Mom Explains Decision To Let Son Live As Girl

KETV television in Omaha recently aired a story about a mother's decision to let her 8-year-old son live full-time as a girl. Watch the story here. You can also participate in a poll about whether the mother did the right thing. (When I looked, the results were over 50% thought she was right, 30% thought she was wrong and the rest didn't know.)

IFGE says to APA ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 18, 2009

Washington DC - The International Foundation for Gender Education has issued the following resolution calling on the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to reform its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. IFGE will be participating in a demonstration this evening at the APA's annual conference in San Francisco, where this resolution will be presented. We urge everyone to join us in calling for an end to the APA's pathologizing of gender non-conforming behavior.

Resolution


Whereas people are naturally endowed with a wide diversity of gender expression, identities, and sexual orientations;

Whereas, the distress felt by gender non-conforming people is fundamentally due to social prejudice and heterosexism, and is not a characteristic of their identities;

Whereas diagnosis of psychological disorders has been used as a form of social control;

Whereas, the inclusion of normal variations of behavior as diagnostic criteria has been widely used to justify discrimination against gender non-conforming people by individuals, governments, and corporations; and has resulted in material harm to people;

Whereas, the principle responsibility of medicine is to "Do No Harm;"

Therefore, be it resolved that we find the American Psychiatric Association to have a responsibility to ameliorate this harm, and hereby call for the following remedies:

(1) We hereby call on the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association to issue a declaration stating that: Gender variance, and gender non-conforming behavior do not constitute a psychological disorder;

(2) We hereby call on the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of so- called "Transvestic Fetishism," which explicitly pathologizes gender non-conforming behavior, from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual;

(3) We hereby call for the reform of any diagnosis that can be made solely based on gender non-conforming behavior, specifically including “Gender Identity Disorder in Children.”

Resolved this day May 15, 2009 by the Board of Directors of
The International Foundation for Gender Education

The International Foundation for Gender Education promotes acceptance for transgender people everywhere through education. Founded in 1978, IFGE is the largest transgender advocacy organization with members worldwide. Providing educational outreach for the emancipation of all gender variant people from restrictive gender norms, IFGE is a non-profit educational corporation with offices in Waltham, MA and Washington, DC and is recognized by the I.R.S. as a 501c(3) charitable organization .

IFGE | 272 Carrol St NW | Washington DC | 20012 | 202-207-8364

Haiku Friday: Scared

Two strange spots on her
Mammogram and ultrasound.
It's biopsy time.

Porcine Influenza

Friday Haiku: Obvious

Hey - wait a minute!
Isn't there supposed to be
A haiku here? . . . Oh.

Keeping us safe

I heard DICK Vader Cheney saying the other day that all the shit that the Bush administration did to remove and suppress our rights kept the country safe. Because of all that administration's repressions, we weren't attacked ... after 9/11, that is. His little speech sounded familiar to me, though, and then I placed it.

There's an old joke about a guy walking down the sidewalk in Manhattan and every few steps, he stops and screams, "GO AWAY! DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!" After a little while, a cop stops him and asks him if he's OK, to which the man answers that he's fine. So the cop then asks him why he's screaming and the man calmly explains that his screaming keeps the wild elephants away. When the cop tells him that there aren't any wild elephants in all of Manhattan, the man just smiles and says, "See? It works."

See? The Patriot Act and Gitmo and WMD and Global War on Terror worked.

Holy crap! A baby in the road!

(OK, I'll tell you right now that the title of this post has absolutely nothing to do with the contents, but if misdirection and come-on are good enough to sell used cars - and they are - who am I to argue with success?)

It's been a month since I was here last and I figured that I at least owed bothall of my readers a short update on my life. First, I'm still unemployed. I did go on one interview that resulted in an offer ... making a salary 60% less than I was making in February. I'm not quite that desperate yet, for a number of reasons I won't go into.

In no particular order, other than this is the order I thought of them, here are some other notable events in my life recently.

Red-headed Spouse fell and cracked two ribs. She essentially couldn't do anything that involved moving her torso, and the only place she was comfortable sleeping was on the couch because she could put her busted ribs over the gap between the cushions. That was a fun 5 or 6 years weeks!

Fireball learned to ride her bike without training wheels and then promptly wiped out on the asphalt road and tore up her hands and knees. Lots of blood then but she's healed now and has even ventured out into the street again.

Pink Guy is failing two subjects and has Ds in two more. He might be repeating seventh grade.

Our oldest dog died in his sleep. He was the same age as Pink Guy - 13.

I kicked a door in the dark with my little toe. The nail fell off a month later.

We still have not put all our Christmas decorations away. It's just the ones inside the house, though, so the neighbors don't think we're lazy or weird or anything. Not for that, anyway.

The automatic transmission in our 9-year-old car went out. We took it to a nationally-known transmission repair shop (BEEP! BEEP!) to get it fixed and were charged an exorbitant price - of course. (Although I will admit that the price wasn't as high as I had feared. So, while we still got screwed at least we got a kiss and lube.) The day after we dropped the car off, the mechanic was road-testing it and ran a red light at an automatic camera intersection. The camera took a picture of the violation, and the city mailed us the ticket. Now we have to go through the hassle of proving that someone other than the registered owner was driving at the time. Oh - and when we got the car back a week later the transmission was still fucked up; fucked up in a different way but still not working correctly. The car is going back to the shop on Monday.

I'm sure there's more good news but that's all I can think of right now. I've probably already repressed the memories of the rest.

Different Shoes

Totally stolen from Alex Billings ... and Kenneth Cole:



(Yes, I'm still around. Don't give up on me yet!)

Friday Haiku: Music

Magnolias rattle,
Oaks shush and bare pecans moan.
Live wind instruments.

Peeved

Yes, I'm still here - I know you can't tell from the postings but I haven't slipped into the Abyss.

I'm pissed and even if you don't want to know why, I'm still going to tell you. I have applied for unemployment benefits from the great state of Texas. I've been approved for unemployment benefits. I will get the maximum benefit allowed by law of $392 / week. That's all OK - although I'd like more money. That benefit is doled out in the form of a cash card issued by Chase Bank that was sent to me and is renewed every week by the state. What has me peeved is that the card has a FUCKING SERVICE FEE assessed by the bank every time it's used! I can use it once for free and after that, every time it's used Chase sucks half a buck out of the card's balance. So, Chase Bank - who was one of the "bad" banks that helped to cause the current economic mess - is now not only getting billions of bailout bucks but also bleeding a little off of every unemployment account that they (indirectly) helped bring about. I wonder how many folks at the Texas Workforce Commission got blowjobs from Chase middle management to set up this sweet deal? And of top of everything else, umemployment benefits are subject to federal income tax! Welcome to the recovery!