Think, Think! It Ain't Illegal Yet!

We used to chant this line during Parliament-Funkadelic concerts back in the day. I use it as my signature line on e-mails that I send.

Little did I suspect that the intellectual laziness of some Americans would become so pronounced over the years that there would be a need to actually remind people to do just that.

As the eldest child of a retired educator and a media personality I abhor ignorance. I also abhor disinformation in all forms whether it's inadvertent or deliberate. I have watched in horror over the last 20 years as reason and logic seems to have vacated national policy making, general discourse and politics. In its place we now have a dysfunctional Alice in Wonderland culture.

Or should Orwellian culture be more like it?

How do you explain a man who erased a trillion dollar deficit, helped create a booming economy during the 90's, was respected and admired all over the world and presided over a decade at peace being impeached for lying about oral sex, but a guy who has us bogged down in a Vietnam-style war in Iraq, lied to get us there, outed a CIA operative to get back at her husband and thumbs his nose at the Constitution with aggravatingly annoying regularity isn't?

I don't get it.

Something else that defies logic is how in Hades demonizing gay people came to be called 'Christian' and why African-American ministers who once spoke truth to power now sit in the amen corner with the same white fundamentalist ministers who opposed our civil rights just 40 years ago.

I'm also distressed about some people celebrating ignorance in our culture. Let me 'keep it real' for you peeps. One of the defining values of African-American culture is our pursuit of excellence and education. We were so laser-beam focused on it after emancipation from slavery in 1865 that African-Americans went from a 10% literacy rate mainly concentrated among free Northern Blacks in 1850 to almost 80% by 1880.

But you have some people in our culture who ignorantly equate education and intelligence with 'acting white'. I remember one encounter with a girl in my old neighborhood. She remarked that in her opinion my Queen's English speech pattern was 'speaking white.' I replied to her that 'yo baby' and speaking ebonically, while that's fine when I'm talking trash with my friends in the 'hood wouldn't get me a job in white-dominated corporate America.

It's not just a Black thang either. I've noted the Culture of Ignorance is taking hold with our white brothers and sisters as well, especially those who profess to be fundamentalist Christians. Fundies are using the 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it' bumper sticker line to rationalize their Luddite-like rejection of science. They're homeschooling their kids because the public schools aren't teaching their younglings their 'christian values' of hate and intolerance.

I'm a Christian, but I refuse to turn off my brain when I enter the church sanctuary.

A $27 million dollar monument to ignorance just opened in Petersburg, KY called the Creation Museum. For $19.95 you can watch a high tech show explaining their 'intelligent design' concoction (a renaming of creation science) that the Earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs and man lived and worked side by side.

Hey, sounds like the Flintstones minus Fred, Wilma, Betty, Barney, Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles. Yabba dabba don't waste your time and money. I can get more laughs out of watching the Flintstones while saving some gas. If you really want to see a good museum in that area drive a few more miles up I-75 to Cincinnati and check out the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Okay, let me go back to talking about politics. It's time for our country to be run by the 'A' students again instead of the 'C' one who looks and acts like a 'D' one. I don't know about you, but one of the first things I look for in a president is not whether I can have a beer with them, but if they are smart enough and have enough broad based knowledge to handle the job. If they aren't I want them to be honest enough to recognize that they don't and get peeps who are to help him (or her) make those tough decisions in the areas where their knowledge is lacking.

But there I go again thinking logically.

Hurry up and get here November 4, 2008. There's a National Merit Scholar in the race and a Harvard Law grad who'd make an excellent president that I can't wait to vote for.

Intellectual laziness is dangerous in a democracy. It's the grease that provides the slippery descent to a dictatorship. So think people. Challenge the statements and ludicrous assertions that people make. Trust your intuition. Don't accept everything as the gospel truth that the media tells you. Filter it with logic and reason.

That also goes for what Reverend So-and-So tells you as well and be prepared to call out the TransGriot if I slip up. My voracious reading habits are a source of pride for me. I'm blessed with an intellectual curiosity that constantly thirsts to be satisfied with knowledge. It has me asking the who, what, when, where and why questions on a regular basis. My most admired people include intellectuals like Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Julianne Malveaux. I try to back up my posts with links for you to check out my comments but even I miss from time to time.

