Posts tagged trans

queennubian:

OUTNEWS: Sweden ends sterilisation of transgender patients

absquesetentia:

seraseatscissers:

projectqueer:

Sweden will no longer sterilise transgendered patients after a law banning the practice entered into force on Thursday, but many who have already undergone a sex change are now seeking damages from the state. The Stockholm administrative court of appeal recently ruled that the practice of forced sterilisations, which dated back to a 1972 law on sexual identity, was unconstitutional and in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In its December 19th decision, the court said the law did not respect civil liberties as guaranteed by the constitution, and was discriminatory since it solely targeted transgender people. The law stated that a person who wanted to change sex legally must be infertile. In practice, this lead to transgendered patients being sterilised, as they had to go through with the entire process including gender reassignment surgery in order to have their ID documents changed.

Some Swedes chose to wait to change sex legally in order to have their own biological children. LGBT rights organisation All Out hand delivered 80,000 protest signatures to the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in January 2012, the Global Post reports.

The new ban on the practice entered into force on Thursday after an appeal period ended, judge Helen Lidö said. The government had planned on removing the sterilisation requirement on July 1st, 2013 but the ruling sets legal precedent from now on.

i hope they get sued to high hell.

What this article doesn’t mention is they weren’t allowed to keep any frozen sperm or ova either.

(via mattachinereview)

spaceykate:

Number of news stories about the murder of local activist and performer Kyra Kruz in the twelve days since her death: 6, mostly from out-of-state

Number of news stories about Thursday night’s candlelight vigil, where several hundred people walked through the streets of Philadelphia to commemorate her loss: 0

Number of news stories in the first three hours after a trolley driver was injured by someone who may be a trans woman, or may be a crossdresser, or may be something else except the media can’t make up their mind, but, well, they’re all pretty sure she uses male pronouns anyway and what’s important is that she’s trans trans trans: 9, all local

Okay, so this idea that HRT makes transitioning people permanently sterile gets thrown around a lot.

Except I can’t find any definitive literature or even anecdotes on it? Everything seems conflicting, with evidence being higher on the side of fertility being possible provided one goes off of hormone treatments.

Like, I have seen quite a few trans people state it as fact, yet our health care providers told us that barring any other complications or surgeries, fertility could be restored by stopping spiro even years after hormone therapy started. And our health care providers are one of the top centers for this kind of care in the region. They are one of the few centers that don’t gatekeep for transitioning, so I don’t see them as having any motive to tell us anything other than what we need to know to make an informed decision. Hell, the head of the center warned us that we shouldn’t treat my spouse’s transition as a sure fire method of birth control unless surgery had been performed.

Plus there are several high profile examples of trans men going off T after years of treatment and being able to both conceive and carry successful pregnancies (not to mention a whole slew of guys that I have met who have done the same,) as well as a few trans women I have heard of who impregnated their partners during HRT. I mean, yeah, many structures can atrophy over time, but that time is much longer than the usual time frame of six months that everyone thinks is the magic threshold, and depends on other health factors. Even the HBSC list infertility as a reversible side effect of hormone treatments. Infertility doesn’t become permanent until certain vital structures are removed.

So I guess my question is why we think this is a hard and fast rule? My suspicion is that certain members of the medical establishment have decided that its better to treat this as the truth so they don’t have to deal with departing from the narrative of the tragic, familyless, infertile transsexual, but that may be a little cynical. My spouse definitely thinks its doctors who encourage this idea so that the process is stream lined and invisible, along with the desire to maintain certain categorical definitions of man and woman, along the lines of keeping to a particular idea of transness (ie: a man shouldn’t want to give birth, a woman shouldn’t want to impregnate someone.)

I think the “6 months on HRT makes you permanently sterile!” is a lie. I know of many exceptions to that, and I think its really unlikely that I’m just encountering all of the exceptions to the rule. I think its a lie that the community as a whole is encouraged to believe for the sake of cis people who don’t want to see any more challenges to “biology” than trans people already represent. I also think that without more definitive research, any medical professional that asserts that 6 months on HRT will definitively make you sterile without any qualifications whatsoever is being unethical and practicing piss poor informed consent. Especially if they go on to recommend surgeries that will make fertility irreversible.

It wouldn’t be the first time, especially with regards to gender/sex variance.

about trans folk, transitioning and fertility.

I have a longer post that will publish in about 8 hours (after I get my live-in biologist to proofread it) but basically, the idea that HRT makes you permanently sterile always and for every person is bullshit as best I can see it.

There is no definitive proof of this and plenty of proof that fertility can be restored barring other health complications and surgical alterations by just ceasing hormone treatments for a certain length of time. Hell, I have some anecdotes about trans women who were fertile while on estrogen and anti-androgens. Some of which came from my doctor, who specializes in such things.

Its a big fucking lie, which functions to maintain false binaries through the bodies and lives of people who don’t fit their assigned place in those binaries.

tal9000:

psychobiddy:

blackenedbutterfly:

reallyfoxnews:

This came up on a reblog of that last post:

“LGBTOMGWTFBBQLOL

Fucking shitheads.

