Normal Breasts

In my Beauty page I began to explore issues about how transwomen need to understand the diversity in female appearance before embarking on Facial Feminization Surgery.  I did not focus on breasts, as my concern was about understanding that the surgeon’s were selling an ideal type of western beauty, and so telling transwomen that they could not look female until they had this procedure or that surgery.  Breasts are generally not part of the body that a transitioning transsexual begins with, but many do have breast augmentation surgery, if they do not get what they regard as normal breasts.  There is also a major debate running on trans websites about whether progesterone will given more normal looking breasts than being on estrogen alone.  Well, I have just found out about a wonderful website that has got hundreds of women to post pictures of their breasts that shows that what is normal covers a wide spectrum.  The purpose of this part of the 007 Breasts site is to reassure especially younger women that surgery is not necessary. Any transwoman considering breast augmentation or taking progesterone, should check out this site.   If you are coming to this page as a male obsessed with women’s breasts, the appropriate part of the website is Breast Taboo.

New Beauty Page

I have added a new page on beauty, which is not my make-up tips, but a reflection on attitudes to beauty and passing among male to female transsexuals.  In essence it is a long blog post, but it is such a crucial issue that I decided to make it a page in its own write.

Admiring Lynne Conway (Ada Lovelace Day)

Today, 24th March, is Ada Lovelace Day.  This is a day when people are asked to remember women in science and technology and as par tof it there is a project to get people to blog about a women in technology whom they admire.  I have chosen Lynne Conway, an American computer scientist and a past winner of the National Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers.  Her work in microchip design at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s laid the foundations of much of today’s microchip designs, while holding down a part-time professorship at MIT.  She also co-authored, with Prof. Carver Mead of Caltech, the very influential Introduction to VLSI Systems (1979).  Then in the 1990s as the amount of transistors on a microchip was increasing,, use was made of a system known as Dynamic Instruction Scheduling (DSI).   Gradually, researchers noticed a similarity between DSI and Conway’s VLSI work.  So in 1999 as she was returing from academic work she began to use a blog to tell her story.  She had once been called Robert and had developed DSI at IBM in 1965. However, when she told IBM that she was a transsexual and intended to  become a woman, she was sacked.  IBM sacked her because they worried that she would cause emotional stress to her colleagues because of her transition, and also because the computer they were focusing on (the 360) did not need her DSI invention.  Yet by the late 1990s DSI had become very important and the invention of Robert, now Lynne, came to fruition.  Not only is Lynne a great example of woman in technology, but the sad tale of her sacking is a salutory lesson for all employers who plan to drive transsexuals out of employment.  Just how many millions of dollars did IBM’s bigotry cost them, just because they could not cope with the fact that the brain behind those ideas was no longer that of a man called Robert, but a woman called Lynne Conway.

Memphis Belles

As we enter a new year, 2008 cannot end soon enough for Memphis male to female transsexuals.  In July Ebony Whitaker was found shot dead, in November Duanna Johnson was shot in the street, and in December Leeneshia Edwards was shot in the face and is seeing the new year in recovering in hospital.  All three were prostitutes and in the Old Year’s Day edition of Pink News, Jessica Green writes that local trans campaigners are blaming their shootings on being forced into prostitution because no one will give transsexuals employment.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-10167.html

At the time of her murder, Duanna was considering taking legal action against the Memphis police over video evidence that she was beaten up by two police officers.  This prompted some trans bloggers to assert that this must be a police conspiracy, but tragically it looks like she is one of a series of  victims – it might even be a serial killer.

Are the campaigners correct, however, to blame the violence on lack of employment opportunities?  Certainly, they have made themselves targets by being prostitutes, but the murder of six non-trans female prostitutes in Ipswich shows that this danger is not limited to trans people, and as the following BBC article points out – prostitutes are “Easy Targets for Predators.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7226330.stm

Giving better employment opportunities to Memphis’ transsexuals might reduce their exposure to danger, but the campaigners seem to be band-wagon jumping here.  The stories of Ebony, Duanna, and Leeneshiaare are not about employment opportunities, they are about hate crime.  Murder is murder and hate is hate – it is wrong if trans people are murdered, it is wrong if any prostitute is murdered, and keeping trans people out of this dangerous profession will not make the murder of prostitutes any less evil.

Stonewall Was a Riot By Drag Queens

“I think we would do well to remember that Stonewall is named after a riot by drag queens. That is all I want to say.”  Those are the words of  Joe Galliano, editor of GT, as reported in the Pink News article ‘Celebs split over trans protest at Stonewall Awards.’  [http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-9523.html]

The trans protest in question was against the nomination as Journalist of the Year given to Julie Bindel, whose past comments on the pointlessness of Gender Realignment Surgery had incensed many in the trans community.  The protest, however, was as much against Stonewall for not only nominating Bindel, but also for not incorporating trans issues into their campaigns (Stonewall Scotland do include trans issues, but not the rest of the UK organisations).   This meant that many of those commenting in trans internet sites after the demonstration (probably the largest trans demo ever held in the UK) saw Galliano’s comments as a vindication, especially as one particularly large banner at the demo proclaimed “Stonewall Was A Riot.”  I am not sure, however, that Galliano was supporting them.

