Listen to the article, Narcissistic Stupefaction. Until now, I've struggled to name the psychosocial process undergirding the movement that is MAGA. However, I think I've found a term that succinctly identifies the problem: Narcissistic Stupefaction. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor killed by Nazis in a concentration camp, noted that fascists were, in the dictionary definition of the term, stupid saying: Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and,… Read more.

Interventions designed to prevent, halt, or reverse non-cisgender experiences are known as conversion therapy. The scientific consensus is that these practices are “pseudoscientific,” and experts on torture have identified these pseudoscientific practices as “torture.” As such, these interventions represent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are scientifically demonstrated to cause brain damage, life-long disabilities, and significantly shortened lifespans. In short, severe emotional abuse is torture; conversion interventions are severe emotional abuse, interventions designed to prevent, halt, or reverse non-cisgender experiences are… Read more.

In this article, I will debunk the five arguments fascists currently use to target transgender people. All fascist movements are predicated upon the myth of categorical purity. Because the material reality of individual humans is not one defined by discrete category, fascism always seeks to conflate people with words and category. It is for this reason that fascism is incompatible with human flourishing. Read more.

Under political pressure for being too liberal from several far-right candidates, Abbott issued what is an effectively fake directive targeting trans children and their families. Read more.

Dave Chappelle’s cisgender enablers repeatedly assert that anti-trans “jokes” are "just jokes" and not an essential aspect of the dehumanization process. So, let us put cisgender media’s claim to the test. The pushback against supporting the dehumanization of trans people began with a trans employee for Netflix writing, “I work at @Netflix. Yesterday we launched another Chappelle special where he attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness – all while trying to pit us against other marginalized… 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.

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.

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.

A memo was recently leaked from the Department of Health and Human Services. In it, the HHS defines sex as a binary determined by chromosomes (presumed to come in only two forms, XX or XY), and states that sex cannot be changed. The memo has caused outrage because its goal is to define gender transition out of existence. Its aim is to discriminate against trans people, declaring them to be deluded or deceptive, their lived genders irrelevant. In so doing, it… 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.

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.

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.

Yes, they worked to make people believe the YouTube Shooter was a trans woman and the mainstream media didn't want you to know, but that's a symptom of a larger problem. On April 3rd, 2018, an armed shooter opened fire at the Youtube headquarters in California. Shortly afterward, as is becoming an epidemic in our current online culture, conspiracy theories and misinformation made the rounds faster then verifiable information could be gathered. There were claims that the shooter was Muslim,… Read more.

The Slowly Boiled Frog is biting commentary from David Cary Hart reflecting upon issues affecting the LGBT community. I should have known that this was inevitable. The headline at Christian Post- reads, "Doctor Slams Trans Study That Claims Using Preferred Names Reduces Depression, Suicide." I wrote about this last Saturday. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin concluded: … In one of the largest and most diverse studies of transgender youths to date, researchers led by a team at The… Read more.

Gender Nation is a bi-weekly column by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the founder of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, reviewing news affecting the trans, intersex, and genderqueer community. A questionable search leads to lawsuit A lawsuit against a Louisiana prison claims that a transgender visitor to the facility was ordered to strip and reveal her genitalia before she would be allowed to leave. China Nelson visited her brother, an inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana in September of 2017.… 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.

Gender Nation is a bi-weekly column by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the founder of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, reviewing news affecting the trans, intersex, and genderqueer community. An Oscar Win The Academy Awards, which has been beset with calls for greater diversity in recent years, was nevertheless the site of a landmark victory for a transgender Chilean as the movie A Fantastic Woman won for best foreign language film. The movie is the first to feature a transgender story and a transgender… Read more.

UPDATE (4/20/22): This article was updated to respond to spurious recommendations from the Florida Department of Health, which assert the same debunked claims this article fact-checks. 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)… Read more.

The Slowly Boiled Frog is biting commentary from David Cary Hart reflecting upon issues affecting the LGBT community. Tony Perkins will argue vociferously that a fetus has rights. Mr. Perkins doesn't seem to think that a teenager has any rights at all. A child, Mr. Perkins, is entitled to quality medical care provided by competent and qualified practitioners. Perkins has decided to comment on a case in Ohio where a transgender boy has been terribly abused by his parents. His father… Read more.

If celebrities are going to profit off of being the figureheads for our collective traumas, then we have the right to demand they do it right. Trans people are sexually victimized at a sadly high rate. All victims of sexual harms deserve to be respected and represented by those treated as the spokespeople of the #MeToo movement. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I want to speak out about a nasty case of ally fail that took place this week when a presumed… 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.

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.

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.

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.

We're always hearing how we're supposed to "RESIST." What can that look like when you live in the Deep South in Trump's America or when your community just faced a historic natural disaster? Find out how trans people living in Texas manage to do it. On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin. And here's more information on events and issues covered in this podcast: Events: Every Monday night trans meeting, HTGA at 7:30 11/4/17: The 25th annual… Read more.

On September 10, the Australian media giant, Nine Entertainment, aired a long-anticipated news report "about what can go wrong when doctors misdiagnose a child as transgender." The story headlined their Australian version of the American CBS program, "60 Minutes," describing a teen youth, Patrick Mitchell, who had socially and hormonally transitioned from male to female, and back to male again. The segment was promoted as a breaking scandal about "how experts can get it wrong" and bring "self-discovery marred by… Read more.

In a TransAdvocate article entitled "On the Ethics and Utility of Violence," an anonymous contributor makes the case for such violent acts as punching Richard Spencer, a white supremacist who has invoked Nazi slogans, in the middle of an interview while he was assaulting no one and posed no physical threat to anyone. Far from a "victory," I find that act of violence a surrender to the ethos of patriarchy and domination, as opposed to the values of feminism, democracy,… Read more.

By David Cary Hart It's Claire Cretin, uh, Claire Chretien again (I know, mine is a sophomoric display of opprobrium). At the ultra-orthodox Catholic LifeSiteNews Chretien asks the rhetorical question (and answer): “Should men go in the girls’ restroom? This mom says no way.” That is a compound lie. This is about school access. Chretien's intent is to suggest that adult men will be using girls' facilities. The second part of the lie is that this isn't about men or boys. This is about whether… Read more.

