http://theage.com.au/national/transsexual-takes-to-the-footy-field-20090606-bz7v.html

Transsexual takes to the footy field
Jill Stark
June 7, 2009


Will, 25, who has been living as a man for two years, hopes to play competition football. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

LIKE many young Victorian males, Will loves his footy. He dreams of joining the thousands of men who lace up their boots every weekend and play in amateur competitions. He's just like them in every way but one — he was born female.

When the 25-year-old takes to the field he will become Australia's first female-to-male transsexual to play competitive football in a men's team.
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Sex, not gender. Pop will make Pop's gender known pretty clearly at some point, whether or not it aligns with Pop's sex. Either way, this reminds me strongly of Baby X - A Fabulous Child's Story, which I think is fantastic.


http://thelocal.se/20232/20090623/

Swedish parents keep 2-year-old's gender secret
Published: 23 Jun 09 16:24 CET

A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl.

Pop’s parents [see footnote], both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”
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http://baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=92846

Local activists among 40 ’transgender heroes’ honored at Stonewall bar
by Ethan Jacobs
Bay Windows staff reporter
Thursday 25 June 2009


Stonewall’s legacy: (from left) Gunner Scott, Nancy Nangeroni and Grace Sterling Stowell will be immortalized as ’Transgender Heroes’ at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. (Source: Marilyn Humphries)

Historians have long credited poor and working class drag queens, bull dykes and other transgender and gender-non-conforming people as key participants in the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, but within the wider LGBT community that defining moment is all-too-often remembered as a gay, rather than LGBT, milestone. The International Court System and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force hope to change that. On June 25, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the riots that marked the birth of the modern LGBT rights movement, the two organizations will hold a dedication ceremony at the fabled New York City bar to unveil a plaque featuring the names of 40 transgender heroes past and present.

The plaque will go on permanent display at the bar, and Bay State visitors will likely recognize a few familiar names on the list. Among the 40 heroes are Gunner Scott, director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC); Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of the Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth (BAGLY); longtime activist Nancy Nangeroni, former president of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE), former co-host of GenderTalk Radio and current host of GenderVision; and Cole Thaler, an MTPC founder who is now the transgender rights attorney for New York’s Lambda Legal.

"It will be permanent, so people going into the Stonewall Inn will be able to see this plaque and see the names of these, to me, true heroes of our community," said Nicole Murray-Ramirez, a longtime San Diego-based activist who presides over the International Court System as Empress Nicole the Great. The International Court System was founded in 1965, four years before Stonewall. Member courts in the United States, Canada and Mexico, including the Imperial Court of Massachusetts, hold events in which members don campy and outrageous costumes and adopt royal titles, all while raising money for LGBT and HIV/AIDS organizations.
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/12/chastity.bono/index.html

Commentary: Chastity, 'Good luck, brother!'
By Jamison Green
Special to CNN

Jamison Green is an educator, adviser and advocate on transgender issues, and the author of "Becoming a Visible Man" (Vanderbilt University Press, 2004).

Welcome, Chaz!

Before the word "transsexual" had been coined in English, an intrepid young person whose family belonged to the British nobility set out to transform herself from female to male. He received a medical school education, obtained hormones -- relatively new substances that were poorly understood at the time -- and independently began living as a man in the early 1940s.

Eventually, he found a plastic surgeon to help him, and his physical changes were complete by 1949, but his family rejected him. The British tabloids hounded him. To escape publicity, he was forced to carve out a life for himself virtually alone. He became a Buddhist monk, and died in Tibet in 1962 at the age of 47.

His name was Michael Dillon, and he one of the Western world's first transsexual people, that is, someone who changes sex and/or gender by medical means. His extensive writings were suppressed and destroyed by his family -- only fragments survive.
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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/mar/01/its-me-in-a-different-way/

'It's me in a different way'
By Jeff Kass, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Photos by Matt McClain, Rocky Mountain News

Originally published 12:30 a.m., March 1, 2008
Updated 03:13 a.m., March 1, 2008

On the first day of eighth grade, Melaina Marquez wore a polo shirt, wedge shoes and denim skirt with ruffles.

The year before, that outfit would have been out of the question. At that point, Melaina was a boy known as Manuel.

Melaina, now 15, is considered to be transgender: a person who does not identify with the sex based on his or her genitalia. She decided to tell her story after news reports last month about a 7-year-old Douglas County girl who attended school last year as a boy.

