Adrian
Forum Replies Created
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Fair comments….
The digest is totally automated….it just picks new stuff out of the forums. If there is news in the forums it picks it up and sends it out. Any content has to be there for the digests to pick up at 2am in the morning – and that means it has to be in a forum. There is limited (or no) scope to add any “editorial” content to the digest – and if we did , it would probably be a millstone round someone’s neck to keep providing digest content in a timely way.
Granted any news in the digest only appears once – so if you miss it – you don’t get a second chance. But the plus in this is that the digests are not repetitive – each day something completely different is delivered to your inbox.
The purpose of the digest is to give people a reason to click on a current forum thread and engage with the web site. When the digests stop running there is a noticeable drop in the number of people visiting the forums (that’s generally how I spot there is a problem!)
Which is why it doesn’t give you much of the thread posting – if it did people would “read” the forums from the digest and never log in and look at the real web site. That would defeat the main purpose of having the digest.
Also not everyone reads the digests – I don’t have an accurate statistic on this one – but I suspect a lot of digests go into spam folders. What I do know is that 33% of the members allow the image on the digest email to load – at least once a week. So the other 2/3 may be blissfully unaware what is going on be it important news or idle gossip!
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I encourage members to complete or look at the survey linked previously. It certainly made me think about the value or otherwise of being “counted”.
Quote:One key area the ABS needs to review is a more accurate recognition, and means of counting trans people.[ul]So… we ask everyone in Australia how gender diverse they are….9x% of the population doesn’t understand the question and tick the box matching their sex. Because for most people sex = gender and they live happily ever after in their own stereotype. But for those who have thought about their inner gender – what information are they going to give that would be useful when rolled up into the ABS statistical reports?[/ul]
The survey asks you to think what question you would ask – to be counted. Its a tricky question.
For the count to be meaningful it would have to capture all gender diversity – no matter how it is manifested physically. It shouldn’t matter if you currently express your gender once a year, or 24/7. It shouldn’t matter if you aspire to change your birth sex, or you choose to live with the constraints of an existing relationship.
But would such a count
Quote:assist in gaining important information to ascertain the need for a range of health and support services”as proposed?
I’m all for understanding and embracing the diversity of our community. But is simple question on the national survey and effective way to do that?
I don’t want to join the ranks of the Torres Straights islanders and just be a tick box for bureaucracy.
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Related to the previous article there is currently a survey running that members may want to complete:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/absstandard (please complete ASAP!)
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If your flight from Australia takes you to the USA and back then this may be on-topic.
Victory For Transgender Privacy: TSA Abandons ‘Nude’ Body Scanners
By Zack Ford on Jan 18, 2013 at 2:26 pm
Quote:In what is an important victory for the transgender community, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has announced it will remove all body scanners that show nearly nude images from airports. The TSA had already removed 76 of the machines and will now remove the remaining 174, though they may still be used in other government offices where privacy is not a concern like it is in airports. Congress had set a deadline for OSI Systems to develop software for the scanners to produce generic passenger images instead of the the nearly nude images, but the company was unable to meet the timeline. Scanners produced by other companies that have managed to adjust the software will continue to be used.The invasion of privacy caused by the machine was particularly invasive for transgender people, who were considered suspicious if their genitalia did not match their presentation. Even the software change utilized by the remaining body scanners, which are manufactured by L-3, use “blue” and “pink” indicators for gender that can still cause confusion (and thus concern) for trans passengers. As a result, they can be disproportionately selected for invasive pat downs.
The TSA is planning to expand its PreCheck program, in which passengers share more personal data before arriving at the airport but can then go through metal detectors instead of body scanners.
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Talking with Gina, I have edited the TransFormal 2012 video to remove a section that featured an interview that someone didn’t want shown.
I have therefore been able to send a copy of the full video to those who featured on it. But that is as far as I’m distributing it at present as Gina is currently in Europe.
I haven’t received much feedback as to what people thought about the ‘cut’ movie – but I plan to provide a “private” screening (if technically possible) at TransFormal this year.
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Two days into selling tickets for TransFormal 2013 we have guests attending from every state except WA and the NT. Over 1/2 the ticket sales are from outside NSW. So if you are thinking of traveling to be at this special event you will not be alone.
And the popular value tickets including very discounted accommodation are as popular as ever. Just 3 left when I last looked.
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Quote:i seem to recall he has been mentioned previously a fair bit in the yahoo group called ATSN (Australian Transexual Support Network).
Ahh.. that is where you may find the fun starts. ATSN has an entrance requirement you are a transexual “undertaking affirmation treatment”. You may find that they have a narrow view of the medical needs of any other part of the gender spectrum. Well that was my experience many many years ago.
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Have you tried searching for “Hayes” in the forums. There are two posts from people who have been referred to him.
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I’m not sure we should rush straight into the survey.
I think we should first draft a mission statement so we are all on board and are singing from the same hymn sheet.
Then let’s put in place a value proposition, pick out the key drivers and look for the low hanging fruit.
When we have identified the value add we can move forward, draft a survey, shoot it against the wall and see what sticks.
