* HUD claims that transgender people are protected against housing discrimination via the Fair Housing Act's prohibition against "gender discrimination"—even though the law doesn't specifically list gender identity discrimination as prohibited.

* Mark Gower, a 26-year-old dancer at SW strip club Secrets, was found dead in his apartment last week.

* The Washington Post conducted a four-month investigation into the career of former Manassas schoolteacher Kevin Ricks, a man the paper says "moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation's public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him"—and racking up molestation allegations along the way.

* Carolyn Hax on the etiquette of outing your gay ex-husband.

* DC Center plans discussion on body image issues among gay, bisexual, and trans men.

* Susannah Breslin on sexual assault games:

To promote the release of Bret Easton Ellis' new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, a digital creative agency in London created an online game that encourages players to virtually manipulate a young woman. If you play the game right — encourage her, get her drunk, get her high — you'll score a blow job, and then you can brag to your friends about a job well done by posting your "high" score to the social networking site of your choice. So, is this social commentary, or marketing misogyny?

Translatina, a documentary on the lives of trans women in Latin America, will see its D.C. debut next week at the Pan American Health Organization. The film tackles a host of issues affecting the community—from sex work to sexual assault to homelessness to HIV to  police brutality: "We hit them, with no shame, because they are men," one police officer says in the film. "They are transvestites. They are homosexuals." Screening details after the jump.

Thursday, July 29 2010, 6 p.m.
Pan American Health Organization
525 23rd St. NW

RSVP to sida@paho.org.

* The New Gay is looking for stories of people affected by a lack of ENDA. "Fired from your job for being gay, lesbian, bi or trans? Do you feel that no one cares about your lack of livelihood born from our governments systematic betrayal of its own people? Now you can do something about it," TNG writes. File your stories here.

* Fugitivus on sex work:

Theoretically, I don’t have a problem with sex work. I don’t think there’s anything inherently, fundamentally wrongdirtybad with sex as a job, or sex for pay. But that’s based on a concept of sex work in a vacuum, and we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in a patriarchy. And sex work situated within a patriarchal world is inevitably swimming in a pool of wrongdirtybad, and anything tagged with the wrongdirtybad brush becomes fair game for serious violations of humanity.

On the one hand, since my ideal vision of the world doesn’t differentiate sex work from any other kind of work, it seems like that should be the thing I’m working toward. I “should” be the kind of feminist that is all on board for decriminalization or legalization, or normalizing the sex trades so they’re not a dirty stigmatized mess — and often I feel bad that I’m not more so. On the other hand, I work in a profession where I frequently see young girls who have been trafficked and exploited, and/or mothers who have had to prostitute themselves in order to feed their children, and their desperation has usually caused them to be exploited as well. Some of the abuses I see surrounding exploited sex work are so heinous that it’s very difficult not to come away with a “SHUT IT ALL DOWN” view of sex work. And yet, I know it’s not something that can be shut down, not now, not ever. I often just don’t feel like my brain is large enough to find a way to integrate some of the worst horrors I’ve ever seen with a utopic vision of positive, healthy sexuality. I don’t know how to overcome my revulsion of abuse long enough to separate the tools (which are not inherently abusive) from the abusive people who are handling them. At some point, they just seem practically, realistically fused together, even if conceptually I know they aren’t.

* Speaking of: Last month, D.C. police busted six people for solicitation [PDF] at 2121 P St. NW.

* Westboro Baptist Church turns its attentions to Lady Gaga.

*Metro Weekly takes a local angle on Chinese counterfeit condoms lubricated with vegetable oil, featuring FUK!T Campaign leader Dan O'Neill:

''When you have counterfeited items, like your Louis Vuitton bags and what have you, at the end of the day, that's not great. But here, when one's life is put at risk,'' [O'Neill] says. ''This has real implications in that it undermines the public's trust in these products.

''What we don't want, or what would be terrible, is if people are just trying to get a deal and at the end of the day they just totally abandon their trust in using condoms altogether, thinking, 'Why bother?'''

First, the headline: "Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's former in-law speaks out for gay rights." Deane certainly does speak out for gay rights, but it seems odd to emphasize that fact above her trans activism. Next, the photo gallery: It begins with a series of photos of Deane applying makeup, hair-spray, and pantyhose, as if to emphasize the fact that Deane's  beauty regimen (quite typical, for a woman) is somehow relevant to that activism.

And then there's this:

For years, Deane, a man who is in the process of becoming of woman, had considered revealing her lengthy but largely unknown connection to Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R). She had told no one that this would finally be the moment she went public.

From whose perspective is Deane "a man who is in the process of becoming of [sic] woman"? The state of Virginia? The Washington Post? Deane's herself?

The Post identifies Deane with feminine pronouns. It also implies that Deane very much considers herself a woman—it mentions that "she changed her name from Bob to Robyn, and transformed herself from a cleanshaven, dark-haired man to a blond woman saving her pennies for sex reassignment surgery." The story states outright that Deane previously "came out as a woman" to her family. What criteria is the Post using to classify Deane as "a man" in the process of "becoming" a woman? The paper doesn't say.

* Ms. Magazine reporter Kate Noftsinger asks a panel of Lilith Fair artists a question:

“Who here identifies as a feminist?”

I got a long pause, followed by nervous laughter.

Finally [Brandi Carlile] spoke, “I don’t know, it means something different that it used to.”

Before I could ask what it meant now as opposed to then, [Sarah McLachlan] assumed the role of official spokesperson and began building a mystery:

"It’s a tricky question, because it’s been redefined and I think we all define feminism to a certain degree. We all define femininity. I think we’re able to have a little more balance. There’s still fights to be fought. There’s still inequality, absolutely. . . . I think as long as we’re being mindful and honest with ourselves and doing what we feel is right, and that’s a very personal decision for all of us, if we’re going forth with that intention, then we are; we’re being feminists, we’re being humanists, we’re being feminine. We’re being true to ourselves, in every way, in every facet of our personalities."

By conflating feminism with femininity, Sarah McLachlan officially lies squarely in the feminist tradition of Sarah Palin devotees.

* Metro Weekly profiles "the first out transgender Capitol Hill staffer."

* But, also in Metro Weekly, magazine co-publisher Sean Bugg is "terrified to write about transgender issues."

* In 1999, David Segal penned the definitive Buttman profile:

Ladies and gentlemen, hide your daughters: John Stagliano is strolling down a riverside walkway and he's got his mojo working.

Cradling a video camera in his hands, he sidles up to a curvy brunet and fumbles for a pick-up line. Gazing into the lens, the woman seems flustered at first, then amused, then — lo and behold — flattered. She follows him to a hotel room, and within minutes she is standing on a coffee table, peeling off her dress. A man knocks on the door and eventually there is a whole lot of naked writhing on a white couch.

Stagliano shoots. Stagliano scores.

* Sady Doyle channels Simone de Beauvoir-as-dating advice columnist.

Photo via Kashmera, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

GLAA Forum points to the Whitman-Walker Clinic's new TV spots. The twin ads target the health clinic's two main demographics separately—LGBT patients (in the above ad) and HIV-positive patients (in the ad after the jump). I wonder if reaching out to D.C.'s HIV-positive residents requires distancing Whitman-Walker's AIDS care piece from its LGBT health piece. And the soundtrack's a little ominous, no?

[youtube:v=ClbnLQI0wlM]

* The roundtable will be held at 2 p.m. this Wednesday, July 14, in Hearing Room 123 of the John A. Wilson Building.

* Individuals who with to testify at the meeting should contact Committee Clerk Victor Bonnett by close of business tomorrow, by phone at (202) 741-2112 or by e-mail at vbonett@dccouncil.us. Include your "name, address, telephone number, organizational affiliation and title (if any)." Testimony should be limited to four minutes. If participants submit 15 copies of their written testimony before 5 p.m. Tuesday, Councilmembers will see copies of the testimony prior to the hearing.

* Individuals who are unable to testify in person can submit written statements to Bonett, or to Secretary to the Council Cynthia Brock-Smith in Room 5 of the Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Statements must be submitted before 5 p.m. p.m. on July 27.

* In other trans healthcare-related news: Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., the DC Trans Coalition will hold a meeting "to discuss our plans for creating the second-ever DC Trans Needs Assessment Survey!" The survey will help fill in some of the gaps left by the LGB Health Report. Contact DCTransCoalition@gmail.com for more info.

Last week on the Sexist, we took a look at potential complications facing trans patients at local hospitals. Commenters weighed in with their own experiences:

JR on the fear of emergency rooms:

I’m a 30 year old trans man and I am afraid whenever I get sick and can’t see my regular doc or have to go to the hospital. There are so many areas that are fear inducing in everyday life, that most people take for granted. I recently had to come out (a number of times) at the neighborhood swimming pool because they have a “no t-shirt” policy for men, and nothing on the books about pre-op transmen.

Stacey on the deterrent to reporting sexual assaults:

Sad thing is . . . Washington Hospital Center is the only hospital in DC that has medical staff trained for rape kit examinations and evidence collection. . . . not having properly trained staff nor understanding the difference between Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity creates a chilling effect for the trans-community.

Elizabeth K says she was outed by her doctors:

About a year ago I was in the hospital emergency room for detoxification—which required having to run the usual gauntlet of admission and medical history questions. It was a very good hospital, set in a population area of about 35,000 collectively—and I doubt they had ever encountered a transperson in the ER. I was a curiosity to say the least as I had to ‘out’ in detail my condition to seven people ‘officially.” What was interesting is the number of people who suddenly found it necessary to come into the exam room to remove the waste basket, restock shelves, and the like. We are an attraction.

Of course within two weeks I was known as transexual all through the small town I was living. I was rather androgynous at the time and gender neutral in clothing, so I suspect the ‘man in a dress’ expectations were squelched. Professonally I had no mistreatment, but behind it was the unprofessionalism of outing me to the community. That seems to be the way of the world.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Why did the report omit the T in GLBT? “The short answer is that we didn’t have any data to report,” says Christopher Dyer, Director for the Mayor's Office of GLBT affairs. "[Trans-specific health] is a brand new field of research at the government level."

The District's transgender community has become a lot more visible in recent years. In 2005, the DC Trans Coalition formed to advocate for trans issues in the District; in 2007, Capital Trans Pride was added to the roster of the city's LGBT pride celebrations. But scientific data moves at a slower pace than public consciousness does.

The new LGB health report relies on data from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), which tracks “health conditions and risk behaviors in the United States” via random phone surveys. The BRFSS surveys included in the LGB Health Report were completed in 2005 and 2007, when respondents' sexual orientation was on the CDC's radar—but gender identity wasn't. "There just weren’t questions asked about gender identity anywhere in the country in those years," Dyer says. “We need to add a question about gender identity."

In order to get transgender health data into upcoming BRFSS-based reports, Dyer says the CDC will first have to approve the gender identity question for the District survey. D.C. will have its next opportunity to request the question in January 2011. If it's approved, the random survey will then have to hit upon enough local transgender people for the results to be statistically significant. “The CDC has a requirement that you get 100 responses or more before you can do any kind of comparative analysis,” Dyer says. “There is no baseline data yet on the transgender population in this country, and it might take two to three years to get enough responses to even begin the analysis. It conceivably could be until 2013 or 2014.”

That's a long time to wait for accurate health information on the local transgender community, which often suffers from health disparities—like an increased risk for HIV. Yesterday, District trans activists took issue with the exclusion of trans data from the LGB report, and penned a letter to the Mayor's Office saying so. "[T]he goal of the report was to 'present data and prompt discussion' about how to improve the overall 'health outcomes in the GLBT community living in the District of Columbia,'" the DC Trans Coalition wrote in a press release. So DCTC was "alarmed" by "the report’s very obvious omission of existing research on D.C. trans communities."

The press release faulted the Mayor's Office for failing to look past the BRFSS-specific data to include information from other surveys that do include trans residents—like the District's 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey and its 2000 Washington Transgender Needs Assessment Survey. Since the results of the 2009 YRBS haven't yet been released, the ten-year-old Needs Assessment Survey provides the latest publicly-available data on the community. But according to the DCTC, "Acknowledging that the existing survey tools only provide a partial snapshot of the current health of local transgender communities in the report would have added much needed transparency."

The DCTC asked the Mayor's Office to wrangle up funding for a new comprehensive transgender needs assessment to supplement the 2000 report, to draw up a trans health report based on data available now, to add questions that include gender identity to all survey tools, and to show a "commitment to true inclusion." Dyer says he’s currently “exploring other options” for gathering transgender data that works with the population’s small sample size. "I'm personally committed to including transgender health data and making the report as good as possible," says Dyer. “When we do produce the transgender report, we want to make sure it’s the best data possible.”

Two years ago, Roberta, a 59-year-old Arlington County resident, reported to Virginia Hospital Center for a breast-cancer screening. “There’s a man here to have a mammogram!” a clinician announced across the room when she arrived for her appointment.

Roberta is not a man—she’s a transgender woman who began publicly transitioning from male to female six years ago. And like any woman, she requires regular mammograms for the breasts she developed through hormone therapy. “Technically, they know what they’re doing, and they’re really, really good,” Roberta says of the hospital’s staff. But when it comes to treating transgender patients with care, “they’re clueless.”

Last month, the Human Rights Campaign released its 2010 Healthcare Equality Index in an attempt at providing healthcare providers a clue. The report surveyed 16 Washington-area hospitals on their patient anti-discrimination policies, looking for explicit mentions of sexual orientation and gender identity. While eight local hospitals’ policies explicitly recognize the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual patients, none mention gender identity or expression—in other words, a commitment to respecting patients like Roberta.