IT IS LGBT YOU DUMB FUCKING TRANNIES.

All that two-spirit intersex non-gendered anti-cis bi-dresser cross-gendered transphoric transgender transsexual transspirit transvestite crap? That gets ONE “T”.

You’re only in that acronym as a courtesy to fucking drag queens, you got that? You keep this retarded crap up and we will make it “LGB” and leave you fuckers twisting in the wind.

You account for like, 1 in every 600,000 people. Subdividing yourselves isn’t meaningful. You’re worse than fucking metal bands with their fifty-genre shit labels.

Stop it you bizarre fucks.”

And it makes me really, truly very sad. 

I’m interested to know who “we” are in the “we will make it LGB” because as a queer person I can assure you that the “we” I am acquainted with will do no such thing, ever. 

I’m not a big fan of the acronym to begin with because it is (1) alienating, (2) super non-inclusive, and (3) hijacked by the corporate white cis gay male “gay pride” arena to demand rights because we are born this way and we just can’t help ourselves. However, and let me make this abundantly clear, this problem goes far beyond the acronym. 

No matter who you are, who you fuck or how you identify, you have no power to tell someone else where they belong.

You have no power to disvalue someone’s gender.

You have no power to disvalue someone’s racial and sexual identification

You have no power to disvalue someone’s sexual preference or orientation.

You have no power to exclude.

You have no power to speak for entire communities, subcommunities, or individuals who find themselves identifying with small or underrepresented minorities.

You have no power to demand that we fit ourselves into nice little boxes for you. You have no power, and we are never going to give it to you.

today in reallyfoxnews kicking ass…

It’s not fucking bad enough that LGB are all sexual orientations while T is a gender identity, it’s not fucking bad enough that lumping LGBT all together erases trans people and literally moves them to the back of the line, it’s not bad enough that when trans people aren’t being erased simply by being lumped in with other groups that really don’t have anything to do with them they’re being erased by being ignored and diminished by the LGB “community,” it’s not bad enough that violence and hatred towards trans people is only being cursorily addressed by the rest of the queer community, it’s not bad enough that trans women are dying every damn day because they are being abandoned and ignored by people who are supposed to be a part of their “community” — but now trans people should consider it a privilege to be lumped in with these bigoted assholes? Fuck that shit. That’s an abusive relationship if I’ve ever seen one.

They stole the movement from trans women (specifically trans women of color), and are now acting like it’s an honor that can be denied if we get too upset at them that they even acknowledge that trans people exist.

They being cis gays and lesbians, and some cis bisexuals. White cis HRC gays are the ones in charge now, but (mostly white) cis lesbians were on the front line to push trans women out of a movement that was basically created by trans women. And respectable white middle-class gays immediately after the birth of that movement stabbed it in the back while still profiting from it.

“We stole your movement from you, and we’ll throw you out of it if you stand up to us”.

Its not like they don’t leave the fucking T “twisting in the wind” already.

amydentata:

lucypaw:

Yes, Doing It Again: In Depth, Tobi Hill-Meyer’s new documentary project on the sex lives of trans* women, trans* feminine people, and trans* females (which I wrote about the other day here) is halfway there on its funding.  So, it’s looking more likely that it’s going to happen.  But it can’t definitely happen unless it gets all the way.

Now, you might wonder why I’m being such a cheerleader for this.  I think it’s obvious but it might not be to the rest of you.  Trans* women, trans* feminine people, and trans* females, are seen as sexually pathetic, sexual freaks, abject objects of sexual disgust.  Yet, even so, they are just as sexual as anyone else.  So you understandably end up with a number of depressed, lonely people.  Yet there are even more people out there successfully hooking up, creating and maintaining sexual relationships.  But that’s often after having first gone through the depressed and lonely stage, believing that it would always be that way.  So getting the information out there that it doesn’t always have to be that way is vital for the health and well-being of trans* people.

Additionally, this can help counter the transmisogynist, femmephobic, transphobic lies about the sexuality of trans* women, trans* feminine people, and trans* females.  It can educate both trans* and cis people.  I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the main imagery of the sexuality of these people being either fetish porn for homophobic cis men or the lies about rapetastic ‘men in dresses’ coming for (cis) women and children.  A documentary showing the realities can help counter those images.

Finally, having people’s realities, people not playing characters, of sexuality is both hot and healthy.  In the US, sex negativity is everywhere, including among trans* people ourselves.  Helping combat that is something I am only too happy to help.

So, I hope this is something that will help happen as well.  Pledge to contribute money here if you can or spread the word.

Ohhhh, we’re halfway there!

Here’s the Kickstarter video:

kiriamaya:

I get asked a lot what it’s like to be a trans woman. Sometimes it’s worded in sort of a dismissive manner, e.g., “How do you know you’re a woman?” Other times, it really is an honest question. There are a lot of cis folks who just genuinely want to understand what it’s like.

I think Lisa Harney already did a pretty good job of getting to the real core of the matter, which is that it hurts to have the wrong body and to be socialized into the wrong role. But, if y’all don’t mind, I’d like to explore this a bit more.

