the interview, Tyler describes how a TERF's fist at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) led her to conclude that it was time for her to start her own women's music festival.… Read more.

Robin Tyler is an iconic Radical Feminist lesbian who talked with me about the ways she confronted TERF violence and oppression against trans women. We discussed Tyler’s involvement with the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference. For some context on why this particular conference was so important, Susan Stryker sums it up well: Elliott also served on the organizing committee of the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, planned for April of 1973 in Los Angeles, and she had… Read more.

The obsessive nature of TERFs who police the trans communities’ selfhoods through cruelty can be viewed as an obsessive sadistic fetish. The TERF movement – in breathtaking acts of Lateral Violence – repeatedly conflate cruelty with empowerment. When harm is inflicted, they conflate the pain they inspire with a strike against the oppression they face.  While this anti-trans behavior has yielded no measurable result in deconstructing the patriarchy, gender policing provides an immediate payout for the TERF. For as long… Read more.

Sandy Stone was a problem that Janice Raymond, author of The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, decided to take care of. Raymond felt that Stone -- an out trans woman who was part of the radical feminist lesbian separatist music collective, Olivia Records -- didn’t belong. Raymond engineered a smear campaign that nearly destroyed the Collective and put Stone’s life in jeopardy, culminating in armed TERFs asserting their intention to murder Stone. Olivia Records was a successful… Read more.

Note: If you've not done so, please read Part III: Debunking TERF Essentialism, as this piece draws upon the debunked TERF ad naturam essentialism concepts - the "essence" of what makes one male or female - commonly found within TERF rhetoric. Chivalry culture is the flip-side of chauvinism and together they are part of the same rape culture coin. Promoting the idea that some people are inherently submissive because female-essence – and therefore need some form… Read more.

Part III of the 'Sexing the Body is Gender' Series: Debunking TERF Essentialism In Part II, what gender is and is not was discussed and the ways in which we contextualize our bodies were reviewed. In this section, essentialism arguments regularly asserted as being self-evidently true are reviewed and deconstructed. When appealing to a substance – say, genetics, chromosomes, etc. – as being a sexed essence which defines how we collectively regard the… Read more.

Part II of the 'Sexing the Body is Gender' Series: Contextualizing the Body If one is talking about something that has chemistry and mass, one is not talking about the thoughts in one’s head. In this series, I will make this simple distinction knowing that there is robust and nuanced discussion around whether there is a biological predisposition that causes trans people to experience our bodies in the way we do. For the purpose of this post, I will make a distinction between that which we take to be… Read more.

Before you read further, I need to state a strong Trigger Warning: The following post recounts the circumstances surrounding the suicide of a trans women. Filisa Vistima was a 22-year-old transsexual woman from Seattle who had not been able to access the type of trans medical care she needed. She volunteered at the Lesbian Resource Center (LRC) and on March 6, 1993, Filisa took her own life after handling feedback from TERFs demanding that people like her be banned from the Center.… Read more.

The following article was published in 1974. Note the way the overall public held anti-trans views in contempt. Note the dismissive way the author of this article reported on TERF bigotry. I think this article serves as an important cautionary tale because I can't help but note that today, like in this 1974 article, some feminists and trans folk seem to think TERF anti-trans dogma is irrelevant. Please never forget the damage they've caused. They are as hubris as they are cruel; TERFs have repeatedly shown that they… Read more.

About a decade ago, the feminist community came up with the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) as a way to halt the default colonization of Radical Feminism and feminism itself by TERFs (and this move by feminists is, of course, claimed to be incredibly insulting). Now, under a wave of new awareness of the hate group hiding among them, feminism is becoming more vocal about its recrimination of TERFs. Old TERFs and TERF allies like Sue Hyde and Gloria Steinem have openly recanted their TERF rhetoric and… Read more.

What it is #TERFweek is a week of education, raising awareness and openly talking about the abuse our communities have endured at the hands of the Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist movement. From Monday, August 11 to the 17, we invite everyone to share their experience with the TERF movement using the #TERFweek tag. We hope that all our diverse communities will take this opportunity to speak with one voice, united in standing in opposition to the hate and very real harm this group has caused. Why… Read more.

The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) has joined the Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Nation Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and several other social justice organizations in petitioning that the trans-exclusionary policy of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF) end. In recent years, the MWMF trans exclusionary policy has been rebranded as merely a trans-exclusionary "intention." In the face of MWMF's continued anti-trans policy intention, the nation's leading equality organizations have joined Equality Michigan in petitioning the… Read more.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman announced that the effort to overturn equality failed to collect enough valid petition signatures to put minority rights up for a popular vote in the upcoming November election. Even though the Houston Area Pastor's Council (HAPC) has threatened to sue, due to time constraints, there is no possible way that the equality ordinance will be on the November 2014 ballot. From lgbtqnation.com It was widely reported that the HAPC was able… Read more.

The Houston Area Pastors Council (HPAC), an organization led by men who sexually harassed women (and who tried to misrepresent the sexual abuse to the public), has been working to overturn broad equality in Houston, Texas. The Harris County DA is investigating a HPAC representative for engaging in voter fraud while working to overturn the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). The investigation comes after the TransAdvocate caught the representative on tape attempting to violate Texas Election laws. The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance… Read more.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently ran an op-ed by the right-wing anti-transgender psychiatrist, Paul McHugh. McHugh purposefully misrepresented the research he cited in his article, misleading WSJ readers, and the wider population into believing the lie he was selling. When the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) learned of the McHugh hoax, they responded. While WPATH Board Member, Dr. Dan Karasic, responded to McHugh and the WSJ published the response, they refused to publish the part where WPATH notes that McHugh misrepresented the research… Read more.

The past president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ed Young and current pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston recently joined Pastor Kendall Baker and David Welch in denouncing Houston's recent Equal Rights Ordinance.  Young claimed equality in Houston was a "staggering moral issue" because equality, according to Young, Baker and Welch, discriminates against cisgender heterosexual Southern Baptists like himself.  At a rally for ending equality, Young proclaimed, "The verbiage of the proposed ordinance is couched in non-discrimination language but, without question, discriminates… Read more.

Houston recently passed a nondiscrimination ordinance protecting the following 15 classes: Sex, Race, Color, Ethnicity, National Origin, Age, Familial Status, Marital Status, Military Status, Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, Genetic Information, Gender Identity, and Pregnancy. A leader in the opposition to equality is Pastor Kendall Baker. Here he is speaking before Houston City Council: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJF20AWc0Pk When speaking against equality, Pastor Kendall Baker mentioned that he had just ended a 20+ year career with the City of Houston due to failures of the Office of the Inspector… Read more.

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014, the Houston City Council approved a sweeping non-discrimination ordinance barring discrimination against 15 protected classes, including an explicit protection against discrimination due to one's religion. The city's right-wing community immediately claimed to be oppressed, threatened to recall everyone who voted for the ordinance and pledged to put their own religious protections up for a popular vote in the November election. More worrisome, the Mayor of Houston… Read more.

The faggot, RuPaul Andre Charles, claims that trans people are "bitches" who need to "get stronger" with regard to his use of tranny. In an interview on WTF with Marc Marron, RuPaul said: You know, if your idea of happiness has to do with someone else changing what they say, what they do, you are in for a fucking hard-ass road… I dance to the beat of a different drummer. I believe everybody — you can be whatever the hell you… Read more.

Judith Butler is a preeminent gender theorist and has played an extraordinarily influential role in shaping modern feminism. She's written extensively on gender and her concept of gender performativity is a central theme of both modern feminism and gender theory. Butler's essays and books include Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993) and Undoing Gender (2004). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc However, the concept of gender performativity… Read more.

Discourse surrounding the term tranny has become more than a little heated. In fact, a RuPaul Drag Race runner-up enacted the mock execution of a trans woman named Parker Molloy for the apparent crime of asking that folks not be so casual with the language people use while killing trans people. Andrea James thought the mock execution was "hilarious" and a HuffPo Gay editor promoted the video.  There's a number of posts out there critiquing the mock execution of Parker Molloy. This article will not substantively focus on these… Read more.

The following is a peer-reviewed paper originally published in Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. The article was co-authored by the TransAdvocate Editor, Cristan Williams and Dr. Rawson of the College of the Holy Cross. K.J. Rawson, Cristan Williams, 2014 The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It circulates widely—in the media, in academia, and in the titles of organizations, archives, and resource centers—to the extent… Read more.

