Transgender Community

http://bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/09/01/camp-for-transgender-kids-builds-trust/7ziUvJtS6gAjKnSAiycKYJ/story.html

Camp unites transgender kids on outskirts
There are few places transgender youth feel accepted. Camp Aranu’tiq was created to change that.
By Bella English, Globe Staff
September 02, 2012


Kids headed to the pool at Camp Aranu’tiq in Connecticut. (Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff)

On the volleyball court, a boy spiked a shot and his teammates cheered. Nearby, some campers lay on mats, doing yoga stretches. A girl executed a series of cartwheels. Over in drama, the kids performed a “cranky old lady” talk show; everyone cracked up.

Before the week was over, there were campfires, Capture the Flag, a skit night, and a talent show. Camp Aranu’tiq seemed like a traditional New England camp, complete with requisite lake, rustic cabins, and 65 shrieking campers.

Only when you see tags around campers’ necks, with the words “(HE)” or “(SHE)” under their names, do you realize something’s different here. It is the only camp of its kind in the country, a camp for transgender kids, where idle chatter on sports, music, school, and teenage crushes blends right in with talk about “coming out,” “transitioning,” puberty blockers — and bullying.

For privacy and safety reasons, Camp Aranu’tiq has never allowed media inside, but recently let a Globe reporter and photographer spend a day at its wooded Connecticut grounds during its weeklong session in late August. Campers, parents, and staff are required to sign a confidentiality contract, and the exact location is not revealed until the child is enrolled. “They know it’s a safety issue,” said founder and director Nick Teich.

Related: Camp for transgender kids builds trust (photos)

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=152470558

Argentina Gender Rights Law: A New World Standard
by The Associated Press
May 11, 2012, 12:09 am ET

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Activists say Argentina now leads the world in transgender rights after giving people the freedom to change their legal and physical gender identity simply because they want to, without having to undergo judicial, psychiatric and medical procedures beforehand.

The gender identity law that won congressional approval with a 55-0 Senate vote Wednesday night is the latest in a growing list of bold moves on social issues by the Argentine government, which also legalized gay marriage two years ago. These changes primarily affect minority groups, but they are fundamental, President Cristina Fernandez has said, for a democratic society still shaking off the human rights violations of the 1976-1983 dictatorship and the paternalism of the Roman Catholic Church.

Activists and academics who have tracked gender identity laws and customs worldwide said Thursday that no other country has gone so far to embrace gender self-determination. In the United States and Europe, transgender people must submit to physical and mental health exams and get past a series of other hurdles before getting sex-change treatments.

Argentina's law also is the first to give citizens the right to change their legal gender without first changing their bodies, said Justus Eisfeld, co-director of Global Action for Trans Equality in New York. "The fact that there are no medical requirements at all — no surgery, no hormone treatment and no diagnosis — is a real game changer and completely unique in the world. It is light years ahead of the vast majority of countries, including the US, and significantly ahead of even the most advanced countries," said Eisfeld, who researched the laws of the 47 countries for the Council of Europe's human rights commission.

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http://transgenderequality.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/victory-federal-agency-rules-trans-people-protected-by-sex-discrimination-law/

Victory: Federal Agency Rules Trans People Protected by Sex Discrimination Law

NCTE congratulates our colleagues at the Transgender Law Center, who tonight, announced a significant federal workplace rights victory. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruled in a 5-0 decision that an employer who discriminates against a transgender employee or job applicant because of the person’s gender identity is illegal sex discrimination based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Though this ruling follows a growing number of court decisions around the country that have held that transgender people are protected by existing federal anti-discrimination laws, this is the first decision by the EEOC on this issue.

NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling said, “This ruling is a major advancement in transgender rights that will provide a significant tool to fight discrimination. It will also help us advocate for still needed protections like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the federal contractors executive order.”

The EEOC is the federal agency charged with interpreting and enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws, and this is the first time it has ruled that anti-transgender discrimination is sex discrimination. The decision applies to both public and private employers throughout the country including in the 34 states that do not yet have gender identity anti-discrimination laws.

