What happens when your son tells you he’s really a girl? Inside the families embracing the new world of gender variance

Some medical professionals see gender variance as a natural characteristic of human diversity, similar to sexual preference, that should be accepted and even celebrated. An article in Macleans (Jan 6, 2014) explores the lives of supportive families and their trans and gender variant children..

The Public Health Agency of Canada published comprehensive recommendations in 2010 for schools to support gender-variant students and several provincial governments have added “gender expression” to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination. The tides may be turning but the need for education is high. The negative judgement of trans individuals suggests there is a 17% higher risk for suicide and even higher risks for being bullied by others.

The Macleans article also has a short video embedded within and pictures throughout, providing a glimpse into the daily lives of trans and gender-variant children and their families. This is an excellent introduction and movement towards educating the public and advancing the needs of trans youth – which is a natural characteristic of human variation.

You can read the article here: http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/13/what-happens-when-your-son-tells-you-hes-really-a-girl/

 

In the United States the National Gay and Lesbian Task Forces and the National Center for Transgender Equality conducted a survey of 6,450 trans and gender non-conforming individuals from all 50 states. This study was the first of its kind and provides us with a clear picture of what needs to change in order to stop the injustice in their lives..

Discrimination against trans and gender variant individuals provides critical data for policymakers, community activists and legal advocates to confront the appalling realities. Respondents experience higher levels of poverty and a staggering 45% of those survey reported attempting suicide. Harassment and discrimination in education was reported at alarmingly high rates and include physical assault (35%) and sexual violence (12%). Harassment was so severe that it led to almost 15% to leave school in K-12 settings or in higher education..

Abuse by Police, discrimination in health care and public accommodations, employment discrimination and economic insecurity, as well as housing discrimination, barriers to receiving updated documents (identification and personal records). The 6,450 individuals all reported that family acceptance was of great importance, although the majority reported experiencing family rejection. Despite all of the harassment, mistreatment, discrimination and violence faced by trans individuals the study demonstrates their determination, resourcefulness and perseverance. This report is a call to action for all of us, especially for those who pass laws and write policies. Inaction is a form of violence that will negatively affect trans and gender variant people. Take up the call for human rights for transgender, transsexual, trans, and gender variant people and confront the patterns of abuse and injustice. Let’s learn (and teach) the values of human variation to our children, to each other and let’s learn more ourselves!.

You can access the full report titled “Injustice at every Turn” here: http://www.TheTaskForce.org or here: wwww.TransEquality.org. You can also get more information about the survey at: http://www.EndTransDiscrimination.org

The citizenship test doesn’t translate

Globe and Mail journalist Maragaret Wente barely passed the online Immigrantion sample test. An interesting perspective about Canadian citizenship, immigrants and family members. Language requirements for new immigrants and cuts to language programs for new immigrants don’t add up but should we be surprised?

The new citizenship test is not a snap. I took a sample test online, and barely passed. (“You might have to study harder!” scolded the automatic message.) People are grousing because failure rates have soared. In some places, they’re hitting 30 per cent. Yet the questions aren’t really harder than they were when I took the test for real more than 30 years ago. So what’s happened?

Human Kinds–The Categories of Sexual Orientation in Law, Science, and Society–Part 1

The first part of Ed Stein’s talk at the Human Kinds symposium on sexual orientation, especially in equal protection under US jurisprudence.

Did Governor Richardson get it roughly right about sexual orientation, as Ed claims?

Philosophy, Eugenics and Disability in Alberta and Places North – Simo Vehmas Part 2

On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north.  Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson.  This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog.  Roughly four videos will be featured each week.

To download the full description of the symposium please click here.

With this video we begin the second part of the presentation by Simo Vehmas (The first part may be found here).  Simo’s presentation is titled “Preventing Disability: Nordic Perspectives” and it focuses on summarizing past and present attitudes towards eugenic practices in Nordic countries, principally Finland, with special attention paid to attitudes and ideas around eugenic practices of preventing disability.