We all benefit from the free exchange of information and knowledge. It helps our country and democracy grow stronger. Reason and logic helps you do your patriotic duty as an American citizen and cast an informed vote.

So just do it. Think! Do it before it becomes illegal to do so.

African-American/People of Color Transperson Research

Stephen "Arch" Erich, Ph.D., LCSW and Josephine Tittsworth, MSW, LBSW are conducting research on issues related to African-American, Hispanic, and others of color transgenders in relation to their Life, Satisfaction and Self Esteem.

We are collecting this information in order to examine Life Satisfaction issues related to the individual's personal life style and also the person's relation to family issues. We are also wanting to see if there is any correlation between Life Satisfaction and Self Esteem. I hope you will participate in the furthering of educating society on issues related to the transgender.

Stephen "Arch" Erich, Ph.D., LCSW has researched gay adoption extensively in the past and has been within the past four years researching issues important to the transgender community. He is the Director of the Social Work Program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Josephine Tittsworth, MSW, LBSW is an activist and researcher within the transgender community. She is the Research Chair for NTAC and has served on the board of directors of many transgender organizations. She is a post-op transsexual. She is currently a doctorial candidate at the University of Houston.

They request that if you wish to participate that you email Arch at erich@uhcl.edu to request the survey questionnaire. If you have any questions you can also call him at (281)283-3388

Please participate and help further the knowledge base on transgender issues.

J. P. Tittsworth, MSW, LBSW, AA; NTAC Board of Directors, Research Chair; GCSW-SA Senator; SGA Social Work Senator

UCLA Research Suggests That Sexual Identity Is 'Hard-Wired' Before Birth

UCLA Scientists Find Genes Organize Male and Female Brains Differently; Research Suggests That Sexual Identity Is 'Hard-Wired' Before Birth

Refuting 30 years of scientific theory that solely credits hormones for brain development, UCLA scientists have identified 54 genes that may explain the different organization of male and female brains.

Published in the October edition of the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery suggests that sexual identity is hard-wired into the brain before birth and may offer physicians a tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia.

"Our findings may help answer an important question - why do we feel male or female?" explained Dr. Eric Vilain, assistant professor of human genetics and urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a pediatrician at UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital. "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome."

Since the 1970s, scientists have believed that estrogen and testosterone were wholly responsible for sexually organizing the brain. In other words, a fetal brain simply needed to produce more testosterone to become male. Recent evidence, however, indicates that hormones cannot explain everything about the sexual differences between male and female brains.

Vilain and his colleagues explored whether genetic influences could explain the variations between male and female brains. Using two genetic testing methods, they compared the production of genes in male and female brains in embryonic mice - long before the animals developed sex organs.

To their surprise, the researchers found 54 genes produced in different amounts in male and female mouse brains, prior to hormonal influence. Eighteen of the genes were produced at higher levels in the male brains; 36 were produced at higher levels in the female brains.

"We didn't expect to find genetic differences between the sexes' brains," admitted Vilain. "But we discovered that the male and female brains differed in many measurable ways, including anatomy and function."

In one intriguing example, the two hemispheres of the brain appeared more symmetrical in females than in males. According to Vilain, the symmetry may improve communication between both sides of the brain, leading to enhanced verbal expressiveness in females.

"This anatomical difference may explain why women can sometimes articulate their feelings more easily than men," he said.

Overall, the UCLA team's findings counter the theory that only hormones are responsible for organizing the brain.

"Our research implies that genes account for some of the differences between male and female brains," noted Vilain. "We believe that one's genes, hormones and environment exert a combined influence on sexual brain development."

The scientists will pursue further studies to distinguish specific roles in the brain's sexual maturation for each of the 54 different genes they identified. What their research reveals may provide insight into how the brain determines gender identity.

"Our findings may explain why we feel male or female, regardless of our actual anatomy," said Vilain. "These discoveries lend credence to the idea that being transgender --- feeling that one has been born into the body of the wrong sex -- is a state of mind.

"From previous studies, we know that transgender persons possess normal hormonal levels," he added. "Their gender identity likely will be explained by some of the genes we discovered."

Vilain's findings on the brain's sex genes may also ease the plight of parents of intersex infants, and help their physicians to assign gender with greater accuracy. Mild cases of malformed genitalia occur in 1 percent of all births - about 3 million cases. More severe cases - where doctors can't inform parents whether they had a boy or girl -- occur in one in 3,000 births.