You may have heard that a clothing-optional spa in Toronto turned away a trans woman and that has caused a stir. What you may not understand is why she was turned away. Articles explaining the situation often completely omit one very important detail: the trans woman who was booked at the spa was not planning to make her genitals anyone’s business. While the spa is clothing-optional, there is no compulsory nudity. According to The Torontoist, “King asked if her… Read more.

By Alexx Andersen There has been a lot of misinformation about North Carolina’s House Bill 2 through various media outlets, as well as a general lack of coverage in regards to the many Queer and Trans People of Color-led (QTPOC) efforts since the passing of North Carolina’s House Bill 2, referred in the media as “The Bathroom Bill.” The narrative that has been pushed through various media outlets leads people to believe that it is only about the bathrooms. North… Read more.

My name is Amiel, and as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Brazilian edition of the TransAdvocate, I’m happy to announce the official launch of the newest addition to the TransAdvocate family: TransAdvocate Brazil. As a Brazilian intersex trans man, I felt it was time to bring the TransAdvocate model of journalism to a community that has, for far too long, had its story told by cisgender people who are more interested in sensationalism than anything like an honest depiction of… 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.

The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) is a supposedly radical feminist activist group which, as noted by Pink News, shows “little evidence of campaigning on any women’s issues unrelated to transgender people”. They claim to “lobby for pro-choice legislation” and for “women's autonomy”, but somehow evidence of (or calls to) action for such purposes are completely absent from their website (archived here so you don't have to give them pageviews) outside that vague mission statement blurb. What you do see, however,… Read more.

This was the era of Anita Bryant's crusade against lesbians and gays. "As a mother," Bryant said, "I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children." This was the predominant belief; this notion that gays and lesbians need to "recruit" people to grow in numbers, and therefore are grooming children. It was very effective, as it tapped into primal fears that one's own sons and daughters could be in peril from a menace that the… 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.

On March 13, 2017, the TransAdvocate will meet with numerous members of the Texas Legislature --both Democratic and Republican-- concerning anti-LGBTQIA bills recently filed during this legislative session. Particularly of concern for both the trans and intersex community are bills designed to force trans and intersex individuals to use public accommodations based upon the sex designated on one's birth certificate, regardless of transitioned status. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAqCJHVgd9k Regarding SB6 and other anti-GLBTQIA bills, the TransAdovcate's Editor, Cristan Williams said, "These bills are creating… Read more.

[su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-viii-interview-the-author-of-the-last-time-i-wore-a-dress-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19904.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 8: Committed for GID By Cristan Williams   Installment Preface Welcome to the ninth and last installment in this series on the rise and fall of Disco Sexology. In the previous installment, I interviewed the author of the classic, The Last Time I Wore a Dress, Dylan Scholinski. Scholinski was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder and confined to a mental institution… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-vi-interview-with-gender-infinity-co-founder-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19773.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 7: Affirmative Therapy [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-ix-the-circular-logic-of-disco-sexology-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19923.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 9: Conclusion By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the eighth installment in this series on… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-vi-interview-with-gender-infinity-co-founder-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19773.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Six: Gender Infinity [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-viii-interview-the-author-of-the-last-time-i-wore-a-dress-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19904.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 8: Committed for GID By Cristan Williams Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook.… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-v-interview-with-zuckers-patient-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19727.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Five: Zucker's Patient [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-vii-interview-with-affirmative-therapy-pioneer-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19880.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 7: Affirmative Therapy By Cristan Williams Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the sixth installment in this series on… Read more.

  By M. A. Melby As an educator, it is my duty to give all students an opportunity to learn and to succeed. In service to this duty, Universities are legally required to maintain a non-hostile environment. I am also devoted to imparting information that may be incongruous with my students strongly held beliefs. With the goal of meaningful instruction and students’ personal growth in mind, I may encourage frank discussions on… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-iv-interview-with-the-camh-medical-director-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19703.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Four: CAMH Director [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-vi-interview-with-gender-infinity-co-founder-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19773.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Six: Gender Infinity By Cristan Williams Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the fifth installment in this series on… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-iii-the-report-controversy-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19672.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Three: Controversy [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-v-interview-with-zuckers-patient-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19727.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Five: Zucker’s Patient By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the fourth installment in this series… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-ii-the-history-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19630.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Two: The History [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-iv-interview-with-the-camh-medical-director-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19703.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Four: CAMH Director By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the third installment… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.transadvocate.com/part-i-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19556.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part One: Introduction [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.transadvocate.com/part-iii-the-report-controversy-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19672.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Three: Controversy By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the second installment in… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.transadvocate.com/part-ii-the-history-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19630.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Two: The History By Cristan Williams   Foreword With the recent enthusiastic promotion of disco-era ideas about trans people and gender identity in general, the TransAdvocate felt that it would be important to release a comprehensive review of these ideas. In this series that will feature the tag #DiscoSexology, the TransAdvocate… Read more.

By Kelley Winters The National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling respondedKeisling, M (2016). Response to BuzzFeed Article. Blog, National Center for Transgender Equality, Oct. 28. http://www.transequality.org/blog/response-to-buzzfeed-article]to sharp criticismHolden, D. (2016). Top LGBT Leaders Are Divided Over Compromising On The Bathroom Fight. BuzzFeed News, Oct. 25. https://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/lgbt-leaders-divided-bathroom-fight] of the recent strategy by NCTE and other nonprofits funded by the Gill Foundation to back a Pennsylvania state nondiscrimination bill that included LGBT employment and housing protection but excluded public accommodation protections.… 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 Kelly Winters, PhD Jesse Singal, the Senior Editor at nymag.com, has enlisted his New York Magazine blog to promote the widely publicized presumption that painful distress with birth-assigned sex and gender are just a phase for the great majority of children who suffer it: While the actual percentages vary from study to study, overall, it appears that about 80 percent of kids with gender dysphoria end up feeling okay, in the long… Read more.

A trans historian considers the backward progress of the way media represents our dead. By Kat If you are thinking of transitioning but have yet to start the process you have probably spent some time looking for ‘trans stuff.’ Yes, that would include information about how to about the transition process medically and legally; I’m just old enough to remember when the Erickson Educational Foundation pamphlets (remember those?) weren’t too far out of… 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.