Part 2

Highlights: Lack of knowledge by sterilization victims about what was happening, total number of Finnish sterilization victims in, illusion of voluntary sterilization, logical flaw of “playing the Nazi card”, strategy for effective discussion in the face of embarrassment, and prevention of disability vs. providing autonomous choice.

A transcript follows the cut.

Philosophy, Eugenics & Disability in Alberta and Places North – Dick Sobsey Parts 3 & 4

On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north.  Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson.  This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog.  Videos will be featured on average twice a week, roughly every Saturday and Wednesday.

To download the full description of the symposium please click here.

We began this series with the first two parts of the presentation by Dick Sobsey, titled “Varieties of Eugenics Experience in the 21st Century.”  This presentation amounts to a summary of various kinds of eugenic motivations, justifications, and practices from the 19th century to today with a good collection of anecdotes and trivia.  Parts 3 and 4 are highlighted in the videos below. Transcripts are also posted below.

Part 3

Highlights from part 3 include: criticism of Jukes as an assault upon the poor, best cement in the world, origin of the underground records for all the new york banks, continuing the Juke heritage, Dugdale’s findings, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. on Sterilization, measures of intelligence and the Flynn Effect, and stopping people from having children easiest through institutionalization.

Saving the World with Viral Eugenics

Randall Gordon, a character from Paul Chadwick's Concrete series, points his finger at YOU, a la Uncle Sam, with the following speech bubble: "I'm completely serious, and I repeat my appeal. You, out there. Somewhere. Sexually transmitted; no undue harm; infertility. Go save the world."

And so a tale already fraught with controversy unleashes an ethical bombshell…

My doctor, my child: The response of the medical community to a mother who chooses to have a child who might be born with a disability

[This is the second post in a series highlighting a public dialogue heald at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. This series will bring forward the videos made of this event twice a week, roughly every Wednesday and Saturday. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here.]

The story you are about to hear you may find surprising in a number of ways; I know that I certainly did when I heard it on the night it was recorded. The contrast between the adversity faced by Wendy MacDonald and her family from the medical community upon making the decision to keep her baby early in the pregnancy and the support they received once it was finally time for Kyle to be delivered struck me as a very unfortunate demonstration of the power of linguistic framing. The shift in language from “miscarriage” to “premature birth” is a small one (the addition of one word, one syllable, and three letters), but it made all the difference for this family and the ability of the medical personnel involved to support them. I also found the adamant stance of her family doctor a bit perplexing, the sort of chilling paternalism that so often arises out of a misplaced belief that we alone have access to the knowledge of what is best for others. Perhaps even more than this I was surprised that this story had, and continues to have, a happy ending. For every Wendy MacDonald I am sure that there are many, many women who would be mothers and men who would be fathers that are bullied into conforming with the system because the system “knows best.”

Perhaps this video will make you a little angry, but it should also give you a little hope. Enjoy. Transcript of the clip beneath the fold.

Does your idea of reproductive rights include disabled people’s right to have children?

Disabled pair defied naysayers to create own kind of family: from the Sacramento Bee

Photo of the Willett family following Rebeka’s birth in 1990. Tammy is sitting in a wooden rocking chair holding a sleeping Rebeka to her chest. Clarence is standing to the right of the chair with one hand on the back of it.

By Leslie Albrecht
lalbrecht@modbee.com

Published: Thursday, Jan. 01, 2009

At 8 a.m. on a recent Wednesday you might have spotted Rebeka Willett on the Modesto Junior College campus. She was the 18-year-old in a Raiders T-shirt and jeans, giggling along with her classmates as she practiced arabesques in a dance class. You would have seen a student like any other: sleepy, but learning and enjoying herself.

This isn’t the way some people thought Rebeka Willett’s life would turn out. She is the child of two parents with disabilities. Her mother, Tammy Willett, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. She needs help to eat and to do other basic tasks. Rebeka’s father, Clarence, 43, is developmentally disabled.