Stonewall was a riot at the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village, New York on 27th June 1969.  To find out more about it you can view the online version of Columbia University’s exhibition [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/].  That exhibition was named ‘Stonewall and Beyond:  Lesbian and Gay Culture.’  That title is one that annoys many trans people, as within the trans community there is an often heard claim that Stonewall was a riot in a pub frequented by trans people of colour, and that the street riot by gays meant that the trans origins of the Stonewall Riot was forgotten.  Those who hold to that view will not like the Stonewall and Beyond Exhibition as it provides absolutely no evidence of Stonewall being a trans club.

Galliano called Stonewall a riot by drag queens and certainly one of the memorial moments of the riot was the drag queens chanting either:

We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair  . . .
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees.

or the original version:

We are the Stonewall Girls we wear our hair in curls,
We always dress with flair, we wear clean underwear,
We wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees,
We ain’t no wannabees, we pay our Stonewall fees!

So was Galliano supporting the demonstrators’ claim by implying that if Stonewall was a riot by drag queens then the Stonewall organisation should support Trans rights as well as Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual rights?  Or was he suggesting that as it was a riot by drag queens that the trans community had no claim to be involved in an organisation just because it is called Stonewall?

Well he stated that is all he has to say about that, so I guess we will never know, but  what is the truth behind the Stonewall Inn?  The reports in the press in the Stonewall and Beyond Exhibition focus on gay men, but then that was an era when most of the journalists would not know the difference between gay and trans (other than those who were hiding their gay or trans status in order to keep their jobs).  More telling is the report that one of the slogans put up on the boards covering the Stonewall Inn’s windows was “Support Gay Power — C’mon in, girls,” which does not sound like a trans pub.  Even more telling is the description of a typical Stonewall Inn crowd as “some transvestites, a lot of students, young people, older people, businessmen.”  So has history been re-written very successfully or has the trans community over-estimated the trans element at the Stonewall Inn?  That should be easier to find out that Galliano’s opinion, so any views with evidence cited in the comments would be very much appreciated.

Second Life’s Transgender Day of Remembrance

Second Life’s Transgender Day of Remembrance is taking place currently, it lasts for 24 hours and takes place at the Transgender Suicide Memorial.  As the name of the memorial suggests, it will remember those driven to suicide as well as murder victims. The memorial is at Elysium Gardens 194,201,22.

Second Life Trans Remembrance Day

Second Life Trans Remembrance Day

International Transgender Day of Remembrance

Each year on the 20th November transgender people around the world remember their bothers and sisters who have died because they were trans.  The focus is on those killed by bigots, but many also remember those who were driven to suicide because family, friends, or society would not allow them to be their true selves. In some places it is held on a Sunday near the 20th to help workers to participate.  In Manchester a group I belong to was asked if they had any ideas of songs that could be put into a tribute video.  I think that there can be nothing better than Elton John’s Candle in the Wind.  Not because of its subject of Marilyn Monroe, or its later use for Diana Princess of Wales, but because of its chorus:

And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in
And I would have liked to have known you, but I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did

Music Elton John; Lyrics Bernie Taupin © 1973 Dick James Music Limited

On International Transgender Day of Remembrance we remember those whose candles burnt out or were blown out far too early.  By remembering them, we make them into the legends that we wish we had known as living legends, not martyrs to an unforgivingly hated filled society.

http://www.transgenderdor.org/

Music Page

Often when we listen to music it helps us to reflect on our lives even if the lyrics were not written to address our issue. There is not a lot of directly transgender songs in the mainstream music industry, so I thought I would open iTunes and gibe 5 Stars to anything that I saw as having a possible transgender usefulness. This list, is to be found in the Music page, please feel free to suggest additions in the comments there.

Stares in Their Eyes

Over the last two years I have experienced a lot of stares, even smirks and giggles at my appearance, and this is when dressed as a man. People seem to think, I am guessing they are never brave enough to say anything, “That is a man wearing make-up,” “That man has lip-stick on,” “That way walks like a woman,” “That man stands like a woman.” Then one day I decided to walk around a shopping mall dressed as Mercia. Again the stares, but I realise the stares were not anymore insistent than when dressed as a man. The only difference is that on this occasion (not in the mall but later walking in the city centre) that two people felt free to shout out comments. This experience is a large part of my final determination to live full-time as a woman. If I am going to get stared at anyway, it may as well be as Mercia, and not Mercia cross-dressing as a man.

Trans Kids on Barbara Walter’s 20/20

Barbara Walter is a well-known TV documentary person in the United States. She did a documentary on trans kids in April 2007, and when I saw it on You Tube I cried. Now the scientists tell us that tears of joy and sadness have different chemical compositions, well my tears were very mixed in their composition. I cried tears of sadness for these children who have had to go through what I went through. They just want to embrace their gender identity, but society will not permit this. I cried tears of joy for the support they were getting from their parents and schools. And I cried tears of regret that I waited until my twenties to tell anyone else about my gender issues and only really started telling people in my 40s.

See http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3091754&page=1