Transsexual Road Map Notes

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Outfest 2011: Groundbreaking transgender films and more

Outfest, the Los Angeles LGBT film festival is next week, and I encourage everyone to come to some of this year’s amazing trans-themed work. Our opening night film, Gun Hill Road, is a festival favorite starring trans actress Harmony Santana, who is scheduled to be there.

http://www.outfest.org/tixSYS/2011/filmguide/films/3321

I wrote up a preview of some of my own edgier recommendations here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/30/outfest-2011-preview.html

Be sure to check out Calpernia Addams in Woman’s Picture July 11 or July 16 at the Directors Guild of America.

http://www.outfest.org/tixSYS/2011/filmguide/films/3478

Here are a few more favorites of board members:

GUN HILL ROAD (Opening Night July 7th)
This is an excellent film - well written, beautifully directed, high production-values - that was nominated for a jury award at Sundance. We are in a new beautiful party space that will feel more like our beloved outdoor parties. Also, Ru Paul will present the 2011 Achievement Award to Randy and Fenton of World of Wonder. It will be a super fun night, please come!!

SHE MONKEYS (Friday, July 8)
Set in the world of female equestrian acrobatics, the competition gets hot when 15-year-old Emma is assigned to train with the older, self-confident Cassandra. Winner of the Tribeca Film Festival Grand Jury prize for Best Feature.

WE WERE HERE (Saturday, July 9)
Director David Weissman (THE COCKETTES) returns to Outfest with this moving chronicle of the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. I thought this film was going to be sad, but it is actually uplifting b/c it shows how a community came together in a time of crisis, making it a universal story.

CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE (Sunday, July 10)
This film made me fall in love with Carol Channing!! She is 91, she is witty, smart, generous, present and totally amazing. Dori is a skilled filmmaker and this film is a real treat.

MARY LOU (Sunday, July 10)
What MAMMA MIA! did for ABBA, MARY LOU does for Israeli pop sensation Svika Pick. Directed by Eytan Fox who made THE BUBBLE, YOSSI & JAGGER and more....

3 (Monday, July 11 - Broad Centerpiece)
This is such a pretty film, as we have come to expect from Tom Tykwer (RUN LOLA RUN) and it is very German in it’s portrayal of a complicated relationship between a woman and a man...and a man. 3 says it all. 3 premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and earlier this year at the 2011 Berlinale.

OLD CATS (Thursday, July 14)
From Sebastián Silva and Pedro Peirano who made THE MAID - which I loved! This film has a similar style as it follows a lesbian couple who are vieying for their ailing mother’s gorgeous apartment. This is an hilarious and oddly moving dark comedy.

HIT SO HARD (Thursday, July 14)
Follows the life of former HOLE drummer Patty Schemel and features intimate footage and exclusive interviews with Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Melissa Auf der Maur, Eric Erlandson, and other important figures. Patty will play with an AMAZING all star band after the film! Sia Furler, Linda Perry, Eric Erlandson (HOLE), Roddy Bottum (Faith No More) Jorjee Douglass (The Citizens Band and Stone Fox), Clint Walsh (Gnarls Barkley), Larry Schemel (Midnight Movies) and MORE!!

HARVEST (Saturday, July 16)
HARVEST has super sexy leads and is set on a farm (what else do you need to know) but is actually a film that uses the beauty of its surroundings to create an intimate story of two young men finding their way in life.

CHO DEPENDENT (Saturday, July 16)
Miss Margaret Cho is back, and she has a few things she’d like to share with you. From her hilarious recounting of her backstage feud with the Palins during “Dancing with the Stars” to musical interludes featuring Cho’s witty original songs, this new concert film from our favorite all-American girl will have you howling from beginning to end.

Please come say hi when you see me!

Outfest site:
http://www.outfest.org/fest2011/index.html

Friday, July 01, 2011

Updated list of websites selling clothes for tall women

Natalie G. notes:

As promised, here’s the updated list of websites selling clothes for tall women:

http://www.tallwomensclothes.com/

http://www.tallcouture.com/

http://www.jcpenney.com/jcp/XGN.aspx?DeptID=70656&CatID=71963&cmCatLevel=3&shopperType=G&CmCatId=70656

http://us.longtallsally.com/

http://www.chadwicks.com/chadwicks/browse/subCategory.jsp?icCategory=cat90129&icSort=

http://www.simplytall.net/

http://www.jcrew.com/womens_special_sizes/tall.jsp

http://www.eddiebauer.com/EB/Women/Tall-4-20/index.cat

http://www.anntaylor.com/tall-womens-clothing.shtml

http://www.softsurroundings.com/S/Tall/

http://www.landsend.com/ix/womens-clothing/Women/Size+Range=Tall/index.html?seq=1~2~3&catNumbers=83&visible=1~2~1&store=le&sort=Recommended&tab=2

Tailors

Hafizz Haute Couture. Mohep Al Hafiz designs and makes exceptional quality clothing mostly for women - including T women. He creates clothing celebrating the female form, which helps T women. Friendly, fast, very reasonable prices.

http://www.shopsatgeorgetownpark.com/stores.aspx
202-697-0507

Lists

Some sites maintain lists and references. Here’s a few of them.
http://www.tallwomen.org/clothes/usa/

http://www.chiff.com/fashion/tall-womens-clothing.htm

http://www.google.com/Top/Shopping/Clothing/Women%27s/Tall/

http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Clothing/Women%27s/Tall/

Further reading:
Clothing and Shoe Resources for Tall Women
http://www.tsroadmap.com/appearance/tall-clothing.html

New GIRES wiki resource lists UK support groups, plans expansion

Holly at GIRES notes:

I would like to share with you my “pet project” tranzwiki.net. It is a comprehensive directory of support groups and organisations in the UK who help people with “trans” issues, and each LGBT police liaison, with each of the groups listed having their own account to update their details when necessary. I’m sure you’ve come across the problem of unreliable link-lists on sites which aim to help people with trans issues, and this is our solution, and also to alleviate the work involved in compiling and maintaining these link-lists in the first place… the movement has better things to do! The site is currently getting 1,000 hits a day in it’s 10th month since launch and I’ll soon be adding some functionality that I’m very excited about, and to my knowledge, exists nowhere else. I’d be ever so grateful if you were to recommend the site. Currently the scope is just within the UK.