The case was brought by the Transgender Law Center (TLC) on behalf of their client Mia Macy who was a denied a job as a ballistics technician at the Walnut Creek, CA laboratory of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). NCTE congratulates TLC on this important victory and thanks Mia Macy for standing up for herself and the rights of all trans people.

Keisling added, “this is a major victory. As many as 90% of trans people still face tremendous discrimination in employment according to our National Discrimination Survey, and it will help so much that the EEOC agrees with what more and more courts have been saying—discriminating against trans people because of their sex, or their perceived sex, or what an employer thinks about their sex is clearly sex discrimination, illegal and wrong.”

Read the full ruling here.

There is a poll on this site, near the bottom of the article, asking 'Should kids who believe they are born in the wrong bodies be offered a medication to block puberty?' Please go and vote!


http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/20/10450683-more-transgender-kids-seeking-help-getting-treatment

More transgender kids seeking help, getting treatment
By Diane Mapes

When Aidan Key was a little girl, he didn't realize he had gender identity issues. He simply knew something was off.

"I didn't necessarily become aware that I was trapped in the wrong body," says the 49-year-old Bellingham, Wash., native who had gender reassignment surgery at the age of 33. "I became aware that people didn't perceive me as I felt myself to be. It was just odd to me to have to wear a dress the first day of kindergarten. It didn't make sense."


Aidan Key, left, was born a girl named Bonnie.

Today, Key might have received counseling -- and perhaps even puberty blocking drugs -- at one of a handful of U.S. clinics designed to help adolescents with what’s now called gender identity disorder or GID. The psychological diagnosis is used to describe a male or female who feels a strong identification with the opposite sex and experiences considerable distress because of their actual sex (the word "disorder" refers to the distress the person feels, not the fact that they identify with another gender).

According to reports published Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics, a small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are now getting support from parents and from doctors who give them treatments that could eventually help them change their sex.

Some estimates say about 1 in 10,000 children may have GID, Dr. Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston told the Associated Press. And that number does appear to be on the rise, experts say.

The number of people treated at Spack's Gender Management Service clinic, also known as GeMS, which was the focus of a study, increased fourfold between January 1998 and February 2010. The clinic now averages about 19 patients each year, compared with about four per year treated for gender issues at the hospital in the late 1990s.

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http://transgenderequality.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/breaking-new-rule-makes-trans-housing-discrimination-illegal/

BREAKING: New Rule Makes Trans Housing Discrimination Illegal

Today, at the 24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that they will issue a historic new rule strengthening housing discrimination protections for transgender people. The regulations will be published next week, and go into effect 30 days from then.

In his plenary address, HUD Secretary Donovan said:

“I am proud to announce a new Equal Access to Housing Rule that says clearly and unequivocally that LGBT individuals and couples have the right to live where they choose [...] If you are denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, actual or perceived, you’re discriminating, you’re breaking the law, and you will be held accountable. That’s what equal access means, and that’s what this rule is going to do.”

The new rule makes several urgently needed changes to current federal housing and housing-related programs including: prohibiting owners and operators of federally-funded or federally-insured housing, as well as lenders offering federally-insured mortgages from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation;and clarifying the definition of “family” to ensure that LGBT families are not excluded from HUD programs.

According to Harper Jean Tobin, NCTE Policy Counsel, “this is a major and urgently needed advancement in basic protections for transgender people. NCTE is calling on other federal departments to follow HUD’s common-sense approach and use existing legal authority to prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in the programs they fund and administer. We applaud Secretary Donovan and the Obama Administration for this much needed relief for transgender people.”

Mara Keisling added “We are very pleased that, just as he said at NCTE’s Awards Ceremony in November, HUD has clearly listened to our concerns with earlier drafts of the regulations and made them even stronger.”

In announcing the draft rules early last year, HUD cited The National Transgender Discrimination Survey conducted by NCTE and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, showing that 19% of transgender and gender non-conforming people had been refused a home or apartment and 11% had been evicted because of their gender identity or expression. The study also showed that 19% of transgender people have been homeless at some point in their lives, and 29% of those had been turned away from homeless shelters and a majority were harassed when they could get in to a shelter.

http://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/press.../2011-09-29-adams-victory.pdf

A settlement was announced today in the case of Vanessa Adams, a Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) inmate at FMC Butner in North Carolina who has gender identity disorder (GID). Ms Adams sued BOP in order to receive appropriate treatment for her GID.