The original Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was passed in 1994 and signed into law by then President, Bill Clinton. As you can imagine, the original act was not explicitly trans-inclusive. However, when the VAWA came up for reauthorization in 2012, lawmakers worked to ensure that trans people were covered. Republicans in the House and Senate fought the reauthorization of VAWA because it was explicitly inclusive of LGBT people and had provisions for helping battered undocumented immigrants. Additionally, The… Read more.

I think the freedom of speech and policing arguments that have popped up around RuPaul are entirely disingenuous. Nobody is stopping RuPaul Andre Charles from using these terms as much as he likes in his personal life. RuPaul Andre Charles is a human being; RuPaul is a brand that Logo sells. Logo does not want the brand they're selling to be associated with terms people use while they kill trans women. Period. HuffPo: "RuPaul's Drag Race and the Danger of Overpolicing… Read more.

I heard of Poppy years before I met her. I knew her to be a major force behind Southern feminism. Poppy has a long history of working for reproductive rights both as an attorney and as a volunteer clinic escort. It was as a volunteer clinic defender that I got to personally know her. The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the largest multi-issue women’s rights organization in the United States dedicated to taking action to bring women into full… Read more.

The right to body autonomy and being free from oppressive gender stereotypes is an issue that's near and dear to my heart. I've noticed that the same hubris people who stand in the way of trans people are generally the same people who are standing in the way of the right to safe and legal abortion services for many of the same reasons. The Pacific Justice Institute, the very organization that hounded a trans kid to the brink of… Read more.

The Third Wave Fund (TWF) is a feminist, activist foundation that works nationally to support the vision and voices of young women, transgender and gender nonconforming youth. I came across the TWF while researching the ways in which anti-abortion narratives often intersect with anti-trans narratives. I spoke with TWF Director and out trans man, Rye Young who, working as the coordinator the TWF Emergency Abortion Fund, developed their report on barriers to abortion access report. In 2012, the concept of "Gender Justice" was the unifying… Read more.

The TransAdvocate is an unequivocal supporter of body autonomy. While the issue of body autonomy affects people in somewhat different ways, we've noticed that the same groups standing in the way of a abortion medical services are generally the same groups who stand against trans medical services. Those who wish to hold autonomy over a trans person's body are generally the same as those who wish to hold autonomy over the bodies of those who might need access to safe… Read more.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) are quick to make fact assertions about the term, TERF. According to TERFs, the term is a slur and use of the term makes one a misogynist.   Others assert that the term is insulting, hyperbolic, misleading, and ultimately defamatory. Allen actually calls for more people to recognize radical feminists as a hate group and then pointedly adopts the term Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to refer to them throughout the article. Make no mistake, this is a slur.… Read more.

TERFs are well-known for referring to their rhetoric as being "gender critical." You might think that this means that they are critical of gender in all its forms. However, TERF criticism of gender seems to only ever extend to others (usually trans people). There is a great line in SLC Punk that gets at the heart of a critique I recently made: Brandy: Aren't you, like, rebelling against society? Stevo: Put that simply, kinda, yeah. Brandy: Wouldn't it be… Read more.

The one thing that you have to realize is that everything the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) did to a trans kid in Colorado was about PJI's desire to stop a law in California that codified equality standards for trans children. Law makers in California proposed legislation that would help ensure that California's trans children would be able to have a school experience free from institutionalized oppression. PJI hated this idea and decided that were going to fight it every… Read more.

University of Melbourne Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF), Sheila Jeffreys is being called out for her racist comments by the indigenous Australian community. Jeffreys asserted on a radio show that being trans is like blackface. A genderqueer member of the Indigenous people of Australia told the Star Observer: There is a fear that racist, misogynistic, queerphobic and transphobic people will take her message as truth and enact these prejudices against trans-identified Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. By reducing transgender identities to… Read more.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/136808690" params="color=ff2c00&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] Hey there folks this is Cristan Williams with another TransAdvocate podcast. Today I have a few topics I want to touch on. We'll talk about the Arizona "right to discriminate" bill. Specifically we'll hear the office of the bill's sponsor, Senator Yarbrough, say that his bill will protect the right of the Ku Klux Klan to institute racial segregation based on "religious belief." We'll talk about why a recent… Read more.

Official Souvenir Program of the 1979 National March on Washington, Page 40 It should be noted that the organizer of the 1st MOW was Ray Hill from Houston, Texas. Hill was a significant supporter of both trans inclusion and trans empowerment. Trans Leader from Houston, Phyllis Frye (center, holding American flag) Phyllis Frye, leading the Texas contingent [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/71779612" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] Official Souvenir Program of the 1979 National March on Washington, Page 1 "Gay is… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Arizona state senator, Steve Yarbrough (R) sponsored Senate Bill 1062, hailed as a "property rights" bill aimed at ensuring that business owners and social service organizations would have the right to discriminate on the basis of religious freedom. Devon Mills, speaking for Yarbrough's office said, "It allows business owners to use religion as a reason to deny someone business if it conflicts with their religious belief." Arizona Democrats, who argue the legislation is a way to legalize discrimination against LGBT… Read more.

A reader writes: I was wondering if it would be possible to open a discussion seeking articulation explaining why and how surgical alteration is different from genital mutilation. I feel insufficiently equipped to defend the difference. Here's the deal: body autonomy. I - not some random person - get to decide what body modifications constitute "mutilation." I don't want a pierced septum and if someone held me down and forcibly priced it, I would view it as "mutilation" regardless if… Read more.

A reader writes: I am trans but also religious. Although I live as a woman, I was born with boy parts. In my opinion, to have surgery would imply that God made a mistake. I do not believe that God is capable of making a mistake, which means that I have the body I was meant to have. I believe that God gave me a challenge and that I am playing the hand that I was dealt. I am trans… Read more.

I recently posted the following to my FaceBook page: Is it me or is there a lot of "JESUS! STFU already! I'm complementing you and think you should have rights! What, now I have to stop asking about your genitals TOO?!? Are you never happy?!?" going around. I saw this sentiment in the fallout over Katie Couric's focus on the genitals of Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera in her interview. I again saw this sentiment expressed after the Janet Mock interview on… Read more.

On Saturday, January 4, 2014, the Toronto Star published an anti-trans hoax without first fact checking. The claim was that a 70 year old woman was undressing in a Toronto-area YMCA when a male-bodied individual "who was pre-everything" and who had been given access to the women's changing area merely because they claimed to be trans, stripped nude, walked around, and with an erection hit on the elderly woman. The Toronto Star twice published this claim. On Friday, the Star tried… Read more.

Ex-gay groups are pounding their high chairs insisting that AB 1266 is not in effect. They claim that merely because they turned in signatures - valid or no - AB 1266, the California law codifying protections for trans children in schools, is on hold. The media and liberal politicians are doing their best to scare school officials into implementing AB 1266 right away. The media is reporting that AB 1266 is now in effect and must be implemented by every… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Jewlyes Gutierrez, 16-year-old trans sophomore at Hercules High School On December 4, 2013 an investigative reporter, Jennifer Lopez interviewed the police department about a case against a trans Hercules High School student who had fought back against school bullies: Detective Putten returned my phone call. This was in reference to Jewlyes Gutierrez, a transgender student who  was being bullied and harassed at her high school. The context that I had contacted Detective Putten… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams In its landmark 2009 decision on responsible communication in the public interest, Canada’s highest court asserts this principle: “Freedom does not negate responsibility. It is vital that the media act responsibly in reporting facts on matters of public concern, holding themselves to the highest journalistic standards.” If the Toronto Star does not live up to this responsibility in everything it publishes — in the newspaper, on its websites and through social media — we undermine our… Read more.

On Saturday, the Toronto Star's "ethics" journalist, Ken Gallinger, unquestioningly published the incredible claim that an elderly Toronto women was hit on in the YMCA women's locker room by a male-bodied individual who was walking around the women's locker room fully nude, replete with erection. Fact checking is not what we do here at the Toronto Star! The article claimed that the nude and erect individual was allowed into the women's locker room because they merely… Read more.

A friend and I recently went to see the new Hobbit movie. The lights dimmed and imagine my surprise when the following movie preview flashed across the screen: My friend and I both gasped at the same time. This was the last thing we expected to see just before the Hobbit. The very organization that has traumatized untold numbers of LGBT people is going mainstream. If you are a survivor of the conversion therapy movement, you should prepare yourself to… Read more.

