1 Month Til Surgery! Disabled, Trans Activist Needs Your Help!!!!
Please consider helping support my friend Lee’s Chest surgery. Lee is an amazing activist,and is a Chronically Ill, Disabled, Autistic, Trans person. Lee is also just freaking awesome.
From Occupy Pittsburgh:
Quinn Elliott 11:18am Nov 14
hey I’m looking to set up a memorial area or altar for Transgender Day of Remembrance (Sunday 11/20) somewhere at the occupation site. I think I’ll also have a moment of silence/ceremony around noon that day.
If you’d like to help or have resources, contact me and I’ll forward them to Quinn. (If you are already a part of Occupy Pittsburgh’s Marginalized Communities and Allies workgroup, Quinn has their cell number up there for workgroup members.)
Quinn is expecting to have a flyer available by the end of the day, but I wanted to get this out there first.
Name Change Mobilization
September Name Change Mobilization event! During this event, attorneys and trained volunteers will help transgender and gender non-conforming folks file petitions to change their names legally at the Daley Center in downtown Chicago.
Signal Boost
Whenever I think seriously about my own gender, I find myself recalling examples of gender-atypical behaviour from my youth: wearing tights as a child until I was told not to, being regularly read as a girl when I had a ponytail in my early teenage years, and a longstanding intermingling of subjective and objective identification with others (the classic queer dilemma: “do I want to fuck them or do I want to be them?”). It’s amazing how easy it is to slip into this defensive posture around gender, as if we render our desires and selves more legitimate or real by reference to histories of deviation.
I tell myself that I shouldn’t need to lean on these episodes in order to claim anything in the present. Calling on childhood events to legitimize my current feelings seems like self-deception and runs counter to my belief in the primacy of self-identification. But nonetheless, this collection resides in my memory, ready in the event that I one day need to haul it out and gesture to it as proof of my realness.
bolded what hit me the hardest. oh, my goodness. pinebark, we are totally on the same tip. last night i was half asleep and sprung awake to write the following in my journal (which i actually completely forgot about until i read your post):
“i don’t feel that my experiences/embodiment of genders previous to now are fundamental signifiers for the validity of my current transition/embodiment, but rather a foundational history… i am not “legitimately queer” because in 2nd grade i kissed girls and i am not “not trans” because i longed for/worked toward mainstream cis femininity and monogamous hetero partnership, but rather i am a queer trans person whose current understanding of self comes from that narrative/lineage/experience. your personal queer history begins at your birth, regardless of any painful attempts at hetero assimilation or any prepubescent hints of queerness”
If y’all don’t already follow pinebark, I highly recommend you do.
Art of Transliness: 5 More Common Bad Habits to Stop Now
In February we wrote a post called “5 Common Bad Habits to Stop Now” that was a gentle reminder to our followers that even the best of us slip up but that we should be careful of the words we say and our behavior towards others. Here are some more common bad habits that I myself find falling into that should probably be stopped:
1. Slut shaming. This kind of misogyny is still unfortunately quite acceptable in our society and wildly common. Even the most sexually liberated people I know have a point at which they consider a woman (it is mostly, but not always, directed toward woman) a “slut”, “whore”, or otherwise too sexual. For some this is after said woman has had sex with 5 partners (or 10, or 20), for others this is when a woman has engaged in something “kinky” like a threesome, when a woman has accidentally gotten pregnant, or when she dresses in a certain way (yup, even if she’s never had sex). Not only is this sex negative, because of the double standard it is often just plain woman negative. I could continue to talk about this, but FinallyFeminism101 already has a really good post about it that I’ll just link to.
2. Belittling, shaming, and criticizing trans* individuals whose identities, expression, or way of life isn’t like yours. Femme ftms, stealth guys, FAAB guys who don’t identify as transgender, and trans* people who have a non-traditional transgender narrative have all caught a lot of flak recently from other transguys on tumblr. Just because you can’t imagine being happily stealth or willingly wearing a dress while identifying as male doesn’t mean it isn’t right or good for other individuals. Stop identity policing!
3. Making assumptions about other people. Assumptions are all too often based on stereotypes and are often wrong and/or insulting. Instead of assuming how someone identifies, what someone means by something, or how someone feels, ask them!
4. Rape jokes and comments that take rape and sexual assault lightly. We’ve mentioned this before, but rape jokes are in incredibly bad taste. Most of the people who make comments like “I just really got raped by that test” or “I raped that paper” probably don’t mean to offend, but saying things like these makes light of rape and can be triggering/upsetting for people who have been sexually assaulted. Try to be sensitive to these issues.
