trans

Southerners On New Ground REPORT
250 Georgia Ave. Suite 201
Atlanta, GA 30317
Phone: 404.549.8628
Fax: 404.549.8642
www.southernersonnewground.org

Trans People Speak Out

Welcome to SONG’s report on our Southern Trans people’s Survey/People’s Movement Assembly. In concert with the US Social Forum, SONG set out to listen more deeply to our Trans base, membership and Trans Southerners living outside of the South. Listening campaigns have always been a core part of SONG’s strategy: prioritizing listening to marginalized and oppressed communities to honor them with hearing and dignity; analyze conditions; find patterns; and take action based on that information. (For more information on SONG and who we are, visit: www.southernersonnewground.org).

SONG was founded by Black and White Lesbians in 1993, and has worked (over its political evolution) on centering voices that have been marginalized; and that has meant taking concrete steps to not only include “Trans voices” but also create real processes that build power, leadership and self-determination for Trans people and gender non-conforming people in SONG. This work is one of our steps in that direction. It is a summary of stories and information, and it was anonymous. However, in the interest of giving the reader a direct relationship to the true voices of the people who shared with us, we include anonymous quotes throughout, wherever possible.

Who Answered the Survey

This survey was answered by 127 people who identified in the largest numbers as Transwomen, Transmen, and Gender Queer, as well as Two Spirit, Cross dresser, passable, Autogynephile, Non-op Transsexual, Women, and Men. The survey asked for information from Trans and Gender Non-conforming people who lived or have lived in the South.

Director: Shumona Banerjee

Synopsis: Can hope be found in the most unusual places amongst the most unlikely characters?  A young transvestite prostitute, Kusum, locked up in her room, gears up for a regular night like any other. But just then enters Purab, an out-of-a-job English literature teacher suffering from Tourette's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive behaviour, without a clue of the local language.  He spent his meager savings to spend one night with a girl, and finds himself stuck with a boy!  On the other hand, Kusum is at a loss with this man who seems to her a "freak" madly going about cleaning her room while throwing things at her in the middle of the night and insisting on blabbering in English!  Both can’t understand what the other is saying.  But as the night proceeds, insecurities, appearances and prejudices slowly give way, but just a little. Will these two people, alike as desperate misfits but otherwise so different, manage to find a connection?  Perhaps like a flower bud bursting through a crack in the wall, an unexpected beginning will see them through....

(h/t helenboyd)

Goddammit, this girl is funny!

In mid July MAGNET is hosting a panel in L.A. called

"The Dehumanizing Misrepresentation of Transsexual Women Through the Gay Male Media Mafia Lens" 

More details to come on the collaborators, panelists, date and venue.

Please let us know your thoughts on this epidemic so we can include them in the planning and discussion.

Thank you,

Ashley Love -
Organizer of MAGNET- Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Transsexual & Transgender People

MAGNET is an anti-defamation organization dedicated to educating the media about transsexual and transgender issues, as well as pushing for more authentic and positive portrayals of trans people in the media.

facebook notice, Ashley's blog or email Ashley directly.

(h/t CyberSolidaires)

Down with STERILE civil status rules!
Trans people demand their citizenship

Today in Québec, trans-identified, or trans, people do not enjoy the same civil status rights as other citizens. Trans people are subjected to long, complex, restrictive, and not universally accessible regulations. Their right to equality and physical integrity is not respected, since they must undergo compulsory sterilization in order to obtain the right to have their designation of sex legally changed in civil status documents.

Moreover, because of these situations, many trans people are forced to wait long periods of time with official identity papers (civil status documents) that do not reflect their actual identity. This can lead to endless discrimination when looking for work or housing, seeking health care, opening a bank account, etc.

Some examples of the consequences these regulations have:

• Trans people who want to change the designation of sex on their birth certificate are required to undergo “medical treatments and surgical operations involving a structural modification of sexual organs intended to change [their] sexual characteristics” – in other words, sterilization. Even though the Director of Civil Status does not explicitly require trans people to be sterile in order to change their designation of sex, these conditions necessarily involve forced sterilization of trans people.

Call For Entries

Drunken Boat, Online Art & Literature Magazine is placing a call for written work from all aspects of transgpersons' lives.  It sounds great.  -arvan

Decades after Women’s Lib and Stonewall, in the time of queer theory, gurlesque and “girls gone wild,” there are still aspects of women and transgender people’s sexuality that are taboo or discounted (the sexuality of older women and women with disabilities, for example, or a joyful transgender sexual self).  We are looking for poems, prose, and multimedia/interactive art that address these topics.

This is a call for bold, honest investigations of the sexual female/trans self that polite society has yet to fully embrace.

We particularly encourage submissions from women of color, older women, queer women, women with disabilities, and transgender/two-spirit/intersex/gender nonconforming folks.

Please submit through our online submissions manager.

Submission accepted May 15 – September 15, 2010

*By “women” we include both cisgender and transgender women, and by “transgender people” we include both transmen and transwomen as well as genderqueer and gendernonconforming people.  We reject the gender binary, acknowledge that people have multiple ways of identifying their gender, and seek to be fully inclusive of all women-identified and trans-identified people in this call.

Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, CSO of the SENS Foundation, on the similarities and differences between the Singularity and the concept of longevity escape velocity.

Aubrey de Grey at Singularity Summit 2009 -- The Singularity and the Methuselarity: Similarities and Differences from Singularity Institute on Vimeo.

I received this announcement for the upcoming TGEU 2010 Council meeting in Malmoe, Sweden

Embracing Diversity. Stretching Boundaries. Demanding Rights  

Thursday 6pm, 30th September 2010 – Sunday 2pm, 3rd October 2010

Dear Trans*activists, friends and allies!

Since our last Council 2008 in Berlin, significant developments have evolved all over Europe: The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe published his visionary Issue Paper “Human Rights and Gender Identity”; France announced that it would be the first European country to take steps to de-pathologize Gender Identity Disorder - GID; in the mean time Turkish trans people keep on being exposed to a brutal series of hate crimes, with at least 8 murdered in the last few months.

The European transgender movement has seen incredible growth and is strongly connected with its international counterparts. It is time, to take stock of recent developments and think together about how to maximize human rights for ALL trans people in Europe. We must make our cause inclusive, to ensure that rights and respect are not given to the few. We must not accidentally or greedily exclude the more invisible members of our community.

So, we are delighted to invite you to the Third European Transgender Council 2010.

This year’s council will be held in Malmo in Sweden from Thursday evening, September 30th till Sunday afternoon, October 3rd. So save the date and join us in Sweden for the biggest European forum for transgender rights and activism!

This year’s Transgender Council ‘s motto will be  

Embracing Diversity. Stretching Boundaries. Demanding Rights

By Theresia Sufa and Indah Setiawati, The Jakarta Post

Dozens of members of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) stormed a human rights training program intended for transgender individuals at a hotel in Depok, West Java, on Friday.

The program, organized by the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM), had just begun when dozens of FPI members forced their way (past police) into the room.

Nancy Iskandar, a participant, said after a coffee break at around 10:30 a.m, a number of police officers had come into the room.

The committee had then asked participants to take a snack break in the training room.

“Several people then suddenly banged on the door and shouted the name of God,” she said.

Nancy, who is also the head of the Transgender Communication Forum, said the group verbally assaulted participants disgracefully.