Some questioned whether the couple could raise a child. A public health nurse once told the Willetts to give Rebeka up for adoption. She said Rebeka would never learn to talk because Tammy can’t talk.

This year Rebeka more than proved the critics wrong. She graduated – on time – from Grace Davis High School in Modesto. Now she’s studying to be a preschool teacher. If Tammy Willett could track down that public health nurse today, she would say, “You didn’t think I could do it? Look at us now!”

Read the entire article here: http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1510146.html

Acknowledgements to Beth Haller at media dis and dat.

Take Home Exercise: Giving Back to Marriage Bigotry

Over at The Data Lounge, a recent post with a bright, new idea for those struggling with what to do in light of the push for gay marriage, and (more especially) the push back against it. They report from one gay NYC man who has just had enough:

I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying. Turns out it’s fun. Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend. She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband”, and I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.” The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs. Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiance with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion.

Freeheld, Laurel Hester, and Garden State Equality

h/t WoC PhD; sorry no captioning for any videos in this post.

Laurel Hester was a long-serving police officer whose final years of her life were spent fighting for the rights that heterosexual couples can take for granted. Cynthia Wade’s award-winning documentary, Freeheld, tells that story.

Article in St Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri): Down syndrome advocates praise new law

CHESTERFIELD, Mo.— When Missouri Sen. John Loudon and his wife, Gina, decided to adopt their third child, they knew three things: They wanted a little boy, they would name him Samuel and he would have Down syndrome.

“This was always part of the plan,” said Gina Loudon as their now 3-year-old Sammy darted in and out of the living room in his slippers, giggling loudly.”We didn’t know much about how it was going to happen, but we just knew.”

The politically active couple with deep roots in the anti-abortion movement said their passion for Sammy spurred them to take legislative action on behalf of children with Down syndrome. It also put them in the center of an ongoing national discussion about genetic testing, the acceptance of people with disabilities and the type of information about Down syndrome that new or expecting parents were getting from their doctors.

Various studies estimate that 80 to 90 percent of parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome through genetic testing choose to abort the fetus. Researchers believe this is the cause behind an 8 percent decline in people with Down syndrome in the United States in the past two decades.

Conference announcement: PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO PREGNANCY, CHILDBIRTH, AND MOTHERING

May 14-16, 2009
At the University of Oregon

This one-time conference will take place in the Spring of 2009. The conference will be primarily philosophical in focus, but interdisciplinary scholarship from fields outside of philosophy is also invited including, but not limited to, sociology, psychology, womenʼs and gender studies, and health care related fields.

Keynote speakers

Lisa Guenther, Vanderbilt University

Eva Kittay, SUNY at Stony Brook

Invited speaker

Andrea O’Reilly, the Association for Research on Mothering, York University

Call for Papers

Submit abstracts for papers or panels of approximately 750 words

Due January 31, 2009, at 5:00 p.m.

E-mail submissions or questions to PCM_Conference@yahoo.com  

Include a cover sheet with name, institution, department, and contact information. Document should be submitted in MS Word (.doc file). For further details and registration information, please link to www.uoregon.edu/~uophil/events.html  

 

Hosted by the University of Oregon and the Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering Research Group. Sponsorship provided by the University of Oregon Graduate School, the Center for the Study of Women in Society, the Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon Department of Philosophy, and the Graduate Student Philosophy Club. 

 

PZ Myers on the Enhancement of Sexual Morality: A Modest Proposal

Continuing to catch up on good things elsewhere, found this sermon on the mount(ed) post on Pharyngula, which only gets funnier. Though not any funnier than the sign, which just reminds us all how much more out there than the rest of us those Brits are, Rev. Mullin excepted, who clearly needs to get out more often:

Effective Family Planning

The Reverend Peter Mullin doesn’t like those darn pushy homosexuals — they must make him feel uncomfortable and all squirmy deep down inside. He wrote some amazingly stupid things about gays.

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen said in an blog that homosexuality was “clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections” and “a cause of fatal disease”.