For the The Transgender Day Of Visibility. This lyric video explores the performative nature of gender, the difficulties of navigating the legal system and finding a place where transgender people are protected as citizens against prejudice, discrimination and hate-motivated violence. By including transgender people who are of different races, ages, faiths, and stages in their transition this video showcases the huge spectrum that exists within the community. All of the people included in this video are transgender. Transgender is defined… 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.

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.

In the 2013 film Adult World, when cisgender protagonist Amy is cleaning the bathroom, she peers through a glory hole in the stall to see Rubia, a transgender woman, using the urinal. The sequence is constructed around Amy's point-of-view: Adult World Whatever the filmmakers' intentions, this is an excellent encapsulation of the cisgender gaze in cinema: a cisgender person viewing a transgender person without their consent, with little regard for their humanity. The reverse of… Read more.

Why TERF ideology is child abuse and how the media supports it. By  Natacha This article discusses the clash of ideology and lived experience as exemplified by a recent BBC radio program in the UK. This article uses the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to distinguish between the trans-supportive Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, The Olivia Collective or the West Coast Lesbian Conference and sex essentialist anti-trans feminism of Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys and/or the… 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.

One of the fairly regular commenters on GenderTrender is Roslyn Hardy Holcomb, a published writer of color. She's been interviewed by USA Today, she has twenty-three books reviewed on Goodreads, and you can buy her books on Amazon. Basically, she's a moderately well-known author in the romance genre. She apparently is also a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, abbreviated as TERF. Holcomb made a comment on the GenderTrender post “We must look, act and live the part” about the Planet Fitness… 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.

Allison Woolbert, recently resigned executive director of Transgender Human Rights Institute (THRI), has a 1991 New Jersey conviction for First Degree Aggravated Sexual Assault of a 15-year old relative. Woolbert was sentenced to 6 years for the offense and was released after 4. She was 28 at the time of offense and conviction. Woolbert isn't a registered sex offender as her criminal conviction occurred 3 years before New Jersey's law mandating sex offender registration was signed into law. The Trans*… 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.

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.

By Natacha Kennedy Michelle Goldberg’s awful article in The New Yorker will be considered by many to be just another example of the sort of biased rubbish trans people have come to get used to from the media. This kind of article is the sort of thing that (dis)graces plenty of TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) sites and marginal online publications that try to be ‘edgy’or ‘iconoclastic in the knowledge that having a go at trans people is the last… Read more.

By Debi Jackson Although I have been part of the LGBT community for the last three years since my daughter transitioned from male to female, I still seem to learn something new every day. Take, for example, my recent discovery of a group that some call TERFs, or Trans-Excluding Radical Feminists. Within the last few weeks, I’ve become a target of hate from some who watched a video of me giving a speech about my daughter’s transition. Most of that… Read more.

I have seen various version of this phrase. "Quit attacking your allies!" - many, many times.  I've only been involved heavily in trans activism for about two years.  How and why I've become as invested as I am is a long story; but at the end of the day, I am a woman who was assigned female at birth.  I am cis.  So, it's odd that this statement has been directed at me, but it often has.  It's also something… 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.

At first, I wasn’t going to write a response piece to Caroline Criado-Perez (CCP) article concerning the term “cis”, because many of her ideas were similar to those in Sarah Ditum’s post I recently responded to. Then I realized those similarities should be pointed out. There are patterns emerging where otherwise respected feminists are injecting thinly veiled transmisogynist bigotry within self-congratulatory “bravery” narratives, as well as, patronizing pro-trans-sounding platitudes.  So, when trans activists respond to their seemingly conciliatory knives-in-the-back… 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.

In her latest cognitive-dissonance-filled diatribe, "comedian" Andrea James attempts to maintain her waning relevance by criticizing the GLAAD Board of Directors for having too much trans representation. The piece, published on Queerty (a blog with its own problematic racist and transphobic history), forwards the idea that GLAAD has been subjected to a "trans takeover" because trans women are more common on the board than they are in the LGBT population as a whole. James claims that the presence of… Read more.

The appearance of Lavern Cox, a prominent trans woman activist and actor, on the cover of Time magazine was a great moment in trans advocacy.  Although Chelsea Manning was the first trans woman to be pictured on the cover of Time, the context of Lavern Cox photo was a bold statement.  Beside her name were the words, "The transgender tipping point: America's next civil rights frontier." Sarah Ditum, a feminist journalist from the UK, reacted to the photo in… 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.

Engaging in fraud in order to overturn LGBT and especially trans equality in cities throughout the nation is nothing new for anti-equality bigots. In the past anti-equality efforts, election fraud was limited to purposefully deceiving voters about trans equality or intimidating voters. Recently, the TransAdvocate documented an anti-equality activist using county property to attempt to circumvent a Texas election law. The Houston Area Pastor's Council (AKA, the Texas Pastor's Council, AKA, the US Pastor's Council) is the Texas-based anti-queer group that is heading up… Read more.

In a June 12th opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, well-known anti-transgender psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh attempts to make a case against supporting hormonal and surgical transition for transgender individuals. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, has been actively working against the medical treatment of trans people since the 1970’s. As the university’s chief psychiatrist, he was instrumental in closing the Johns Hopkins Gender Program in 1979, one of the first programs of its kind, citing… 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.

I suppose the headline of this article should actually read, "Will LOGO ban RuPauls drag race?" Then, all of those who truly understand the dynamics of the situation at hand could answer, "Probably not. But they most certainly should."  For some of us, the question is, "Why is it unlikely that LOGO will separate from him?" Let's face it, money and power breeds privilege. When segments within minority groups begin to gain privilege, the struggles of others might not seem very important. Those (now) privileged minorities,… 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.

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.

Trigger warning: video linked portrays a trans woman being murdered A trans woman activist portrayed with a moustache and a bad wig being murdered by a drag queen is the kind of imagery that would come with a trigger warning on most sensible online information outlet, not hailed as “hilarious” by one it’s editors. But, it would appear that Huffington Post editor James Nichols believes that the death of trans activist at the hands of an angry drag queen… 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.