5. Racism. I’m not talking about the explicit racism of our forebears that pretty much everyone recognizes as wrong, but that subtle, insidious racism that still pervades our society. That off-color joke you like to tell? It isn’t okay just because you “dated a black guy”, “like mexican food”, or “went to china and taught english”. Most white people (even the most well-meaning among us!) have some implicit racism to work through, and education is a pretty good start. The Good Men Project ran a good article recently about race that had some suggestions on where to start to educate yourself about race.
All of this.
New Research Details Transgender Inmate Prison Stories
A Philadelphia-based collective released a report called “This is Prison, No Glitter Allowed” on the experiences of transgender and gender variant people in Pennsylvania’s prison system. The research, in which 68 percent of respondents identified as black, adds to a growing body of work that looks at how transgender inmates fare when incarcerated.
Drawing inspiration from similar research carried out in New York and Washington DC, the group Hearts on a Wire surveyed 59 transgender and gender variant recently or currently incarcerated individuals in Pennsylvania, most of which were placed in men’s correctional facilities.
(Source: drowningwaveshasmoved)
So! I’m writing a big letter to the researcher behind that sexuality study.
And CCing the big long list of ethics officers.
I’ve had time to calm down enough to structure arguments and do research, but I’m still angry. Angry about the survey itself, angry that I unintentionally enabled my friends to be hurt by it, angry that the ethics committee that reviewed this didn’t catch how vastly problematic it was. Angry about the binarism and about how the gender identity questions were sterotypical and full of things where they asked if my identity as a woman or man was important to me in a way that negated the possibility of being gender variant, gender fluid, or agender.
I am including resources ranging from professional associations, to gender studies, to general information from trans and gender variant individuals. I am indeed looking for suggestions.
If you are intersex, then I’m mega curious as to any preferred resources discussing or representing being intersex, as well as opinions about this survey, particularly the conflation of penis and vulva with male and female. I have few contacts within the intersex community, and none that I feel comfortable approaching directly.
Additionally, if you have any stories about your experience with this survey, you can leave a disqus comment, reblog, email me at nicocoer(at)gmail.com, or send me an ask. This goes for anyone who took it.
While I do recognize that the non-consensual sexuality questions may have been an issue, those I doubt the ethics people will be interested in because the consent form explicitly states- even in the shorter version- that questions about non-consensual sexual contact will be asked. I just fear that the ethics people will look at that and throw out that argument.
The sexuality survey in question (along with a description and huge warnings). Note that while it is on the topic of Gender and Sexuality in Autistics, the survey is not restricted to Autistics so if you would like to and are able to look it over as someone who is knowledgeable in gender and sexuality, research methodologies, or simply in your own experience as someone who is trans, gender variant, or of a non-normative sexuality be it asexuality, kink, lgb, or other types of non-normative sexuality.
Please share this, be it reblogging or other means.
Someone needs to take this survey and either PDF or copy-paste all of the questions as a permanent record.
I remember there being a number of problematic questions aside from the Autism Quotient and the best friend vs. partner question that I described previously, but I can’t remember what they were now— and I’m not going to go through that thing page-by-page again right now, especially because some of those questions squicked me out like whoa. (That, and I don’t want to accidentally submit it and double up my results…)
One thing I’m personally worried about is how they’ll be handling questions that were left blank. In many of these questions, a null answer is actually statistically significant, and shouldn’t be thrown out. If these nulls are ignored, the results will be skewed greatly in the direction of sexuals while ignoring asexuals.
I would gladly document their questions but I spent about half an hour trying to calm down and fighting off self-harm compulsions after I tried taking it the first time, soooooo I’m not going back in there.
(And on the asexual side, I accidentally clicked a button on a question that didn’t apply to me, and it then meant I was completely unable to unselect anything, which does suggest they’re regarding skipped questions as not statistically significant, since it’s not actually an option you can select. Which um.)
But yeah massive binaryism and cissexism. Like any data this study produces is going to be suspect because wow.
I’m looking through it right now for curiosity’s sake. I can copy/paste all of the questions into a Word doc (or a Google doc) so there’s a permanent record of its current state, and I’m trans so I can at least isolate problematic shit about gender to some extent.
Please do if you make it through the survey; I can probably safely look over the survey after someone else has collected the data and point out all the creepy cissexism and binaryism and mononormativity and sexualism like gah.
So! I’m writing a big letter to the researcher behind that sexuality study.
And CCing the big long list of ethics officers.