Which means going to the hospital—rarely a particularly pleasant experience—often produces an overlay of uncertainty and anxiety for transgender patients. Without a firm policy in place, the care transgender patients receive often comes down to chance; a caregiver who’s familiar with transgender issues may treat patients perfectly fine, but if they encounter the wrong employee, problems can ensue. Even, sometimes, within the same hospital.

Take the case of Washington Hospital Center, one of the local hospitals to include sexual orientation—but not gender identity—in its nondiscrimination policy. Last October, Stacey Roberts cut open her left pointer finger while slicing fruit. So she headed to the District hospital’s emergency room, where she received a bandage from a nurse—and a transphobic attitude at check-out. The employee who completed Roberts’ hospital visit “repeatedly insisted on calling me ‘sir,’” she says. “For each question he asked me, he blatantly added the term ‘sir’ at the end.”

Roberts—who says she was “dressed very feminine, in a dress”—listened to the man address her as the incorrect gender half a dozen times before requesting that he modify his language. “I didn’t even ask him to call me by feminine pronouns,” says Roberts. “I just asked him to stop gratuitously calling me sir.” The employee refused. Though Roberts identifies as female, and began presenting a feminine gender expression years ago, she has yet to secure a legal name and gender change. And until the government officially recognizes Roberts as a woman, the clerk claimed, he’s “legally required” to treat Roberts as the gender listed on her identifying documents. (That’s news to local LGBT activists.)

That same month, another District transgender woman checked into Washington Hospital Center following a suicide attempt. After swallowing “a lot of pills,” she was rushed by friends to the hospital, where she spent several days in the mental-health ward. “I’ve had really negative experiences at other hospitals in the area,” says the woman. So once she regained consciousness at Washington Hospital Center, “I was really surprised—pleasantly surprised—that everyone was super-respectful.” The woman says hospital staff had “no problem” identifying her as female and providing her trans-specific healthcare throughout her stay. Despite the mental-health ward’s highly regimented routine, “they let me go to the bathroom at certain times on my own to deal with trans-related stuff,” says the 31-year-old, who asked to remain anonymous due to the nature of her treatment. Staff was also quick to prescribe the hormone medication she takes daily. “The treatment I got there was really important,” she says. “If I’d had a negative experience there, it would have made everything a lot worse.”

Those two wildly different experiences stem from a hospital with a confused LGBT anti-discrimination policy. According to a Washington Hospital Center representative, the institution “has long observed a broad policy of nondiscrimination and is committed to providing care to all those with an emergent need, without regard to any status protected by law.” But once the policy gets into specifics, it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the LGBT community. “With respect to Washington Hospital Center’s nondiscrimination policy, we are in the process of revising it to enhance our current reference to sexual orientation to include the more specific reference to gender identity or expression,” the hospital said in a statement, adding that “staff education will accompany implementation to ensure all patients are treated in a sensitive manner.”

Except gender identity or expression is not a “more specific” reference to sexual orientation. Roberts, for example, is a transgender woman who also happens to be a lesbian—and those two identities are not one and the same.

In a few weeks, Washington Hospital Center’s policies will, technically, be in compliance with the HRC’s expectations. “In the Healthcare Equality Index survey, we asked for specific language—explicit language that policies were inclusive of LGBT families,” says Tom Sullivan, deputy director for the Human Rights Campaign Family Project. But improved written policies might not translate into actual improvements in care. “I don’t think there’s a correlation between having protections for gender identity and actually providing trans-specific and trans-friendly healthcare,” says a local man who prefers the term “trans” to “transgender,” and has had several negative experiences at local hospitals.

A couple of years ago, the 20-something—who wished to remain anonymous—sought treatment at Sibley Memorial Hospital for possible appendicitis. When he arrived, he disclosed his trans status to his doctor for medical reasons. “I explained to the doctor that I’m FTM and what that means,” he says. “She had no clue what was going on. It’s one thing to not know about trans-specific healthcare, but it’s another to be so ignorant that you say things that are medically impossible. She asked me when I had my uterus implanted.” Other hospital personnel expressed disbelief that the bearded man standing before them was trans. “People were just visibly shocked,” he says. “And they were open about that shock. They said, ‘Oh my god. Really?’ In a medical situation where you’re disclosing all kinds of information, that’s not a response that’s ever appropriate.”

Sibley maintains that it has policies on the books meant to protect transgender patients against such affronts. Sheliah Roy, director of public relations and marketing for the hospital, notes that its patients’ bill of rights includes the right to “receive hospital services without discrimination on the basis of any factor to which discrimination is prohibited by law.” Because discrimination based on gender identity has been prohibited in D.C. since 2007, Sibley’s policy technically covers transgender patients. Transgender patients at hospitals in Maryland and Virginia don’t benefit from similar legal protections.

“Every time I go to the hospital,” Roberta says, “I have to give ‘Trans 101’ to everyone I meet.” Unless hospitals write coherent guidelines and provide training on their own, that responsibility may keep falling on patients.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

This week, the District Mayor's Office of GLBT Affairs released the "LGB Health 2010 Report," an examination of everything from smoking habits to sexual behavior in the gay community. This is the District's first report to address the health of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in the District. But as the report's title makes clear, the transgender community has yet again been excluded from the official conversation on health. Also underrepresented here: African-American men and women under the LGB umbrella.

The methodology of the [study] itself raises questions about the reliability of the data and how it represents the true health of the LGB community, as reflected by the limited number of responses from African American LGBT people. The survey's findings rely on an identity-based rather than a behavioral questionnaire, which may exclude men who have sex with other men (MSM) but do not identify as gay.

And, as always: "the absence of information on transgender health underscores the pressing need for better data on the transgender community in the District," the DC Center writes.

* In the City Paper this week, Kim Chi Ha writes about the regulatory spotlight on Ziegfeld's/Secrets, the lone SW gay club to survive the construction of Nationals Park. Post-baseball, the D.C. government has kept a close eye on the strip joint:

The club’s regulatory troubles were exacerbated by an ABRA investigation in December, in which two investigators “observed five to six nude male performers, standing on individual pedestals, each performing a sexual act on themselves (masturbation),” in apparent violation of D.C. Code, according to an agency report, which includes a grainy photo of one performer touching himself. Patrons were also observed “rubbing and massaging the performers about the body (not the genital area) and the performers did the same to the patrons,” the report notes.

* In Maryland, Dana Beyer is running for office in the hopes of becoming the "first out transgender person to win election to a state legislature."

* Dear Prudence tackles sperm donation etiquette.

* Carmen Rios offers up "a big fuck you" to street harassers. That happens to be the phrase that I generally employ when harassed on the street. Similarly satisfying possible responses welcomed in the comments.

* Figleaf rejects the idea that"sufficient" progress has been made toward gender equality: "I happen to believe, correctly, that there’s been incredible progress, sure. But sufficient? . . . Just as something’s either legal or it’s not, you’re either equal or your not. And I think 'sufficiently' in this case means 'closer to my comfort level” rather than 'closer to equal.'”

* Sexist internal business: On Twitter, I now answer to @amandahess. "@" me!

Photo via Powerhouse Museum Collection.

That's a problem, especially considering that the latest local data available—the DOH-funded 2000 Transgender Needs Assessment Survey—reveals staggering infection rates among trans women. Here's a rundown of that survey's findings:

The decade-old report surveyed 252 District transgender men and women on a variety of factors, including their HIV status. Of locals surveyed, 32 percent of trans women reported being HIV-positive, compared to 3 percent of trans men. (Twenty-two percent of those surveyed were unaware of their status).

More info on how HIV affects the community: Eighty-one percent of the HIV-positive trans men and women surveyed were black. And two-thirds of HIV-positive trans citizens "believe they became infected through unprotected sex with men." A "history of sexual assault, a history of sex work, and unemployment" also contributed to HIV rates in the community.

Also a contributing factor? The lack of public education and concern on how the epidemic affects the trans community. In 2008, Darby Hickey wrote of the invisibility of transgender people in the HIV conversation: "The communities hit hardest are African-American men and women, Lations, and gay and bisexual men of all races. Within these carefully drawn categories, some based on behavioral risk factor and others on racial, gender and sexual classifications, one community heavily affected by the epidemic remains invisible in the eyes of officialdom a quarter century since the first reports of the disease: transgender people."

The failure of mainstream studies to single out trans men and women in its numbers compounds the problem of getting testing, prevention, and treatment resources to that community. "There are no official reports because most agencies do not recognize trans people's existence at all," says Sadie-Ryanne Baker of the DC Trans Coalition. "They usually fold trans women in the 'men who have sex w/ men' category (even ones like me who sleep with women!) which means we have no independent numbers to analyze for trans folks. It also means that most trans folks don't even get tested or get safe sex supplies because all the forms force them to lie about their identity."

Research shows that intimate partner violence occurs at the same rate in the LGBTQ communities as in the heterosexual community. Last year, Rainbow Response released a groundbreaking report on IPV in the District, which confirmed that DC’s LGBTQ communities experience IPV at the same rate as the heterosexual community. However, for a variety of reasons, survivors of IPV in the LGBTQ communities do not have equal access to services to help them escape; therefore it’s critical that our community be afforded as many protections and resources as possible.

Although there is no federal law outlawing discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in the workplace, the District has outlawed this type of discrimination for many years. Unfortunately, it remains perfectly legal to terminate an LGBTQ employee who happens to be a victim of IPV, simply for reasons related to the abuse. For example, three years ago one of my good friends, who is a lesbian and was out to her employer, found herself in an abusive relationship and was forced to miss work periodically because she was either in court seeking a protection order, or was at home waiting for the bruises on her face to disappear. Noticing that she had been taking time off from work, her employer threatened to fire her even after my friend disclosed the reasons for her absence. Fortunately, this talk happened just as her abusive partner finally decided to leave the relationship, and the District, for good. However, if my friend’s employer had fired her, she would have had no recourse available. Not only would she have been abused by her partner, she would have become abused by the system too.

. . . Much has been discussed about the comprehensive provisions in the bill, including requiring employers to post notice of these protections, develop workplace violence policies, and provide training for staff on domestic violence. Many questions and concerns have been raised about these provisions that are important and valid. I have tremendous respect for both the business and domestic violence community, and have no doubt that we can all work together with Committee staff to revise the bill where necessary to ensure it moves forward. But please let me remind us what the core issue of this bill is about at the end of the day: discrimination. If we as a society are committed to creating a safe and healthy District of Columbia, then we must help those who are in need, and protect them while they heal, not unravel the fragile threads that are supporting them.

* Via Vox Populi, Georgetown student Julia Shindel talks to the Chronicle of Higher Education about her reproductive health activism on campus, which included chaining herself to a statue of Georgetown founder John Carroll and wearing duct tape over her mouth. She rates that symbolic silencing method "disgusting."

* The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health offers up a proposed curriculum on porn.

* Something to remember, via Hysteria!: "There are too many instances in the world when women’s voices are discounted.  Not just our figurative voices—the words we speak and the meanings of those words—but our literal voices too—our sometimes soft, high-timbre ululations. We are told that we are too soft-spoken to hear, that our proclamations carry too much emotion, too much shame, too many tears."

* Queen Emily on what can happen when you're outed as trans:

One time, I inadvertently outed myself to a group of students. I’d been teaching a tremendously interesting media studies class to first years; that is, mostly 17 and 18 year olds. The first three weeks went pretty well. We talked video games and violence, Hollywood, what they actually did with media. The discussions were engaged, it was all going fine. Then, a month in, I came down with a cold. My voice suddenly dropped an octave, because I couldn’t vocalise at my usual pitch. And like that, you could see the lights go on in their eyes. They’d realised I was trans.

. . . The next week, we did adbuster style cut-ups to jam dominant media messages and several groups turned in transphobic assignments, giggling their arses off. They were laughing at me. Another student spent the lesson interrupting me, telling the class how everything I was saying was stupid. And of course, a number of students stopped attending my classes altogether, trying to get into classes in the same unit run by other teachers.

. . . The point is, the mere fact of their knowing that I am trans meant that they, 17 and 18 year olds with scant knowledge of the subject they were taking, suddenly felt entitled to talk over me, to mock me openly when previously they had been respectful. Of itself, being subjected to ungendering takes its toll, especially if it’s something you experience frequently.

* Elena Kagan on abortion. Apparently she believes that the constitution provides for women's lives being protected in abortion regulation. Activist judge!

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Photo via George Eastman House

Last week, I wrote about the second KinkForAll unconference to bring ad-hoc alternate-sexuality education to the D.C. area. Below, some video evidence of kink educators from around the country talking everything from oral herpes at orgies to erotic Harry Poter fan-fic. (I'll post videos of that story's anti-porn conference later today).

"Sexy Fun Time With Google Apps", with Maymay and Emma, on the way Google's suite of applications can be applied to sex, from spreadsheets for calculating orgasm rations to calendars for annotating past sexual experiences.

"The Language of Touch", with DDog, on gender politics and touching. One participant: "After i came out as trans and started using male pronouns and presenting more male, it became more OK for me to be touchy-feelie and cuddly with people than I had previously, because for some reason a lot of my straight female friends then saw me as a straight guy instead of a gay woman—neither of which have ever been true!"

"How'd You Get Here? Rocky Horror, Fanfic, and Gateways to Kink", with Julia, on how nerdy subcultures can facilitate exploration of kinky sexualities—from the Rocky Horror Picture Show to Harry Potter fan fiction. Engorgio!

