Transgender athletes

After all of the recent headlines about the acceptance of transgender athletes (Kye Allums, Keelin Godsey, LPGA's inclusion of transgender athletes, etc.), I decided to do some research on the actual policies that govern participation.

There are three main levels of policies:
1. Olympic (IOC) and professional sports, which are the most restrictive and controversial of the three, requiring hormone treatment as well as genital reassignment surgery.
2. College sports, which rely on hormone treatment.
3. High school sports, which is the most open of the three, requiring neither hormone treatment nor genital reassignment surgery.

There isn't one policy that covers high school or college sports, rather a set of recommended policies that must be taken up by individual schools.

Policies governing Olympic and professional sports are also implemented within each individual organization.

Anyway, this takes an in depth look at high school and college sports:
http://www.nclrights.org/site/DocServer/TransgenderStudentAthleteReport.pdf?docID=7901

LPGA

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-lpga-transgender

Trans acceptance in basketball?

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/Transgender-George-Washington-player-a-fascinati?urn=ncaab-282180
I don't try to be negative, but I just like to question the actual "progress" being made in moments like these. I guess it is a slow transition that must be made, but one has to ask whether the acceptance merely comes from the fact that, at this point, Kye Allums can be a man on the team as long as he still looks like a "woman". Once any physical transition takes place, he will no longer be able to play on the team. I find it extremely problematic that the individual is not really viewed as transgender, or of the opposite gender, until they physical represent that gender. I believe that the acceptance, or lack of acceptance, comes from how much of a threat the individual is to the game. Since Kye has no "biological advantage" over the women at this point, he is not a threat and can remain on the team. In contrast, one can examine the controversy over runner Caster Semenya in terms of the same argument. Because it is socially and historically accepted that men are stronger and better at sports, the possibility of someone on a women's team being a man, or intersex, is too threatening and must be proven to be a woman. We unfortunately live in an "I'll believe it when I see it" mentality and until we get out of that rut, we can't expect too much progress, least of which in the world of sports.

The Click List

The Click List: Top 10 Videos is a countdown show on LOGO featuring music videos by LGBT artists. The majority of the videos are quite difficult to watch. They are pretty over-the-top in a DIY sort of way in that the quality of the videos and sets are very amature with overly dramatic lipsyncing and magnified movements. The music is pretty bad, most of which consist of lyrics about (homo)sexuality and are backed by techno/club beats. My feelings toward this show are quite ambivalent. However, based on my first experience I can say that I am fairly disappointed in the fact that all of the videos on the list are by presumably gay men with the inclusion of the occasional transwoman. Anyway, here's one of the more intriguing videos on the list.

Antony interview (excerpt)

GROSS: I’d like to talk with you a little bit about gender. You describe yourself as transgender. What does that mean to you?

HEGARTY: Well, you know, it’s pretty simple. I don’t identify as a man. I identify as transgender, you know? I mean, it’s a pretty typical phenomenon. There’s probably transgender people in most families, somewhere around the line. Usually exhibits…

(Soundbite of laughter)

HEGARTY: Its symptoms, like, by the age of five or something, you know that your alignment is subtly or very overtly different than the kids that may be around you. I always aligned more with my mother and my mother’s side. And my pursuits and interests as a really young kid were more creative and always leaning more toward the feminine side as opposed to towards the masculine side of activities. So, it’s really as simple as that, you know? I made a choice to, sort of, really spell it out for people, especially since I’m not someone that is transitioned to—towards anything, really. I’m just sort of in a process of embracing myself as a transgender person and presenting myself, you know, as I am…

GROSS: You mean as opposed to having a sex-change operation to surgically alter yourself?

HEGARTY: No, not necessarily. That’s not what I meant. But you know, it could be more subtle than that. You know, I mean, I think people tend to be really obsessed with transgender people’s physical configurations. But transgender is a condition of the spirit, you know? There’s something very reductive that tends to occur in perceiving transgender people and even gay people, in that society tends to want to reduce them, in almost a crude way, around an obsession with their sexuality or even their genital configuration, which has—there’s a kind of a cruelty to that, when, in fact, what we are dealing with is people whose spirits are different.

And it’s much more subtle and there’s a lot more potential there within each of those children and within each of those adults that remains unacknowledged and sometimes even unexplored, because people, even individuals, fall victim to society’s impression of them or society’s reduction of them. And what you tend to notice about a transgender kid, you know, they’re usually the ones that are kind of dancing by themselves in a little circle of light, and they see colors more brightly, and they’re very sensitive to the feelings of kids, other kids, and adults around them. And my suggestion is that they have a little gift inside their hearts that could be a real asset within the family. And I think that’s true of gay kids, too, you know?

Revisiting a giant

Patterns

Wild Side

So I just came across this clip for the first time?!!! It's probably one of the most emotional 2 minutes and 24 seconds that I have experienced in a LONG time. I NEED to find this movie. Trip to Amoeba anyone?

The Burial Series #8 (The Surrogates)

Helium Bodies

We walked toward the sky
When our only desire was to dig our toes in the dirt
We sought stability
But our flags caught the wind
Carried us away with dreams of unslanted grounds

We wore our banners like capes
Covered in every color but white
Flew overhead so that we could see the city grid
And wondered why gravity couldn't pull us down

Made it!

www.thetransitionproject.weebly.com

The opposite of standing still is...crawling?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/state_eases_rules_on_changing.html

While it is an improvement, there are, of course, still some problems with this new policy. I guess we should just embrace that change is indeed occurring.

Next up: not needing a note from a doctor saying you are "in the process of gender transition"!
And then maybe deleting sex from the passport altogether. It serves no purpose.

Love Love Love

The Burial Series #7 (The Spirit Medium)

Beautiful!

Saw this on someone's blog and fell in love!

Some sketches

Hmmmm.....

I just found out about this show... It's exciting but I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. However, the website does have some very useful and informative links, which is a huge plus!

http://www.vh1.com/shows/transform_me/series.jhtml

FYI

Dear Tyra Banks,

If someone is a transgender woman and blatantly states that she identifies as female and always has, you do not ask her boyfriend if he considers himself gay or bisexual.

-David Gutierrez

"Ain't I a Woman?"

We are the soldiers of discourse

We ran when no one was chasing us
Looked for things that didn't exist
We punched through walls
And leaped over fences

We bound different parts of our bodies
Hid things that didn't belong
We humored ourselves with thoughts of being whole
Because we knew something could be done

We disguised our fear as strength
And marched through the desert in jungle camouflage