"If physicians could predict the gender of newborns with ambiguous genitalia at birth, we would make less mistakes in gender assignment," said Vilain.

Lastly, Vilain proposes that the UCLA findings may help to explain the origin of homosexuality.

"It's quite possible that sexual identity and physical attraction is 'hard-wired' by the brain," he noted. "If we accept this concept, we must dismiss the myth that homosexuality is a 'choice' and examine our civil legal system accordingly."

The UCLA study was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation and with start-up funds from the UCLA Department of Urology. Vilain's co-authors included Phoebe Dewing, Steve Horvath and Tao Shi, all of UCLA.

Identity Construction Among Transgender People Of Color Study

TransGriot note: I met Kylan during TSTBC 2005 and have participated in his research project. There is a huge need to get information out there about African-American transgender peeps and other t-peeps of color.

f you are a trans identified person of color I would love to hear from you and have you share your experiences. I will be traveling the US (Midwest, West Coast, and Southwest) and Vancouver, Canada in May and June, as well as New York in August. I will also be conducting phone interviews over the next year.

I am a FtM, queer, and anti-racist identified graduate student in Sociology at SIUC. My research is in the area of gender and racial stratification, how this is experienced in the transgender communities, and how this affects perceptions of self.

My research project is called "Identity Construction Among Transgender People of Color". If you have any questions about me or my research please contact me at kylan.devries@gmail.com or my faculty advisor, Professor Rob Benford at rbenford@siu.edu

This research explores the stories/narratives of Trans People of Color
(inclusive term to include all identities on the transgender
spectrum), how you perceive yourself, and how others perceive you. I am particularly interested in how racial identity affects perception of self during and after transitioning (I recognize that transitioning is subjective and may not have an end for some). Participation is completely voluntary and confidential

To participate please contact me:
Kylan M. de Vries
kylan.devries@gmail.com or kylan33@siu.edu
(618) 303-4767


This project has been reviewed and approved by the SIUC Human Subjects Committee. Questions concerning your rights as a participant in this research may be addressed to the Committee Chairperson, Office of Research Development and Administration, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901-4709. Phone (618) 453-4533. E-mail: siuhsc@siu.edu

'Transgender' Category Needed For The 2010 US Census

When I graduated from high school in 1980 my first job was working during that hot Houston summer as an enumerator for the decennial US census.

It wasn't just any old summer job. They didn't have to tell me that in my training class. I knew how important it was. The population stats I was helping to gather would determine congressional seat allocations, how much federal funding was allocated to my hometown and determine the population of Houston, Harris County, Texas and the United States for the next ten years. I used 1910 Census data a decade later to cross check the accuracy of my genealogical research on the family tree I was compiling for my father's side of the family.

In 2000 the US Census for the first time allowed people to check multiple racial categories to more accurately count and document the people who have biracial status.

In 2010 I'm proposing another change to the US census: Adding a 'transgender' category to the options available to define yourself.

Over the last decade we've had a serious debate between the transgender community and the psychiatric one about the actual prevalence of transsexualism. Psychiatrists have long claimed that male-to-female transsexualism is extremely rare, occurring in only one in every 30,000 males and 1 in 100,000 females and that figure is often quoted. It's even quoted in the recent C-J article Angie Fenton wrote about me and Dawn.


However, Professor Lynn Conway of the University of Michigan challenges that figure by saying, "It’s way too small, perhaps by a factor of 100.”

Simple observation by transpeople tells us that something is amiss with those numbers. In my high school gifted and talented class of 70 people I have a transman in it. That's the one I actually know about. There may be others in my class I DON'T know about and the total number of graduates in my high school class was 700. If the 1 in 30,000 number were correct then that other transperson shouldn't exist.

By counting the number of surgeries performed over the years, Dr. Conway estimates there are as of 2005 at least 40,000 postoperative trans women in the U.S. These women have transitioned out of a population of roughly 100,000,000 adult males*. Simple division reveals that at least one in every 2500 people born as males here has undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRS): i.e., ~ 40,000/100,000,000 = 1/2500.

However, something on the order of 5 times as many people inherently experience transsexualism than those who have already undergone sex reassignment.

