Argentina's Gender Identity Law Being Debated Tomorrow

When same gender marriage was passed last year in Argentina, the GL groups there in the wake of their happiness over its passage and being signed into law July 21 by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner uttered a bitterly familiar phrase to the transpeople left behind legislatively.

We've heard it said over and over in the United States and Canada but have seen them fail repeatedly to live up to it:  We'll come back for you.

Looks like the Argentine GL groups meant what they said.   

There is not only a push to get Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner reelected to another term in the upcoming October 23 election, they are pushing a Gender Identity Law on behalf of the trans community.

The Argentine Congress will begin debate tomorrow on a proposed gender identity law that if passed, would allow anyone to correct his or her name, gender and image registration in all public records through a quick and simple procedure.   

The current policy in Argentina is for trans people who wish to have government ID that reflects their name and gender presentation to get the changes to them done via a judge's ruling.   While our transpeople do occasionally win these court hearings, it can be a lengthy, costly and frustrating process if they have to appeal adverse rulings.

Because they have been trying since 2007 to get this bill through Congress and it keeps getting stuck in the Argentine Senate, in advance of tomorrow's upcoming debate,  FALGBT, the Argentinian Federation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans people and the ATTTA (Asociación de Travestis, Transexuales y Transgéneros de Argentina) launched an informational campaign entitled 'Identitad:  Direcho de ser.'  (Identity: The Right to Be in English)  complete with this video.



Best of luck to our trans brothers and sisters in Argentina and hope I have positive news to report soon from our South American trans cousins 


H/T xQSi Magazine  

Another Day, Another WWBT Lie Debunked

One of the lies the WWBTs have been loudly and incorrectly trying to pimp is that the transgender umbrella term was forced onto the trans community against our will by crossdressers, or in WWBT speak, the Transgender Borg.


Since I grew up in the 70's I recalled reading the 'transgender' term in many of the articles I'd clipped or read on transsexuality during the 80's, and remembered the debates about the issue in the late 80's-early 90's

I've pointed out that it was transsexuals who advocated that the community use this term because they correctly argued that we shouldn't be defining ourselves and our community, much less be advocating for civil rights coverage using a term created by the medical community to define us.

So I was pleased to read this Ehipassiko post of Cristan's pointing out the 'transgender term had been in use since the mid 1970's and popped up in a 1985 newspaper interview given by none other than the first well known United States transsexual, the late Christine Jorgenson.

Let's take a trip back in time to December 18, 1985 and peruse what Christine Jorgenson had to say about the word 'transsexual'.

The word transsexual irks Jorgenson because the word sex, she believes is only relevant to what one does in bed.. "I am a transgender because gender refers to who you are as a human being."

People who think they wish to switch sexes can go to 'gender identity clinics' where it can determined if they really do want to take the plunge, says Jorgenson.

Daaayum.   The world's most famous trans person identified as transgender, and oh yeah, she's post operative to boot.

After Cristan pimps slaps them with several more newspaper article clippings she summarizes her post with this comment:

So, can we please stop with the whole “crossdressers pushed that identity on us” stuff? The word was obviously used by clinicians in the 1970s, in the mass-media by transsexuals in the early 80s and then used to describe transsexuals by media in the late 1980s. Our culture was obviously using the term to talk about atypical expressions of gender, concepts of having gender neutrality, cross-gender expression and transsexuality since the 1970s. 

Sadly, I don't think the Transsexual Taliban will cease and desist with their increasingly debunked lies. 

Forcing Boys To Perform Masculinity

TransGriot Note:  Another post from Renee, the distinguished editor of Womanist Musings

I love to paint my nails.  Right now they are an awesome lime green.  Every time I pull out my nail polish, Mayhem stares at my hands and asks me if he can touch them when they are dry. One day he finally built up the courage to ask if I would paint his nails too.  Of course I had no problem with that, and I let him pick the colour he wanted.  The unhusband received praise from our friends for allowing his son to walk around with painted nails.  This irritated me to no end, but I took it in stride. Is it any wonder that kids learn that certain things are for girls when fathers are complemented for allowing their sons to explore?

When Monday rolled around, Mayhem asked that I remove his nail polish, because he didn't want to be laughed at, at school.  He told me that a lot of people think that nail polish is for girls, and because he is a boy, that they would laugh at him.  My heart broke for him, but I took the nail polish off as he requested.  The weekend rolled around and on Friday night, Mayhem once again asked if I would paint his nails, and if he could pick the colour again.  We sat down and he patiently waited for his nails to dry.  Throughout the weekend, he went to the park to play with his friends, but on Sunday night he once again asked that I take off his nail polish.  He told me that people laughed at him, and called him a girl at the park and that it made him mad.

The next day when he came home from school, he noticed that I had not bothered to put any makeup on.  "Your lips look regular mom," he said. I told him that I was not wearing any lip gloss today and he asked me if lip gloss and lip stick are only for girls?  I told him that boys can wear anything that they want, but because some people are silly and only believe that girls should wear this, that should he choose to do so outside of the house, that some people would tease him.  He put his head down and said okay, but I could see that he was sad.  For Mayhem, wearing makeup is about play.  He loves vibrant, bright colours and it is just part of an expression of who he is.

What he is learning by this whole experience is that breaking the gender binary in any way comes with social discipline.  He knows that his home is a safe space, and that he can be who he wants to be, but acceptance has limits outside of his home. In my mind, this answers the nature vs nurture debate.  Social discipline is how we force people to conform and perform gender in the manner in which we have normalized.  If a six year old boy cannot wear nail polish or play with his mother's makeup without worrying about being teased and attacked, then the very idea that boys are born with an innate desire to perform certain behaviours is wrong.

Mayhem has 12 days of school left, and I know that his summer vacation will be spent exploring, playing and generally speaking having fun, that is when he is not busy trying to increase my grey hair.  During that time, he will get a reprieve from the pressure to perform masculinity in a specific way, because all his father and I care about is his happiness and safety. Some boys don't even have the safe space that Mayhem has because of gay and trans panic. If we really believe that childhood is a protected class, we would not invest as much time as we do into the gender binary, because it is limiting and hurtful.  Children should feel free to express themselves and to investigate the world in safe ways.

Forced Child Masculinization In Malaysia?

Was alarmed to hear about this revolting development coming out of Malaysia.   

66 kids deemed by their teachers as 'effeminate' boys were taken out of their classrooms and sent to four day government sponsored boot camps in which they will try to 'indoctrinate away the trans and gay'.   The camps will involve physical training and teaching "masculine behavior" to keep them on the "right" path.

Umm hmm.   Who's to say they aren't on the 'right path' now?   

Besides, I know a bunch of people in this community who got GI Joes, Hot Wheels cars and toy guns for Christmas, were all district performers in football and other various sports, Boy Scouts, joined the military and still transitioned.

There are people I know who had 'masculine childhoods that are so far out of the rainbow closet a Navy SEAL team couldn't shove them back in.

Malaysian activists have tried to shut down the camps but so far have failed in their attempts to do so.  Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has turned a deaf ear to public outcry over the masculinization camps, which violate the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Malaysian Child Act of 2001  

The stated purpose of the Child Act is to protect children "in all circumstances without regard to distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, social origin or physical, mental or emotional disabilities or any other status."

Forcibly sending effeminate kids to a four day camp in order to keep them on the subjectively deemed by some adult 'right gender path' could be counterproductive to the health and welfare of the kids stigmatized by being sent to these camps in the first place.


Let's just hope that Prime Minister Razak sees the light and stops this idiotic program.