Just days after Monica Jones was shown in this video protesting the failed religious discriminatory law in Phoenix, she was offered a ride while walking to a bar. The driver turned out to be an undercover police officer who then arrested her for "manifestation of prostitution'. This law is a vague statute which enables officers to arrest woman for no other reason than asking if they are police. The law is used to feed people… 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.

Laura Jane Klug (image: Facebook) Lumberton Texas ISD suspended Laura Jane Klug, a transgender teacher at the intermediate school. Mainstream news reports say parents complained about her transgender status, but Ms. Klug thinks something else prompted her dismissal. Ms. Klug, in a phone conversation, told the Advocate about her hiring "The school was fully aware of my transgender status when they hired me. I made a point of making that clear to them by showing… Read more.

Co-authored by, Marti Abernathy It started with Addams March 5th Advocate Op-ed: In Defense of Jared Leto followed by Parker Marie Molloy March 10th Advocate post, critical of Addams, titled "Op-ed: What People Don't Get About Dismay Over Jared Leto. Everything was civil up to that point, but that civility came to an end with Calpernia Addams dismissive April 2nd Huffington Post article "Parker Marie Molloy's Transphobic and Homophobic Slurs Don't Matter, but Our Response Does".  Addams inexplicably attempts… Read more.

In his latest piece for TheFederalist, arts writer David Marcus takes on what he believes to be a great injustice: the inclusion of trans people in a list of playwrights developed to demonstrate that perspectives beyond those of men actually do exist and are readily accessible. The list, a public google document titled “We Exist,” was developed in response to a recent comment by a director at a gathering of professional DC theater folks that there are too few… Read more.

Just in case you've been living under a rock, 2013 saw the release of Dallas Buyers Club, co-starring Jared Leto as a transgender woman named Rayon. Rayon is a rare entry into cinematic transgender canon, and she has sparked a firestorm of debate around trans representation in fiction. Beyond the criticism of the content of the film has been criticism of the mere casting of Jared Leto, because he's a cisgender man. In the grand scheme of things, this… Read more.

Rupauls contestants yucking it up after being told they will be using a transphobic slur in determining whether a person is a 'real' woman or a psycho case Drag icon RuPaul is no stranger to criticism, particularly over his continued use of transphobic slurs on his popular TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race which is produced by the LGBT-centered Logo cable network. However, in March, he ignited a firestorm of backlash from within and outside… Read more.

Lateral violence is displaced violence directed against one's peers rather that one's true adversaries. Our true adversaries are kyriarchy and all those who perpetuate it. We live in an interlocking system of oppression; one oppression built on top of another with its core being white supremacy and white supremacist concepts of gender. Challenging transmisogyny and transmisogynistic concepts of gender are indispensable to anti-oppression.  In part, this means challenging the idea that trans women have to "pass" (god I hate that word) to be truly… Read more.

By Cathy Renna @cathyrenna Possibly inspired by Laverne Cox and Orange is the New Black, I blurted out the title of this post at a recent panel about media coverage of transgender issues, as I was trying to put into context the quality of coverage of transgender issues today, as compared to gay and lesbian issues in the early 1990s. It has stuck in my head since. Back then I was working at GLAAD and gay and lesbian people were still… Read more.

Andraya Williams Subjected to discrimination, intimidation, humiliation and stonewalled by North Carolina Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC), transgender student Andraya Williams tells the TransAdvocate she's had enough. On March 19th, Ms. Williams was detained by a campus school guard while exiting the lady's room bathroom telling her that they had heard reports of a man in the restroom and asked her for her college ID. Ms. Williams then presented her ID, which clearly identifies her… Read more.

Human rights advocates braved the elements Saturday in Harlem to show their angst over the church sign promoting violence against the LGBT, and for good reason. Just 20 blocks away, last year, fists were thrown at a transgender woman who lay dying on pavement stones. Islan Nettles was taken off life support by her mother a short time after. This is the violence that the ATLAH church promotes and this very sign, the one demanding violence, was most likely seen by the people… Read more.

The day after the Maryland House of Delegates passed legislation making discrimination against transgender people illegal, one group has decided to take action against it. The bill, SB 212 "Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014" amends the state's law to include gender identity in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. The Baltimore Sun is reporting that the conservative group MD Petitions emailed supporters telling them: "The good news is that we don't have to accept this bill as law – there is another… Read more.

In a situation that recalls the recent controversy around MMA Fighter Fallon Fox, Chloie Jönsson, a trans woman, was recently banned from competing in the women’s division of Reebok’s CrossFit athletic competition, a high-intensity endurance fitness challenge with a cash-prize of $250,000. She is now suing Crossfit for $2.5 million for discrimination. In the letter to her lawyer, obtained by TMZ, CrossFit contends that:  This is simply wrong as a matter of human biology and if you can’t see… Read more.

Fred Phelps, founder of the WBC will forever be remembered as one of the most hateful people ever to walk this planet. Fred Phelps has died. According to CNN the founder of the Westboro Baptist church passed away today Thursday the 20th of March 2014 from natural causes. While many are calling for a picket at Phelps funeral Stephanie Mott, executive director of the Kansas Transgender Project doesn't agree telling CNN "hate doesn't drive out hate.  … Read more.

If you’re of my generation and grew up in the U.S., you’ll remember the movie “Kindergarten Cop” where a gruff police officer goes undercover as a Kindergarten teacher.  At one point, one of his students raises his hand and blurts out “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina”.  At the time, publicly discussing genital anatomy, much less discussing genital anatomy with other people’s children, was incredibly taboo.  So, the audience recognized the awkwardness of the situation and found it… Read more.

The Observer recently featured a photograph of a tourist casually sexually assaulting a trans feminine performer by slipping his hand under her dress and squeezing her breast while posing for a picture. The photo was featured as one of the best photographs commissioned by the Observer. The same photograph was published in December of 2013 and focused on the increase in Chinese travelers to Pattaya, Thailand due to the recent changes in travel restrictions. This photograph, as well as a second… 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.

Yes we are. A few days ago, I posted excitedly about going to Washington DC to attend the 2014 LGBT Media convening and the very real possibility of seeing the president. Well, my train was behind schedule, so I missed Bo by 15 minutes but the real frustration hadn't even begun.  Looking at the agenda early in the day I saw three panels where I could air my concerns about Jared Leto's role in the Dallas Buyers Club, the… 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.

