In her column last week in San Diego LGBT Weekly (issue 113, Feb. 14) Ms. Autumn Sandeen went off on RuPaul and others for using the word “tranny.” Ms. Sandeen even actually attacked RuPaul as “trans-negative” and that the word “tranny” was offensive. To whom, Ms. Sandeen? The facts are that our GLBT community uses…
I own a butterfly kite. It’s has an ombré color fade from blue to purple in the wings, as well as a pair of 50-foot long rainbow tails. When the wind is blowing and it’s in the air it’s quite a sight to see – the wings even appear to flap in the wind. Last…
I want to love RuPaul as a drag performer for his trans-positive actions, yet I find I can’t because of his trans-negative statements. I can’t quite reconcile my mixed feelings about him. RuPaul’s Drag Race (on Logo’s basic cable channel) has had three transgender contestants on it. Two of those contestants came out as trans…
Feb. 6 2003, I went to my place of employment as Autumn for the first time. As many already know, I served in the U.S. Navy from 1980 through 2000. I’m a retired, disabled, Persian Gulf War veteran; my disabilities are service connected and my Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability rating is 100 percent….
Last September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill protecting LGBT youth from the psychological abuse of reparative therapy (sometimes referred to as conversion therapy). SB 1172, due to a temporary injunction by the federal courts, isn’t currently being enforced. The Liberty Counsel argued for three plaintiffs who practiced reparative therapy that implementation of the law…
The media often facilitates the barriers in the way of tolerance of trans people in broader society, and sometimes are the barriers themselves. One recent example is from Great Britain. Columnist Suzanne Moore wrote an article entitled Seeing Red: The Power Of Female Anger for the British newsmagazine The New Statesman speaking to how women…
There is a measure by which we’ll be able to judge current secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel’s support for the LGBT community that I haven’t seen mentioned yet in discussions. Should Sen. Hagel be confirmed as secretary of defense, his legacy on open service for transgender servicemembers will be a plumb line measure for…
Nov. 2 2012 I received a letter from the California Department of Public Health, Vital Records. In that letter came proof that I was “born again.” I was born female. You see, the gender listed on my original birth certificate was male, and my name was my given, male name. The gender listed on the…
The evening I’m writing this column is an evening after a day spent fishing at Lake Cuyamaca. I haven’t been fishing in more than three years. The last time I went fishing was March 2009, which was the month before I went to Greeley, Colo. to cover the Angie Zapata hate crime murder trial. Before…
Saturday, Dec. 2, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced that their governing body has voted to replace Gender Identity Disorder (GID) with Gender Dysphoria (GD). It’s a milestone for transgender and transsexual people, as well as for those who identify as both transgender and transsexual; the decision has medical, political and psychiatric implications. From a…