"Sex, Gender, and Pathologies", with xMech, on the scientific language of "gender identity disorder," and how it hurts the trans community.

"Taboo Erotica," with Jack Stratton, on erotica that defies social norms. He begins the session by having participants name "some horrible things." A working list: Scat play, piss play, incest, bestiality, furries, underage people, rape, edge play, snuff, race play, slavery, cuckoldry.

"Kissing," with Molly Ren, on navigating life as an orgy-attender with oral herpes. "I've dated mostly in the kink scene for the past two years, so I don't know what vanilla people do anymore," Molly says. "My first reaction when I would tell people, 'Oh, I can't kiss'? They'd say, 'Oh, Molly has a dom that's telling her not to kiss anyone but her! This is really hot!'"

"KinkForAll: What and Why?", with Maymay and Emma, on the reasoning behind this whole thing.

Earlier this month, we examined how D.C.-area hospitals fared in the Human Rights Campaign's 2010 Healthcare Equality Index, which rates hospitals on their policy toward LGBT patients (they all failed). Then, we spoke to HRC's Tom Sullivan, who explained the Equality Index's high standards. Now, Sum of Change has produced an in-depth video—including interviews with both Sullivan and Ellen Kahn of the HRC's Family Project—which explains all aspects of the index, why it's important, and why more facilities will be coming into compliance in the future. Let's hope D.C.-area hospitals are listening.

The annual documentary film festival Silverdocs hits D.C. again this week. For the City Paper's coverage of this year's Nordic-heavy offerings, I reviewed Regretters, a documentary which unfolds as a long talk between two men who underwent sex-change operations to become female only to immediately regret the loss of their penises. Its accusatory title aside, the film is less about the tragic indecisiveness of a couple of transgender people than it is about the desperation of homophobia and misogyny, the complexity of gender, and all the social expectations that come with a set of genitalia. Read the rest of the review here.

The final item on the GLAA's agenda is "Prostitution: Legalize It, Regulate It, Zone It, Tax It." And their plan to do so is pretty awesome:

"Public officials seldom ask a most practical question," the agenda reads. "[W]ho benefits from the criminalization of prostitution?" The agenda goes on to cite notable scholars on the question, from Samuel Johnson to Jesse Ventura:

Samuel Johnson described the ills associated with prostitution—crowding, intemperance, famine, filth, and disease—and assured his friend John Boswell that “severe laws, steadily enforced, would be sufficient against those evils, and would promote marriage.” Jesse Ventura came closer to the truth when he told Playboy in 1999, “Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it’s run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it’s legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.” Not just girls, Jesse.

The GLAA then lists the reasons that D.C.'s LGBT community should get behind legalization: A lot of sex workers don't choose prostitution freely. People treat them poorly. Our criminal justice system in particular treats them poorly. And criminalization only makes matters worse:

As advocates of the legalization of prostitution, we think it needs neither sanitizing nor glorifying. It is not a profession filled exclusively with people who freely chose it from a host of other options. No doubt there are some in that category, like the college student turning tricks for extra cash. But too many turn to it by necessity. These include gay teenagers who have been thrown out of the house by their parents, and transgender people whom discrimination has left with few options.

People in these situations are practicing survival sex. They face greater risk of substance abuse, mental and physical abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. The District has seen numerous murders of sex workers in recent years—murders that were made harder to prevent and harder to solve by the fact that the victims worked the streets and were without legal sanction or protection.

Harassing, arresting and prosecuting people for survival sex solve none of their problems, but only pile more on. Whose idea of responsible public policy is this? To be justified, any public law ought to serve some identifiable common good. Saying to people as Sister Mary Ignatius did, “You do the thing that makes Jesus puke,” is no basis for criminalizing whatever it is. Having been the targets of moralistic lawmaking, we as gay people are especially on guard against it.

The best-case scenario for sex workers? The District should fund "the creation of drop-in centers, transitional housing, job training, counseling, addiction recovery programs and other services for at-risk populations." But first, it's going to have to get over its hang-ups in talking openly about sex:

Our society’s penchant for legislating morality is the chief obstacle to eliminating the harm caused by prostitution and solicitation laws. Otherwise compassionate and practical people often lose their bearings when the subject turns to the “naughty bits.” Overcoming this will take time, especially in D.C. with its constitutional vulnerability to congressional grandstanding; but we will never get there if we do not start. We can begin with a humble recognition of the normal variation in sexual expression, the proper limits of government coercion, and the fact that other people’s personal choices are none of our business unless they harm us. In the case of sex behind closed doors, whether in homes or hotel rooms, the fact that someone is paying for it is no more a legitimate basis for police involvement than if the transaction is a more informal one involving dinner and a show.

Tonight, I have the honor of appearing on WPFW's monthly LGBT radio program, "Inside Out." I'll be talking about some recent LGBT coverage on the Sexist, from terminology disputes to wedding industry turf wars to same-sex marriage turncoats. I'll also be chatting for an entire hour about this stuff, so help me out! Got any topics you'd like me to talk about? File them in the comments. Want to ask a question on the air? Call us at (202) 588-0893. And listen in tonight at 7 p.m. on 89.3 FM in the District, or online at WPFW.org. In the meantime, I'll be studying words I'm not supposed to say. I've heard "cunt" is off limits, so, glad to get that one out of my system!

Photo via Nationaal Archief

Exciting news! The Washington City Paper will be repping The Sexist in a float (OK: a pick-up truck) in tomorrow's Capital Pride Parade. Joining us in the back of said pick-up truck will be Miss D.C. Jen Corey, who has dedicated part of her reign to becoming an outspoken advocate for victims of street harassment and public sexual assault. Yes!

Sashes will be worn! Truck beds will be sat upon! Candy necklaces will be thrown!The parade begins at 6:30 p.m., and the route goes like this: "starts at 23rd and P streets NW, moves east on P Street toward Dupont Circle, heads northeast on New Hampshire Avenue, turns east on R Street, moves south on 17th Street, turns east on P Street and ends at 14th and N streets." See you there!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

* Kelsey Wallace at Bitch: Does OKCupid separate the hots and the nots?

* The New Gay is looking for some more "lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer women to contribute" to the blog.

* Via The Curvature, The State Department has relaxed passport rules for transgender travelers. Writes Cara Kulwicki: "the U.S. State Department has decided that surgery is no longer a requirement for trans individuals to change their gender markers on their passports."  Here's why that's important:

This is great news for several reasons. First of all, it can be incredibly emotionally distressing and even traumatic to be forced to carry and present identification that does not actually match your identity — especially when you face a culture that is regularly and hugely hostile to the very idea of your identity, already.

That alone — basic humanity and decency — should, of course, be more than enough reason for such a change to go into effect. But in addition to the emotional damage of not being able to have your passport accurately reflect your gender, the old rules also presented a very real risk of harassment and physical harm.

* Marisa Meltzer reviews former fashion editor and model Avis Cardella's memoir of her shopping addiction, Spent:

She's very skilled at accepting the blame for her habits, but only barely hints at the underlying reasons we—women, typically, but men as well—are encouraged to buy things as comfort or to show status. Overall, she misses an opportunity to place her spending in a larger cultural context. She only briefly talks about the way credit-card companies prey on spenders, the ways glossy magazines manufacture desire, and the fad for luxury goods, instead pondering her own reasons for spending money. "Was it low self-esteem? Was it unresolved grief? Was it a lack of something that resided in me all that time?" she asks.

* I am obsessed with Jezebel's efforts to decode Elizabeth Kaye's blind item in Elle about the movie star she had sex with while on assignment to interview him many years ago. Their best guess: Kris Kristofferson. Nice.

Photo via the Library of Congress.

Attention Sexist readers: The good folks over at The New Gay want ya'll on their dance floor, so they're giving away two pairs of tickets to the District's "coed, trans-inclusive, straight-friendly alternative queer dance party," Homo/Sonic. The party, held this Friday on the Black Cat Mainstage, is sponsored by alt.dc.pride, which is producing a whole slate of alternative queer events throughout Pride. TNG promises it "will rock your ass, dick and boobs off." My dick's already been rocked out of existence, so the tickets are up for grabs! File a comment (include a valid e-mail address) or shoot me an e-mail telling me why you want a couple of tickets, and I'll get the two best responses on the guest list.

Yesterday, the Human Rights Campaign published its 2010 Healthcare Equality Index, which rates the policies of hospitals around the U.S. on their efforts at LGBT inclusion. This year, the HRC determined that all D.C.-area hospitals it surveyed failed its preliminary test: They don't mention sexual orientation and gender identity in their patient anti-discrimination policies. But for hospitals inside the District line, at least, discriminating on the basis of either of those factors is against the law. So how specific does a hospital non-discrimination policy need to be?

Yesterday, a rep from D.C.'s Sibley Hospital wrote in to argue that its patients non-discrimination policy implicitly covers both sexual orientation and gender identity, so it was wrong for the HRC to flunk them. Sheliah Roy, Director of Public Relations & Marketing for the hospital, notes that hospital policy gives patients the right to "receive Hospital services without discrimination on the basis of any factor to which discrimination is prohibited by law." She adds that the hospital's visitation policy is gender-neutral. It reads: "New fathers or significant others are welcome at any time if the patient has a private room in the Family Centered Care Unit."

Again, District of Columbia's Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So what's the problem?

One possibility: Employees and patients may not be aware of all the  types of discrimination the D.C. Human Rights Act actually prohibits. The act outlaws discrimination based on nearly 20 factors—"actual or perceived" race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, familial status, family responsibilities, genetic information, disability, matriculation, political affiliation, source of income, or place of residence or business.

Tom Sullivan, Deputy Director for the Human Rights Campaign Family Project, argues that specificity is key to ensuring that hospitals are actually committed to following each part of that law—and that patients know it. "In the Healthcare Equality Index survey, we asked for specific language—explicit language that policies were inclusive of LGBT families," says Sullivan. "That's not to say that if a hospital does not have that language, LGBT patients will always have bad experiences there. Sibley is a very good hospital. But nationally, we've found that there's enough discrimination against LGBT patients in healthcare to warrant very specific language in the patient's bill of rights to say that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people will not be discriminated against."

According to the HRC, the Joint Commission—an organization that "accredits and certifies more than 17,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States"—concurs on that point. The HRC says that "The Joint Commission—the largest organization that accredits hospitals nationwide—has announced that, in the future, all hospitals in America will need to have a non-discrimination policy for LGBT patients on their books."

Photo via brykmantra, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The Human Rights Campaign has released its 2010 Healthcare Equality Index, which rates healthcare providers on their policies toward the LGBT community. The HRC's press release was not impressed. It kicks off: "new healthcare equality analysis from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation found that no healthcare facilities in the Washington, D.C., metro area reviewed for the Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) 2010 have fully inclusive non-discrimination policies for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people."

Let's see how our local hospitals stacked up:

Six hospitals included in the survey—Washington Hospital Center, Sibley Memorial Hospital, Howard University Hospital, Providence Hospital, the MedStar-Georgetown Medical Center, and the George Washington University Hospital—are located in the District of Columbia. Of those, only three have a patient non-discrimination policy that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation; zero have a policy that mentions gender identity. The D.C. Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, but since the act is not always easily enforceable, it's important for hospitals to be committed to eliminating these illegal forms of discrimination internally.

Five hospitals surveyed—Washington Adventist Hospital, Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, Doctors Community Hospital, Suburban Hospital, and Holy Cross Hospital—are located in Maryland. Only two prohibit discrimination against patients based on sexual orientation; again, none include gender identity in their policies. Maryland prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, but a bill to add "gender identity and expression" to the list died last year.

Five more hospitals—Reston Hospital Center, Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, Virginia Hospital Center, and Inova Alexandria Hospital—are located in Virginia. Oh, Virginia. Virginia's Human Rights law does not protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The George Washington University was the only local hospital to voluntarily participate in the study, so the HRC has a little bit more data on the hospital's visitation policy, its LGBT training, and its employment non-discrimination policy. Results were mixed:

Today, the G.W. Hospital issued a press release patting itself on the back for throwing the HRC some info. (Gotta start somewhere). While Chief Operating Officer Kimberly Russo admitted "there is more we can do," she also clarified that the hospital's "liberal visitation policy extends the same rights to gay and lesbian partners as are granted to married spouses or heterosexual couples."

Photo of the George Washington University Hospital by NCinDC, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

On Wednesday, DC for Democracy hosted a pre-endorsement candidate forum for D.C.'s mayoral candidates. Here's the final question posed to the candidates: "Transgender people face some of the worst discrimination in the District, despite legal protections. As Mayor, the question to you is: Will you appoint the first transgender member of the human rights board?" Here's how Vince Gray, Mayor Adrian Fenty, and Leo Alexander chose to answer that question:

Vince Gray: "Yes. I think the District has made enormous strides, I was very proud to vote in favor of marriage equality in December; it became law on March 3rd in the District of Columbia and I think we had about 100 couples who were married in the District of Columbia. So I think we have a strong track record for observing human rights and equality here in the District of Columbia and that would simply be another way of demonstrating our committment."

Mayor Adrian Fenty: "Yes also. Let me just go back to the last question for one point . . . " [Proceeds to spend the rest of his time talking about the attorney general instead of transgender rights].