OutSmart magazine asked me to write a piece on the TERF phenomena. My 2500+ word article featured just two sentences that mentioned Cathy Brennan's behavior. Cathy Brennan - a Maryland attorney, activist, leader and a public face of TERFism - is demanding that my article be edited so that it remains silent about her behavior in the modern TERF movement. Lie for me or else! Brennan asserted that she's hired lawyers to successfully go after other media… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @CristanWilliams Gina Gleason, director of the Faith and Public Policy and Watchmen "ministries" of Calvary Chapel church1, asserted that her church's group, the Privacy for All Students (PFAS) coalition is suing the California Secretary of State because PFAS turned in their petitions late. PFAS signature gatherer hiding face after being caught fraudulently misrepresenting the issue to voters, a crime under California election law. The law (AB 1266) protecting transgender children says schools must treat transgender students as equal to cisgender students.… Read more.

The Paradise Post decided to feature one the more ridiculous talking points on offer by anti-equality forces. The "Specificity Critique" is when bigots decry trans equality laws for being policy instead of procedure. I find it ironic the same people who decry the claimed tyranny of Big Government are the same who decry the fact that they aren't micromanaged by the State in the roll-out of trans-inclusive policy. The specificity critique is the last fig leaf of a bigoted ideology. In… Read more.

For the 4th Day of TransGiving, the TransAdvocate has picked The Trans Youth Support Network (TYSN)!  TYSN is a partnership of youth and community members who work together to support trans youth in Minnesota. TYSN empowers trans youth to address issues affecting their quality of life and we think that's awesome! TYSN's mission is to promote racial, social, and economic justice for trans youth, with the freedom to self-define gender identity and expression. TYSN hosts activities and support meetings that help… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Charlotte Burrous, a reporter for the Canon City Daily Record asserted that parents of students spoke out at a school board meeting: Parents of students in the Florence-Penrose School District expressed concern during Monday's regular board meeting about a transgender Florence High School girl who has been granted permission by the school, and the district, to continue to use the girls' restroom at the school. Yeah, they're talking about Jane Doe: Before… Read more.

The Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth (BAGLY) is a youth-led organization that's worked with trans youth since the 1980s. BAGLY has a queer youth speakers bureau and youth led HIV/AIDS education program. Furthermore, BAGLY is where the nation’s first prom for LGBTQ youth happened. BAGLY teaches intersectional feminist ideals. As part of BAGLY's Leadership Development programming BAGLY staff, adult volunteers, youth leaders, and youth members work to recognize dominant group identity (white/male/gender normative/adult), make connections between oppressive behaviors and dominant groups. Making… Read more.

This is the second in a series on backing your community. During the month of December, the TransAdvocate will feature 12 AMAZING trans nonprofits/causes that deserve your support. The Gender Book is one of those super amazing projects that you should support. It's an illustrated book - similar to educational children's books, with no age limit. It's about 90 pages long, and can be read in one sitting. The book covers highly nuanced subjects in a way that makes… Read more.

This is the first in a series on backing your community. During the month of December, the TransAdvocate will feature 12 AMAZING trans nonprofits/causes that deserve your support. The Trans Center in Houston, Texas is unlike anything else you are likely to see. More than a simple meeting hall or social service agency, it is all that and more. The center and its programs are run by the trans community itself. That means that the social services (therapy, homeless… Read more.

Recently, an equality effort in Florida was defeated by appealing to the 'trans people = rape' meme. As it turned out, appealing to this meme was deliberate and is, in fact, part of a curriculum currently being taught to anti-LGBT activists. The TransAdvocate obtained audio from one of the training sessions given by the Christian Family Association (CFC) on October 5th, shortly after their successful defeat of a Florida equality measure that included trans people. The curriculum taught at this training… Read more.

Recently Katherine Svenson, a Delta county School Board member in Colorado, found herself the topic of controversy after remarking that trans kids should be castrated before they use the restroom. What news reports failed to note was that Svenson is the co-founder of an anti-gay ministry: Cached 2010 copy of TellASIA founding members Here's some of what TellASIA spends its time doing: It so happened that the dates of the final conference coincided with the date when South… Read more.

What follows is an amazing speech given by Graciela Sanchez on realizing liberation through building a "community of the heart." Sanchez, a self-identified lesbian Latina queer spoke on the intersections of oppression and of social justice. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121478145" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] The last page of the Houston and San Antonio TDOR booklet This speech was taped by the TransAdvocate at the San Antonio, Texas Trans Day of Remembrance on November 21, 2013, held in the Metropolitan Community… Read more.

As a feminist organization, Secular Woman promotes gender equality. We stand against and combat sexism, hate, intolerance, and misogyny. Transgender women are women. Cisgender women are women. We do not, in any way, view the existence of transgender women, genderqueer individuals or transgender men as a threat to the safety of women, female identity, or the goals of feminism. As intersectional feminists we acknowledge the privilege that cisgender people experience. We aim to dismantle the axis of oppression that this… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay group who recently bullied a Colorado trans kid to the brink of suicide. At the same time, PJI was working to strip protections for all trans children in California. The PJI-backed coalition worked tirelessly to paint trans children as threats, sexual deviants an unstable. Their campaign of lies, fraud and intimidation produced over 600,000 signatures in support of discrimination against trans children. Unsurprisingly, California's school district has seen a recent uptick of anti-trans crimes targeting… Read more.

Just a week after the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) backed coalition turned in over 600,000 signatures to repeal protections for trans children in California, a trans student was caught on tape fighting for her life as a group of bullies attacked her. PJI is the ex-gay organization that recently bullied a Colorado trans kid to the brink of suicide. The attack comes days after a California genderqueer student was set on fire for wearing a skirt. School officials say that… Read more.

"Exposing Injustice" The Pacific Justice Institute is the ex-gay organization that bullied a trans kid to the brink of suicide and is one of the major players in the effort to repeal protections for California's trans children. The time has come to bring the fight to their doorstep. The protest will take place at: Christian Legal Aid Society 2200 North Grand Ave. Santa Ana, CA 92711 Michael Peffer serves as Senior Counsel for Pacific Justice Institute and is officed… Read more.

... Is the headline you're probably heard if you're familiar with this story. As you might imagine, the actual story is a bit more nuanced. Yes, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia did, in fact, pass policy that went into effect on November 13, 2013 which would house some trans inmates according to their gender orientation, but this new rule isn't a without some caveats. I first got a call from the Harris County Sheriff's office to get some help in shaping… Read more.

Would you be surprised to learn that a wildly popular front group TERF attorney, Cathy Brennan runs is fake? The group, Organizing for Women's Liberation (OWL) claims to have received well over 100,000 FaceBook likes and is the more palatable face of Cathy Brennan's hate group. OWL mixes anti-trans messaging in with news reports chronicling rape and brutality against women, thereby linking "trans" to real violence against women. The reality is that OWL is a fake group whose "like" numbers… Read more.

The TransAdvocate has documented numerous unethical and/or illegal actions by Pacific Justice Institute backed movement seeking to repeal protections for trans children in California. We've caught them bullying a trans kid to the brink of suicide in an effort to manufacture talking points. We've caught them committing election fraud over and over again. We've caught them lying in the press and lying to the public and today, we've  uncovered evidence of signature gatherers attempting to intimidate a trans advocate when she asked… Read more.

The mere mention of the incident should send shivers down your spine. Trans people who support protections based on gender identity should feel nervous when Colleen's name is mentioned. If you're trans, you should hope that this incident fades into the distance and is never brought up in polite conversations. For the uninitiated, here's a recap from Fox News: A Washington college said their non-discrimination policy prevents them from stopping a transgender man from exposing himself to young girls inside… Read more.

Before PJI: Jane Doe (front row, middle) with school friends. The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization who claimed that a trans kid (who I refer to as Jane Doe) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Media outlets published PJI's story without fact checking their claims, prompting members of the right-wing community to call for the death of Jane Doe. While PJI’s claims were proven false, the public animosity PJI inspired by and focused on Jane took… Read more.

Sasha Fleischman, a genderqueer senior at Colorado's Maybeck High School, fell asleep in the rear of a bus heading for East Oakland. Sasha's skirt was set on fire by a 16 year old named Richard Thomas, resulting in 3rd-degree burns. Sasha was hospitalized and must have skin grafts. Sasha will remain hospitalized for several weeks, but should be home for Thanksgiving. "Sasha is getting good care, and has a good prognosis for recovery," Trevor… Read more.

Some of you may be shocked to learn that staff at Heritage Middle School in St. Leonard, MD are forcing school children to crossdress in order to make them understand the hardship trans and gay people are facing. It must be true because here's a photo of the school children: "These Two Children Were Paired As A Post-Op And Pre-Op Transsexual Couple" Horrifying, isn't it? Right wing activist groups thought so: Who's PFOX you ask? Well, PFOX is… Read more.