At age 2, Melaina recalls playing with Barbies and her favorite toy, a kitchenette. When she played house in pre-school, "I would always want to be the mom."

Melaina says she never struggled with her identity. But her mother, Michelle Benzor-Marquez, cannot say the same.
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http://www.out.com/detail.asp?id=23533

The Trans Fags
They're like any other gay men. Except born female.
by T Cooper

On a cold winter night I take my 20-year-old friend Hunter to an East Village gay bar -- his first time in a New York City watering hole where he could wade among other cute gay men like himself. I convince the bartender to let us in by pretending that Hunter is my little brother who just turned 21 and came out but had his wallet and ID stolen on the subway. The barkeep grudgingly lets us stay, and we take a seat in the rear. It’s a pretty empty weeknight, but a few guys start throwing looks over shoulders and cruising Hunter, and he whispers that he thinks one of them is cute — the straightest-looking dude in the room.

Then, as if called in from any-gay-bar central casting, a lanky dark-haired guy starts unbuttoning his fly and pulling out a soft dick, then lets it flop around outside his jeans as he struts around the bar. Both Hunter and I try not to stare, but we start betting on whether it’s real. For 20 minutes we’re convinced it is, but then someone pulls the thing, and it stretches to a skinny foot-long before snapping back wildly. Hunter laughs and mouths, “Totally fooled me.”

Despite handling the often rugged and unforgiving testing ground of a gritty downtown gay bar with aplomb, Hunter -- like the rest of the men you see on these pages -- is the kind of guy some online gay hookup sites don’t want you to meet. But I do. So let me introduce you to Trystan, Cole, Kelly, and Hunter, all trans fags -- Transgender men who date other men.
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http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=features&sc3=&id=54949

Trans bill briefing draws a crowd
by Ethan Jacobs, staff reporter
Thursday Jan 17, 2008

About 40 people, a mix of lawmakers, aides and LGBT advocates, turned out at the State House Jan. 16 for a legislative briefing on House Bill 1722, which would update the state's non-discrimination and hate crimes laws to make them Transgender-inclusive. The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), the lead organisation in the coalition to pass the bill, presented lawmakers and their aides with a panel to explain the basics of Transgender identity and anti-trans discrimination as well as personal stories from Transgender people about their own experiences with employment issues. The briefing is part of MTPC's run-up to the Judiciary Committee hearing on H.B. 1722 that is expected to take place sometime in the next two months.
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NATIONAL NEWS | http://washingtonblade.com/

Transgender activists turn on one of their own
Once lauded, Stanton denounced as traitor after interview with FL newspaper
By LOU CHIBBARO JR
Jan. 11, 2008

Less than one year after being fired from her job as city manager of Largo, Fla., because of her status as a transgender woman, Susan Stanton has come under fire from transgender activists, who have called her a sell-out to their cause.

In a series of developments that would have been unthinkable just months ago, Stanton’s perceived status as a positive role model for the transgender community has soured, with transgender activists expressing outrage over a recent newspaper article quoting her as calling trans people “men in dresses.” Stanton says the article misrepresented her views.

But Stanton remains firm in her support for gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and the Human Rights Campaign, over their controversial decision to back an employment non-discrimination bill (ENDA) for gays that excludes protections for trans people. Frank and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have said there weren’t enough votes to pass a trans-inclusive bill and that moving ahead with a gay-only version would make it easier to pass a trans-inclusive bill sometime later.

“I think we need to do a whole lot more educating before we’re going to be able to realistically have the support on the national level to get this passed,” Stanton said of a trans-inclusive measure. “I personally don’t feel denying the rights of one group should be perpetuated unless everybody has those rights,” she told the Blade.
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http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/12/another-giant-leap-for-glbt-rights-in.html

Nepal Supreme Court Orders Government To Guarantee Gay Rights
AFP - France
December 21, 2007
[12/21/07]

KATHMANDU (AFP) -- Nepal's Supreme Court Friday ordered the government to enact laws to guarantee the rights of gays and lesbians, who have long complained of discrimination in the highly conservative Himalayan nation.

"The government of Nepal should formulate new laws and amend existing laws in order to safeguard the rights of these people," the judges said in their ruling.

"Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex are natural persons irrespective of their masculine and feminine gender and they have the right to exercise their rights and live an independent life in society," the judges said in the ruling, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

The court also ordered the government to form a committee to study existing laws and provisions of foreign countries on same-sex marriage and prepare laws to give it legal recognition in Nepal.

Rights activists hailed the ruling as a landmark decision.
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