We shouldn’t really be pushing the envelope with this thing but ensuring customer centricity is essential.
Before going live we need to incentivise the membership to respond otherwise the whole project will be like herding cats and go belly-up.
Do I make myself clear?
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Hmmmm… looks like a case of get some data, plot a few graphs and prove just whatever you want.
Putting cynicism to one side, I would suggest that the research isn’t about similarities in the genders (as this thread is headed). I’m not willing to pay to read the full pdf of the study but the abstract gives the non-sensationally worded conclusion as
Quote:Average differences between men and women are not under dispute, but the dimensionality of gender indicates that these differences are inappropriate for diagnosing gender-typical psychological variables on the basis of sex.What they conclude (well this is my interpretation of all the academic stuff) is that sex is not a reliable indicator of gender typical characteristics.
Rocket science? Hardly. If everyone had to have the same gender characteristics as their physical sex there wouldn’t be any gender diverse people and this web site would have closed down years ago!
So what did they discover? They plotted gender characteristics for people who were physically male and for those who were physically female and the graphs were a mess – with males having feminine characteristics and visa versa. Luckily they didn’t throw any intersex people into the equation….or perhaps they should have??
The abstract does say that one of the characteristics they measured was masculinity and femininity – but without paying $$$ we can’t tell how they did this. But what would have been interesting is if they redrew the graphs showing how the characteristics vary with masculinity and femininity not with sex. But they didn’t … or they didn’t release those graphs to the world.
I’m guessing they measured gender using a multifactoral approach – as they mention Spence’s (1993) gender identity theory in the abstract. So there could be some valuable information here for our community – provided that they changed the “horizontal axis” from sex to gender.
I’ll start another thread to discuss multifactoral gender identity theory perhaps – I wasn’t previously aware of work in this field, and it could greatly add to our understanding of gender.
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Moderator
Quote:The last two posts have nicely wandered off the original topic….
a clear failure for my new checklist that asked…Deep thought, none of us can actually be a Binary anything ?
Does your post address the subject of this thread?In a day or so I will have to delete these two posts so we can go back to the topic.
I must stress that splitting posts out just because someone has changed the topic costs me a lot of time… that I don’t have right now.
If you want to discuss a tangential topic… please start a new thread
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Quote:Hormones that were not of my body or added later had no bearing on who i am as a person. im not a trans person so why would hormones change me , they did not because im intersexed, so as being some what different there would not be any changes concerning my mind or much of my body .
I’m not sure that the blanket exclusion of intersex people from discussions about gender identity is valid. Intersex and Transgender are widely held to be separate issues – being one does not carry any implications about the other.
Quote:People who have intersex conditions have anatomy that is not considered typically male or female. Most people with intersex conditions come to medical attention because doctors or parents notice something unusual about their bodies. In contrast, people who are transgendered have an internal experience of gender identity that is different from most people.[ul]http://www.isna.org/faq/transgender[/ul]
I’m not sure what Noeleena’s background is, and don’t wish to pry into it.
So I will discuss the concept of being intersex in deliberately general terms.The fact that one was born intersex does not determine if one is or isn’t transgender. We all can adopt an internal gender identity irrespective of any ambiguity in our sex. Or putting it the other way – being medically diagnosed intersex does not determine if one is or isn’t transgender.
I understand that in many cases the reason intersex people take HRT is not connected with their gender, but is rather a medical necessity to re-enforce their chosen sex and avoid medical complications. ( http://www.isna.org/faq/hrt_sousa ). In these cases, if the internal gender identity aligns perfectly with the chosen physical sex then one would not expect to see behavioural changes as a result of HRT. Or at least no more change that would be observed in a genetic woman taking HRT post-menopause.
But if internal gender identity is challenged by taking HRT we may or may not see behavioral changes as a result. Just as we have observed in the non-intersex population.
Whether the existence or not of observed behavioral change tells us anything about gender is what many have already debated on this thread.
I argue that this debate is equally valid irrespective of whether a person is intersex or is born anatomically unambiguously male or female..
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Of course I have always aimed for quality not quantity!!!!
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Not sure what the protocol for 100 is – let me know when you find out.
I noticed this month that I had reached 1600 posts.
That’s probably going to need more than bra waving!The only comment that comes to mind is…. “why don’t you get a life Amanda!”
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I have received an improvement suggestion from a member who felt that though many people were aware we had rules for posting on topic, perhaps they were not aware of the exact detail when they came to post a reply. The member suggested that a more dynamic check-list might help the overall compliance.
I don’t want anyone to be inhibited from using the forums, but I also want to cut the considerable moderator overhead of editing posts that wander off topic. So I’ve implemented such an enhancement to replies made in the moderated forum..
When you reply by pressing the submit button in a moderated forum you will now find an extra screen pops up. It offers a review of the message you have typed and asks three questions to help you stay on topic.
If your answers to the questions indicate that you are on topic a second submit button appears which actually posts your message to the forum.
The edit to the site was a little bit “creative” so if you find anything doesn’t work as expected please let me know.