Ms Adams' challenge to BOP’s treatment of transgender prisoners has resulted in BOP ending its so-called “freeze frame” policy in which treatment for any person with GID is kept frozen at the level provided at the time he or she entered the federal prison system. In Ms Adams’ case, this meant that because she had not received treatment for GID before being incarcerated, BOP refused to provide her with medically necessary care even though its own doctors diagnosed her with GID, told her about treatments available for GID, and knew about the seriousness of her medical condition.

“BOP’s freeze frame policy trapped transgender prisoners in despair, leading often to depression, suicide attempts, and in many cases, serious self-harm, as was the case with Vanessa,” said Jennifer L. Levi, Transgender Rights Project Director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).

The change in policy was promulgated via two memoranda, dated May 31, 2011 and June 15, 2010, from BOP’s Medical
Director to all BOP’s chief executive officers. The May 2011 memorandum ends:

In summary, inmates in the custody of the Bureau with a possible diagnosis of GID will receive a current individualized assessment and evaluation. Treatment options will not be precluded solely due to level of services received, or lack of services, prior to incarceration.

The memo also states that “current, accepted standards of care will be used as a reference for developing the treatment plan.”

The memos have been distributed to all individuals in the prison system who have been diagnosed with GID, as well as to the medical staff treating these prisoners.

When the suit was filed on February 24, 2009, Ms Adams was at a federal prison in Florida . There she was being denied medically necessary hormone therapy and prevented from otherwise expressing a female gender identity because she had not received this treatment prior to her incarceration. In a June 7, 2010 ruling, Federal District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro rejected BOP’s argument that Ms Adams’ claim was moot because BOP had finally started Ms Adams on
hormone therapy.

Citing BOP’s consistently callous conduct toward Ms Adams, the fact that BOP could stop her treatment at any time, and that BOP did not disavow its policy, Judge Tauro sent the case to mediation. With today’s settlement, the parties jointly agreed to end the case.

Cassandra Capobianco of Florida Institutional Legal Services said, “It is critical not only for Vanessa’s health and safety but for the good of other prisoners that BOP’s policy has been changed.”

“We applaud the BOP for getting rid of an unfair policy that has denied medically necessary care to many people. We hope
that other state and county prison systems will follow BOP’s lead and eliminate discriminatory policies that are based on bias rather than medical need,” said Jody Marksamer, a staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

In addition to GLAD, Ms Adams was represented by Florida Institutional Legal Services (FILS), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Bingham McCutchen LLP, and Allyson Kurker.


Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders is New England’s leading legal organisation dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV status, and gender identity and expression. http://glad.org/

The National Center for Lesbian Rights is a national legal organisation in the US committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and Transgender people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. http://nclrights.org/

Florida Institutional Legal Services is a non-profit organisation that advocates for institutionalised people and other vulnerable people and groups.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/02/18/patrick_gives_protection_to_transgender_state_workers/

Transgender state workers get aid from governor
Activists see order as step toward new law
By Michael Levenson
Globe Staff / February 18, 2011

Governor Deval Patrick quietly issued an executive order yesterday banning discrimination against transgender workers in state government, a move that advocates view as a first step toward passing statewide legislation.

Patrick signed the order in a private ceremony in his office attended by advocates and several transgender state employees. He did not list the event on his public schedule or send out a press release afterward.

The order expands the state’s current civil rights policy by forbidding state government and its contractors from discriminating on the basis of “gender identity or expression.’’ The state already forbids discrimination based on a host of other characteristics, including race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and religion.

Patrick said he signed the order after being asked to do so by advocates.

“It’s really this point about leading by example,’’ he said following an unrelated event late yesterday. “We have so much talent in this Commonwealth, and it resides in every single corner and in every single community, and we want to make as clear as possible that we welcome that talent and its contributions.’’

He said he was not trying to avoid questions about the controversial subject by signing the order in a private ceremony.

“You’re kidding, right?’’ Patrick said.