Leo Alexander: "I don't think he answered the question . . . OK, are we allowed to do rebuttal now since he was able to come back? . . . As far as their representation on the board, absolutely I support that. They should have been on the board, a member from that community, transgender community. Mr. Gray also mentioned his support on marriage equality here in Washington, D.C. and help moving that through council and getting the Mayor's signature. I understand that as being one of their proud achievements. My only issue with that is that I would have preferred a vote in the community. I think it's one thing to keep talking about being denied a vote on capitol hill but then we're turning right around and denying people in Washington D.C. an opportunity to vote on something as serious as this issue."

So, we had one candidate voice his support for a transgender appointee, and then spend the rest of his time talking about achieving gay rights in the District. Then, we had the current mayor voice his support for a transgender appointee, then spend the rest of his time talking about completely unrelated shit, even though he is Mayor right now and apparently has not appointed a transgender person to the commission yet. Then, we had another candidate voice his support for a transgender appointee, and then spend the rest of his time talking about how he thinks gay rights should be subject to a popular vote. Way to go team.

The D.C.-based WEAVE, or Women Empowered Against Violence, has launched a new campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence for an LGBT audience. "Show Me Love, DC!," the campaign's online component, includes statistics about the problem, discussions about healthy relationships, and legal resources for the LGBT community.

Some stats that illustrate the need for Show Me Love: While the overall rates of domestic violence in gay and lesbian relationships are comparable to those of straight couples, LGBT youth are at a higher risk of dating violence than straight people of the same age. Over 75 percent of the cases handled by the D.C. police's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit are domestic-violence related.  Only 20 percent of LGBT victims of domestic violence and sexual assault seek help. Press release after the jump.

Campaign Launches to Address Intimate Partner Violence in LGBTQ Communities

Local Nonprofit to Raise Awareness of Healthy Relationships in DC

WASHINGTON (JUNE 1)  –  Women Empowered Against Violence, Inc. (WEAVE) today launched Show Me Love, DC! – an innovative campaign designed to promote healthy relationships in Washington’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) communities.  An interactive web hub for the campaign, www.ShowMeLoveDC.org, features information on healthy relationships, support resources for LGBTQ survivors, quizzes and facts and the campaign’s “Postcard Project.”

“This is an exciting campaign because there is very little information out there for LGBTQ people on building healthy relationships or about where to go if relationships aren’t healthy,” said Morgan Lynn, Supervising Attorney and Manager of LGBTQ Program for WEAVE.

“The hopes of the Show Me Love campaign are twofold — To get people in DC’s LGBTQ communities actively talking about and working toward healthy relationships, and to provide a resource for people in unhealthy relationships where they can find information and lists of LGBTQ-friendly service providers,” Lynn said.

In conjunction with LGBT Pride Month, throughout June, the Show Me Love campaign will host a series of events throughout DC, including a Launch Party at Pulp DC store on 14^th Street, NW on June 11^th from 5-7 PM, an interactive art-based Postcard Project, community-based conversations, a Metrobus ad campaign and information tables at upcoming Capital Pride and Trans Pride events.

The Show Me Love, DC! campaign is backed by an advisory committee of local artists, activists, social workers and attorneys and is funded through a grant from the Office for Victims of Crime, which is a component of the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Everyone deserves relationships that are healthy and free from all forms of abuse – no exceptions” said Joye E. Frost, Acting Director of the Office for Victims of Crime.  “We are proud to support this initiative and think it can be used as a model in other parts of the country.”

Created in 2007, WEAVE’s LGBTQ Program provides free assistance to address the specific legal needs of Washington’s LGBTQ survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, dating violence and stalking. WEAVE also hosts three weekly walk-in legal clinics that provide free legal advice.

For more information on the campaign, please visit: www.ShowMeLoveDC.org.

###

WEAVE is a Washington-based nonprofit that works closely with adult and teen survivors of relationship violence and abuse, providing an innovative range of legal, counseling, economic and educational services that leads survivors to utilize their inner and community resources, achieve safety for themselves and their children, and live empowered lives. For more information on WEAVE, please visit: www.weaveincorp.org.

The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), a leading resource on journalistic style, chimes in on the LGBT vs. GLBT debate: "The NLGJA stylebook supplement does not give explicit guidance, but only lists 'LGBT' as an option, perhaps revealing a preference." A commenter chimes in: "Our college campus’ group . . . technically referred to themselves as LGBTQQIA—the last part was queer (as in studies?), questioning, intersexed and (straight) allies. Most people were confused, even some gays. They ended up changing their name to 'prism.'"

Photo via brainchildvn, Creative Commons License 2.0

* Zack Rosen at The New Gay on the assumption that gay men love Sex and the City: "assumptions about my relationship to SATC make me about as angry as being called fabulous," he writes. "We’ve all gone on bad dates or slept with someone who never called us again. We do not all, however, live in a New York City haze of money and extreme fashion. We do not all act as if women and gay men are half-formed creatures that will die flopping on the floor if they cannot find a mate. And most importantly, we do not all subscribe to the notion that the life lived by the SATC gals is a mirror image of that undergone by the contemporary urban gay male."

Rosen isn't just peeved at the constant comparisons between all gay men and a set of sexually promiscuous, frivolously spending, Cosmo-swilling white ladies; he's also unimpressed with the film's depiction of actual gay men: "this movie . . . features a gay wedding between two men who hate each other, love an all-white color palette and hired Liza Minnelli to sing 'Single Ladies.' I’ve hosted orgies that were less stereotypically gay than that."

* Who would you rather work for: Andrea or James?

Madeline Heilman at New York University once conducted an experiment in which she told volunteers about a manager. Some were told, "Subordinates have often described Andrea as someone who is tough yet outgoing and personable. She is known to reward individual contributions and has worked hard to maximise employees' creativity."

Other volunteers were told, "Subordinates have often described James as someone who is tough yet outgoing and personable. He is known to reward individual contributions and has worked hard to maximise employees' creativity."

The only difference between what the groups were told was that some people thought they were hearing about a leader named Andrea while others thought they were hearing about a leader named James. Heilman asked her volunteers to estimate how likeable Andrea and James were as people. Three-quarters thought James was more likeable than Andrea.

The story goes on to examine the experiences of two transgender scientists at Stanford who transitioned mid-career—one transitioned to male, the other to female. I wonder who had a better time post-transition?

* SAFER Campus on WaPo's recent examination of campus rape: When you headline a story "Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence," shouldn't you then report on some schools that are actually trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence?

I found the title of the article “Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence” in the Washington Post to be extremely misleading. I expected to read a some stories of how schools are adequately and sincerely making efforts to prevent and respond to crimes such as rape, but instead I found myself reading a boring, shallow article that barely grazes the real picture of violence on college campuses and how institutions are dealing with it.

* Student journalists at the University of Utah who secretly inserted words for genitalia in the school newspaper will not be penalized. Apparently, publishing "penis" and an unidentified "slang term for the vagina" are not, in fact, outlawed in the school's Code of Conduct. "Administrators said academic holds on the journalism students were lifted after they determined the student code was not violated by the prank, which spelled out the words in large capital letters within The Daily Utah Chronicle's farewell columns."

* Alyssa Rosenberg points to another lady-centric movie I will definitely see:

[youtube:v=j92Rka-FtUw]

Traditional beauty pageants come with all sorts of strange entrance requirements. In order to compete in the Miss America pageant, for example, a constestant must be an unmarried woman who has always been female, has never been pregnant, and has never engaged in any "immoral" or "indecent" activities.

D.C.'s annual LGBT pageant, Mr. and Miss Capital Pride, welcomes married, transgender, and pregnant contestants. The sexual history of entrants is unimportant; the entrance requirements don't even specify that contestants be part of the LGBT community. But the Pride pageant has got a few strange rules of its own. From the 2010 application [PDF]:

1. Do not get high and steal from other pageant contestants.

Any contestant, or person affiliated with a contestant, who misappropriates the property of another contestant, violates any law regarding the abuse of alcohol or drugs, or is caught in the act of stealing will be disqualified and removed from the location of the contest. Unsportsmanlike conduct by a contestant or contestant’s entourage (dresser, dancer) before, during or after the pageant will not be tolerated and is subject to immediate dismissal from the venue and pageant.

2. Entourage is responsible for any damage inflicted by entourage.

It is further understood by signature of this application and submission of this application, contestants and the contestant’s entourage (dresser, dancers) will take responsibility for any and all damage (should it occur) to Town before, during or after the pageant.

3. Only one dresser at a time:

Each contestant will be allowed ONLY one (1) dresser at any given time. Contestants must remain in the assigned area at all times. Administrative points will be deducted from contestants who do not remain in the designated area. Dressers and Dancers as well as any other helpers with a contestant must pay at the front door before being allowed access to the dressing room.

4. No tips.

At no time during the contests shall a contestant or their helper(s) receive a gratuity of any kind during their time on stage.

5. All colors of rainbow must be represented. Rules for the "Pride Attire" category:

Pride attire may be presented by the contestant in the form of his/her most imaginative and creative style. Pride attire is not limited to any one color, but should encompass the full scale of the rainbow. Make your own statement and get as creative as you like.

6. No strings attached. Rules for the ladies' "Evening Gown" category:

Evening gown will be the most elegant outfit you wear during the pageant (i.e. full length not a cocktail dress). It should complement your figure and make a statement of your personal style and taste. The dress accessories should be in perfect condition. No strings should be anywhere on the dress unless the style warrants it. There should be no tears in any part of the fabric and the gown should be stain and wrinkle free. It is your responsibility to take care of the gown and keep it in perfect condition during the pageant.

7. Black jeans are not formal wear. Rules for the men's "Formal Wear" category [Gender nerd noted: Observe how the women's gowns must "complement your figure" while the men's formal wear must simply "complement you"]:

Formal wear should be the most distinguished outfit you wear during the contest (i.e. black tie, tails, regular or modern tuxedo, no black jeans). It should complement you and make a statement of your personal style and taste. No strings should be anywhere on the formal attire. There should be no tears in any part of the fabric and the garment should be stain and wrinkle free. It is your responsibility to take care of your formal wear and keep it in perfect condition during the pageant.

8. Lip-syncing will be judged on proper phrasing. I love that there are three possible talent categories here: "lip-sync," "live vocal," and "other." Hey, beats the swimsuit competition:

Talent is the highest point category in the Mr. & Miss Capital Pride 2010 contests. Contestants will be judged on the quality of lip-sync, live vocal or other entertainment. Judges will be looking for lip sync or live singing ability. This will include but not limited to words to his/her song and proper phrasing within the song. If it is a live performance, is the talent of good quality? If there is choreography, the dancers should know the steps and steps should flow. If a member of your troupe does not know his/her part, points will be deducted from you score. Quality of set design and construction are not judged (note: allowed height 8 feet). All contestants are responsible for their sets. Judges are instructed to deduct points if a set does not complement or enhance the talent and if the set falls or is broken during the talent phase of competition. All costuming and set design should fit the style and mood of the talent being presented. Is your talent appropriate for competition? Does your talent move, excite or educate the judges panel and the audience. It is important to know that you are being judged by a panel of judges and not by the audience. Keep in mind that subcategories make up the total score in each category of competition.

In other words: This is going to be awesome. The Mr. and Miss Capital Pride 2010 pageant will begin promptly at 7 p.m. Friday, June 4th at Town Danceboutique.

This year, the DC Center—the sole community center serving the District’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents—will no longer be known as a “GLBT” community center. It will be known as a center for the “LGBT” community. It’s a simple transposition of two letters, but it offers a glimpse into the complicated gender politics of the people the DC Center serves.

GLBT—an acronym which stands for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender”—was coined in the 1990s to reflect the widening umbrella of identities represented by what was originally referred to simply as the “gay community.” But when the title expanded to include additional marginalized identities, few agreed on who should come first. “There have always been fights in the community over acronyms, which letters to include, and what order they ought to be in,” says Sean Bugg, co-publisher of District LGBT—or GLBT, depending on who you ask—magazine Metro Weekly. “You sometimes wish there was a board saying, ‘This is what it’s going to be now.’”

Recently, several local institutions have arrived at some consensus: LGBT is in. And GLBT is, ahem, out.

Why the concern over the placement of a couple of letters? David Mariner, Executive Director of the DC Center, says that his organization’s acronym switch-up is “not a big deal either way,” but that the Center made the change “to be consistent with the other national organizations we are affiliated with.” CenterLink, which serves as a hub for “LGBT Community Centers Around the World,” favors the L, but its 201 affiliated centers vary on usage.

“I think it’s often a local preference,” says Terry Stone, CenterLink’s Florida-based Executive Director. “In some parts of the country, LGBT is more predominant. In other places, it’s GLBT. I don’t think that much deep thought goes into choosing LGBT or GLBT. People just use what has become familiar to them in their coming-out process.”

The DC Center’s switch isn’t the only indication that the District is now batting for LGBT. Metro Weekly also recently began favoring the acronym; Bugg says the change from GLBT to LGBT was codified in its style guide about six months ago. “I hesitate to change our style guide without having a really strong reason for it,” says Bugg. The rationale: Metro Weekly’s style was becoming increasingly inconsistent with community standards, and ‘GLBT’-schooled Metro Weekly reporters kept returning with quotes from ‘LGBT’-happy subjects. “A lot of people would be using ‘LGBT’ in a quote, and we would be using ‘GLBT’ as a matter of style,” says Bugg. “It became a bit awkward and confusing.”

The DC Center logo, before and after the switch.