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.

Giving the Commonwealth's high school league the benefit of the doubt its possible they thought they acted in a way that encouraged gender diversity in sports with the adoption of the state's first transgender high school athletic policy...or it could have been a preemptive strike to ensure that not one transgender student will ever play sports in Virginia. Ether way the new policy which was passed 27-0, requires the exclusion of all teenage transgender athletes except the ones who… Read more.

Recently the South Florida Gay News interviewed me for an article on the TERFs, Cathy Brennan and her group, Gender Identity Watch: The Web is where this feud appears to have escalated with Brennan trading barbs between journalists and advocates from the transgender community who claim Brennan and her blog are insensitive. “I believe the petition served to clearly demonstrate that many thousands of feminists view the GIW team to be a hate group,” said Cristan Williams, editor of Transadvocate.com. “I… Read more.

I'm sure many of you have seen the various protest images of Vladimir Putin's image colored as if he's wearing false eyelashes and makeup. The images are used to protest against anti-queer oppression in Russia. Do you think the image is problematic? Some feel the image uses trans expression to shame and mock Puttin, thereby degrading the trans experience. Here's what some of you have to say about this on the TransAdvocate FaceBook page: This is both trans misogyny and… 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.

By Ryan Sallans @rsallans Over the past two months two incidents have happened that I believe will start to shift TV shows away from the typical questions and expected narratives of transgender people. The first happened when Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera were interviewed on Katie Couric, and when Carmen was asked about surgery, Laverne interjected the importance of moving past asking about body parts and moving to “lived experiences”. In a statement after the show Laverne wrote on her blog:… Read more.

By Kat Haché @papierhache NOTE: Content warning below. Yesterday, I came across an article in the LA Times regarding the National Transgender Discrimination Survey’s study of the elevated risk of suicide in the transgender community.  To briefly summarize, the statistics are shocking: 41% of transgender/gender non-confoming individuals have attempted suicide, a rate of 9 times the national average The risk was higher for those who had suffered discrimination or violence For those driven to homelessness, the risk was even higher, at 69%, for those… 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.

It all began with the Media Matters "Misinformer of the Year" winner, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) issuing a press release claiming that because they turned in 600k+ signatures (some valid, some demonstrably not), the California law codifying protections for trans children was put on hold: PJI compounded their campaign of lies by then giving the false impression that they had won a courtroom legal fight against the California Secretary of State: After calling the California Secretary of State, the… Read more.

The TransAdvocate joins other media outlets in celebrating that most hallowed of Holiday traditions: The Top 2013 List. What follows is a look back of the most popular and most evocative stories we published in 2013. Most Fascinated: Published on February 25, 2013, Matt Kailey wrote Why Do Trans People Make Me Uncomfortable? Misogyny lies behind these concepts. The unwarranted devaluation of women and the feminine, along with the unwarranted elevation of men and the masculine, lies behind these concepts.… 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.

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.

By Kat Rose In a bizarre courtroom speech, a Queen defense attorney said the life of a murdered transgender prostitute wasn’t worth much — and argued that her convicted killer shouldn’t be punished as if he had killed someone “in the higher end of the community.” “A sentence of 25 years to life is an incredibly long period of time judge,” John Scarpa said Thursday as he asked a judge to go easy on his client, Rasheen Everett, for killing… 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 Oscar for best supporting role goes to Jared Leto for his portrayal of a drug addicted trans hooker who's fictional character "Rayon" was written into the story line as a tragic joke in "The Dallas Buyers Club". I wanted to experience this movie fully so I watched it with my longtime best friend and HIV/Aids activist Pamela Curry at the Angelika theater in Dallas Texas. I picked this theater purposely because of its proximity to the gayborhood and its indie motif. What I… 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.

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.

... 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.

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.

By Zinnia Jones This August, California passed the School Success and Opportunity Act, a law mandating that transgender students must be included in school activities on the basis of their identified gender rather than their assigned sex. This includes playing on sports teams consistent with their gender, as well as the use of facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms. Conservative groups predictably painted this as an outrage, raising the terrifying possibility that trans girls might use girls’ restrooms – which is supposed… 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 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.

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.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/117840029" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] In this podcast, I review the way in which the mainstream media has responded to the TWO right-wing hoaxes which spread the trans bathroom meme in mainstream media. Also, there's a short interview I did for Swirl Radio - a Clear Channel radio show - and an excerpt from the radio interview that followed my on: an interview with Cathy Brennan, the TERF opinion leader.   Tip this TransAdvocate! Writers… 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Editor's Note: This is part of a TransAdvocate series on religion. This series seeks to explore how various religions conceptualize trans and how trans people conceptualize religion. Eunuch Ebed-Melek successfully argues against the rest of King Zedekiah’s court and leads a team of 30 men to rescue the prophet Jeremiah from a well. (Jeremiah 38)   By Daniel Gonzales Ben Johnson of LifeSiteNews is in a tizzy over Pat Robertson’s declaration that transgender people altering… Read more.

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,… 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.

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,… Read more.

The growing parallels between Hitler and Putin's charade duping world leaders, who are all to willing to pretend there was nothing so wrong with Nazism or Putin's Anti LGBT laws that a Boycott of the Olympicswould have been necessary, is well, mind boggling. Nothing has changed, with the Olympic committee or world leaders who remain more concerned with their egos, prestige and cooperate connection$ than human rights, life or dignity. The biggest difference between then and now is social media where… Read more.

Trans narratives are hot. Across the globe, media makers are turning to the transgender community for fodder for films, photo exhibits, stage plays, magazine articles, etc. In fact, if you aren’t talking about trans people, then you are missing out on what is an incredibly powerful media moment where our lives have become the catalyst for mainstream discussions of gender, sexuality, and even race. Riding the wave of this trans trend is the new Netflix series, Orange is The New Black.… Read more.

I wake up, like any other woman, run my fingers through my long, bed-head hair, wishing I could stay asleep, and go to pour some cereal and coffee for breakfast.  I decided to check my Twitter and my Facebook page, and in my feed, I see a Thought Catalog post that looks interesting.  I click, I read, I find a little bit of inspiration. This has been a fairly accurate description of many mornings that I have spent before school or work,… 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.

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.

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.