He pointed out that he supports a similar measure in the Legislature that would ban discrimination against transgender workers in both public and private settings statewide.
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http://guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/12/spanish-teenager-transsexual-operation

Sixteen-year-old becomes Spain's youngest transsexual
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 January 2010 20.25 GMT
Article history

A Spanish clinic today revealed it had performed a male-to-female sex-change operation on a 16-year-old, making her the youngest patient to undergo the operation in the country's history.

The unnamed teenager had been taking hormones to change her body since she was 15, according to doctors who treated her at Barcelona's hospital clínico, and she had been seeing doctors and psychiatrists for even longer. "The patient has been in treatment for nearly three years," said the surgeon who carried out the operation, Dr Iván Mañero.

A sex-change operation on a minor requires the approval of a Spanish court to override a law that sets the minimum age for such operations as 18.

That permission was given in November by a judge after the the child's parents had themselves made the request. The ­operation was carried out in December, though news of it was only released on Monday.
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http://justout.com/news.aspx?id=176

Kindergarten Complications
What the journey of transitioning from female to male means for a five-year-old in Silverton, and for those around him
By Megan A. Gex

Editor’s Note: Silverton native Megan A. Gex is a fourth-year magazine journalism and digital art major at the University of Oregon. Her mother, Susie, was Oliver’s kindergarten teacher and was intimately involved in his transition into grade school, as well as his gender identification process. Over the past two years, Gex and her mother have continued to be in contact with the family, and follow Oliver’s progress. The family’s last name has not been included to respect their privacy. Gex can be reached at megangex@gmail.com.

At first glance, Oliver is a healthy, jovial seven-year-old boy.

In the schoolyard he’s known for his gelled faux-hawk, and his favorite color is blue. His favorite book is The Dangerous Book for Boys. He loves to sprint the 200-meter in track and watch Sponge Bob on the weekends with his best friend. His rambunctious attitude and boyish tendencies belie a core reality: Oliver was born a girl.

With today’s prenatal technology, gender identity is often established before birth. It’s something parents take for granted, while picking masculine names or painting the child’s room pink prior to delivery. During the first years of rearing, the parents often provide their offspring with a gender role, before the child is even aware of their sex. Between the ages of two and three, children start expressing their own gender tendencies, according to specialist B.J. Seymour. Most of the time the child identifies with their assigned sex, but other times their psyche may say something different.

Oliver, born Olivia in 2002, began showing signs of gender discomfort at one-and-a-half years. At such an early age, the signs weren’t verbal; they were present in the choices he made. Over the next year his mother Holly swept her apprehension from the front of her mind and let her child play with whatever toy, or act whatever way, he pleased. “That’s why I bought him Hot Wheels,” Oliver’s father Joel says. “I thought, ‘Cool, my daughter likes cars.’” Both of them shrugged it off as just a “tomboy phase.”

Holly, a hard-working nurse with strawberry-blonde curls, has a warm affection and deep admiration for Oliver and his struggle. Flipping through photographs of Oliver as a toddler nearly brings her to tears. “Right here he’s three,” she says, holding a photograph of a doe-eyed girl in a green t-shirt with purple hair clips. “I had such a struggle with him that day to get him to wear ponytails. That was the last picture we ever got to take of him like this, because he wasn’t old enough to throw a fit.”

She glances over baby photo after baby photo, creating a tentative timeline of Oliver’s transition: one of him with a lace headband in a velvet dress, age one; another taken the following year, in jeans and galoshes with a mid-length haircut. “It’s so strange looking at these pictures. It’s the same soul, just a different person,” Holly says.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8438865.stm

US Lifts HIV/AIDS Immigration Ban

The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/AIDS from entering the country.

President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.


President Obama wants the US to be a world leader on HIV research

The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/AIDS summit for the first time in 2012.

The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.

It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/AIDS.

The BBC's Charles Scanlon, in Miami, says that improving treatments and evolving public perceptions have helped to bring about the change.

Rachel Tiven, head of the campaign group Immigration Equality, told the BBC that the step was long overdue.

"The 2012 World AIDS Conference, due to be held in the United States, was in jeopardy as a result of the restrictions. It's now likely to go ahead as planned," she said.

In October, President Obama said the entry ban had been "rooted in fear rather than fact".

He said: "We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic - yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country."