Also confusing: navigating the ever-expanding roster of initials that can be added to the standard four-letter-acronym. Local newspaper the Washington Blade has an evolving approach to the acronym. According to Editor in Chief Kevin Naff, the paper “uses LGBT in stories and headlines.” In its branding, however, the paper now tacks on an extra Q.

“We’ve recently added the Q to our tagline in response to reader inquiries and concerns that those ‘questioning’ their sexual orientation were excluded from coverage,” Naff says. “We have not added the Q to standard references in stories, mostly because the alphabet soup starts to get unwieldy.”

Other emerging subgroups may add more letters to the acronym: an I, for “intersex”; an extra T, for the Native American identity of the “two-spirit”; an A, for either “ally” or “asexual”; and the Q, for either “queer” or “questioning.” Bugg says that Metro Weekly eschews the Q for clarity reasons. “We don’t use Q because it’s not standardized,” he says. “If you start packing on Q, depending on the context it can mean ‘queer,’ or it can mean ‘questioning,’”adds Bugg. “You want your readers to know what you’re talking about.”

Beyond D.C., there remains no industry acronym standard. According to GLAAD’s “Media Reference Guide,” which instructs journalists how best to cover the community, both “LGBT” and “GLBT” are acceptable. GLAAD notes that acronyms “are often used because they are more inclusive of the diversity of the community,” but warns that “Care should be taken to ensure that audiences are not confused by their use.”

Perhaps that’s why the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times refrain from mentioning any of the related acronyms in their style guides—for the uninitiated, even the four basic initials can require a more verbose explanation.

But the politics of community acronyms go far beyond scannability. “Acronyms are tough,” says Deb Greenspan, who writes for local entertainment site Brightest Young Gays. “On the one hand, you’re able to give a bunch of discrete, self-identifying groups representation while making life a bit easier on your reader. On the other hand, whenever you start to list letters, you get the sense that you better list them all,” she says.

Lists also imply rank. “You inevitably have to put someone first and someone
last in the string of letters,” says Greenspan. The potential for point-counting is one reason Greenspan prefers to call the whole thing off: “I tend to use queer, since it removes the issue of rank,” she says. Zack Rosen, editor of local website The New Gay, also uses queer: “I want to make sure that we don’t use terms that leave anyone out, and I think queer is the most inclusive umbrella term,” Rosen says. “It doesn’t make any assumptions about how people identify.”

But for some, moving the ‘L’ to the front of the line constitutes an important political statement. “I always understood it as a nod to feminism,” says Greenspan. “For a long time, the gay community was not inclusive of women, and lesbians had to forge out on their own in a lot of ways. The balance still isn’t perfect, but I think the L in front is a recognition of that.”

If putting ladies first is a sign of respect, what does it mean that bisexual and transgender people consistently take up the rear? For a long time, working to simply tack on the ‘T’ was met with controversy. “T is still a fairly recent addition, and it’s not one that is fully accepted by all parts of the community,” says Bugg.

Since the wider community’s best-known activists don’t always focus on the concerns of Is, As, Qs and Ts, acronym inclusion can come off as tokenism. Metro Weekly’s internal style guide now contains a four-paragraph discussion of acronyms, which warns reporters against overstating the magazine’s coverage via acronym. “We only use LGBT when we’re speaking about an issue that is inclusive of all four of those. If it’s solely about gay men, you use ‘gay men.’ If it’s something that deals solely with lesbians, you use ‘lesbians,’” says Bugg.

“It’s all well and good if we use inclusive acronyms, but if you’re not actually reflecting all those letters in your magazine, then it really doesn’t matter,” he says. “As important as it is to be inclusive, it’s far more important to actually tell the stories of those lives.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

* Older, but good: Sex blogger Hey Epiphora on why writing about sex is not an invitation for harassment. Of interest to any reader who has ever, ever considered sending a message like this one to his favorite writer:

Dude: horny?

* Holly Kearl of Stop Street Harassment writes an op-ed on harassment of women runners, and offers some thoughts for positive action:

– Men, don't harass women—including whistling and honking.

– Everyone should take women's harassment complaints seriously.

– Everyone should help women they see being harassed.

– Women should report harassers.

– We can brainstorm creative ways to deal with harassers, such as issuing fake citations (until real laws are passed).

* Via Jen at Gold Sound, a quick hit on rape advice by Katie Arb:

* Via Salon, it's the action-figure Brontë sisters. When their powers combine, they become a Brontësaurus:

[youtube:v=-NKXNThJ61]

* Barney Frank says he supports transgender protections in ENDA, so why the fuck is he talking like this?:

“There’s no chance of doing it without it,” he said of the transgender protections.

Frank said he’s told wavering Democrats that “the principle is the same. It’s discrimination.”

He said concessions were made in the drafting of the language to address moderates’ concerns. For instance, Frank said, transgender people with “one set of genitals” would not be able to go to a bathroom for people with another set of genitals.

And, Frank said, they also would have to have a “consistent gender presentation” in order to be able to sue for discrimination.

“They can’t sit there with a full beard and a dress,” Frank said.

Photo via The National Archives UK

So, I've been pretty hard on breast implantation lately. First there was this screed against justifying breast augmentation as empowering. And then there was this dissection of the plastic surgery industry in general. And then C.L. Minou, a writer I admire very much, sent me an e-mail basically saying, "Hey! I am a woman who actually has breast implants. Want to talk to me about it?"

And good thing, that! For behold the product of that missive: This lovely interview with Minou about the ways in which the feminine beauty ideal intersects with trans identity and feminist identity and the work of just living our lives and being comfortable in our bodies. But first: Minou blogs at The Second Awakening, a blog about feminism, post-gender-transition; she is also a regular contributor to Below the Belt and Tiger Beatdown; soon you'll see her work over at Change.Org, too. Onward:

SEXIST: What was your decision-making process like in deciding to undergo breast augmentation, and how do you feel about the whole thing now?

CLM: As I say over at The Second Awakening, my experience of privilege has left me an opponent of it in all its forms—because I'm quite familiar with the gradient. And it's not even as simple as male privilege vs female subordination—as a crossdresser, I was a lower status male back in the days people thought I was male. I was a feminist before I transitioned, but I'm a much more ardent feminist since I transitioned.

But there's definitely the possibility of my feminism being dismissed for a lot of reasons. The one you cite is certainly one of them—that I'm only a feminist because I'm a woman now, or to express it more bluntly, that I'm trying to recapture my male privilege. (Of course, some people would accuse me of still having it, or acting like I do). The whole question of my former male privilege is pretty complex and delicate–I've never denied that my career (outside my writing life, I'm a programmer) was certainly made much easier because at the time I wasn't a woman. But is that balanced by the lack of status I have as not just a woman, but a trans woman, one who often loses status even among women? Because there's also a trend to automatically discount my feminism or feelings about a feminist topic because I don't share the background that most cis women share. (In its most extreme form you get the attitude of Lu's Pharmacy in Vancouver, a woman-only store that refused service to trans women because we've never bled.

At the same time, as someone who identifies and is usually identified by other people as a woman, I've certainly become more confident in expressing myself in feminist ways. Obviously my words have greater impact when I speak as a woman, rather than as a feminist-identified man. It's not that I deny there's any self-interest in my feminist viewpoint—it's just that it's not the ONLY reason.

Last month, D.C. police released a report breaking down every hate crime reported in D.C. [PDF] over the past five years. In 2007, changes to the D.C. Human Rights Act required police to begin recording hate-bias crimes motivated by the victim's "gender identity or expression"—in other words, crimes that specifically target transgender victims. Since then, crimes against the transgender community have been the second most frequently recorded type of hate crime committed in D.C., after sexual orientation.

Since 2007, D.C. police have recorded 16 bias-related crimes based on gender identity. Last year, D.C. recorded seven of these crimes (which can include anything from destruction of property to assault to murder). But as trans activist group the DC Trans Coalition notes, transgender victims often face barriers to having crimes against them reported, investigated, and properly coded as a hate crime. According to the DCTC, "Since many trans communities (particularly low-income trans women of color and those who are sex workers) experience violence at the hands of police themselves, it is likely that anti-trans crimes in general are under-reported. Further, DCTC has also learned via a Freedom of Information Act request that MPD still is not tracking statistics about police response rates to cases involving trans individuals."

And because the transgender community in D.C. is so small, seven crimes in a year is an extremely significant figure. We're talking about a very limited population of potential targets, which means that any hate crime against a trans person holds more power to terrorize the entire community.

In 2009, D.C. experienced several highly visible bias crimes motivated by the victim's gender identity. Last March, a transgender man was assaulted outside of Fab Lounge by some of the gay bar's other patrons. In August, Tyli'a Mack and a friend, both trans women, were stabbed on the street in the middle of the afternoon. Mack was killed. The most recent hate-bias crime based on gender identity occurred last weekend, when two transgender individuals were assaulted in Petworth with a metal pole.

The new D.C. police report resolves one reporting problem for D.C.'s transgender community: In an original hate crimes report released in November of last year, D.C. police failed to distinguish between gender identity and sexual orientation in its data, leaving the transgender community with no information on how many victims were being targeted specifically for their gender identity. After some prodding by activists, D.C. released the fully differentiated data last month.

Yesterday, the New York Daily News reported that a New York woman recently filed a lawsuit against former NFL player Eric Green, claiming that Green "forcibly sodomized her" in his Scottsdale, Ariz. condo. According to the woman's suit, Green claimed to be taking her back to the condo so that "he could telephone his dealer, get some marijuana, and get high," and also, bizarrely, to "introduce her to his friend, the Prince of Bahrain." Green and the woman began having consensual sex, the suit claims. But when Green realized that his sex partner was transgender, the woman claims that Green held her down and forcibly sodomized her against her will.

At this point, no armchair observer in this case could reasonably determine whether this woman's story checks out or not. But the New York Daily News commenters are already inventing dozens of reasons why the assault could never have occurred—and if it did, she deserved it!

According to the commenters, the woman engaged in a variety of behaviors that screamed she was "asking for it." They include:

ENTERING A ROOM. Sure, this commenter doesn't write in full sentences. But intelligent women will still heed his advice: Never enter a room by your own free will:

She went to a room with on her own free will. Bad move.

BEING A TRANSGENDER WOMAN. No. 1 way not to evaluate claims of rape: "So let me guess what happened":

So let me guess what happened. he met "her" in a club, took her back to his condo thinking "she" was a woman, then it got all "Crying Game". Shocked and embarrassed he told her to get out. "She" in turn was humiliated and even though "she" isn't a woman, did what many women that seek revenge on men do . . . cry rape?

BEING IN THE VICINITY OF A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER. This commenter claims that anyone who goes back to the home of an NFL player to party—even a straight, cisgender, red-blooded, meat-eatin', football-lovin' American dude—should reasonably assume that that football player will rape him. Observe how thoroughly this commenter is not a bigot!: No matter who the rape victim is, he or she still deserves it!

Man/Woman/Gay/Straight/Transgender/Whatever...you go home with a biga$$ football player you don't know, you are playing Russian Roulette. I wouldn't feel sorry if it were any of the above. Has no one learned anything about personal responsibility for personal safety?

BEING IN THE VICINITY OF ANYONE WITH TESTOSTERONE. A closely-related argument: Big football players just can't help themselves:

Half the NFL players I would never want to meet in the bedroom, they are hulking gigantic people. If you disrupt the testosterone/steriods then your on your own.

BEING A TRANSGENDER WOMAN, PART TWO. Did you know that if you are transgender, your rape is so much less crucial than the consensual sex partners a professional football player prefers?:

Let's keep an open mind about this. Maybe Green has a fetish for transgenders.

BEING RAPED BY A PERSON WHO HAS FRIENDS. Oh, this old standby:

why are you people so quick to assume that any of this is true. all of his friends know him and know this is something he isnt even capable of doing. why be so quick to jump on the media bandwagon. because some person who obviously likes to file lawsuits everywhere it goes were supposed to beleive. dont be so quick to judge because if you knew him like i do you would know that he is one of the nicest, happiest person you ever met, he lights up a room when he enters it so instead of going with the looney maybe you should support the one who is truly the victim. ERIC.

BEING A TRANSGENDER WOMAN, PART THREE. According to commenter "RotorRooter"—surely, "the dominant expert on the subject—this woman's story is false because she is just too womanly!

I can almost guarantee that this was a situation in which he was naive and did not even know that this woman was actually born a man. Chances are that he tried to get intimate with her, she told him that she was experiencing her menstrual cycle, and offered her backside instead (happens all the time on Jerry Springer- LOL!). Afterward, she saved some DNA evidence and made up this cockomamy (no pun intended) story as a get-rich-quick scheme.

TALKING ABOUT YOUR RAPE. Congratulations to commenter "ccb94." Never has a victim-blaming argument come so close to exploding my brains out of my fucking head. Here you go:

I bet he never touched her. If he did, she wouldn't be this mad. I don't take those harmones, I am born with them and know that is how a woman would be. If she were raped, she would be acting differently and more quietly!!!

In November, transgender Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner was found dead of an apparent suicide. Penner, who wrote for the paper since 1983, made headlines himself in 2007 when he he came out as transgender, began living publicly as a woman, and changed his byline to Christine Daniels. In 2008, Daniels quietly detransitioned back to Mike, leaving mourners with an identity problem: Should they eulogize Mike Penner or Christine Daniels?

After Penner's death, transgender activist Autumn Sandeen spoke to the importance of identifying Penner as Penner. "In my heart, I know her as Christine. In my job as a writer, I have to think of him as Mike,” she said. "I would love to remember him as Christine, but he didn’t give us that opportunity, and I’m going to be sad about that . . . How he identified was important. We can’t just pick and choose how we want to identify someone. I’m militant about that, but I’m frustrated at my own militance."