I’ve had time to calm down enough to structure arguments and do research, but I’m still angry. Angry about the survey itself, angry that I unintentionally enabled my friends to be hurt by it, angry that the ethics committee that reviewed this didn’t catch how vastly problematic it was. Angry about the binarism and about how the gender identity questions were sterotypical and full of things where they asked if my identity as a woman or man was important to me in a way that negated the possibility of being gender variant, gender fluid, or agender.
I am including resources ranging from professional associations, to gender studies, to general information from trans and gender variant individuals. I am indeed looking for suggestions.
If you are intersex, then I’m mega curious as to any preferred resources discussing or representing being intersex, as well as opinions about this survey, particularly the conflation of penis and vulva with male and female. I have few contacts within the intersex community, and none that I feel comfortable approaching directly.
Additionally, if you have any stories about your experience with this survey, you can leave a disqus comment, reblog, email me at nicocoer(at)gmail.com, or send me an ask. This goes for anyone who took it.
While I do recognize that the non-consensual sexuality questions may have been an issue, those I doubt the ethics people will be interested in because the consent form explicitly states- even in the shorter version- that questions about non-consensual sexual contact will be asked. I just fear that the ethics people will look at that and throw out that argument.
The sexuality survey in question (along with a description and huge warnings). Note that while it is on the topic of Gender and Sexuality in Autistics, the survey is not restricted to Autistics so if you would like to and are able to look it over as someone who is knowledgeable in gender and sexuality, research methodologies, or simply in your own experience as someone who is trans, gender variant, or of a non-normative sexuality be it asexuality, kink, lgb, or other types of non-normative sexuality.
Please share this, be it reblogging or other means.
I’ll of course assume he’s completely ignoring the presence of autistic trans women
Because if autistic women are inconvenient for his theories about extreme male brains, autistic women who have absurd levels of distress over coercive masculinization are like… Yeah.
Brains: You can’t just arbitrarily stick genders on them.
(This is the guy who’s tests show that most women have male brains and who doesn’t think this is a problem SO I MEAN REALLY.)
Hell yes. My best friend is an autistic transwoman and so very “stereotypically feminine”. SBC’s tripe always reminds me of her, how very opposite his tripe she is.
Say, when is the Autism Women’s Network interviewing Simon Baron-Cohen on radio again? Someone should ask him about transwomen. I’m sure people must have asked him ‘bout ‘em before, but whatever drivel he replies with ought to be recorded.
Anyone want to volunteer to be the call in question asker? (Prefer if it’s a trans autistic btw…)
I DO know that he is/was supposed to be coming on the Autism Women’s Network Radio Show again SOON, if he hasn’t backed out. Unfortunately, it seems like he still hasn’t been scheduled in? I’ll have to talk to my executive director….
(Source: thenameoftheworms)
Has anyone else had like…?
…serious anxiety problems develop after going on hormones? (er, specifically thinking estrogens obviously)
Because I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on with my moods right now (esp. given my last blood test came back with too high estrogen levels)
And I’m curious if other people have had experiences like that, because this is getting a bit frustrating and I’d like to know more what other people have had in this regard.
If you have experience with it, let her know? I know I’ve heard from people saying this was the case for them But I don’t remember specifics.
AKA signal boost.
Response to the post about the CAFAB->Men and Autism article
55 minutes agoI agree with your thoughts on a flawed study. Baron-Cohen’s own orginzation, The Autism Research Centre (ARC) states “it is recognized that at best the AQ is a screening instrument - it is not itself diagnostic.”
The article from Cambridge First omitted the important last paragraph from the original press release full News Release here
Emma Martin, a co-author, is a transwoman and psychotherapist. She gives the only real caution in the article: “This new research reminds us that gender incongruence is incredibly complex. Every possibility should be discussed with new clients, but should not delay what can be a painfully slow process for those affected.”Bill then provided a link which didn’t work to another press release, and I couldn’t retrace it either.
I would like to see this, as well as hear what people know of Emma Martin and her professional history.
This godawful paper has a co-author who is a transwoman? I…don’t know what to think of this, and would also be interested in learning more about Emma Martin. Google is no help.
I’m trying to find a copy of the paper in full and can’t. It’s not in the most recently available issue of Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, though I am looking at an article about an abridged version of the AQ. SBC is a third author. (Notice that we still do not have a validation of the AQ as an evaluative measure from any non-SBC-affiliated source.)
Has anyone else been able to find the article?As a sidenote, here’s a depressing game: How many articles in the JADD actually have the potential to help autistic people? Seems like way too few to me.