Since election day we've gotten numerous requests for updates on what's happening with the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) backed effort to repeal the California law defining protections for transgender school children. The law (AB 1266) protecting transgender children, which California Gov. Jerry Brown signed in August, says schools must treat transgender students as equal to cisgender students.  A PJI-backed coalition of anti-LGBT groups calling itself "Privacy for All Students" has circulated 100s of thousands of anti-trans petitions throughout California. Their goal… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization who claimed that a trans kid (who I will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of safety) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Media outlets published the story without fact checking PJI's claims, prompting some to call for the death of the trans kid. While PJI's claims were proven false, the public animosity PJI inspired and aimed at Jane Doe took its toll. Jane Doe was placed on a suicide watch. PJI acknowledged… Read more.

The group TERF attorney, Cathy Brennan represents is promoting PJI's fundraising efforts: Brennan had previously acted as PJI's mouthpiece, delivering PJI statements to the TransAdvocate. Additionally, Brennan outed the name of the trans kid during the height of the bullying she was enduring, an act even PJI refused to do. This fundraising video features individuals PJI asserts are subject to police investigation for possible online criminal activities targeting a trans youth. This video targets the same trans youth who who was… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization that stirred up the right-wing word when it claimed that a trans kid (who I will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of safety) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story without fact checking PJI's claims, prompting members of the right wing community to call for the death of the trans kid. As a result of PJI's bullying Jane Doe was placed on a suicide watch. Even… Read more.

The TransAdvocate has documented the dirty tricks anti-trans groups are playing in California. We documented how the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) falsely claimed that a trans girl had been harassing cis girls in the restroom so they could use it to scare Californians into rejecting AB 1266, the law protecting trans children. We documented how the PJI lied about there being a police investigation targeting the trans girl. We interviewed and fact checked PJI, proving that they were dishonest time… Read more.

Before you read further, check out this Storify wherein Victoria Brownworth claims that I am a pedophile who pays to have sex with children: Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about cisprivilege and how it showed up in a print article wherein Victoria Brownworth was curious about what the genitalia of a trans kid looked like - someone she says she believed to be a minor - and… Read more.

NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR PAYMENT TYPE CITY STATE ZIP EMPLOYER OCCUPATION AMOUNT TRANSACTION DATE SEAN FIELER MONETARY PRINCETON NJ 8540 EQUINOX PARTNERS PARTNER $80,000.00 9/25/2013 PACIFIC JUSTICE INSTITUTE MONETARY SACRAMENTO CA 95827 $10,000.00 9/23/2013 HAGMAN FOR SENATE 2016 NON-MONETARY CHINO HILLS CA 91709 $7,013.73 9/26/2013 HERMAN ROWLAND, SR MONETARY FAIRFIELD CA 94533 JELLY BELLY CANDY COMPANY CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD $5,000.00 9/26/2013 CHRISTINE HALLADAY MONETARY NEWHALL CA 91321 SELF HOMEMAKER $1,000.00 9/24/2013 ROBERT MACK MONETARY HILLSBOROUGH CA 94010 UNEMPLOYED $1,000.00 9/27/2013… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization that stirred up the right-wing word by claiming that a trans kid (who I will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of safety) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story without conducting any fact checking, prompting members of the right wing community to call for the death of the trans kid. Last week, PJI made the following statement on the notorious right-wing site, World Daily News: Transgender… Read more.

In the seemingly never-ending morass of falsehoods coming from the likes of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a new claim of trans harassment is being pushed in the media by members of the PJI-backed coalition of organizations who are trying to dismantle protections for California transgender school children. In this iteration of the trans bathroom meme,  it's claimed that LA school girls are being harassed by a trans kid who crawls up and over the bathroom stalls in order to watch… Read more.

For the second time, undercover auditors for the TransAdvocate have caught Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) backed signature gathers working to overturn trans protections for California school children by lying. PJI, an ex-gay organization who recently orchestrated a smear campaign of lies against a Colorado trans kid resulting in the trans youth becoming suicidal, is a major financial backer of the effort to overturn a recent California law banning discrimination against trans children. PJI attempted to use Jane Doe, a Colorado trans… Read more.

The following is the argument against YOUR transitioned status being recognized, currently sitting in the Texas 13th District Court of Appeals, and soon to be making its way to the US Supreme Court. This Texas case may very well define how US courts views the transitioned status of trans people. For the uninitiated, here’s how we got here and why this case will likely affect YOU. Keep a close eye on this case. The TransAdvocate obtained an audio recording of the September… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization that stirred up the right-wing word by claiming that a trans kid (who I will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of safety) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story without conducting any fact checking, prompting members of the right wing community to call for the death of the trans kid. Yesterday, the TransAdvocate learned that Jane Doe is under suicide watch. Also, the PJI just issued… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization that stirred up the right-wing word by claiming that a trans kid (who I will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of safety) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right-wing media outlets jumped at the story without conducting any fact checking, prompting members of the right-wing community to call for the death of the trans kid. While I interviewed Matthew McReynolds, staff attorney for PJI earlier this week,  McReynolds was first interviewed by the… Read more.

I wanted to go ahead and get this interview out there ASAP. I'll make a more in-depth post soon - including how PJI responds to Jane Doe's mother and what they think about ex-gay and ex-transgender conversion therapy (clue: they think it's worth fighting for). Here's the interview:   [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/116441769" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]   UPDATE: An amazing Reddit user has transcribed this entire interview!   Tip this TransAdvocate! Writers for the TransAdvocate work hard to… Read more.

I’d like to introduce you to a 16 year old high school student who I’m going to refer to as “Jane Doe.” I’m calling her "Jane" because, after an ex-gay organization orchestrated an international smear campaign against her, numerous individuals have stated that she should be beaten and killed. Jane recently moved to a small Colorado town with her two moms. Jane transitioned from male to female two years ago with the blessing of her therapist. In October 2011, Jane… Read more.

Groups who want a legal right to discriminate against transgender children seem to be pulling out all the stops. An ex-gay group, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), recently went on an ugly smear campaign targeting a Colorado trans kid in what seems to be a ham-handed effort to manufacture talking points for their California battle against trans children. While the campaign was proven to be a hoax, it nonetheless resulted in the conservative community calling for the beating death of the innocent… Read more.

Today, HRC has joined GLAAD in condemning the false reports of trans harassment by an ex-gay/creationist group, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI). The PJI is the organization at the center of an international effort to malign one transgender kid. Last week, the PJI issued the right-wing community talking points for use in their fight for their right to discriminate against trans children. In their letter, the PJI claimed that they were concerned that the school was helping a trans kid harass cisgender girls. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story without… Read more.

GLAAD condemned the false report by the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) which claimed a transgender kid was harassing cisgender girls in Colorado. PJI is the ex-gay/creationist organization at the center of an international effort to malign one transgender kid. Last week, the PJI provided the right-wing word with the ultimate talking point against protecting trans children when they claimed that a trans kid in Colorado, assisted by the public school system, harassed cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story… Read more.

Okay. Maybe the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) doesn't think that they're admitted their charge of "harassment" is fake, but I'll let you be the judge. The PJI is a right-wing activist organization and huge supporter of the ex-gay movement as well as the debunked practice of conversion therapy. Recently, the PJI stirred up the right-wing word by claiming that a kid in Colorado was helped by the public school system to harass cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets… Read more.

Cathy Brennan, an opinion leader in of the Trans Exclusionary RadFem movement has chosen to side with the ex-gay organization, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI):   Fails to mention this story was recanted   Worse, Brennan volunteered to serve as the mouthpiece of the right-wing anti-gay activist organization: Trans people are "inherently intimidating and harassing" and no, we've not actually supported anything we've said with any evidence, but trust us. We wouldn't… Read more.

On Sunday, October 13, 2013 the Daily Mail published a story titled, Girls ‘harassed’ in school bathroom by transgender student told his rights trump their privacy, but pulled the article after it became apparent that the story fabricated. An early promoter of the lie was David McCaine at the Examiner:   On October 11, David ran with this story without fact checking. The TransAdvocate took him to task for his irresponsible behavior and I've just learned that David has done the right thing:… Read more.

On Sunday, October 13, 2013 the Daily Mail published a story titled, Girls 'harassed' in school bathroom by transgender student told his rights trump their privacy: The story, exposed by the TransAdvocate as a lie concocted by right wing ideologues, elicited the following responses from the Daily Mail readers: Give him a throat punch when no one is looking. Tell it to use the boys room! Is anyone surprised by this? What happened to the days when boys and girls were… Read more.