Recently, Sandeen attended a memorial service for Daniels, where she heard some stories that changed her position on how to publicly refer to the deceased:

[S]ince I'm now going to refer to the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who wrote under the Mike Penner byline as Christine Daniels again, I thought I needed to explain why . . . And, the reason has to do with how Christine identified herself in conversations with her minister, and to one of her very close friends—Susan Horn (who delivered the eulogy to Christine at the memorial service)—after she detransitioned. To the both, she said words to the effect of: "I never stopped being Christine," and . . . "Don't you ever think I'm not Christine."

So now, knowing how she identified, I can—and will—stop calling her by male pronouns, and stop calling her Mike Penner. She detransitioned to Mike not because she wasn't Christine, but for whatever external pressures to which she succumbed because presenting as Christine became too hard to bear.

In death, how do we reconcile a person's public and private lives? After he publicly detransitioned back to Mike, Penner indicated that he still wanted to be identified as Christine to his minister and a very close friend of his. That's private. In his professional life, however, Penner was still writing columns as Mike and presenting outwardly as male. At the memorial service, the Reverend Dr. Neal Thomas made Penner's private identity public by delivering a eulogy remembering Christine Daniels. In death, should we defer to Penner's wishes in life by keeping his private identity private? Or should we pay tribute to the reality of her life by finally publicly eulogizing her as Christine?

This year on the Sexist, the pageviews accumulated like so many cats draped across my spinstery blogger frame. I'd like to take a minute to thank you all for clicking and commenting, even those of you who accidentally stumbled onto this blog while searching for porn. Especially you guys.

Below are the 10 most popular blog posts of the past year, with commentary on everything from semen facials to sexy librarians to nipple slips to Sarah Palin. Damnit! You all were just looking for porn!

10. Semen Facials Are Like Weddings, in which the degradation of porn can be ignored in the bedroom (as long as we can address it on the blogs):

Facials are like weddings. We all know that the institution of marriage is one of the patriarchy’s all-time greatest hits, in which women are sold into sexual slavery from father to husband in exchange for livestock. And yet, who derives the greatest joy from weddings? Women! It’s the craziest thing. But even though we all know that weddings were clearly institutionalized to facilitate the willing subjugation of women, feminists figure out a way to do it anyway. Why? Probably because even though we all know it’s sexist as fuck, weddings—like facial ejaculation—still make some people happy. And feminists deserve to be happy, too. But that doesn’t mean we should forget about the sexist tropes that sometimes inform our happiness (and our sex lives).

9. Library Conference Secret Twitter Proves Librarians Sexy, Stern, in which some librarians wish to silence the sexual overtures of other librarians:

Some librarians are exhausted by the conference’s material (”I have reached the point of the conference where I no longer give a damn about anything anyone is saying any more.”) Others are inspired by a perceived lack of cultural acceptance for a librarian’s sex life (”I am an adult. I am a librarian. I enjoy good sex. Including at this conference. What is the problem?”). Most of them, for whatever reason, are talking about fucking—that’s the “sexy” part. Not everyone is happy about it. That’s where “stern” comes in.

8. Huffington Post: Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment, in which nipple slips emerge as a liberal mainstay:

The problem is that people really do care about nipples. They care so much about nipples that the Huffington Post devotes pages and pages of photographs to them when women accidentally (or, you know, against their will) reveal them to the public. In that way, there’s no difference between the religious conservative who is scandalized by a bare breast popping up in the middle of his football game and a liberal Web site which devotes its resources to naked chicks. A woman’s body part is a priority. Real women’s issues, not so much.

7. The Onion's Best and Worst Rape Jokes, in which the hilarity of rape jokes is all about the target:

I’ve written a lot recently on who can successfully tell a rape joke and what targets are fair game for the butts of those jokes. One perennial source of rape humor, the Onion, gets the rape joke dynamic right a lot of the time. The format has a lot to do it: as America’s leading source of fake news, the Onion is always skewering the media along with its make-believe subjects, and media treatment of sexual violence is often ripe for satire.

6. The Rapiest Quotes From "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell", in which Tucker Max's jokes rely on almost (but not quite!) rape:

[youtube:v=-qpHzm5Z-eQ]

Max’s stories succeed on orchestrating sexual conquests that are increasingly outrageous, drunk, dubiously legal, painful, objectifying, and embarrassing to his sex partners. In order to continue to one-up himself, Max intentionally pushes the line of consent—getting drunker, getting her drunker, leaving his sex partners to fend for themselves—naked—on the street, hiding his friend with an undisclosed video camera in his closet while they’re doing it. It’s not hard to think of the ultimate scenario these increasingly absurd sexcapades are inching toward—it’s, like, rape, dude. And now—thanks to Max’s movie tour—undergrads everywhere can compete to have the consensual sex that’s most like rape without actually being a prosecutable offense. Sure, some dudes might fail and actually rape chicks. Oh well!

A new initiative from youth voting campaign Rock the Vote is encouraging young people to "hold out for health care" by refusing to have sex with people who don't support health care reform. In a strange turn of events, I'm with FOX News on this one: This sucks.

Rock the Vote, an organization which works to "engage and build the political power of young people," is currently collecting signatures for the celebrity-endorsed petition to "hold out for health care."

"We pledge ourselves to the health and liberty of young Americans and to government for the people ... and to never fucking you if you are against us," the video announces. "We will vote against you, work against you, and once again, just in case you forgot, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever fuck you."

The strategy strikes me as counter-intuitive. After all, what do Republicans hate even more than public health care? Young people having premarital sex! If I were a Republican, I would love this Rock the Vote campaign. It reads like a conservative porn script: No health care, plus a bunch of young hot chicks sexily announcing that they're not going to give it up!

But I'm not a Republican, so I find a few aspects of this Rock the Vote campaign unsettling that have nothing to do with the young people admitting to F-wording each other. First, Rock the Vote President Heather Smith told FOX News that the fucking-withholding petition aims to remind the youth of America that "they have a stake and a say" in the debate over health care. Huh. I thought young people had a stake in the health care debate because they're human beings with a civil right to engage in our country's political process. But I guess it's actually because they're hot and like to fuck. Second, the unsettling sexual stereotypes: According to Rock the Vote, women are sexy teases; men are insatiable buffoons. Finally, this line, meant to to ward off a skeezy Tea Party guy who wants to fuck our hot liberal heroine: "I'm on my period. I don't have a vagina." Would you like some transphobia with your abstinence?

Despite the snub, CUAllies has carefully attempted to conform its advocacy work to the teachings of the Catholic church. The Post story notes that CUAllies has formulated a "self-imposed list of topics that are off-limits: pre-marital sex, gay sex, birth control, gay marriage and behavior not permitted by the Catholic church." With sex, marriage, and "behavior" off the table, what can CUAllies talk about?

Catholic University senior Robby Diesu, one of the group's founders, explains how to cultivate an LGBT group while keeping it Catholic: Avoid "advocacy," distract administrators from the dreaded combination of gays and food, and invent some clever condom wordplay.

"The three goals of CUAllies are to make Catholic U. a safe, welcoming, and affirming place for GLBTQ peoples," Diseu wrote to me. The purpose of CUAllies is hardly controversial: The group is devoted to preventing gay-bashings, providing some visibility for gay students on campus, and affirming the "dignity of the human person" for gay and straight students alike. Diseu insists that the group's goal is "not to change the Church," but rather to find a safe space within church teachings for LGBT students. In order to make life at Catholic University better for CUA's LGBTs, Diseu has found that it benefits the group to keep quiet on the political front. "We as a group do not have an official position on issues like gay marriage or birth control, so the group never diverges with the administration on those types of issues," he writes.

CUAllies has reason to step carefully: The group was formed in the aftermath of Catholic University's first gay-straight alliance, which ultimately conceded to university pressure. The first iteration of the CUA gay group, the Organization for Lesbian and Gay Student Rights, operated as an official student organization from 1988 until several years ago, when "the group was forced to dissolve . . . because it became an advocacy group," Nakas told the Post. "The university has chosen not to go down that path again," Nakas said.

Diseu says that CUAllies' strictly apolitical activities are an attempt to avoid the dreaded accusation of "advocacy." "The reason why we have 'self-imposed' off-limits topics is to show the ridiculous nature of the fact that Catholic is refusing us official status as a group," Diseu writes. But no matter how much CUAllies members censor themselves, Catholic University will always raise the bar for inclusion: "Their definition of advocacy is to have food at your meetings or wanting to talk about hate crimes! Ahh the horror!!" According to Diseu, Catholic's former gay group was hardly controversial. "They were having food at their meetings, and if the gays have food you know what happens. . . . The school put a stranglehold on the group, and we were not going to let them do that to us." (Despite the evident controversy of gays serving food, Diseu says CUAllies does have refreshments at meetings).

Besides fighting off dissolution, what can CUAllies do? Plenty, as long as they frame it right. "We went to the National Equality March as a group because we support full equality for all people," Diseu writes. "In the spring we are having a 3-week series on GLBTQ health and safety and we have a whole week set aside to talk about HIV/AIDS." Diseu says that last subject may take a little bit of verbal acrobatics. "It's basically a word game, we find the loopholes and use them to our advantages," he writes. "Will we talk about condoms? Most likely. But will we directly say, 'When you have sex, use a condom'? No. It will more likely be, 'One of the ways to prevent getting HIV/AIDS is to use a condom.'"

Recently, D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier decided to restructure the department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU)—a unit of officers specially-trained in LGBT issues—in order to disperse trained officers across the force. The move has been criticized by LGBT activist groups, who are concerned with the force's ability to adequately address LGBT-specific crime without a visible, coordinated, and well-staffed unit.

Today, the D.C. Trans Coalition (DCTC), the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club released a statement enumerating their beefs with the decision. "MPD Chief Cathy Lanier is poised to call this initiative a success, but we are unfortunately quite skeptical," they write. "An award-winning unit has been effectively dismantled without meaningful input from the very community that unit serves."

Full release after the jump.

December 9, 2009

Contact:

Sadie Ryanne Baker, DC Trans Coalition, 202.557.1951
Rick Rosendall, GLAA, 202.328.6278
Chris Farris, GLOV, 202.368.5321

Broad Coalition of LGBT Community Organizations Oppose Metropolitan Police Department Plan to Restructure Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit: Groups object to flaws and inadequacies found throughout new GLLU training program for affiliate officers.

Washington, DC – Today a broad coalition of DC’s LGBT community groups stand together to express our severe disappointment with the Metropolitan Police Department’s ill-conceived plan to restructure the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU). MPD Chief Cathy Lanier is poised to call this initiative a success, but we are unfortunately quite skeptical. An award-winning unit has been effectively dismantled without meaningful input from the very community that unit serves. Lanier is quick to point out that she and her staff have held meetings with community members to discuss their plans, but she fails to mention that not one critique of her plan was accepted.

In spite of repeated requests, MPD has not been able to say how many officers will serve GLLU full-time (there is currently only one, with three on full-time leave), whether GLLU will again have a full-time sergeant, or how new affiliated officers will be effectively coordinated to both respond to LGBT issues and learn and share best practices. Many members of our communities have had exceptionally negative experiences with police, while others have enjoyed quite positive interactions – these latter advances have often been credited to GLLU’s outreach work both within and outside the MPD. Thus to upend this unit without seeking real community input calls into question MPD’s self-stated claim to serve our communities. We look forward to MPD demonstrating its willingness to act in good faith to work with us in both cleaning up the fallout from this hasty restructuring program and in making additional progress in other areas.

Moreover, community members have been largely shut out of the process to develop the training course for GLLU’s new affiliate officers, which concluded last Friday. Lanier has boasted that 32 hours of classroom training have been provided to these officers. However, only 2 of those hours featured any discussion whatsoever of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. The MPD promised to share its training curriculum with community representatives at a meeting on October 22, yet failed to do so. At that same meeting, organizations were promised an invitation to suggest reading materials, case studies and specific modules for the training program. Finally, the Chief stated under oath at a City Council Hearing on November 20 that she would share the curriculum for the training with the LGBT community and incorporate their feedback. There was absolutely no follow-up to this invitation, despite repeated requests by LGBT community organizations. Last week, some LGBT community leaders were invited to speak at the training session (for 10-15 minutes each). They were given less than two days and asked to prepare outlines of their presentations before attending. This left no time for any real preparation, and only allowed for a few minutes of time for community members – almost entirely volunteers – to present anything at all.

In addition, individuals who were able to sit in on the training are deeply concerned about numerous errors of omission and commission that will seriously endanger DC’s LGBT communities. Specific concerns include:

• Failure to consult with the LGBT community to foster confidence and gather community input to inform the training,
• Failure to follow through on the commitment to have stand-alone GLLU training for at least half a day – instead, training was limited to less than two hours, and with combined attendees from both the GLLU and the Latino Liaison Unit;
• Failure to provide culturally competent training for officers on how to sensitively approach and manage specific needs for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming individuals;
• Failure to include in the curriculum any discussion of the distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity;
• Failure to discuss the need to actively curtail profiling trans individuals as criminals;
• Failure to address domestic violence situations, which make up 82 percent of GLLU’s caseload, until after training was well underway, which converted what limited LGBT Domestic Violence training there was into a mopping-up exercise;
• Failure to provide guidance and training on how to appropriately track and record hate crimes related to an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression;
• Failure to address strategies on how to ensure a supportive workplace for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender affiliate officers and those performing LGBT liaison duties;
• Failure to develop a public education plan aimed at encouraging community members to report homophobic and transphobic violence and crimes;
• Failure to encourage affiliate officers to attend significant LGBT events to promote visibility and develop strong and meaningful relationships between police and LGBT community members.