That has led Dr. Conway to conclude the inherent condition occurs in at least one in every 500 children born as males. Note that this figure of 1 in 500 is a "lower bound" on the prevalence of transsexualism (intense gender dysphoria), and the actual value could be higher. Her hypothesis was tested by researchers using her methods in Thailand, India, Great Britain and Malaysia who came up with roughly the same ratio.

“Those are still small numbers, but transsexualism is certainly not ‘extremely rare’”, Dr. Conway says.

After revealing that psychiatrists have vastly underestimated the prevalence of transsexualism for many decades, Conway asks: “Can’t psychiatrists count?

So since they can't count, let's settle the debate by adding transgender as a category on the upcoming United States Census in 2010.

It'll be an uphill battle to do so. Our right-wing opponents don't want us to have those hard numbers to point to so that they can continue to marginalize and demonize us. The psychiatric community wants to perpetuate the 1 in 30,000 myth as well. Even some transpeople would rather not see the more realistic numbers be proven as fact because in their eyes they won't be as 'special' any more.

Sorry peeps, this inquiring mind and others want to know exactly how many transpeeps are inside the borders of the United States. It's past time we ended the speculation and get those precise numbers.

Feeling the Gender Gap Firsthand

Having Worked in Science as a Man and a Woman, Ben Barres Has Experienced Its Gender Divide From Both Sides
By JUJU CHANG
From ABC News.com

Sept. 27, 2006 — Ben Barres is a world-renowned neurobiologist, whose quiet demeanor is off-set by the twinkle of intensity in his eyes.

With an M.D. from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. from Harvard, Barres is a respected scientist who is known on the Stanford University campus as a great mentor, especially to women.

Barres, a staunch feminist, is deeply offended by the insinuation that women are less talented in science. That may be because Ben Barres spent 40 years of his life as Barbara Barres.

Growing up, Barbara Barres was a tomboy and math whiz who wound up at MIT, despite the fact that her high school guidance counselor discouraged her from applying there.

It was the 1970s, when only 11 percent of MIT's students were women, and Barres described the atmosphere as occasionally sexist.

Once, Barbara Barres solved an equation the professor had designed to stump the class, and was the only one who got it right. But the professor didn't believe a woman could solve the puzzle.

"He looked at me with sort of this disdainful look and said, 'Well, your boyfriend must have solved that for you,'" Barres recalled.

Barbara Barres didn't get credit. And yet, it was the accusation of cheating that got under her skin, not the blatant sexism.

"It was only years and years later that it occurred to me, 'Gee, this was sexism,'" Barres said.

It's possible the sexism didn't register because Barbara Barres never really identified with women. "I certainly did not feel comfortable wearing makeup, wearing jewelry. High heels, things like that, were agony," Barres said. Ironically, the only problem she couldn't solve was deeply personal.

As Barbara Barres in college, she dated only briefly, Barres said. "If anything, I have weak attractions to men. But I really don't have strong attractions to either sex," Barres said, describing himself now as a contented bachelor. His passion, aside from science, is roasting his own coffee, which fills his kitchen with a rich aroma.

Receiving More Accolades as a Man

Today Ben Barres seems comfortable in his skin, but his was a long journey toward self-discovery. It took a breast cancer scare and a mastectomy when Ben was still Barbara to make Barbara realize she'd been living in the wrong body for 40 years.

"I remember that my doctor was kind of horrified at my suggestion that he cut 'em both off while he was at it, and another doctor, a year later, saying, 'Well, don't you want to have reconstructive surgery now?' And I was like, 'No, I am not gonna let anybody put those things back on me.'"

It's been 10 years since Barbara Barres became Ben Barres, with hormones and surgery. And Barres' unique perspective has turned him into a fervent crusader in the debate over whether gender matters in science. In one of the first lectures after his sex change, Barres spoke at MIT.

"Afterward, somebody who was familiar with the work of Barbara Barres apparently was heard to comment, 'Gee, that Ben Barres' work is so much better than his sister's.'" The person said this, evidently not realizing that Ben and Barbara were the same person.

That's a telling anecdote about the way men and women are perceived in the field of science. "There is a presumption that work being done by a man is better than work being done by a woman," said Barres.

When former Harvard president Lawrence Summers caused a firestorm last year by suggesting that women are less innately talented in science than men, Barres called it verbal violence and felt he had to speak up.