Former South Carolina GOP Executive Director, Todd Kincannon has publicly declared that some Americans should be interned in "camps." Kincannon went on to refer to a trans person as a "goddamn he-she" and stated that trans people were "disgusting mentally ill weirdos." While certainly worded with cruel intent, how does Kincannon's message of exclusion differ in substance from the stated position of the South Carolina GOP? The South Carolina Republican party is very clear about their views of LGBT people and their stated… Read more.

The push for radical transgender rights in schools is trumping privacy rights at one Colorado high school. A male student at Florence High School who claims to be a transgender has been harassing girls in the bathroom. When parents complained, school officials said the boy's rights as a transgender trumped their daughters' privacy rights. - charismanews.com Right wing news outlets are falling over themselves to bemoan the sad state of our public school system now that the law allows transgender… Read more.

While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with. Any legislation should be aimed at the social conditions that initiate and promote the surgery as well as the growth of the medical-institutional… Read more.

  Used with permission: (c) Rebecca Cohen   Read more.

The mere mention of the "cotton ceiling" should send rapey shivers up your spine. If you've not heard of it here's the lowdown from feminists: Transgender cotton ceiling rapists hold male-only (Planned Parenthood-sponsored) seminars, write books, host lecture tours, and endlessly spam lesbian websites and blogs with rape and murder threats over lack of male “inclusion” in lesbian social gatherings, lesbian organizing, lesbian events, lesbian music festivals, and – most importantly- lesbian bedrooms. http://tinyurl.com/ms5289e Planned Parenthood Toronto is helping to sponsor… Read more.

I've noticed that there seems to be some confusion about what a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) is so, here's a quick guide to help you figure out if you're someone who pushes TERF ideology, which is to say, someone who's a TERF. Chances are that you're a TERF if you believe that you're a feminist when you... 1.) Claim that trans women are cis men, that trans men are cis women and purposefully misgender trans people. 2.) Out trans… Read more.

Me & Judge Frye Today Phyllis Frye (America's first out trans judge) and I met up with Nikki Araguz at the 13th District Court of Appeals for the hearing on how Texas will view the transitioned status of trans folk. For the uninitiated, here's how we got here and why this case will likely affect YOU. Court began at 2:00 in the afternoon. The court was made up of a 3 judges and since this is… Read more.

This very important case has been dragging on for a couple of years now and here's the recap: 1.) It all started April, 19 2010 with this: Back in 2010, an intersex person wanted to marry a woman and the El Paso clerk  didn't know if it was legal to issue a marriage license because this person had initially been sexed male, but had genital reconstructive surgery and had proof of her intersex status. So, the El Paso clerk wrote… Read more.

While the vast majority of the feminist word understands that in a society that punishes trans people, not being trans is beneficial. However, fringe nuts on both the left and right often bleat on about how cisprivilege isn't real. More educated, less employed   Trans Unemployment Rate,  2005 Snapshot: 37%: Xavier, J., Bobbin, M., & Singer, B. (2005). A needs assessment of transgendered people of color living in Washington, DC. International Journal of Transgenderism, 8(2/3), 31-47. doi:… Read more.

There is so much hardship, pain, grief and oppression we as trans people face. Sometimes it seems that no matter where we turn, the only image we see representing us (in movies, books, articles, etc.) is the hardship and the death. What can be lost is a message that's also important: we endure this suffering for a reason. We stand up to bullies for a reason. We speak up and tell the truth - even when it's terrifying - for… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth, self proclaimed "award winning" TERF journalist (though she calls herself RadFem), hates me. Like, a lot. I wrote the following factual account of how she used her privilege to coerce a trans minor (actions Brownworth herself describes as both creepy and wrong) to expose his genitals to her: Gawking at TransKid’s Genitalia is “Freedom of Speech” says Philly PD Instead of owning her privilege and/or lapse of professionalism, she went on the offensive: She… Read more.

From the Houston trans community comes this comedy gem: [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/27466208" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] A poe is someone who parodies fundamentalism in such a way that it is ridiculous yet simultaneously difficult to tell if the media is real or a parody. The "radio show" mixes absurd reality with absurd comedy to make a deadly serious point. Enjoy!   Tip this TransAdvocate! Writers for the TransAdvocate work hard to bring you news and… Read more.

Sheila Jeffreys has for years claimed that trans surgery is the product of some malevolent conspiracy: could be likened to political psychiatry in the Soviet Union. I suggest that transsexualism should best be seen in this light, as directly political, medical abuse of human rights. The mutilation of healthy bodies and the subjection of such bodies to dangerous and life-threatening continuing treatment violates such people's rights to live with dignity in the body into which they were born,… Read more.

San Antonio adults standing up for their right to discriminate. For the past month, the adults of San Antonio have been wringing their collective hands in very public displays of "concern" over a city ordinance that would extend equality to *gasp* trans citizens. While the notion of trans/cis equality has set the adult's tongues awaggin, their children already extend this equality to trans children. San Antonio ISD has, for some time now, had a trans-inclusive policy… Read more.

Supposedly, as the RadRight narrative goes, the California bill protecting trans kids in school is anarchy and madness. Unsurprisingly, TERFs and H-BSers jumped on that narrative: You know what? BS. Here in TEXAS - yes, conservative TEXAS - we've had these California-style policies in effect for YEARS. And you know what's happened? Nothing... Except trans kids got to go to school without having to face institutionalized bigotry. Yup, from kindergarten to high school, here in Texas towns like Houston, trans kids… Read more.

The TransAdvocate recently featured a piece by Radical Women. The group touched on many radical positions on gender and the transgender experience. In this piece, the TransAdvocate interviews Sharon Presley, Executive Director of the Association of Libertarian Feminists (ALF). ALF was formed in 1973 by Toni Nathan, the first woman to have received an electoral vote in a US Presidential election. Look for interviews and pieces by various Feminist opinion leaders in the near future! If you as a… Read more.

A lot has been said over New Jersey's new bill, signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie (R), which bans gay conversion therapy. What you may not know is that this law is inclusive of trans kids, too: 2. a. A person who is licensed to provide professional counseling under Title 45 of the Revised Statutes, including, but not limited to, a psychiatrist, licensed practicing psychologist, certified social worker, licensed clinical social worker, licensed social worker, licensed marriage and family… Read more.

Using the cis- and trans- taxonomy to reference gender behavior was used as early as 1914. The transgender community didn't invent its use, nor is its current use inconsistent with its use in 1914.  When discussing gender, cis simply means same and trans simply means to cross. Whether it was 1914 or 2014, when someone uses cis regarding gender, it is simply a recognition that one is not trans. Likewise, whether it was 1914 or 2014, when someone uses trans regarding gender, it… Read more.

The above is a picture of militant lesbians and gays protesting against a movie that promoted false gay stereotypes. March 18, 1970 Ladies' Home Journal Sit-In Above is what happened when a bunch of RadFems righteously took over the offices of the Ladie's Home Journal because it was a vector for promoting false stereotypes about women. Protesting negative stereotypes of cisgender women in the media has a long and proud tradition among feminists. Queer Nation's New York… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth is an award-winning journalist who likes to write about transwomen who live on the edge of society due to bigotry which means that nothing she does can ever be transphobic. Furthermore, she writes for the Philadelphia Gay News (PGN) - which (of course) means that she doesn't have cisprivilege (which isn't real, BTW). In one of PGN's Brownworth articles, she recounts how she talked a trans minor into exposing himself to her because she felt it was her privilege (even though… Read more.

Trans pioneer Dallas Denny published an article on TA about expressing her misgivings about the upcoming publication of a book promoting  Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) hate. She just received a chilling response from a group of  TERF academics declaring war on trans people. The anonymous author declares war on me and for that matter on all transpeople. He or she and his or her six compatriots claims that they will raise an army of graduate students who will oppress me… Read more.

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Editor's Note: This is part of a series on "stealth." The goal of this series to examine the nuanced ways trans opinion leaders conceptualize stealth and how they feel about it. Suzan Cooke kicked off the series with her article, The Many Shades of Stealth. It should be noted that TA is not endorsing any one view, definition or conceptualization. As with the elephant parable, each perception presented in this series represents one representation of the truth; taken together, it's… Read more.