There is a critical need for a more comprehensive LGBT training program to be provided before new affiliate officers are certified as GLLU members – a training program that is developed in partnership with the LGBT community. This includes intensive field training with existing GLLU officers, and in-depth classroom training that covers the range of safety, discrimination, and access to justice issues that LGBT individuals face across this city. We also feel strongly that we need answers to the key questions on the size, structure, and responsibilities of the GLLU moving forward. We hope that MPD acts quickly to demonstrate a genuine commitment to community safety, and cooperates with concerned individuals and organizations to address its flawed GLLU restructuring program.

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the difficulties facing obituary writers following the death of Mike Penner, a transgender sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times. When Penner was found dead in his home on Nov. 28, his obituary writers were left with an identity problem: Should they remember Penner as male or female?

Penner's career generated significant public interest in 2007 when he came out as transgender, began living publicly as a woman, and changed his L.A. Times byline to Christine Daniels. But late in 2008, Daniels quietly detransitioned back to Mike, reclaimed his original byline, and scrubbed the L.A. Times‘ Web site of all work attributed to Daniels.

In light of Penner's more recent detransition, most obit writers in both the sports and LGBT communities have chosen to eulogize Penner with male name and pronouns—while still acknowledging that Penner was transgender, and noting the time he lived publicly as Daniels. A few obituary writers, however, have chosen to pay their respects more directly to Daniels, using female signifiers to remember the sportswriter's life. Bitch Magazine's Anna Clark was one of them. Clark explains her decision via e-mail:

I used female pronouns in the Bitch piece because the only information I had was that she began writing under the Mike Penner byline–but I couldn't find any explicit confirmation, in her words, that this indicated a full intent to de-transition, or even that she herself initiated the byline change and blog deletion. I think it's safe to assume that she did initiate it, given her paper's support of her previously, and it's quite likely that she did intend to de-transition both on and off the sports page. But I didn't feel comfortable writing about her with male pronouns without finding any facts that made this explicit. There was a lot of commentary and presumption that followed in the wake of the byline change–but nothing in her own words, that indicated her own intent. At least nothing that I could find. As you wrote in your piece, this shift back had little of the initial fanfare.

Which, of course, doesn't mean it's not a valid all the same. I do understand and respect why other obits use male pronouns. I do think it's crucial for journalists to follow the gender cues of the person involved, however they might change. But I also think it's important to ensure that those cues come directly from the person involved, rather than the people and commentary and implications surrounding the person; to do otherwise often leads to transphobic media. In this particular case, I simply used the only direct cues I could find from the person involved–which was when she came out as a trans woman. If she did de-transition, and there's clear, first-person indication out there that this is so, I hope to find out about it.

As Clark notes, Penner's initial gender transition was accompanied by speaking engagements, national interviews, and a personal blog. His detransition back to Mike inspired no public announcements—just a byline switch followed by a marked absence from the media spotlight and the LGBT activist community.

Ina Fried, for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist's Association (NLGJA), put the Penner/Daniels obituaries in context. The gender confusion that lingered after Penner's death, Fried notes, is a consistent problem in the coverage of transgender subjects:

Writing about transgender subjects, to me, necessarily means embracing complexity. The general style is to use the pronoun and name that the person prefers and the best way to know this is to ask that person. Unfortunately, still too often we write about transgender people, often for the first time, only after they have died through violence or by their own hand. This means writing about people who often lived in a world somewhere in between the gender they were born with and the one in which they saw themselves in an ideal world.

It means that they may be known differently to different people with whom they were close.

To Fried, it's okay that some have chosen to remember Christine Daniels, and others Mike Penner: "no matter what pronouns one uses, both personas deserve to be remembered."

Photo courtesy of Autumn Sandeen

On Saturday, Nov. 28, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner was found dead in his Los Angeles home, the victim of an apparent suicide. Penner had been covering the sports beat for the LA Times since 1983. But the writer's public profile skyrocketed in April of 2007, when he came out as transgender, began living publicly as a woman, and changed his byline to Christine Daniels. The world lost Christine Daniels before it lost Penner: In 2008, Daniels quietly detransitioned back to Mike.

Penner's impermanent gender transition left obituary writers with an identity problem. Whose obituary to write: Mike Penner's or Christine Daniels'?

In the 25 years he worked at the LA Times, Penner evolved into a modest public figure in the sports world. But in the eighteen months that Penner lived outwardly as Christine Daniels, Daniels became a celebrity in the LGBT community. Daniels' coming-out column, in which she announced, "I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words," was one of the LA Times' most widely-read stories of 2007. That year, Daniels launched a new blog for the paper, Woman In Progress, which discussed trans issues with transparency and humor. She spoke about her experiences coming out in the workplace at the National Gay and Lesbian Journalist's Association's National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's annual conference. She earned a coveted spot on Out Magazine's annual "Out 100" list. Then, in October of 2008—with none of the fanfare that accompanied Penner's original gender transition—the celebrated sportswriter resumed the public persona of Mike Penner, reclaimed his original byline, and scrubbed the L.A. Times' Web site of all work attributed to Daniels.

The obituaries penned in the days following Penner's death revealed a fault line among his public mourners. Some writers favored Penner's sex assigned at birth—and his final public identity—by employing masculine pronouns in their obituaries. Others favored Daniels' brief public persona as an out trans woman, and referred to the deceased as "she" and "her." Gawker, puzzlingly, chose to straddle the gender divide by reporting the death of Mike Penner but referring to him as "her."

The sports world overwhelmingly chose to remember Mike Penner as male. Penner's editor, Mike James, remembered Penner as "a gentle man, a kind man." SportsBlog Nation writer Jon Boise's obituary referred to Penner with masculine name and pronouns, but took care not to erase Penner's transgender identity in doing so:

Changing one's gender is always met with apprehension in our culture, but within Penner's sports subculture, the process was likely even more difficult. Penner later took back his original name and resumed living life as a man a year later, which led to the unfortunate misconception that his decision was a thoughtless, ill-conceived one. In fact, Penner had taken on months of therapy and self-searching before making his decision. . . . At the very least, I hope that those who do decide to play expert for a day and cast judgment can accept that their judgments are completely irrelevant.

A few obituary writers in the LGBT and feminist communities, however, chose to remember Penner for his year of trans activism—-by running obituaries for Christine Daniels. The Advocate's online obit of Daniels went so far as to edit out the gender signifiers used by Penner's colleagues, in order to re-frame all remembrances of Penner as female:

“[She] was one of the most talented writers I’ve every worked with,” said Times Sports Editor Mike James, adding that Daniels covered numerous beats including the National Football League and sports media during her more than two-decade-long career at the paper.

Bitch Magazine's Anna Clark also chose to present Daniels as a woman, even as she recognized Penner's more recent choice to detransition:

One thing that is troubling–and that perhaps foreshadows today's sad news: last year, Daniels started to use the "Mike Penner" byline again. This is presumably why the coverage of Daniels' death at the Times uses male pronouns to refer to her, and why James describes her as a 'gentle man, a kind man,' and why the "Woman in Progress" blog was removed.

(Clark explains her choice to eulogize Christine here. The Advocate did not return a request for comment. The Advocate's obituary has since been heavily edited without comment; you can read the original obit here).

Daniels, left, at the 2007 NGLJA conference

Interestingly, the decision to remember Penner as female in his obituary lies in direct opposition to a longtime cause of the LGBT movement: Ensuring that the mainstream media accurately represent the gender identity of transgender subjects. According to several professional style guidelines, writers are to use the gender identity, name, and pronouns preferred by the subject. So, if Mike goes publicly as Mike, you call him Mike; if Christine goes publicly as Christine, you call her Christine. The GLAAD Media Reference Guide instructs journalists to "ask transgender people which pronoun they would like you to use," or to "use the pronoun that is consistent with the person's appearance and gender expression." Since 2006, the Associated Press Stylebook has accepted that standard. The book's “sex changes” entry reads:

Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics (by hormone therapy, body modification, or surgery) of the opposite sex and present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.

Given Penner's most recent bylines—and his attempts to erase Daniels from the public record—it's clear that in the last year of his life, Penner wanted to be publicly identified as male. By GLAAD and AP standards, that means that a correct obit should refer to "Mike Penner" and employ male pronouns. Penner was a lifelong journalist, and it's only fitting that his obituary writers follow the standards of the profession.

But the life story of Mike Penner and Christine Daniels hinges on that divide between the public and the private, the professional and the personal. It's technically correct to refer to Penner as "Mike," but that treatment fails to recognize Penner's inner life. By remembering Mike Penner only as "a gentle man, a kind man," the media runs the risk of contributing to the widespread transphobia that likely played a role in Penner's death.

Penner never spoke publicly about his motives for transitioning back to Mike. But when Penner chose to "detransition"—when he stopped identifying outwardly as Christine Daniels—several experts weighed in on the latest development in Penner's public persona. According to psychologists, most transgender people who choose to "detransition" do so as a result of external pressures resulting from their public gender transition, and not because they no longer internally identify as transgender. In his coming-out column, Penner informed the world how difficult it was for him to live outwardly as a male sportswriter for upwards of 40 years. He never publicly aired the fresh set of problems that came with the alternative—life as an openly transgender female sportswriter. Penner, already a public figure, traded four decades of inner turmoil for a deluge of public scrutiny from the sports world, the LGBT community, and snarky gossip blogs. Given what we know about detransitioning, it's understandable why the LGBT community and its allies would be reluctant to embrace Penner's reclamation of his male persona, particularly in light of his apparent suicide.

Autumn Sandeen, a trans activist who knew Penner when he was living as Christine, has struggled to process Penner's death on both a personal and a professional level. On the blog Pam's House Blend, Sandeen eulogized Mike. In private, however, she continues to think of her friend as Christine. "In my heart, I know her as Christine. In my job as a writer, I have to think of him as Mike," she says.

To Sandeen, adhering to media style standards in Penner's case shows a respect for every person's autonomy over his or her own gender identity. But the professional treatment also leaves her frustrated. "I would love to remember him as Christine, but he didn't give us that opportunity, and I'm going to be sad about that," she says. "It seems cruel that we need to stick with the style guides, but we need to stick with the style guides. How he identified was important. We can’t just pick and choose how we want to identify someone. I’m militant about that, but I’m frustrated at my own militance."

In the past two years, Penner lived a very public life. But his gender identity didn't belong to the public, Sandeen says—not to the LGBT community that wanted to claim him as Christine, and not to the sports community that wanted to reclaim him as "any regular heterosexual guy." "In the end, he called himself Mike," says Sandeen. "Who am I to call him Christine?"

MORE: The Case for Eulogizing Christine Daniels

Photos courtesy of Autumn Sandeen.

In this week's cover story, I examine the cultural relevance of D.C.'s competing LGBT publications, Metro Weekly and the Washington Blade (now the D.C. Agenda). Are you a Metro Weekly man? Or are you a Blade man? Or are you not an upper-middle-class middle-aged gay man who lives in Northwest Washington D.C., and therefore largely ambivalent? File your allegiances in the comments.

Illustration by Robert Ullman

Last we checked in with Dr. Ruth Jacobs, president of the Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government, she was explaining why transgender women should not be allowed in her bathroom: “If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” Jacobs said. “We need to be able to retain the right to speak up about men in our bathrooms without being labeled bigots.”

Okay! Well, now Dr. Jacobs is back to apply her anatomical expertise to the issue of gay marriage. Let's see what she has to say!

Thanks to Metro Weekly for getting this all on tape. Here are the money quotes:

* "An anus was designed for exit, not entrance."

* "Who will protect the children?"

* "Once it becomes law, you cannot opt out . . . students are terrified to be taken out of sex ed. They get on their knees and beg to their parents to be included. Because, to be outside is to be labeled the conservative. To go to the library while everyone else is in class having sex ed, means that you then—when you refuse to go to sex ed, you then become the group that is discriminated against."

* "46 percent of black men . . . are HIV positive" (No).

* Marriage and the vagina and the penis are designed to go together, and the penis and the anus do not."

* And a dose of reality courtesy of Councilmember David Catania: "If your testimony is that you're only eligible to marry if your population has a low HIV rate, the first in line . . . are lesbians. So based on your testimony, we could only marry lesbians."

Last week, two stories on the Washington Post's gender treatment for a couple of transgender shoplifting suspects (Washington Post Cross-Dressing Shoplifting Story Misfires; Transgender Shoplifting Story's Absurd Corrections) inspired confusion, transphobia, and some helpful commentary!

The story: A couple of transgender women are caught shoplifting, and end up being shot by police after a botched getaway. In a medical examination, the suspects are revealed to have male genitalia. So: The Post first reported that the suspects were women, then reported that they were cross-dressing men, and finally issued a vague clarification that the suspects were still men dressed as women, but “were not in disguise.” Was the Post's treatment insensitive? Incorrect? Or the lone crusader for truth in a PC world?

Carisa Cunningham appreciates the teaching moment:

I don’t think we can just expect mainstream journalists, even those with good intentions, to know what to do, how to look at this, the correct terminology to use, etc,about what to them is unfamiliar territory if we don’t take the responsibility to reach out to them. An event like this is an opportunity for GLAAD, for example, to connect with Mr. Weil about terminology and about transgender issues generally. I accept at face value his explanations and would approach him in the same good faith. The world doesn’t change otherwise.