"If people treat women as if they are less good, that treatment in itself causes them to be less confident, to choose to leave science," Barres said, adding, "I am always amazed when Larry Summers and others make this comment, because it so flies in the face of the data. A little bit less arrogance would go a long way."

In an impassioned response just published in the journal Nature, Barres references a slew of academic studies that found that women who applied for grants had to do more than twice as much work as men did, and that women at MIT were not getting equal resources, such as lab space.

His point: The gender gap in science has less to do with subtle differences in brain power and much more to do with bias.

Last week, a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences said women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and "outmoded institutional structures."

The report recommends altering procedures for hiring and evaluating scientists, changing typical timetables for tenure and promotion, and providing more support for working parents.


Barres helps to fight bias by lending his hand to the respected Pioneer Award program, the National Institutes of Health's most prestigious prize. As a judge, he worked to make the application process more open, which led to important results.

Barres said the number of women and minority winners shot up from zero percent to nearly 40 percent. "The very best part was that we only discussed who was the best scientist and what was the best science."

And in Barres' perfect world, that's all that should matter.

October 2006 TransGriot Column

‘Intelligent Design’ Is A GLBT Issue
Copyright 2006, THE LETTER


One of the things that pisses me off (besides Shirley Q. Liquor and the state of our nation) is when GLBT peeps toss out the ‘that isn’t a GLBT issue’ line to avoid thinking about various subjects or discussing sensitive ones such as racism in the GLBT community.

Over the last decade, scientists and educators have been fighting a pitched battle against ‘intelligent design‘. American fundamentalists have always poured Hateraid on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ and a century of scientific evidence supporting Darwin didn’t change their fundamental goal of eliminating it from public education. With the rise of the Religious Right in the early 80’s they allied themselves with those folks and developed the Creation Science/Intelligent Design argument as a slickly packaged attack on Darwin. Their attempts to inject intelligent design into public school curriculums have created federal court clashes in Louisiana, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.

Creation science is based on the biblical Book of Genesis and asserts that the earth is only 6000 years old. When it ran into resistance from the scientific, education, religious and legal communities it got respun into what is currently called ‘intelligent design.’ The gist of it is that life is so complex it couldn’t possibly have arisen from uncontrolled natural events.

Tell that to the Vatican’s chief astronomer, the Rev. George Cloyne. According to the Italian news agency ANSA, Father Cloyne stated that intelligent design "isn't science, even though it pretends to be." He argued that if it is to be taught in schools, then it should be taught in religion or cultural history classes, but not in a science curriculum.

Federal district judge John Jones agreed. In a court case initiated by eleven Dover, Pennsylvania parents angered by their local school board's decision to implement teaching of intelligent design, the Bush-appointed Lutheran judge in a 138-page opinion ruled in December 2005 that it was ‘a mere relabeling of creationism," intended to get around the 1987 judicial ban on teaching creationism as science in public schools. He also called it a "breathtaking inanity" that fails the test as science, castigated its proponents and said Dover's students, parents and teachers "deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom."

Those eight board members were all replaced in the November 2005 school board elections. Unfortunately the peeps in Kansas didn’t get Judge Jones’ message. Their conservative controlled State Board of Education recently mandated that intelligent design be taught in science classes there.

So what does this have to do with the GLBT community? As citizens we need to be paying attention to the composition of our school boards and what happens there. Formations of Gay-Straight clubs or combating bullying shouldn’t be our only involvement in public schools. In the face of studies that show US kids falling behind nations such as India and Japan we need more fact-based science curriculums in place, not faith based ones.

It’s also in the GLBT community’s best interests to ensure that quality public school education is widely available and continues to serve a diverse population of students and support those folks who fight to make that idea a reality. It’s no surprise that the anti-public education folks and the intelligent design proponents have the common thread of being bankrolled and supported by our fundamentalist opponents.

It is also only a matter of time before the reams of research being generated by the completion of the Human Genome Project blows up the major Religious Right attack argument that being gay is ‘a choice’. The Nazis began their persecution of Jews by using bogus theories and disseminating them as scientific facts. That propaganda has been repackaged by our opponents to attack the GLBT community and needs to be refuted ASAP. The scientific community will play an important role in that effort.

A minority group has to seize opportunities to build coalitions with other advocacy groups because we can’t do it alone. If we want help in the GLBT civil rights struggle with the radical fundies, then we must help others who are similarly besieged by them.