A much older adult, who was famous in the eyes of a kid, talked the minor into exposing themselves to the adult. The adult then took a good long look - long enough to memorize the details of the kid's genitals. The adult then wrote an article featuring the explicit details of what the underage kid's genitals looked like. While this might elicit a strident response from folks who care about things like the age of consent, the use of… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth has been in the news lately because she is a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) who has a history of interpreting the trans experience for disempowered trans people. What follows are excerpts from her 2008 Philadelphia Gay News article, Trans youth: Risking life and limb published online July 4, 2008. "Devon tells me he should have been a boy... He's handsome and, in the loose shirt, no one would ever guess he was born female... I ask him how old he is. He… Read more.

After an ordinance was approved in April by the City of Phoenix which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations based on gender identity, Republican Representative John Kavanagh introduced a bill that sought to make it a crime for a person to use a restroom or any other hygiene facility associated with a sex other than that which was assigned at birth, as noted on a birth certificate. Kavanagh's original "papers please" bill caused a national uproar over government overreach and intrusion… Read more.

UPDATE: I just received a statement from Clear Channel! See below... On June 3rd - just days into Pride Month - the Clear Channel radio show Lex and Terry, broadcast by SiriusXM,  began discussing the gay/trans panic issues saying, There's a teen that shot a tranny after finding out that it was a man after they had a little sexual encounter. A co-host responded, I don't blame him. I would have shot his ass too. [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/95574012" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] The gay/trans… Read more.

6/6/13, 1:10 PM UPDATE: Sign the petition demanding that Clear Channel issue a public apology! 6/5/13, 8:30 PM UPDATE: I've spoken with Senior Vice President of Communications at SiriusXM and he has made it clear that they do not support the comments of the Lex and Terry show and have taken steps, via an official statement (see below), to distance SiriusXM from the show. Sirius satellite radio, founded by out transwoman Martine Rothblatt, bought XM satellite radio in 2008… Read more.

At its core, Thompson’s argument — and Vogel’s — is essentially based on gender identity and socialization. It contends that being assigned female at birth is a life experience that differs from that of being assigned male. “The internal struggles and social pressures are different,” says Thompson. “We live in a patriarchy. That is still true. And that has real, cultural effects." Syd Mutcher, another Michfest participant, agrees, saying that trans women are informed by their boyhoods and by male… Read more.

This month we asked our readers, "If you're transitioning and had to pick just one, what would you say is the goal of your transition?" and here are the results:   May 2013 polling results Well over 300 of you (n=388) of you chose to add your voice and the good news is that apparently the vast majority of you are quite well adjusted folk (though the rest of you need to get to your therapist… Read more.

Apparently I've made the big time. I discovered that GallusMag, self-identified RadFem (TERF), TERF opinion leader and co-founder of RadFemHub, has attempted to troll me on her infamous TERF blog, GenderTrender. According to GallusMag, I have huge sweaty balls, I'm a man, I hate lesbians and gays, I hate feminists most of all, I have a sexualized image of myself as a woman, that I'm known for my advocacy for men's rights, that my greatest desire is to be a… Read more.

Horror of horrors: there's a cartoon wherein a boy puts on a ring that dresses him up like a female superhero. You just know that's going to bring out the RadRight/TERF fringe to proclaim that this show signals... Here's some of the reactions. I've taken these comments from a well-known RadRight blog and a well-known TERF blog. Which comment came from which? Can you guess correctly? (answers at the end) Oh, that's just so terrific. Maybe they can get… Read more.

Will the real Brennan please stand up? Many trans folk are aware of Brennan for her attempts to overturn trans equality protections, her targeting, outing and trans-shaming  of non-cis folk and for claiming that cis privilege doesn't exist because not all butch lesbians can access all the privilege that comes from not being trans. About a month ago, Brennan began contacting me. She sent me her personal phone number and email saying that should I ever have questions, I should… Read more.

FB messages between me and the SPLC   The trans community has asked itself recently why the supposed watchdog of extremist hate-groups - The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) - has historically given Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) a pass. I wondered too and I decided to ask them about it. Here's my the FaceBook email exchange: ME: April 23, 1:48 PM   Why do you endorse hate group leaders on your site? http://www.transadvocate.com/radfem2013-lies-london-irish-centre-truth-a-preview-of-sheila-jeffreys-new-terf-book.htm The very person your site uses to hold up… Read more.

A TERF hate-tracking site recently raised a warning that Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) leaders are attempting to appropriate the Trans Day of Remembrance: Cathy Brennan, contributor to the Radfem2013 conference, has sunk to yet a new low.  She is now trying to exploit the death of our sisters (Transgender Day of Remembrance – TDOR)  to further her justification of transphobia. She wants us all to believe that it isn’t transphobia that kills us, it is male violence. While it is true that the majority of… Read more.

15-year-old Raymond Buys shortly before his death Raymond Buys was sent to an infamous right-wing training camp for effeminate boys. "I sent my son on this course to make him a better man, to give him a better future..." said Buys' mother, Wilma Buys. Buys in camp uniforms Upon admission to the hospital, Buys had had brain damage, cigarette burns all over his body, a broken arm, numerous bruises and resembled Nazi concentration camp survivor. He died… Read more.

America's first out trans judge Phyllis Frye (she was the first out trans judge to be sworn in, in America) just recently won the Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was given at the Transgender Foundation of America's 21st annual Transgender Unity Banquet. Check out her moving acceptance speech: [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/88945075" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] What follows is a post that I made after I processed a number of her personal documents for the Transgender Archive located in Houston, Texas: … Read more.

I've noticed that TERFs tend to lie. Like, a lot. As in, metric tons of BS. TERFs far and wide are currently gnashing their collective teeth over the reality that their hate-fest conference (#RadFem2013) was booted from its venue for the second year in a row. Instead of being an emotional adult about their situation, they instead (of course) chose to construct a narrative wherein their bad behavior had nothing to do with their eviction; instead, they're victims of a conspiracy. In other words,… Read more.

Last month we asked TAers how they felt about non-binary expressions of gender. One of the favorite RadFem (TERF) memes they like to propagate is that trans folk are the embodiment of the patriarchy since because their lived experience proves that they only value the gender binary. Are the TERFs right? We asked TA readers the following: Do you feel that non-binary gender identifications are valid? TA Polling Results   Of the 148 of you who gave your opinion, the vast majority -… Read more.

  No, it's not 'shopped. From what I've been able to gather, Einstein didn't value clothing norms; he instead wore what felt comfortable. It's well known that he hated wearing socks and had foot problems. It could be that he simply felt that these shoes were comfortable and really didn't give a damn if convention held that supposedly only women could wear this particular type of shoe. What are your thoughts? Read more.

RadFem 2013 organizer, Cathy Brennan responds to this post in a totally rational, non-hateful way. For the second year in a row, the TERF hate conference  has been booted from their venue. For the second year in a row, the TERF hate leadership is claiming to be victims of a conspiracy. Last year is was a transgender conspiracy and this year it's a so-called "Men's Rights" conspiracy: Here's why the TERF's claim they're being booted from their venue:… Read more.

  Those in her corner cite studies that show that testosterone production is diminished by several years of estrogen therapy, while adversaries contend that those studies are flawed, and that she has an unfair advantage in muscle mass. - MMA Fighting Look, she’s huge! She’s not just huge, she’s got a fucking man’s face. I mean, you can wear all the lipstick you want. You want to be a woman and you want to take female hormones, you want to… Read more.

Most of the Womyn that come to fest really don't care whether you're straight or not as long as your not trans. - D.M., Festival Supporter, July 4, 2012 More Context: MWMF TERFs organizers supported the targeting of a Radical Feminist, Lesbian-separatist music collective for being trans-inclusive and led to armed TERFs threatening the life of a trans woman. Lisa Vogel's fist inspired trans-inclusive Women's Music Festivals MWMF violence led to the creation of Camp Trans while Leather Dykes and the Lesbian Avengers offered bodyguard… Read more.

Equality means just that. While the trans community is invested in marriage equality, the reality trans folk face each day is described by the American Psychiatric Association thusly: Discrimination and lack of equal civil rights is damaging to the mental health of transgender and gender variant individuals. For example, gender-based discrimination and victimization were found to be independently associated with attempted suicide in a population of transgender individuals, 32% of whom had histories of trying to kill themselves, and in… Read more.

This is part of a lecture given on May 5, 2010 by Prof. Robert Sapolsky at Stanford University. Prof. Sapolsky reviews studies he feels make a compelling case for those who assert that transsexualism is actually a type of intersex condition. More on gender orientation Those interested in gender roles and the brain should read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender. Fine does an excellent job at debunking pernicious myths while chronicling the history of the way neurology has been used… Read more.