While TJ wants an apology:

The first thing that I thought about the article was, “That’s nice that you cleared it up.” But then I had this question: was this supposed to be a retraction of some sort? I understand that these two women are criminals, but were they issued some sort of apology? Clearly they considered themselves female based on what Renee Bailey said. And with names like Renee Bailey and Kelly Bright, how in the world would the police or anyone else think that these are men? WTF!

And william thinks that people with "confused sexuality" will naturally confuse others:

While confused sexuality may not be mysterious to those who identify as transgender—it is highly confusing to many others, including police. Give them, and the media a break. I happen to have personally met one of these suspects and can tell you “she” is living as a woman but physically appears to be very, very male. I left the meeting pretty confused myself and would have to consult an expert to properly categorize this person.

Gregory A Butler writes:

Cut out the politically correct bullshit—these were men in dresses. They may have had a mental delusion that they were “women”—but they had penises, and testicles, and Y chromosomes, and that makes them MEN, no matter how many skirts or wigs they put on!

Julia writes:

Thank you for writing this. The distinction between sex and gender is one that far too few people recognize, but you’d hope that major media outlets would at least try to get it right (it doesn’t take much research to see that cross-dressing isn’t the same as being transgendered). If they don’t, they deserve to be called out on it. And the fact that they can get it wrong probably means that the general public doesn’t have a good grasp of the issue either, which makes your detailed explanation all the more important.

Much ado 'bout nothing thinks we should all understand "the news biz" (instead of transgender people):

Shoplifters get caught is not news. Shoplifters get shot IS news. And so, when the police identify the shoplifters as female, and they turn out to have penises, that’s something that “advances the story,” as they say in the news biz. Not a correction, but a new fresh lede for the story. That’s how the news biz works.

The news biz, Amanda. Learn about it. It can help you gain perspective.

Matt C is afraid that these transgender women are suffering from our gender stereotyping:

What defines a female? Is it the type of clothes a person wears? Is it the type of general interests a person has? Or is it even the choice in sexual partners one prefers?

If you answered No (like I do) to the above questions then it would stand to reason that a man could share these same characteristics and still be considered a man.

Why then do some feel the need to ignore fact and incorrectly label either themselves or others with a stereotypical “gender identity” that defines ones sex by the way they dress & behave rather than their biological fact.

I applaud the Washington Post for getting the facts correct on this story and not letting political correctness cloud the truth.

While Gregory A Butler is back to clarify one point: Transgender women must choose between being referred to as women, and getting shot—or being called men, and not getting shot. Makes sense!:

Also, the real issue here is being lost.

These guys (and that’s what they are – GUYS) were Shot For Stealing A Dress.

That’s the REAL issue here – not what pronouns the Washington Post’s crime reporter uses!

I’m sure if you called these men “he” but Didn’t Shoot Them, they would prefer that to being called “she” and being shot over a dress!

This is one of the main reasons why Political Correctness is so destructive!

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

NBC Washington shows what happens when news outlets fail to confirm the correct gender identity of their subjects before publication. The outlet has just posted another story about the two shoplifting suspects who were shot by police near the University of Maryland last Friday. Here's the absurd lede:

Upon closer review, it appears two shoplifting suspects shot by a Prince George's County police officer weren't men, as originally reported, or cross-dressers, as was later reported, but transgender women.

The third time is the charm for NBC, who took four days to get the gender identity of the suspects right. NBC does one better on the Washington Post, at least. The Post first reported that the suspects were women, then reported that they were cross-dressing men, and finally issued the vague and misleading clarification that they were men dressed as women who "were not in disguise."

Apparently, the paper has an aversion to just calling the suspects "transgender women." Interestingly enough, the Post's first iteration—"women"—would have worked just fine. Martin Weil, the Post reporter who wrote the second story on the suspects—the one outing them as "men"—said in an interview that the paper decided to run the story in order to stay competitive with the television news outlets that had reported the suspects' sex as "male."“The police had informed us that the suspects appeared to be men wearing women’s clothing, and we didn’t know too much more about any of the details,” says Weil. “We posted that story on the web so as not to look as if we were totally unaware of the unusual circumstances.”

Weil adds that the original story, which identified the suspects simply as “women,” risked inspiring some gender-related confusion of its own. “When you’re writing about women criminals in the newspaper, it behooves you to be extremely careful, because it alters people’s perceptions of the world,” he says. “When you read about a woman seemingly recklessly dragging a police officer, you get an unusual impression of the range of behaviors that are possible. And maybe it’s an accurate impression. But if it’s not an accurate one, I wanted to correct that in any way that was possible. So I decided, in a burst of enthusiasm, to post that item on the Web early Sunday morning.”

Beyond Weil's enthusiasm for accuracy, the fact remains that “cross-dressing” shoplifters make for more sensational crime suspects than even women do. While women aren't generally seen as criminals, transgender women are often cast in the public eye as fakers, predators, and criminals against humanity—shoplifters or not. Weil says he never meant to capitalize upon the “man in a dress” punchline. “The last intention I had was the demonization of anyone, of any gender, or transgender either,” he says. “I just never thought at the time that they could be transgender. I assumed they must be people in disguise, or people who happen to prefer that mode of dress.”

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a story about two shoplifting suspects who were shot over the weekend by a Prince George's County police officer. The suspects were shot after they attempted to drive away with the officer's arm lodged in the door of their getaway car. But the Post story was not concerned with the facts of this botched escape—the newspaper had already covered the particulars of the incident a day earlier. The follow-up amounted to a lengthy correction of one fact: the gender of the wounded suspects.

In its first story on the suspects, the Post wrote that "an off-duty county officer shot and wounded two women." In the second story, the Post corrected the record: the suspects "turned out to be men rather than women," Staff Writer Martin Weil wrote. Weil explains:

It was believed at first that the two who were shot were women. But they "turned out to be males dressed in female clothing," Officer Henry Tippett, a county police spokesman, said early Sunday.

That finding was apparently made when medical personnel began treating the two for gunshot wounds, Tippett said.

The headline of the story reads "Two Men Shot by Pr. George's Officer Were Dressed as Women." A link to the story goes further to label the pair: "Cross-Dressing Men Shot By Police."

There are two possibilities here:

(a) The suspects were cross-dressing men who had disguised themselves in dresses, wigs, and make-up in order to lift merchandise from a store. Any man can be a cross-dresser—all you gotta do is put on a dress. Or:

(b) The suspects were transgender women who were born with male sex characteristics, but live their lives as women. Transgender women are not guys in dresses—-they're women whose gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. They should be identified as women, not men.

For the Post, the distinction between "cross-dressing men" and "transgender women" is an important one. According to the Associated Press Stylebook, transgender subjects are to be identified by their gender identity, not their sex at birth. Media outlets are to employ "the pronoun preferred by the individuals who . . . present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth," the guide reads. "If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly."

Additionally, the GLAA media guide cautions against using the term "cross-dresser" to describe a transgender person. Cross-dressers, the guide notes, are people who "occasionally wear clothes traditionally associated with people of the other sex." The term should be employed to describe someone who is "comfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth and do not wish to change it," not "someone who has transitioned to live full-time as the other sex, or who intends to do so in the future."

It's not possible, at this point, for the Post to definitively identify the subjects as either "cross-dressers" or "transgender women." One sure-fire way to confirm a person's gender identity is simply to ask them, but the names of the suspects, both 23, have not yet been released by police.

Still, a couple of facts in the story suggest that the suspects in question presented consistently as female, and didn't just dress up "in female clothing" for their little crime spree. Initially, everyone—from the police officer who chased and shot them to the police spokespeople who announced the incident—had no doubt that the suspects were women. The suspects were only identified as biologically male following a medical examination. In short, the Post modified the gender of the suspects solely on the basis of a genital check.

If you're under the impression that a person's genitals should determine the gender used to describe them in print, consider this: Under what other circumstances would the Washington Post force its subjects to drop their pants in order to prove their gender? Let's run that test on some other stories which appeared in yesterday's Metro section. Was Noah Robbins, a 19-year-old local actor headed for Broadway, forced to display his genitals in order to be referred to throughout the piece as "he" and "him"? How about Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell—did the Post ensure that the candidates have penises before calling them "men"? Was Debra Rowe, former HIV/AIDS housing chief, only granted a "she" following a medical examination?

In every other instance, a Post subject is considered a woman if she presents as a woman and says she's a woman. A couple of shoplifting suspects, however, appear to have been denied that courtesy. There are several reasons for the Post not to write this story. The suspects' identities are still unknown. The gender identification in the story is contrary to style guidelines. The Post has reason to believe that the gender terminology employed by the police requires fact-checking. Further information in the case could require yet another gender correction here.

There's one reason why the Post would go ahead with this story: "cross-dressing" shoplifters make for more sensational crime suspects than do a couple of women. The story has already generated such helpful online comments as "Was dey pretty? Does dey gets to wear the dresses in prison? Big dummies," and "One can only hope that their shoes matched their dresses." Perhaps the Post received positive feedback for its previous dubious "cross-dressing shoplifter" work, published back in August. The Post is clearly capitalizing upon a "man in a dress" punchline to this modest little crime story. But obviously, the potential for some sophomoric joking is no reason to sacrifice accuracy in reporting. The true gender identities of the suspects in the case are still unclear. When you're writing a story that is exclusively centered on the gender of your suspects, shouldn't you wait until you can get it right?

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

Remember Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), that rag-tag group of heterosexual activists that just can't seem to find many "ex-gay" people to advocate for? Last we heard from PFOX, the group was celebrating a court decision which said that "ex-gays"—people who were once gay, but are now totally heterosexual—should be covered under the District's sexual orientation protections. PFOX was psyched with the ruling, because it meant that the group could begin to capitalize on protections that have been afforded to the LGBT community (hate crime legislation, anti-discrimination policies, etc.) and open up the possibility of suing on behalf of persecuted "ex-gays."

I've never seen nor heard of an "ex-gay hate crime," but I assume it would involve screaming epithets like "curse you, former homosexual!" while committing an assault, or refusing to hire an employee based on the fact that he doesn't have sex with men like he used to. Alas, the world may never know: Yesterday, PFOX posted a blog entry encouraging supporters to help oppose hate crime legislation in Texas.  A couple of months ago, PFOX was ecstatic that "ex-gays" would finally be protected against discrimination. Now, the group is rallying opposition to those same protections across the country. What gives?

As I detailed in a story a few weeks ago, PFOX doesn't so much advocate for ex-gays as it does advocate against gays. The group's main interest is sabotaging the acceptance of homosexuality by arguing that sexual orientation is changeable, nobody has to be "gay forever," and "ex-gay is okay." PFOX will use whatever tactics available to them to protest the gay movement. When it suits the group's interests, PFOX will celebrate sexual orientation protections. When it doesn't, PFOX will rally the troops by penning sentences like this:

"Oppose Effort to Include Anti-ExGay Hate Crimes in Annual Defense Authorization Bill"

Woo, that is a doozy! Let's try to pick that one apart, shall we? According to PFOX, hate crime laws protecting gays and lesbians themselves constitute hate crimes against ex-gays. Because if you tell people that they can't beat up people because they're gay, you discriminate against the people who beat up gay people because they are gay! It is you who are committing the "anti-ex-gay hate crime," because if people aren't allowed to hate gay people, how will PFOX ever find any ex-gay people? Shame on you all!

Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government is a conservative group which opposes gender identity protections in the state. The group's president, Ruth Jacobs, says stuff like: "“If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” The group's recent written materials, too, strike that special blend of horror, humor, and confusion.

Horrific: In a recent flier, the group refers to Human Rights Campaign staffer Allyson Robinson—a transgender female—as a "male transsexual." I'm beginning to think that these people just indiscriminately pick a gender, tack on a trans term, and run with it:

Funny: The flier then attempted to point supporters to the group's anti-transgender Web site, notmyshower.com—but accidentally sent readers to notmyshower.net:

Hey, I wonder what notmyshower.net is all about?

Would you rather spend an evening wading through right-wing materials on the sanctity of traditional bathroom arrangements, or a German party casino? Downloaden!

—
Confusing: As Jim Kennedy points out at Teach the Facts, this bill was passed a year ago. Live in the now!

Yesterday, CBS CBC News reporter Sarah Liss spent 12 hours of her life reading The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's 509-page sequel to The Da Vinci Code. Only 45 minutes in, Liss comes across this Brown gem:

The act of tattooing one’s skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices …. . . cosmetic surgery, body piercing, bodybuilding, and steroids . . . even bulimia and transgendering.

"Ugh," writes Liss. "Sometimes, Dan Brown, loosely adapting Anthropology 101 texts for fiction just doesn’t work. Also, why do I get the sense you’ve never been tattooed—or met a gender-variant person? Also: 'transgendering' is not a verb."

Allow me to join in here: Fucking Dan Brown.

No, it's not enough for him to casually and unnecessarily refer to transgender people as "addicts." Too subtle. He must also lump them in with a laundry list of other "flesh-altering" sorts—Barry Bonds, people who suffer from life-threatening eating disorders, and dudes with tribal calf tattoos—then top it all off with an offensive make-believe word . . . which millions of people will surely read. God damnit! Fine: Just add it to the dictionary now. But please, don't make Tom Hanks grow his hair out again. I'm begging you.