The last time I posted on the murder of Milwaukee trans man and rapper Evon Young five suspects, 37 year old Ron Allen, 23 year old Devin Seaberry, 26 year old Billy Griffin, 18 year old Ashanti Mcalister, and 27 year old Victor Stewart had been arrested and charged with Young's murder. In a January 31 court hearing they defendants all plead not guilty to the first-degree intentional homicide charges they face. The charges come with a maximum life in prison sentence… Read more.

Even when The Towle has a reasonable post on a trans issue – here, the Cemia Acoff murder – one can count on the Chorus du Transphobique to show what the entitled really believe that they have the right to do, namely to exclude, humiliate and discriminate against in precisely the same way that they expect Gay, Inc. to prevent themselves from being excluded, humiliated and discriminated against. David Hearne declares: A person is dead, and somebody has his panties… Read more.

I'm beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired of the near genocidal levels of anti-trans violence that are taking away far too many under 30 transwomen of color before they've had a chance to live their lives.  We are not only losing them, but their potential contributions and talents toward building all the communities we intersect and interact with.   TransGriot  April 5, 2013 29 year old Kelly Young, 30 year old Ashley Sinclair and 20 year old Ce Ce Acoff until this… Read more.

Recently I came across an interesting story in my newsfeed. It seems Sir Richard Branson, of Virgin Air lost a wager to Air Asia Group CEO Tony Fernandes. Sir Branson bet Mr Fernandes over whose Formula 1 team would be ranked higher in the 2010 Championships. Branson lost the contest and as a result, he must serve as flight attendant on AirAsia’s Perth to Kuala Lumpur flight. It all seems a bit of fun. The proceeds from the flight go… 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.

I've talked in the blog about the Archie Comics having storylines in which they have done 'what if' gender bending with their hero Archie and reimagined his life twice as a girl in issues 516 and 636.  In Archie 636 they took it a step further and gender swapped Betty and Veronica as well as Archie. Gender fluidity has been present in the comic world for decades but only through fantasy based methods such as magic, shape-shifting, brain-swapping, and cloning via adult or independent… 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.

At the New Statesman, Juliet Jacques with one of the best, distilled and concise pieces I’ve seen setting out point-by-point who the media monsters are and the evil that they perpetrate; here is but one: 2. Transphobia cuts across left/liberal and conservative media Transphobia in left/liberal media tends to come, still, from this radical feminist perspective, tending to attack trans people as a category. Conservative pundits seem to focus more on isolating trans people in apparently “public” roles, undermining their identities by… 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 producers of "True Life" began this episode in Jerry Springer fashion featuring trans woman Domain Javier saying the show would introduce you to people who lived... "Every minute of every day lying about who they are...trapped in a web of deceit as they try to hide there true identities..." essentially amplifying and validating every misconception and lie we as a community fight against every day. My first impulse watching the video below was to go against the tide and say, OK… Read more.

The Fox News headline "Students Who Refuse to Affirm Transgender Classmates Face Punishment" sets the stage for this "Cultural War" against trans people written by Todd Starnes. Deconstructing Fox lies. The headline of Starnes article is a lie. There is no wording in the new policy mentioning disciplinary actions of any kind. Todd Starnes writes "The new rules would also prevent teachers and administrators from telling parents with which gender their child identifies." That's a lie. According to the Massachusetts Nondiscrimination… Read more.

Notice the woman didn't need to check Christoph Waltz's crotch. She already knew he's not a real man. And Kimmel, I feel sorry for any woman trans or cis that you fool. http://youtu.be/4V2akDW9GK8 How would you have reacted placed in that situation?   Cross-posted from PlanetTransgender Read more.

After my last post about a profile on Grindr using ex-gay writer Matt Moore’s photo and personal details, I contacted Moore, who responded as follows: The grindr profile was really mine. I’ve been on it on and off for the last couple of weeks. Like I told the guy who sent you the picture, I am wrong in having been on grindr. I haven’t changed my views on homosexuality, the bible, etc. Creating a grindr profile and talking to guys on it… 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.

This video has been compiled by TransBareAll as a response to recent transphobic articles in the press. We don't aim to debate the merits of freedom of speech, or the rights and wrongs of different sides of an argument. Instead we want to show the real impact of the way language is used, how it can affect the people it targets. In the media (and society in general) there are some words which we never use, such as the 'N'… Read more.

By Diana O’Brien 16 Jan 2013 The third season premiere of Lost Girl just demonstrated the well-worn path for advancing gay/lesbian/bisexual themes in the media. That path continues to be walking over the crushed public image of transgender people. Lost Girl has received a lot of attention for its sexually charged plot lines and positive portrayal of lesbian and bisexual female characters. Even GLAAD has taken notice of the show, promoting it in The GLAAD Wrap and What to Watch.… Read more.

The problem is that the very imagery of what she’s referring to is so weird that I honestly can’t tell precisely what its a threat of. Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore has launched an outspoken attack on PinkNews after it published a story about the killing of a trans woman in Brazil. Linking to Wednesday’s story, Moore tweeted from her account @suzanne_moore Read this piece of shit and Pink News will hear from my lawyers in the morning I am back to sort this out and to… Read more.

The British Transphobic Feminist Troika unleashed their hate speech upon the world last week probably thinking they would get pushback from the trans community they and their acolytes could spin and demonize them with until it quickly blow over. Not this time. This time it isn't just our British trans cousins who are pissed off about the transphobic scribblings.   They got reinforcements from various trans bloggers around the world and pushback from the surprising direction offeminists, allies and other justice minded folks tired of the… Read more.

There are things one does not do in a national newspaper. One does not call Blacks "uppity ni**ers". One does not state as fact that Yids drink the blood of Christian children. And one does not publish articles like this one. Starting with a quote illustrating a complete lack of anything redolent of white feminist privilege "Sod that, we're having lobster and champagne at Frederick's and I'm paying," I told her. Half a bottle of Bolly later, she looked at me… Read more.

After all, the Julie Birch Ill Society probably just cheers whenever a transsexual woman gets ‘cut out.’ From Pink News: It’s being reported that a transwoman has been shot dead in Brazil. According to the ‘Guerrilla Angel Report’ blog site, it is claimed the victim, named by the site as Cecilia Marahouse, worked as a performer and that the shooting took place near Fortaleza, north-eastern Brazil, on 11 January 2013. She is described as being a “well known” figure among the area’s LGBT community. Earlier this week, British journalist Suzanne… Read more.

