Nashville's Transgender Day of Remembrance

Thanks Val for doing this video. Well done!
avalonfarmblog.wordpress.com

Transgender Remembrance Day in Kyrgyzstan

LGBT Organization 'Labrys' commemorated the day by lighting candles at Ala-Too Square in Bishkek.

Refuse to Hate

Refuse To Hate #1 - JUSTICE FOR ALL

Refuse to Hate #2 - EVERY MINUTE

Special Comment on Gay Marriage ~ Keith Olbermann

You can almost hear him cry. I am crying too.

Transgender Day Of Remembrance

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
-- Theodor Seuss Geisel

The Real World Brooklyn Cast Gets Transgendered

Posted on Sep 21, 2008 by Michael Martin in Brooklyn | 18 Comments

Courtesy of Vevmo

The cast of The Real World Brooklyn looks to differentiate itself from the previous twenty seasons on MTV by having the first transgender cast member.

The cast's head shot compilation was posted on Vevmo and combined with my sources indicate the naming of the cast is as follows - starting clockwise from the top left.

• Kate - formerly Chris
• Sarah
• Baya Voce
• Devyn Simone
• Chet Cannon
• JD Ordonez
• Ryan Conklin
• Scott Herman

This would be the first time a transgender cast member would be on The Real World and hints to why for the first time filming starts with eight instead of the usual seven cast members.

The reason I am told there are eight cast members to start with is because Kate may be leaving for the transgender surgery in Taiwan during filming and then return post-op - similar to another MTV reality series True Life.

Other interesting highlights of this cast include:

• Devyn was the 2005 Miss American Teen National Pageant winner and is looking to be a singer.

• JD is a dolphin trainer from Miami and had reportedly dated CNN news anchorAnderson Cooper according to the Gawker.

• Chet is both a virgin and a mormon so the rest of the cast have taken it upon themselves to help him lose his virginity when they go out, which is generally in Manhattan since the Red Hook area has given the cold shoulder to the cast.

Oops, I forgot to say Katie C. was the one who told me about this show. She met Kate in Thailand when the were both there for their surgeries.

Thanks Katie,

Vickie

Best in Short Film"Laundromat"

I love this movie! 

Of course I cried.

Watch the preview above. 

By the way Andrea James and Calpernia Addams are the couple in the background. 

Watch the whole movie at this link.

2008 Southern Comfort Conference Pictures

Charlotte Goiar Revieled

Charlotte Goiar "genius" behind the whole Harry Benjamin's Syndrome has finely posted her picture on her site. I have to admit she looks gorgeous. Not your average transsexual, that's for sure.

Charlotte Goiar.

HBS International Founder.

Licensed Human Rights Investigator.

Member of the Citizens Commission
on Human Rights International.

SHB Act Up Task Force.

HBS International Activist.

SHB Europe Activist.

Special Note to Those Thinking About a Sex Change

I was looking at a list of famous computer programmers that had about 1.8% percent transgender people on it.

The 4 male to female transsexuals in the list are Rebecca Heineman, author of Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate and Dragon Wars, Audrey Tang, known for the Pugs Perl 6 compiler, Sophie Wilson, designer of the instruction set for the Acorn RISC Machine, and Danielle Bunten Berry, known for the M.U.L.E. multiplayer video game written in 1983.

http://grok-code.com/37/famous-programmers-from-adleman-to-zimmermann/

In looking up the individual trans programmers, I ran in to this message from Danielle Bunten Berry, mentioned above. From other links on her memorial site I could see she was a gorgeous and accomplished women but she had quite a cautionary message for those of us that are pre-op.

Special Note to Those Thinking About a Sex Change, by Danielle Berry
Compiled from a number of emails I sent in response to requests for input from those considering their own change.

---

Don't do it! That's my advice. This is the most awful, most expensive, most painful, most disruptive thing you could ever do. Don't do it unless there is no other alternative. You may think your life is tough but unless it's a choice between suicide and a sex-change it will only get worse. And the costs keep coming. You lose control over most aspects of your life, become a second class citizen and all so you can wear women's clothes and feel cuter than you do now. Don't do it is all I've got to say.

That's advice I wish someone had given me. I had the sex change, I "pass" fine, my career is good but you can't imagine the number of times I've wished I could go back and see if there was another way. Despite following the rules and being as honest as I could with the medical folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and said "Are you honest to God absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for you?!" To the contrary, the voices were all cheerfully supportive of my decision. I was fortunate that the web didn't exist then - there are too damn many cheerleaders ready to reassure themselves of their own decision by parading their "successful" surgeries and encouraging others.

I can speak the transgender party line that I was a female trapped in a male body and I remember feeling this way since I was 4. But, it's never that easy if you look at it sincerely and without preconception. There's little question that a mid-life crisis, a divorce and a cancer scare were involved in at least the timing of my sex-change decision. To be completely honest at this point (3 yrs post-op) is not easy, however, I'm not sure I would do it again. I'm now concerned that much of what I took as a gender dysfunction might have been nothing more than a neurotic sexual obsession. I was a cross-dresser for all of my sexual life and had always fantasized going fem as an ultimate turn-on. Ironically, when I began hormone treatment my libido went away. However, I mistook that relief from sexual obsession for validation of my gender change. Then in the final bit of irony, after surgery my new genitals were non-orgasmic (like 80% of my TG sisters).

So, needless to say, my life as a woman is not an ultimate turn-on. And what did it all cost? Over $30,000 and the loss of most of my relationships to family and friends. And the costs don't end. Every relationship I make now and in the future has to come to terms with the sex-change. And I'm not the only one who suffers. I hate the impact this will have on my kids and their future.

Anyway, I'm making it sound awful and it's not. There are some perks but the important things like being comfortable with myself and having a true love in my life don't seem like they were contingent on the change. Being my "real self" could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice. I miss my easy access to my kids (unlike many TS's I didn't completely lose access to them though), I miss my family and old friends (I know they "shouldn't" have abandoned me but lots of folks aren't as open minded as they "should" be ... I still miss them) and finally, I hate the disconnect with my past (there's just no way to integrate the two unrelated lives). There's any number of ways to express your gender and sexuality and the only one I tried was the big one. I'll never know if I could have found a compromise that might have worked a lot better than the "one size fits all" sex-change. Please, check it out yourself before you do likewise.

It all scares the hell out of me. Another reason to go slow.

http://www.anticlockwise.com/dani/personal/changes/dont.htm

http://grok-code.com/37/famous-programmers-from-adleman-to-zimmermann/