Buy Girl Scout Cookies With Authority

Normally I try to avoid putting stuff that isn't really related to trans men directly on this blog (mostly because I'm aware the other stories I put here tend to be biased in ways I'm not comfortable with), but... well...

Buy Girl Scout cookies this year.  If you don't have other reasons for not doing so, anyway.

It's a good program.  And it's actually girl-centered rather than cis-girl-centered.  It's inclusive.  It's not the Boy Scouts.  Also I worked for them for a long time.

I'm not particularly worried about them, to be honest... the fact is, when that group disbanded to form a different group, they joined the same organization that was created because the Girl Scouts made mention of "God" in the promise optional.  So they were assholes to begin with.

Just saying, buy Girl Scout cookies.

Australian trans men no longer need bottom surgery for recogintion.

First off, a "Gender Reassignment Board?"  Jesus!

Two trans men in Australia appealed a decision the Western Australia state Gender Reassignment Board made that they could not be recognized as male because they had not had sex reassignment surgery, and won because gendered characteristics are (to quote the ruling) "confined to external physical characteristics that are socially recognisable" and not stuff most people don't see, anyway.

In today's appalling trans male news...

Occupy Wall Street: NYPD Chains Trans Man to Jail Restroom for Eight Hours

From the article:

A transgender man arrested Saturday as part of the Occupy Wall Street protest at the Brooklyn Bridge was verbally and physically humiliated by the New York Police Department (NYPD), including being inappropriately patted-​down, segregated from other arrested persons, refused repeated requests for food — despite the fact that other prisoners were fed — and chained for eight hours to the wall of a restroom in an NYC jail, according to a statement he released.

Browsing Hulu...

Found this:

Which I'm sure most of you won't care about, but my family watches DWTS so, well, there you go.  And yes, I'll be rooting for Chaz.

My Therapist Talks To My Spirit Guides, Also Dreams

So, I am a Pagan spiritualist.  Did I mention that already?  Well, it's true. Mostly I work with rocks because my God is a God of infertility and I can't work with plants very well.  But anyway, this came up at my therapy session and my therapist, who is an energy worker, said she wanted to try some energy work with me.  And I consented.

I'm not saying I regret it, and I like her a lot as a therapist, but honestly pretty much everything she told me was stuff we'd talked about at my third session.  Namely that I have been trying to transition into a different clothing style, but I trip up for... well, pretty silly reasons.  So basically a lot of "pay more attention to your personal appearance" stuff which was actually kind of my idea.  But, well, I'll take it as motivation to continue on this quest anyway.

Some relevant recent crap.

It's been kind of stressful lately what with the ridiculous amount of transphobia out there and the ridiculous amount of people saying they aren't transphobic because women are incapable of oppression.  My favorite recently was that somebody had made a comic that used trans women as a punch line... not the worst punch line I've ever seen, but a punch line nonetheless.  The author was all upset that people called her "privileged" because people were using the word "privilege" as a weapon against her.  The fact that you can say this, by the way, without most people thinking it is an unreasonable request, is because you have privilege.  Zing!


Recently of course the big issue was a trans woman who was assaulted in a Baltimore McDonalds bathroom while an employee did what any upstanding US citizen would do and taped it to put online while people sat by and laughed.  Of course, talk to most people and it's trans women who are the bathroom predators, so how come I'm not hearing more stories like this in which trans women are the ones doing the beating?  This is not a particularly rare occurrence, either.  But noooo, we need to "protect" cis women because they are perpetual victims.  You know what just put the icing on the cake here?  When the story first broke it didn't mention she was a trans woman because the reporters weren't sure about it, and people were commenting on trans-positive blogs with comments like "The article says she was a woman, not a trans woman!"  Seriously.  People on trans-positive blogs commented that.  Of course the articles said she is a woman.  She is a woman.  And even if she were cis, which she is not, she was clearly assaulted because of a perception of being trans, which is still anti-trans crime.

I believe there is also a petition to McDonalds to hold people accountable (last I heard at least one of the employees was fired, good riddance) at Change.org, but it's been down for me so, well...

Transsexual differences in brain structure...

Found this article today through my feed reader... they've done yet more studies on trans brains to see if the structure more closely resembles brains of cis males or cis females.  We already know that in the brains of dead trans women, there is a difference in the area of the brain called the stria terminalis compared with cis males.  In other words, it's closer to perceived sex.  Interestingly I've seen this study quoted a lot by gay men to justify homosexuality, which is weird because there was no difference between the stria terminalis when it came to sexuality.  This is a relatively old and well-known study, and if I recall right they did do the same on trans men and found similar results.  The brain differences were there regardless of whether or not the trans person in question was on hormones.

But I digress.  They have a new study, two new studies actually, based on four particular areas of the white matter of the human brain in which males and females differ significantly, and in fact it can be done while one is still alive.  One study dealt with trans men, the other with trans women.  In each study, roughly 20 cis men, cis women, and trans people had their brains scanned to look at these four particular areas.

Good luck, Kye Allums

Kye Allums - gwsports.com

You've probably already heard the news.  The NCAA now has its first openly trans member, FTM Kye Allums, who plays for George Washington State and will be allowed to continue playing on the women's team so long as he is not on testosterone.  He is currently a recipient of a scholarship dependent on playing women's basketball.

I get uncomfortable about this sort of thing, and initially I was uncomfortable with this, too.  I think too many transmen have a sense of entitlement when it comes to women's space.  Then I realized I was in the closet working for the Girl Scouts in a female-only position for three years, so hey, hello hypocrisy.