The MMA world has been a-buzz after learning that MMA fighter Fallon Fox is trans. A popular site for all things MMA recently posted an article that was quite good. The author sought out the informed opinion of experts and the resulting article was both insightful and balanced. However, the follow-up article failed in every way the first succeeded. Instead of using the informed opinion of a professional who has first-hand knowledge of the physiology of post-transition trans folk, the site used the opinion of Dr. Johnny Benjamin. Benjamin took great pains… Read more.

This is a review of the way a single story is handled by two diffident tabloid newspapers. The sensationalistic reporting style is so starkly different that I thought it would make an exceptional case study for the dos & don'ts of trans reporting (even when it's tabloid reporting). DO - From the New York Daily News:   Do keep the focus of the mockery on the criminal and not on his victim A hulking ex-firefighter accused of violently attacking his transgender… Read more.

The HUD App Reciently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) unveiled the first housing discrimination mobile application (app).  The app provides a quick and easy way to learn about your housing rights and to file housing discrimination complaints, and inform the housing industry about its responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act. “Having this first fair housing mobile application equips people everywhere with the information they need to combat housing discrimination,” said John Trasviña, HUD Assistant Secretary… Read more.

The POTUS noted Stonewall in his 2013 inaugural address: We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King… Read more.

Take the survey here   For some time, I’ve seen and heard subjective assertions like: I love the trans community! I hate the trans community! There is no such thing as a trans community! I wish the trans community was stronger where I live! So... Is there a trans community? Strangely, quantitative research complementing existing ethnographic research concerning this question is hard to come by. The results of this research will map where (and possibly why) the trans population detects and… Read more.

ENDA via Executive Order On social policy, Obama is reconsidering whether to issue an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. When he decided not to issue such an order last year, the White House said it would prefer to pass a law applying to gays and lesbians in the workplace. But if Congress seems unlikely to act on the broader legislation — called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — officials have… Read more.

The real story: Long-standing medical and psychiatric literature demonstrates clear benefits of medical and surgical interventions to assist gender variant individuals seeking transition. However, transgender and gender variant people are frequently denied medical, surgical, and psychiatric care related to gender transition. Access to medical care (both medical and surgical) positively impacts the mental health of transgender and gender variant individuals. Discrimination and lack of equal civil rights is damaging to the mental health of transgender and gender variant individuals. For… Read more.

Pongsapat Pongcharoen is a US-educated Thai police general who running for the office of Bangkok's governor. Our modern world increasingly accepts varied genders… Bangkok must be a city that understands sexual differences, not just accepting different lifestyles … it must be a friend to every difference. And you know what? Pongcharoen is currently the favorite to win and leads his opponent by 10 percentage points. In short, Pongcharoen certainly has the TransAdvocate's endorsement! Read more.

The Omen Damn! 4:30 a.m. I fumbled with the off switch on the alarm clock, knocking over the glass of water I kept on my bedside table. I can only compare the sound my alarm makes to the unholy union of grinding metal and fingernails on a chalkboard. I needed to get up. I needed to get ready. I thought of the things I needed to do. I reminded myself to make sure I have all of the documents I would… Read more.

Multiple news outlets have reported on the recent torture, murder, and mutilation of a mid-western trans rapper. The rapper, Evon Young went missing January 2. The official story is that 5 men were arrested for torturing, mutilating, murdering, immolating and then throwing Evon in a dumpster because someone thought Evon maybe stole something... or maybe it's that Evon was killed as part of a gangland initiation rite... or may it's that Evon was killed in a burglary gone wrong. While the official story… Read more.

In the wake of the President Obama's historic speech referencing Stonewall, NPR ran a piece asking and purporting to answer the question, "So, what was Stonewall?" The article calls upon Martin Duberman, now 82, to retell the story of Stonewall. Martin Duberman published the first history of Stonewall in 1993. His history significantly featured trans folk. Bizarrely, the NPR author Liz Halloran seems to rewrite Duberman's history, spending many lines minimizing the trans aspect of Stonewall:  "I liked the mix of people," he said. "It was not… Read more.

I've witnessed many arguments and misunderstandings explode over the conflation of these THREE dimensions of what we in trans discourse collectively refer to as gender: Gender Orientation: One’s subjective experience of one’s body, including its sexed attributes. Gender Identity: Identity labels used when socially constructing sexed personas within the context of social groupings. Gender Expression: One's situational expression of cultural cues which communicate gender identity. Note that gender identity and expression are absolutely culturally influenced. However, even if you stick me on a deserted island, I am… Read more.

It’s happened. TERFs and the people who DEFENDED Prop 8 have untied as one voice to proclaim that pre/non-op transwomen - as a group - are 1.) icky because 2.) they’re actually men, and therefore 3.) a danger to cisgender women. “Now, it’s a Right Wing Organization that is standing up for Women and Girls…” – Cathy “Sorry About Your Dick & I’m Not A Bigot” Brennan Yes, because that’s what right wing organizations do, Brennan. They… stand up for women… Read more.

As you may know, most of the TS Separatist leaders have moved on with their lives and the ones who are left seem to be the Ashley Love/Just Jennifers of the world who regularly make absurd and demonstrably false claims.  I will continue to both confront and make evidence-based corrections when folks like Love attempt to pass off fiction as fact. Having said that, now that the historical record seems to have been set right on coinage myths, I can't say that I have any… Read more.

Isis recently modeled political shirts that read, “Legalize Gay” and “Gay is O.K.” and I know what you’re thinking… You’re thinking that it’s cool that an out transgender woman is able to support one of the many political causes she cares about. What would you think if I told you that your reaction is wrong; moreover, what if I told you that you’ve just helped oppress Isis and every transgender woman out there? Furthermore, what if I told you that the only… Read more.

Or not. A lot has been made over a Cathy Brennan - a TERF - being “attacked” at a dyke event by event organizers and some cis and trans folk. Here’s the video of what occurred: http://vimeo.com/44796073 I watched the 20 min video and never saw the “assault” Brennan later claimed. She states in the video description that the encounter was videoed when folks started yelling; there’s no mention of violence prior to the video starting. It seems that she may have been taking poetic license… Read more.

I wanted to take a moment and address what it means to be a non-Separatist; that is, what it means to be an Inclusionist - part of the transgender community. The Houston transgender community has been an explicitly Inclusionist community since the 1960s. We toyed with separatism in the mid-1980s when West-Coast Separatists tried to force the Houston trans community to give up our native Inclusionist values and the result was disastrous. Instead of letting Separatists tell you what it means to be an Inclusionist, I thought I’d talk about with it means… Read more.

For example, this Spring a few self-promoting and self-aggrandizing “transgender” bloggers, authors and “gender outlaw” entertainers (who actually financially and professionally profit by enforcing transgender socio-politics and umbrella-ism theory) are obsessing over how to stop the inevitable transsexual liberation by creating petty drama, speculating, concocting ‘out of this world’ and laughable history revisionism, taking actions and quotes out of context, presuming to know one’s intentions as if they are telepathic, unrobing and degrading the bodies of women born with transsexualism… Read more.

Ashley "I'm Colonized" Love So, Ashley Love supposedly held a rally outside of a GLAAD meeting. She writes: Though GLAAD does some good work, primarily for gays and those who support transgender socio-politics, we hold this education rally to inform attendees that the medical condition transsexualism is actually not about third gender politics or homosexuality. Our legitimate birth challenge stems from being born with chromosomal and/or anatomy diversity, and is treated by affirming doctors who aide us is ensuring our body is aligned… Read more.

Love made yet another post asserting (without evidence, of course) that she’s a victim of the word “transgender,” that the evil transgender umbrella is evil and transsexuals were colonized: Please... someone do an intervention on Ashley. NOW! So, I replied… Answer the following 4 questions: 1. When did transgender become an umbrella term? 2. When did transsexual stop being an umbrella term? 3. Exactly how many decades has transgender referenced the transsexual experience? 4. Where did the term come from and does… Read more.

I’m going to call it: the TS Separatist movement – as it has existed over the past 5 years – is dead. The foundational falsehoods upon which TS Separatism was built have been exposed and thus, destroyed.  Furthermore, in an ironic twist, it’s been shown that the guy HBSers (a subset of the TS Separatist group) named themselves after didn’t actually think one could transition from one sex to another. Practically all Separatist opinion leaders have moved on to (hopefully) do better things with their time and energy… and I wish them well!… Read more.