Response to the post about the CAFAB->Men and Autism article
55 minutes agoI agree with your thoughts on a flawed study. Baron-Cohen’s own orginzation, The Autism Research Centre (ARC) states “it is recognized that at best the AQ is a screening instrument - it is not itself diagnostic.”
The article from Cambridge First omitted the important last paragraph from the original press release full News Release here
Emma Martin, a co-author, is a transwoman and psychotherapist. She gives the only real caution in the article: “This new research reminds us that gender incongruence is incredibly complex. Every possibility should be discussed with new clients, but should not delay what can be a painfully slow process for those affected.”
Bill then provided a link which didn’t work to another press release, and I couldn’t retrace it either.
I would like to see this, as well as hear what people know of Emma Martin and her professional history.
Cambridge: "Female-to-male transsexuals could be more autistic"
FEMALE-to-male transsexuals have a higher than average number of autistic traits, a new study from Cambridge University has found.
The study, published today in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, has important implications for the clinical management for girls with gender ambiguity that persists into adulthood, and for the ‘extreme male brain theory’ of autism.
The researchers measured autistic traits using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and compared scores from five groups: 61 transmen, 198 transwomen: 76 typical males; 98 typical females; and 125 individuals with Asperger Syndrome.
They found transmen - female-to-male transsexuals - had a hiver avergae AQ than the other groups, but lower than those with Asperger Syndrome.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at University of Cambridge, led the study with Rebecca Jones, now at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
Professor Baron-Cohen said: “Girls with a higher than average number level of autistic traits tend to have male-typical interests, showing a preference for systems over emotions.
“They prefer not to socialise with typical girls because they have different interests, and because typical girls on average have more advanced social skills. Both of these factors may lead girls with a higher number of autistic traits to socialize with boys, to believe they have a boy’s mind in a girl’s body, and to attribute their unhappiness to being a girl.”
Rebecca Jones added: “If such girls do believe they have a boy’s mind in a girl’s body, their higher than average number of autistic traits may also mean they hold their beliefs very strongly, and pursue them to the logical conclusion: opting for sex reassignment surgery in adulthood.”
The study was funded by the Medical Research Council.
Thoughts? There’s a couple of places where I’m going “ick,” particularly the comments about the implications. then again, Let’s look at who was leading the study. Oh, yes, Simon Baron-Cohen, who is particularly gender essentialist about traits and has all sorts of gender fail of both the sexism and cissexism sort. :-/
QUESTION!?
So, I’m doing image descriptions. And I’ve been reblogging a lot of stuff about the French Ban on Niqab(/Hijab?) and I have a question for the Muslim and otherwise more familiar with Islamic practice. (Also extra wanted if this is true *and* you ID as gender queer/non-binary/variable in some way.)
I’ve been following the discussions in the Trans* community about how one shouldn’t use gendering in image descriptions unless you actually KNOW the person IDs as such.
SO: I was wondering if Niqab would ID someone as a woman in Islamic cultural context, Or if Those who do not ID as women also cover sometimes? Or should I just continue with the person thing?
I’m curious as well as wanting to deal with the image descriptions respectfully. I know I have thinky thoughts about gender and covering in Judaism, and I’m curious about the perspectives on it in Islam.
But my main reason for asking is for image descriptions.
Job Offering in Philly Area
Program Director Posted on 4/13/2011 3:03:00 PM
Position Detail
Seeking a full-time Director for a new Housing and Drug and Alcohol treatment program for 18 transgender adult individuals. The program will provide drug and alcohol clinical supports and will provide temporary housing during treatment. The new program is revolutionary in concept, therefore, incument’s duites and responsibilities may be enhanced as the program and the position develop. The Program Director will be responsible for fiscal and administrative operations, hiring staff and providing programmatic overview for individuals supported. Ideal candidate will be a member of the transgender community, and has a Bachelor’s degree (Master’s degree preferred) in a clinical field, with prior drug and alcohol experience. In addition, the candidate will have 3-4 years experience providing clinical services to transgender individuals. Three to four years of experience managing and supervising others and managing a program required for consideration. We offer a competitive salary provided and a comprehensive benefits package. Please send your resume and cover letter with salary expectations to Debbie Kulp, by email: mgh@rhd.org, to apply.
Contact
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact: Debbie Kulp
E-mail: mgh@rhd.org
Salary: $70k
Program: RHD Central Office
Job Type: FT
To see the actual job listing, See RHD’s Job Listings, Click “Director/Manager”, And click on the “Program Director” that has Debbie Kulp as the contact person.
FYI. (I got sent this but I lack any of the professional qualifications.)