I recently wrote about the lead role the Human Rights Campaign took in the historic transgender hearings, and it looks as if their project win back strategy is coming to fruition. The Human Rights Campaign has hired ordained Baptist minister Allyson Robinson as their Associate Director of Diversity. Here's Allyson in action: The HRC website states that: "This is a regular, full-time staff position reporting to the Chief Diversity Officer. The Associate Director of Diversity will lead the Human Rights… Read more.

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“So I get on my knees and pray … we won’t get fooled again!” — the Who Fresh on the heels of Southern Comfort Conference (SCC), many of the transgender community reveled in what seemed a penultimate victory: HRC – yes, the Human Rights Campaign – was actually appearing to take the transgender community as equals. (Obviously the ultimate victory would be equal rights for us all, jobs and all.) All of the years of HRC’s historic missteps seemed to magically disappear. We’re now a welcome, if amnesiac community for the Equal Sign people. During the speeches there was much congratulation and self-congratulation, and plenty of high spirits about the impending bills in Congress awaiting votes: Hate Crimes (already passed inclusively in the House) currently awaiting Senate approval, and the all-important Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA) approaching the House vote. All seemed right with the world in Trans America’s focus point that weekend at SCC in Atlanta. All seemed eerily right to some of us long-timers with memories intact as well. Eerily too right. After the speech, everyone clapped, ate, enjoyed the rest of SCC and went home. Most of us waited with baited anticipation. Myself, I couldn’t get over how this reminded me of 2002. At the SCC in 2002, HRC came down and made the big presentation again, and ushered in the coming out of a brand new national activist on the scene, Mara Keisling formerly of then-disbanded WGTE – the group name under which a study in concert with HRC was conducted. She was planning to open shop with an org of her own. No more WGTE, now NATE or NOTE was the names she was hashing over at the time (later settling on NCTE). HRC was not going to deal with the existing trans orgs -- NTAC nor IFGE, while GenderPAC left the trans fold to focus on "gender." So Mara’s sudden emergence fit them to a T, literally, and was welcomed in the HRC fold. However, it wasn’t just HRC’s king or queen-making within the trans community that was the draw of this presentation. This was more about the study findings, ballyhooed as changing the minds of HRC about trans inclusion in legislation. Word went out, there at that conference, that HRC was behind transgender inclusion and would begin such a push immediately. The question from the skeptical among us was posed as to what would happen if this ran up the HRC flagpole, and they instead decided “Nah!” and let Mara twist in the wind. Mara responded that they wouldn’t dare try, “and if they did, rip them a new asshole for publicly trashing her political credibility.” I’ll never forget the look on David Smith’s face at her answer … curious. Read more.

Alice Dreger Destroys Academic Freedom in Order to Save It It is an old adage that “crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.” This appears to be the thinking behind Alice Dreger’s latest attempt to stifle criticism of J. Michael Bailey’s pseudoscience in the name of “academic freedom”. Joelle Ruby Ryan recently issued a Call for Proposals for a proposed panel of the National Women’s Studies Association entitled The Bailey Brouhaha: Community Members Speak Out on Resisting Transphobia in Academia in Beyond. In it, she accurately summarises the history of the “controversy” around Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism, as follows: While Bailey's book The Man Who Would be Queen was released in 2003 to overwhelmingly negative reviews, the book caused a stir for its assertion that trans women can be split into two groupings: "homosexual transsexuals" and “autogynephilics." Trans activists and allies mobilized and took Bailey to task for his bogus claims and helped to document a compelling case against him. Many considered it an open-and-shut case until the 2007 appearance of an article by Bailey colleague and intersex researcher Alice Dreger, who published a lengthy apologia for Bailey in the Archives of Sexual Behavior and castigated trans women activists for their attempts at "ruining" Bailey. In response, Dreger declared that the CFP was “laden with factual errors and misrepresentations about the history of the Bailey controversy and my work”, of which she could identify none, and points to her own dubious “scholarly history” (to be published by a journal controlled by Bailey, Blanchard, and Lawrence) and a breathtakingly inaccurate New York Times article that I have discussed previously as reliable sources of information. Dreger repeats her unsupported and unspecified claims of misrepresentations (in one case “profound” misrepresentations”) and factual errors throughout her correspondence on the subject with Emi Koyama on the Women’s Studies listserv WMST-L, and falsely claims that Bailey’s critics attempted to censor him. She does not enlighten interested readers about the scientific status of Bailey’s claims or his defamatory responses to criticism. She closes the e-mail exchange by endorsing a veiled threat directed at Ryan by Emi Koyama(1): What is the “academic freedom” that Dreger defends so fiercely as to resort to threats and blatant misrepresentations? Is it the freedom to publish scientific findings and engage in scholarly discussion without state or institutional censorship? Clearly not. That right has not been impinged upon. No one is calling for censorship of Bailey’s work, nor has any censorship occurred. The book remains in print, for all to see. Bailey’s right to fetishise “controversy” over science remains inviolate. Read more.

Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it And the reaction will be passionate Give 'em the old hocus pocus …. Give 'em the old three ring circus” — Richard Gere as Billy Flynn in the song "Razzle Dazzle" from the movie “Chicago” What the hell is up with being trans? Seriously, why is it such a heinous scandal to have someone attached to anything hinting of crossdressing or transsexualism? One would think that in 2007 we’ve progressed beyond that stage, but clearly that’s not so. A couple of items jumped out at me this week prompting this rant. One was a tabloid (Star or Enquirer, can’t remember which) with a blaring headline replete with photos showing a sad looking Cher, and an alternate photo of daughter Chastity Bono in what appears to be a man’s suit. The headline was: Cher’s Heartbreak Over Chastity’s Sex Change Decision. The other item concerns photos released of Oscar DeLaHoya and trumpeted as lead story on Entertainment Tonight for multiple nights in a row, even bleeding over into the nightly six o’clock local news at one point. The photos have what appears to be the boxing champ in a fishnet bodysuit, spike-heeled pumps and even wearing a wig with a jaunty fedora in one photo. Read more.

