Adrian
Forum Replies Created
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A view on Passing from the internet:
PASSING AS A PRIVILEGE
Paris Lees writes about the privileges associated with gender.
In discussing passing she says:Quote:When I first transitioned, sometimes people would pick up on the fact that I was transgender and shout abuse at me. It was horrible. I don’t get that much anymore. That’s a privilege. The privilege to walk down the goddamn street without people being assholes, or at least not be assholes about that particular point.Passing privilege is …. conditional. It depends on conforming to a societal standard of gender presentation. It can be taken away. Essentially, passing privilege is a case of, “If you look a certain way, you don’t have to deal with all the bullshit that we hand out to other transgender people.” It stinks. Passing may afford many privileges, but it is not a true freedom.
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Alison_2 wrote:I see it as – I’m a woman passing by without being noticed that I’m not a woman.
Validation by not being noticed is unfortunately a common way to decide if we PASS. Sadly this just feeds into the fear of failure – of being noticed. If you don’t PASS then safer to stay at home and hide your gender.
Before you rush to assume that not being noticed means everyone assumes you are a stereotypical “woman” consider:
a) Awareness of the existence of Transgender people has skyrocketed recently. This means that instead of seeing us as “weird” ,people may correctly classify us as transgender. That means less overt staring.
b) Knowing someone is Transgender is less threatening than reading an unknown “guy in a dress”. As a result people are less inclined to call us out in public. The younger generations who used to be the worst offenders at announcing “Look there is a guy in a dress over there” – are now generally our strongest supporters. They are more likely to just smile at us.
All this means that a lack of response in public means absolutely nothing. It could mean you look, talk and move indistinguishably from a genetic female. On the other hand it could be that everyone knows you are probably transgender and couldn’t care. As I’ve never encountered a transgender woman who is indistinguishable from a genetic female my money is on the second interpretation.
Caty wrote:But what I would like for all of us, is for society to accept that we should be able to dress where and how we would like in all aspects of life, without fear of criticism or ridicule.My observation as someone who is out a lot and doesn’t believe in PASSING is we are a long way towards your dream. Criticism or ridicule from the public is definitely on the wane.
Those girls who don’t care too much about the concept of PASSING may to some degree be responsible for the lack of response we are getting now
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Christina wrote:Even the word PASS hints of a value system. You are in or you are out.
Instead we should be supporting diversity and choice rather than conformity to some sort of binary and a line set by others.Well said – 4 years ago I expressed much the same thoughts.
http://forum.tgr.net.au/cms/forum/F124/2065-what-is-passing-about#18674Sadly I still see too many people held back in the closet because of this silly notion that passing is important or even desirable.
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I’m not sure how your query differs from past topics on this forum.
Have a look here:
http://forum.tgr.net.au/cms/forum/F398/5025-breast-implants#21289
for a start.
I’ll probably merge any posts on this thread back there anyway. -
Sara_Timms wrote:In English do we have any gender neutral names? There are shared names like Terri and Terry where different spelling are used to indicate gender. The only one I can think of is Pat which is a short name for Patrick and Patricia.
Not sure if this is wandering off the topic of indigenous languages. But lookup unisex names on Wikipedia and you will get a nice long list of names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_nameSlightly more on topic the article points out that different cultures have different attitudes to gender in names.
A search for “uNisex name” will give many other web sites – many of which have a longer and better list than Wikipedia.
Of course I dismiss all the name lists that don’t include Adrian. Because some very attractive girls are called Adrian!
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Good post – as long as it doesn’t encourage us to give up because we ‘look too male’. Never talk to me about my nose!!!
I’m amused why you thought the topic was only relevant for ‘part-timers’. I know hormones do change a few facial features over time – but most of what the article describes isn’t going to change suddenly when you go from 7-11 to 24-7. And certainly not if you are determined to race ahead of the speed of your body changes.
So a good article for EVERYONE!
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February 2016
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Nostalgia is great (looking back!). Those modems may have been pesky surfing – so spare a thought for those of us who were uploading websites back then on to Geocities.
The “history of TgR” records that it wasn’t just the Americans wandering round West Hollywood. We were there in WestHollywood 7788.