Tranzwiki via GIRES
http://gires.org.uk/tranzwiki/index.php/Main_Page

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

“DSD” supporters on track to get intersex listed among DSM-V’s disorders

Anne Tamar-Mattis, an intersex activist with Advocates for Informed Choice, has embraced the problematic concept of DSD (Disorders of Sex Development). She has just published a piece in which she seems surprised that this short-sighted choice is about to usher in a new era of repathologization of the people her organization serves. She notes:

I am very concerned about the move to classify people with intersex conditions who reject their gender assignment as a subtype of the gender dysphoria diagnosis.

http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=5406&blogid=140&utm

For years, many of us have pointed out that Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) are merely variations on a theme. Both turn traits into diseases. DSD is especially problematic because it conflates issues of function with issues of cosmesis, and it categorizes a wide range of naturally-occurring traits (even those not requiring medical intervention) as diseases to treat. DSD is a dangerous setback that erases decades of hard-earned rights and sets the stage for radical “cures,” including reparative therapy already used on trans youth, and in utero “solutions” that identify those who are “disordered” so they can be dealt with accordingly.

A commenter identified as a member of Organisation Intersex International sums up the contradiction perfectly:

With respect this contributor fails to see her own part in this. Calling Intersex people disordered and using pathologizing language is at the heart of the need to further pathologize us when we reject our birth assignments.

We not only do not have a gender identity disorder we likewise do not have a condition or a disorder of sexual development. We have anatomical differences that society finds so reprehensible the only acceptable explanation is a disease model. Your language is as problematic as that proposed by the writers of the DSM who incomprehensibly thought gender identity disorder was too stigmatising yet thought nothing of calling Intersex disorder of sex development. Recall the DSD terminology was invented by physicians who then and now seek to patrol the edges of human sex expression both physical and behavioural by categorising acceptable and unacceptable bodies and rectifying them to normalcy when they are thought to break those boundaries. The medical diagnose for Intersex is as stigmatising for us as the mental “condition” of GID is for Trans.

All pathologizing of difference is stigmatising and when used to describe people who have no illness , disease or reason for medical interventions save for societies discomfort with our bodies it is insultingly so.
In Australia we are able to have our cardinal documents changed in three states, on the basis of a mistaken assignment at the time of birth, simply by producing evidence of our intersex. Every country in the world would do well to follow this example and further respect our rights by including us in anti-discrimination and human rights law.

The notion that bodies that are not clearly male or female are somehow diseased and must be made, so far as possible, to conform to one or the other of those two stereotypes has to be scotched once and for all.

Those who argue that DSD, GID, and other pathologizing conceptualizations of human diversity are necessary usually claim it assists in getting subsidized healthcare. Trading our basic human dignity in order to save money on healthcare is a devil’s bargain. Reclassifying intersex people as diseased because their initial sex assignment does not match their personal conception of themselves will be the legacy of separatists who claim that intersex and trans rights issues need to proceed on separate paths. Thanks to DSD, its short-sighted supporters are about to find themselves in the same political boat as trans people, and it’s their own doing.

Disorders of Sex Development
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html

Monday, June 20, 2011

British Psychological Society joins critics of proposed DSM-V revisions

Lynn Conway notes: Despite significant criticism, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders continues to move toward codifying dangerous concepts for sex and gender minorities. The British Psychological Society had just joined in criticizing the entire DSM as being based on unsound methods, and recommends sweeping changes in its formulation. In a 26-page document, they write:

As stated in our general comments, we are concerned that clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences; responses which undoubtedly have distressing consequences which demand helping responses, but which do not reflect illnesses so much as normal individual variation.
We believe that classifying these problems as ‘illnesses’ misses the relational context of problems and the undeniable social causation of many such problems. For psychologists, our well-being and mental health stem from our frameworks of understanding of the world, frameworks which are themselves the product of the experiences and learning through our lives.

Of particular concern to sex and gender minorities, they write of two specific “disorders”:

Gender dysphoria
Of particular concern are the subjective and socially normative aspects of sexual behaviour. We are very concerned at the inclusion of children and adolescents in this area. There is controversy in this particular area – the concept of a ‘diagnosis’ of a ‘psychiatric disorder’ disputed.
Labelling people who need help as ‘ill’ may make supportive and therapeutic responses more difficult.

Paraphilias

Again, of particular concern are the subjective and socially normative aspects of sexual behaviour. It is a matter of record that homosexuality used to be considered a symptom of illness. The Society would not be able to support considering sexual differences as symptoms of illness.
We, finally, have severe misgivings about the inclusion of “Paraphilic Coercive Disorder” in the appendix. Rape is a crime, not a disorder. Such behaviours can, of course, be understood, but we disagree that such a pattern of behaviour could be considered a disorder, and we would have grave concerns that such views may offer a spurious and unscientific defence to a rapist in a criminal trial.

If you’d like to comment on this fiasco, APA has extended time for commentaries to July 15, according to Vibe Grevsen at LGBT Danmark.

Further reading:
Response to the American Psychiatric Association: DSM-5 Development”
My comment on the DSM-V proposals
http://www.tsroadmap.com/notes/index.php/site/comments/my_comment_on_the_dsm_v_proposals/