From the AP Stylebook: "Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics (by hormone therapy, body modification, or surgery) of the opposite sex and present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly." Now keeping that in mind when you see this image: Name: Francis Renee White Headline from WTKR Suffolk Man Charged… Read more.

During the HRC/LOGO Presidential Forum John Edwards was asked: MR. SOLOMONESE: Susan Stanton is in our audience tonight. She was, for 17 years, the city manager in Largo , Florida . She did her job well; she was respected and admired. And when it was revealed that she was transgender, she was fired. So my question for you is if a member of your staff came to you and told you that they were transgender and that they were thinking… Read more.

From the Wednesday, July 25th edition of the Randi Rhodes Show When someone apologizes for a "bad joke" and understands their mistake by making the following comment... " This is my second attempt at posting a reply because I feel awful about your PERCEPTION of who I am. Can YOU imagine that? Being misunderstood? I am honesty sorry if my attempt at humor failed." - Randi Rhodes" Would they continue to air this? http://www.transadvocate.com/audio/Annisaman.mp3 I think not. Read more.

I'm continually amazed at the hatred and bigotry shown by the Fox Broadcasting Network. The fall lineup includes the inherently transphobic series, "There’s Something About Miriam." The series first aired in the 2004 in the UK and features six men who try to win the affection of 21-year-old Mexican model Miriam. In the final episode it is revealed to the suitors that Miriam is a preoperative transsexual woman. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/2ACJL41x3QE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] The series originally ran in the… Read more.

It was striking seeing a blurb by a spokesperson in the Iowa Republican Party responding to the prospect of former-President Bill Clinton lobbying for his wife Hillary’s presidential campaign: “After Bill Clinton tarnished the name of the president of the United States, the Republican Party restored hope, respect and morality within the Oval Office by bringing positive ideas and conservative values back to the White House.” Reading this caused me to respond with one of those GEICO© caveman moments: “Yeah,… Read more.

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I pulled a couple of well versed legal minds in to shed more light on the shared space concerns: "It's problematic for employees who have transitioned prior to employment. As I read it, it means that shower or locker rooms without private stalls are exempt, so long as employees get a shower or locker room 'not inconsistent with' their self-identified gender. Thus, a transgender person, regardless of surgical status, can be singled out for placement in a single-person shower room,… Read more.

To all the folks involved with the production of the Zoey/Zarf story line on "All My Children" I'd like to say thank you. I've never watched something so transpositive in the popular culture as I've witnessed today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the clips below: [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/u7AtMExU7rY" width="425" height="350"/] [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_a4rkCIFeDA" width="425" height="350"/] And that's just the beginning.... Zoe going to the endocrinologist to start HRT [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/h_hsWwmeVQs" width="425" height="350"/] and the one that kinda hurts...… Read more.

First he said: * "Homosexual transsexuals tend to have a short time horizon, with certain pleasure in the present worth great risks for the future." * "Prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to." * "The more resourceful and attractive transsexual prostitutes are call girls." * "Nearly all the homosexual transsexuals I know work as escorts after they have their surgery." * "As for shoplifting, homosexual transsexuals are not especially well suited as… Read more.

In my post, "Just Wondering" I asked where the outrage was concerning Michael Savage's attack on on transgender people. It's two weeks later, and I'm still asking myself the same question. Ann Coulter - Called one man a faggot. Don Imus - Called a team "nappy headed hoes." Michael Savage - Called a murdered transwoman a psycho freak. "Yeah, process of becoming a woman -- psychopath. should have been in a back ward in a straitjacket for years, howling… Read more.

In my March 26th post "Just Wondering...", I asked where the outrage was concerning Michael Savage's recent tirade against transgender people. I checked the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) website to see if they'd issued any kind of statement concerning Savage's assault on the transgender community. Finding none, I contacted the only transgender contact at GLAAD that I knew of, Andy Marra (She's also on the board of NCTE, GLSEN (NYC), and NYAGRA, but you might recognize her… Read more.

I recently was asked to review the movie "American Beauties" by Groove Films. The description that came with the email gives you a slight clue that something is amiss here. "American Beauties (2005) is an award-winning documentary on Asian transgender immigrants. We enter the secretive, often misunderstood world of immigrant male to female transgenders. In a series of illuminating interviews, Amanda, Imani, Kimberly and Kosal I've revealing insights on the issues closest to their hearts: discrimination, prostitution, and sex reassignment… Read more.

In March of 2006, I suggested to members of the Indianapolis GLBT activist community that they not support the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) fund raisers in the state until HRC fully supported transgender people in hate crimes legislation. I received an email back from Donna Rose, who served on the HRC Business Council. "There is a significant amount of history to overcome – full of anger, frustration, and distrust. None of us can change the past. However, to believe that… Read more.

In the past I've written posts supporting the "All My Children" transgender character Zoey/Zarf (here and here). Recently, Zoey (the soap character) took part in a support group with real transgender people. Simply amazing. I'm so glad to see this. There's a good representation of sex and race in the scene. Typically in the media you only hear or see white m2f trangender people. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ziWZQXqfhns" width="425" height="350"/] Read more.

The EYE is on Autumn! She was mentioned by CBS News!!! Read more.

Can we can all agree that anyone who gets their kicks off by mocking women is a patriarchal jackass that truly hates women? Read more.

Could we be winning the war of the words? I got this google alert in my email box today: Notice the actual piece that the google alert was linked to: There is hope yet. We may not be winning the "war", but we're winning some battles. Read more.

Boston Catholic Charities decision to close it's adoption services rather than comply with state guidelines that require them to consider all good people as equal when placing children is yet another reminder of the remorseless attitude of this Pope and his Curia toward the Lesbian and Gay community. It is not the old "love the sinner" sort of thing that they parroted in the past, it is an insistence that we be marginalized, considered disordered and unfit. The Church's specious… Read more.

There are so many negative stereotypes when it comes to transgender people, it's a beautiful thing when someone not only "gets it," but also stands up proudly and puts down those stereotypes. That's exactly what Felicity Huffman did when she won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Bree in the movie "TransAmerica." Accepting her award, she said: "I know as actors our job is usually to shed our skins, but I think as people our job is to become… 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.