The snapshot of the early web site in reocities is next to useless as we had already upgraded to a yahoo domain name when their snapshots were taken.
If you go to the InternetArchive http://web.archive.org/web/19990715000000*/http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/7788 you can see samples of TgR going back to 1999. The trouble is that most of the links on these early web pages are broken.
But when editing the website on Yahoo down a flaky modem became too hard I resorted to building the entire web site on my PC and uploading it. A few months ago I was throwing out some old ZIP disks (remember them??) and I found a virtually complete copy of the early TrannyRadio (aka TgR) site.
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Michelle_1 wrote:Is being a focus a good thing or bad?
I have previously argued that “being in the spotlight” (awareness) doesn’t necessarily lead to acceptance. What the ACL is demonstrating at the moment is the sad fact that awareness of transgender issues can be highjacked with deliberate misinformation to achieve very negative outcomes (for us).
Those who subscribe to the view that “All publicity is good publicity” would do well to observe how the ACL operates. They appear organised but we are often splintered and disorganised. We all need to spread postive information about being transgender to counter this, and if we can’t or won’t then perhaps it would be better to go a bit slower with less publicity and public focus.
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FactCheck Q&A: was Lyle Shelton right about transgender people and a higher suicide risk after surgery?
Kairi Kõlves
Griffith UniversityThe Conversation has fact-checked claims made on Q&A, broadcast Mondays on the ABC at 9:35pm.
Quote:Studies that have been done of transgendered people who have had sex reassignment surgery, people who have been followed for 20 or so years have found that after 10 years from the surgery, that their suicide mortality rate was actually 20 times higher than the non-transgendered population. So I’m very concerned that here we are encouraging young people to do things to their bodies … like chest binding for young girls … [and] penis tucking … Now this is taking kids on a trajectory that may well cause them to want to take radical action, such as gender reassignment surgery…– Lyle Shelton, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, speaking on Q&A on February 29, 2016.
Australia’s Safe Schools Coalition program has been accused of promoting a radical view of gender and sexuality in schools.
The program’s architects say it aims to boost acceptance of same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, staff and families.
Critics have said that the program directs children to groups such as Minus18, a youth-led network for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. Among the resources on Minus18’s website is information about appearance modification for transgender people such as:
Quote:Changing your appearance is another way you can express your gender. Things like makeup, the clothes or school uniform you wear, binding your chest, tucking/packing your pants, or the way you do your hair can all help you better express yourself.Speaking on Q&A, the Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton stressed that respect is essential and that no one should be bullied at school. However, Shelton said he would prefer anti-bullying programs didn’t include “contested gender ideology” that may lead to gender reassignment surgery.
He also said research showed that people who had undergone sex reassignment surgery were 20 times more likely to suicide than the general population a decade after their surgery.
Let’s take a closer look at what the research says.
Checking the research
Shelton did not respond to The Conversation’s request for comment and clarification. However, later in the program he referred to a Swedish study of over 300 people over about 30 years between 1973 and about 2003 that found that the suicide mortality rate was 20 times higher than the non transgendered population – so it seems likely he is referring to a 2011 study published in the journal PLOS ONE
That study, led by researcher Cecilia Dhejne, tracked 324 sex-reassigned people in Sweden between 1973 and 2003 to estimate their mortality, morbidity, and criminal rate after surgery. The researchers also included a comparison group. In that group, for every transgender person studied, the researchers included a non-transgendered person the same age and the same sex as the transgender person was before surgery.
The researchers found that:
Quote:Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.The authors did not find that surgery was the cause of increased suicide risk, writing in their paper that:
Quote:the results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment.Why are post-surgery transgender people at higher risk of suicide than the general population?
It is possible that Shelton was not implying any causal relationship between sex reassignment surgery and a higher suicide risk. The Conversation asked him to clarify what he wanted to convey by mentioning the study, but he did not reply.
It is also possible some viewers may have been left with the impression that the study showed sex reassignment surgery causes a higher risk of suicide later in life. That is not the case.