Why and when did transsexual people begin calling themselves transgender? According to some internet memes transsexuals began self-identifying as transgender due to a vast global plot by crossdressers1,2 . According to this conspiracy, transsexuals by the millions were forced by the media3, through a cunning application of crossdresser colonization 4 to start using the term “transgender” sometime in the mid-1990s by a communist.5 In an ironic twist, the apparent solution to this imagined dilemma  is to invent a new term – or string of terms – which… Read more.

Well, TS Separatists have warned us for years that progress will never be seen under the rubric of the transgender borg. The time has come for me to admit that the Separatists were right about it all! I’m so ashamed! After all of this time and effort… we’ve changed nothing… nada. We’ve made no progress at all! They were right all along! Just kidding! The Separatists have been and continue to be proven wrong about just about every single meme they’ve hysterically pushed. The newest blow to… Read more.

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve spent about 12 of them scanning Phyllis Frye’s 1970s trans documents. I don’t know that I can even put into words how those documents affected me. Most of us don’t know that we all owe Phyllis a debt of gratitude. 1973: Teaching transgender law before there was such a thing In Houston, we trace our community back to Phyllis. On the international scene, we trace our legal protections and back to Phyllis. Whether you want to talk… Read more.

While I’m guilty of hating hate, of being intolerant towards intolerance and of having evil intentions towards evil, I’ve no personal issue with Separatists as people. As I’ve said several times, I’m not invested in what someone else chooses to call themselves or whether they want to be part of any movement or community. I have no problem with any statement of opinion anyone cares to make… even if that opinion is that they think I’m a really horrible person.… Read more.

Protections will allow men to dress as women “… in order to perpetrate crimes of homicide, rape, robbery assault…” Sound familiar? It sounds like the arguments of TS Separatism and Religious Fundamentalists, doesn’t it? Actually, this quote is 40 years old and comes from a pamphlet published by a religious fundamentalist group campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). While this equality-for-the-sexes amendment was approved by the federal government, a fundamentalist  bathroom argument scared enough states into not ratifying the amendment so that it ultimately failed to become part of… Read more.

“Tranny” seems to be a contentious term within the GLBT community. For many in the trans community, we’ve known “tranny” to be a term associated with the gay (specifically gay male) community; a term used by gay men to talk about the trans experiences in a pithy, ironic or comical way. The term is usually spelled one of two ways: “Tranny” or “Trannie”. Recently a number of notables have begun experiencing the ire of the trans community when the term is used in a public forum. The… Read more.

As some of you know some Separatists recently colluded in a bid to have the United Nations remove trans protections based upon gender identity and expression. Dana Lane Taylor, Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford happily sent the following letter to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women: This letter linked back (note the “xxii” citation) to Taylor’s site wherein she asserts that a number of sick fucks who like to hurt women would be somehow protected/encouraged by trans protections based upon… Read more.

Today I found that I was the subject of yet another Dana Lane Taylor gauntlet throw-down. Dana is an opinion leader in the TS Separatist group and in this post she seems to claim complete ignorance of any crossdresser leadership within the trans community except for the evil Virginia Prince. Well, as with the last time Taylor threw out a challenge, I accept! On the outset I have to question the honesty of the following statement: “There is a stigma surrounding male crossdressers which Charles (Virginia)… Read more.

I just read a sad little rant by a TS Separatist: “I see the T in lgbt as being a dumping zone, a miscelaneous, really in my view, the T is a junk drawer, an oubliette if you will. The T can stand for MEN who wear women’s clothes for reasons of sexual arousal, it can stand for gay MEN who wear women’s clothes for reasons of entertainment, it can stand for Men who are still sorting out why and… Read more.

Since people are having a hard time understanding why trans folk seem to take issue with Work It, let me put it in terms that more folks might understand. What follows is the exact “About” section from the show’s homepage. I’ve made just one change: instead of transface, the show is now about blackface: Work It About Page: About the show Lee Standish is a quick-witted and likable family man. His best friend, Angel Ortiz, is a hotheaded ladies’ man… Read more.

I know someone who was kicked out of her family’s home because she was trans. When she was on the streets, she went to the only place she knew would be welcoming to someone like herself: a gay bar. When she got there, a man let her know that she could stay the night at his place… if she agreed to have sex with him. Until that night, she had never had any sexual relationships… exchanging sex for housing would… Read more.

As I said before, I set out doing research into the etiology of the term “transgender’” to satisfy my curiosity about claims made about the term. I’ve therefore focused on the eras which are most consistently discussed: 1970 – 1979, 1980 – 1989 and 1990 – 1999. However, in satisfying my curiosity by going about this in the way that I have, I realize that I’ve probably inspired more drama than I’ve allayed. Some of the 1990s era documents that… Read more.

        Many of you will remember that Houston Community College (HCC) seemed to have attempted to cover up the anti-trans bashing of Lance Reyna, a female-to-male transgender student after he suffered an on-campus attack. On June 22, 2010 Reyna was washing his hands in the restroom when a man with a shaved head said in a mocking falsetto voice, “Hey queer!” and put a knife to his throat. Once Lance was on the ground, the attacker began… Read more.

Note: Update 9/19/2011, here’s my ethics complaint letter against Dr. Ablow before I sent it off today:   By now, you are probably aware of the disgusting and shameful professional behavior of Dr. Keith Ablow, a pop psychiatrist employed by Fox News. Here’s a quick refresher: On September 2,  Dr. Keith Ablow, the Fox News psychiatrist, advised parents not to allow their children to see a transgender person on television because he feels that doing so might turn children into… Read more.

Example of right-wing ex-trans site I find the response that I’ve had to this is really interesting. After folks like pop-psychologist (trained in criminal psychology and practices a Chris Angel-like therapy called “Street Therapy”) Dr. Keith Ablow was given an extraordinary platform via Fox News and tell parents that their children could catch transsexualism from watching Chaz Bono on dancing with the stars, I did a quick search to see what other organizations were saying about trans folk. So, I… Read more.

For the past few months, I’ve made available a number of never-before-considered documents that reviewed the true roots of the word “transgender”. The Myth The term “transgender” was coined by a heterosexual crossdresser chauvinist who hated transsexual people, Virginia Prince. The term was explicitly created to refer to other heterosexual crossdressers like Prince. Therefore, if you refer to a transsexual person as being a “transgender” person, you are literally calling that transsexual person a crossdresser – which is offensive! Some… Read more.

Here’s the text of the Clear Channel apology letter: We would like to apologize for remarks made on KTBZ that has caused distress to people in the Houston Transgender Community. We addressed the insensitivity of both content presented on air with our staff and the manner in which we responded to concerned members in the community. No offense was intended. Cristan, we want to thank you and members of your organization for reaching out and enlightening us to foster a… Read more.

Today I found that I was the subject of another Dana Lane Taylor commentary. Dana is an opinion leader in the TS Separatist group and in this post she claims that I am trying to force her and those like her to give up identifying a transsexual women: Then there are the power struggles which seem to have ramped up a lot lately. Cristan Williams, Supreme Queen of Transgender Historical Records and better than anyone else on the interwebz, is… Read more.

Thirty-one years ago today, Judge Phyllis Frye – the first openly trans judge in Texas – was able to get the Houston crossdressing ordinance overturned: - Click to for detail - Thank you Phyllis for everything you’ve done… from pioneering the field of transgender law through ICLEPT to making it safer for trans folk to leave their homes! cross-posted from Ehipassiko Read more.

It hasn’t been but 2 days since I reviewed the disguising way in which TS Separatists have taken up abhorrent fallacies and used it as a weapon against an oppressed people. If that wasn’t enough to expose this ideology as being morally bankrupt, the following exchange should settle the debate. Suzan is another opinion leader in the TS Separatist movement. Responding to my article, in an aptly titled post, “Which Side Are You On”, she addressed me personally. I will… Read more.

I was recently made aware of a disgusting revival of some of the same Raymondiod fallacies that has been used against trans people since the 1970s. This time the TS Separatist, Dana Lane Taylor has, in a stunning display sycophantic credulity, hopped onto the Raymondism bandwagon saying: The sooner the transgender community acknowledges this issue, the better… As stated repeatedly in this communication, we abhor irrational discrimination against transgender and transsexual people.  However, we equally abhor the lack of concern… Read more.

A case of voyeurism that has gripped the media was initially reported on a local Idaho news station: A man who identifies as a transgender woman has been arrested after they took photos of other women inside of the changing room at Target in Ammon. On Monday the Bonneville County Sheriff's Office responded to the Ammon Target store where an adult female says a person taking pictures of her while she was inside a changing room trying on clothes. The woman noticed… Read more.