He recommended that homosexual practices be discouraged “after the style of warnings on cigarette packets”.

He wrote: “Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.”

What about the heterosexual women? Everyone forgets the loving ladies in these arguments. Do they also get chin tattoos? That would be a real shame. And then there are those heterosexual couples that engage in all of the same activities that homosexuals do — why do they get a free pass from the Rev. Mullen?

He also didn’t say a thing about cunnilingus, but they never do. Lesbians also always get a free pass, and it’s just not fair. I’m beginning to think they are god’s favored people.

To Caption or Not to Caption

that is, no doubt, not THE question, but a question, one asked by Seek Geo in the captioned video appearing below the fold that shows its author signing a message that is also captioned. I would be curious to know if anyone with a screen-reader can read this (and those with them who cannot, which I suspect is most if not all, let us know)–and what they think about either the medium or the message (or both). And to know what deaf readers think about the same. And what sighted hearers also think.

Genetic profiling and the Law

I never seem to stop plugging Radio National podcasts, but here‘s one that shouldn’t be missed, on Damien Carrick‘s Law Report, about genetic profiling. The program looks at the likely prospect that within the next ten years it will be possible to purchase a full genetic profile relatively cheaply (i.e., for around $1000).

Censoring Joy

Celebrations last week for the legalization of same-sex marriage in California were joyous indeed. It was marked as a great triumph for couples like Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who have been together since 1953, and who were first to be married in California under the new law. In any situation where the press meets sexuality, however, the question of choice arises: why Martin and Lyon? What does a ‘normal’ gay marriage look like, anyway? We might optimistically think that the choices surrounding the publication of images of potentially controversial material are not spelled out in such explicit terms, but in this case, at least, we might be surprised. Interestingly, it has been from proponents of gay marriage that the most blatant censorship has come. Presumably out of fear that images of “guys in gowns” might scare off even more liberally-minded Americans, yet unsure of what gay marriage might spell for the norms and values of the state, leaders of the California gay/ lesbian community have been underscoring the importance of self-censorship at same-sex marriages. Jack, from Feministe, explains why she isn’t celebrating:

That’s right, folks: no camp here. No gender non-conformity, either. And definitely no guys in gowns.

Why? Because the marriage equality movement is largely predicated on the notion that us queers are just like “everyone else,” meaning mostly white, mostly middle-class or up, gender conforming monogamists. You know, the non-threatening queers. The rest of us should apparently find a nice closet to go hide in for a while, lest we threaten the rights that are apparently meant for the more upstanding, respectable members of the LGsomeotherlessimportantletters community…..

“Coming Out”, by See Hear

What does coming out suggest to you? Well, prepare to be surprised! This is a smart, funny short film created by the UK’s See Hear and directed by Louis Neethling that itself came out last year. Sign(s) of the times. Watch at least the first 90 seconds … and see if you can stop watching more.

What can one say, except that coming out is not always easy, even in the most sympathetic of families …

Hat tip to Disability Studies at Temple.

What Sorts of Marriages?

In addition to the blog entry I put up on this site, whatsortsofpeople.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/california%e2%80%99s-same-sex-marriage-case, I’ve been doing some blogging on The Huffington Post about marriage for same-sex couples in the United States.  These posts can be found at www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-stein. 

Although my scholarship has not heretofore been focused exclusively or primarily on this topic, recent developments in California (where the state Supreme Court held that not allowing same-sex couples to marry violates the state constitution), New York (where the governor and a state appellate court said that the state will recognize valid marriages from other jurisdictions between people of the same sex, e.g., Massachusetts, Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, etc.), Michigan (where the state Supreme Court said that state agencies, e.g., universities, could not extend domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples because of a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman), and other states led me to start blogging on this issue.  But for now, the U.S.A.’s bizarre patchwork of recognition and non-recognition for relationships between people of the same-sex helps keep me busy.  When things calm down regarding marriage and related issues, I hope to blog here and on The Huffington Post about other topics as well.