The Conversation asked the authors of that study how they felt about the way Shelton had represented their findings. One of the authors, Mikael Landén from the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet medical university, told The Conversation that:
Quote:As Mr Shelton phrases it, it may sound as if sex reassignment increased suicide risk 20 times. That is not the case. The risk of suicide was increased 19 times compared to the general population, but that is because gender dysphoria is a distressing condition in itself. Our study does not inform us whether sex reassignment decreases (which is likely) or increases (which is unlikely) that risk.When asked why people who have had sex reassignment surgery may be more prone than the general population to suicide later in life, Landén said:
Quote:Gender dysphoria is a distressing condition. We have known for a long time that it is associated with other psychiatric disorders (such as depression) and increased rate of suicide attempts. Sex reassignment is the preferred treatment and outcome studies suggest that gender dysphoria (the main symptom) decreases. But it goes without saying that the procedure is a stressful life event. And that the surgery and medical treatment is not perfect. It is thus not surprising that this group of patients will continue to suffer from stress-related psychiatric disorders. There might be lingering professional and relational problems. It is also possible (but unproven) that gender dysphoria is somehow etiologically related to depression. In that case, fixing the first with a cure would not automatically fix the latter.In November 2015, Cecilia Dhejne told the website The TransAdvocate that, “Medical transition alone won’t resolve the effects of crushing social oppression: social anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.
(Dhejne also confirmed to The Conversation that the transcript of her interview on The TransAdvocate website is accurate).
What does other research say?
Recent literature reviews, including a literature review colleagues and I conducted reviewing Australian literature until the end of 2012, found a greater prevalence of suicidal behaviours among sexual minorities in general.
Risk factors for suicidal behaviours specific to LGBTI people include “coming out” in adolescence and early adulthood, prejudice, discrimination, shame, hostility, and self-hatred.
A recent review of literature focused on suicidal behaviours – including suicidal thought, suicide attempts and suicide rates – among trans people (the term used by the authors of that review) between 1966 and April 2015. The authors concluded that the prevalence of suicidal behaviours differs depending on the different stages of transition, but they are still overall greater than the general population.
A 2011 Dutch study found that male-to-female transsexuals had a risk of suicide 5.7 times higher than the general population.
However, suicide risk was found not to be significantly higher in female-to-male transsexuals compared to the general population in an 18 year follow-up of 996 male-to-female and 365 female-to-male transexuals.
Again, those studies do not indicate the cause of increased suicide risk.
It’s possible that a number of other lifestyle factors, combined with lack of social support, discrimination and stigmatisation increase the risk of suicidal behaviour in the trans population.
Verdict
Shelton was correct to say that research shows that transgendered people who have had sex reassignment surgery had a suicide mortality rate later in life that was roughly 20 times higher than the non-transgendered population.
However, it is also possible some viewers may have been left with the impression that the study showed sex reassignment surgery causes a higher risk of suicide later in life. That is not what the Swedish study showed. In fact, the researchers wrote that things might have been even worse without sex reassignment.
Nevertheless, there is lack of research on the topic and his comment appears to be based on one study from Sweden.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article
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Adrian wrote:At the time of writing there are just 6 places on the Full Weekend left.
– make that 3 now!
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That was popular!!! All sold!
We still have tickets left for the Friday/Saturday weekend and also for just the Saturday night formal.
But just [strike]23[/strike] 21 places left on Saturday night – so don’t think about it for too long!
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Adrian wrote:Adrian wrote:At the time of writing there are just 6 places on the Full Weekend left.
– make that 3 now!
Just 2 now!
We have currently sold 2/3 of the tickets and already have 7 tables filled for the Saturday Formal.
For those with a statistical bent:
[ol]
[li]22% of the ticket holders are attending TransFormal for the first time (but I dare say not for the last time)[/li][li]We have bookings from NZ and every state except WA/TAS/NT. What has happened to all the girls in Tasmania? [/li]
[li]At a rough guess about 13 couples have registered so far for the weekend (that’s over half of all the weekend tickets) [/li]
[/ol]
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January 2016
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Wooooooooooooooosh!!!!!!
Suddenly all the numbers fall into place and we have a financial plan for the weekend.
At this stage tickets should go on sale Sunday (21st) evening. I’ll be emailing everyone on our mailing list (including non-TgR guests) to confirm this.
Big sigh of relief from organiser