(Note here that I’m talking specifically about being a trans woman, because that’s what I have the most experience with. I don’t mean to erase anyone; quite the contrary, I want to make sure that I’m not speaking for/over trans* folks with different experiences than me.)

Being a trans woman means waking up to the horrifying realization that you have to spend another day in this completely wrong, ill-fitting body. It means being reminded, as you live and move throughout the day, of all the ways in which it fails to match the map in your brain.

Being a trans woman means that people will try to place their own meanings onto your body, onto you. It means constantly having to fight to define your own self and your own body, and fighting off all who would try to do it for you.

Being a trans woman means being a target of misogyny, and yet being systematically denied most of the resources available to women to deal with that. It means being treated with suspicion (at best!) by women who ostensibly care about gender liberation. It means having your needs ignored, dismissed and postponed by queer groups who purport to fight for you.

Being a trans woman means having your every act, every word, every vocal inflection, relentlessly analyzed and then declared either “too feminine” or “not feminine enough”. It means people will try to invalidate your very selfhood on this basis.

Being a trans woman means being expected to justify your womanhood to random people whom you’ve never met before and whom you’ll never see again.

Being a trans woman means being taught, almost from birth, to doubt your own reality. It means learning to “go along” with people’s misconceptions because sometimes it’s the only way to stay safe. It means having to swim against the tide of all kinds of legal, social, and (pseudo)scientific notions of gender that harm us all.

Being a trans woman means that, even though not only the entire world but your own body is against you, you choose to be who you are anyway. Because there’s no other choice you can live with.

This is my experience, anyway. And like I’ve said, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m white; I’m (sort of) able to work; I have a place to stay; I have a reasonably decent support system. I can’t begin to imagine how much more difficult it must be to be a less privileged trans woman than me. I admire the fuck out of all those women, and I want to support them in any way I can.

I hope that you, too, will support all trans women (but especially those less privileged, especially TWoC) as they fight to be themselves.

(via amydentata)

madamethursday:

illhaveasalute:

sweetlyfez:

cyzzane:

I used to. Honestly though, now that I’m not worried about losing the weight, I am. Now that I’m OK with where I am, things are getting better.

And I’m not slowly killing myself, anymore by destroying my body.

I have done on shopping trips before. High street shops aimed at teenage girls seem to think that no-one over a size 12 is allowed to feel beautiful.

I’m just grateful I was never tipped over the edge to any self-destructive behaviour.

Yes, and I sometimes still do.

What I have realized is that I don’t cry over my weight. I cry over the way I’ve been made to feel about it, the way others treat me because of it, the things taken from me because people have been told and tell each other how horrible my weight is. 

I don’t cry because my body or my weight is bad. I cry because others believe it’s so and treat me accordingly. 

Just remember that, everyone. Just remember that. 

One of these days I will write that piece about how I subsumed my gender issues into my fat hatred, and how finding fat acceptance helped me realize that my sobbing and discomfort about my body were as much about dissonance as about hating my fat. I think a conversation needs to happen about how fat hatred intersects and weaves in with the expected normativity of androgyny, and what happens when your gender identity is fluid and your need to be gender neutral is hampered by the socialized feminization and demonization of fat. 

(Source: sayhellotothin.tumblr.com , via thecurvature)

stfuconservatives:

epochryphal:

It’s largely linguistic in reasoning!

The -ed removes agency and passivizes the modified subject.  That morpheme suggests that the subject is operated upon, transgender-ed, by something (presumably society), and is thus altered from an original (“normal” - cisgender) state.
As evidence: there is a fairly common faulty back-formation, the verb “to transgender,” from “to be transgendered.”  This is sometimes used to mean “to transition,” which is a mistaken meaning of what transgender means anyway.

This phrasing basically posits nurture over nature (regardless of the individual’s personal feelings on their identity’s source), suggests being transgender is a result of brainwashing/group-think or faulty raising or some sort of change, and leads to a pathologizing and “cure”-based approach.

Of course any individual may prefer transgendered to transgender!  I have heard some folks speak up and say that they do indeed feel society made them this way.  Completely valid.
But as a universal application, it is far less neutral and leaves trans folks less room to position themselves, and honestly gives people the wrong overall impression and gives media pundits a subtle way to continue painting trans people as passive victims and objects.

It may not be a big issue, but it definitely does influence how people think, however subtly.  Language is tricky that way!

A few of you sent me this link — thank you! Googling “transgender versus transgendered” didn’t bring it up. I knew it was “transgender” but I couldn’t figure out how to explain it. Many thanks to all the folks who helped me out :)

(via amaditalks)

in calling themselves “women” yet claiming to not have a gender identity, the internet radfems are shitting all the fuck over DFAB genderqueer folk who are non-binary, agendered and non-gendered. I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before.

It takes a lot of fucking nerve to call people “pretendbians” and accuse DMAB trans* folk of appropriating “womanness” while you are appropriating my gender. It takes some serious soullessness to appropriate my gender in order to attack DMAB trans* folk.

Cute, really.