TransLondon Boycott Pride 2009

With good cause it seems. Check out the full report at their website:

'Last year, a successful Pride march was marred at the rally in Trafalgar Square when a number of trans women were denied access to the women's toilets by Pride security stewards. One woman was subsequently sexually assaulted after being told to use the male toilets. Roz Kaveney, one of the women targeted in the 2008 "ToiletGate" incident, explained how she felt Pride London had only ever provided a grudging apology under threat of legal action, and that she felt they had never taken the discrimination against trans women in the 2008 rally seriously.

During the meeting on May 19th 2009, members heard how the democratic and transparent structure used in 2008 to co-ordinate participation of trans groups and the funds made available for transgender attendees, through the elected Trans@Pride committee, has been abolished by Pride London for 2009. Instead, Pride London have imposed their own unelected "representative" for the trans strand. Furthermore, requests for information about funding, how decisions were made and who participated in the decision-making process, have been rebuffed.

Last year, the elected Trans@Pride Committee consulted repeatedly with over a dozen groups and hundreds of individuals over before arranging travel bursaries for trans people to attend from around the country, hosting a breakfast for marchers on the day, commissioning artwork from a local queer artist as a rallying point for trans marchers, producing banners and bunting, arranging trans performers for all of the Pride stages including the main stage in Trafalgar Square and publicising the arrangements widely. In stark contrast, the meeting heard of how Pride London's appointed trans "representative" for 2009 has simply imposed Pride’s vision for trans participation in the march and rally.

The 2009 pride participation is, so we are told, to consist of a float at the very back of the parade which would pander to the most tired and inaccurate media stereotypes of trans people. Trans women would, in Pride's vision, be dressed in sequins, high heels and fairy wings and, apparently as an afterthought, a few trans men would be invited to pose in football strips. The Pride representative explained that the trans float would complement a float at the front of the march with members of the cast of the West End musical, "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". In her vision, onlookers would be delighted to see "Priscilla at the front and Priscilla at the back". As a coup de grace, a visible cordon of security stewards would surround the trans float, ostensibly "for our own protection". '

Autumn Daze

'Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed'

-- John Keats
'Endymion'



It feels like Autumn more than ever. The hot water bottle is back in use, bedsocks are worn, and porridge is on the breakfast menu. Washing days are planned according to the weather forecast and laundry often finishes drying indoors.

We are preparing the house for the cold times ahead. Sowing silverbeet seeds and stocking up on soup supplies, feeling compelled to accumulate large stores of root vegetables and tinned tomatoes. Yesterday we hung a patchwork quilt from the bedroom window to keep the heat in, last week we bought door snakes to stop the draught. We still need thick curtains and rugs for the bare floorboards, and to locate scarves and gloves and warm hats. I'm planning flanellette pj purchases, and checking out slippers in the winter catalogues. My mother gave us pots of bulbs, and I am happen imagining what lies beneath the damp bare earth. Spring will come, but first it is time to hide away and grow.

I'm preparing for the Winter Writing Frenzy too: have added instant coffee to the collection for wee small hours consumption, am storing up chocolate and office supplies, photocopying masses of articles and chapters, ordering in large numbers of books from the library, sorting out folders and files. Its a matter of getting things in order, clearing my desk and my rubbish bin and making sure I have enough staples and highlighters to see me through the dark times.

And so my fur grows thicker, my fat deposits and my cheeks are stuffed with nuts...

NEW WORLD WITHOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT-- NEWSPAPER (Just came across a flyer for this)

Launch Night
7-10pm Wednesday 20th May 2009
Free

@ Little Fish Gallery
22 Enmore Rd Newtown

Performance/ Free Resources/ Snax

www.worldwithout.org

Kitty, Litters

Our beast of a kitty has decided that a certain side of the kitchen floor is the correct place for her to pee when in the house. As opposed to her litter tray, conveniently located a couple of metres away. Its getting beyond a joke...any ideas on how to stop her? Someone suggested cayenne pepper?

Note The Pronouns *SIGH*

Have been trying to formulate some sort of response to this, but have a monster headache so for now here it is as reported by The Age (on SMH website):

'Court lets girl, 17, remove breasts

* Karen Kissane
* May 4, 2009

THE Family Court has allowed a 17-year-old girl to have her breasts removed so she can be more like a boy.

The teenager, code-named "Alex", was on court-ordered hormone medication from the age of 13 to prevent menstruation and breast development. She returned to the court in December 2007 asking for a double mastectomy to make it easier for her to pass as a boy.

The Chief Justice of the Family Court, Diana Bryant, decided it was in the teenager's best interests to have the surgery immediately rather than wait until turning 18. The teenager had been diagnosed with "gender identity dysphoria", a psychological condition in which a person has the normal physical characteristics of one sex but longs to be the opposite sex. Justice Bryant said: "In the end, it wasn't a particularly difficult issue because the only real issue was, 'Would he (Alex) have it at 17 or once he's 18?' Then, he doesn't need permission.

"So the issue was, 'Was there any likelihood he would change his mind in the meantime, and was it in his best interests to have it at that time?'

"Overwhelmingly, the evidence was that it was in his interests. And I made that order. I wanted to make it quickly so that he could have the operation straightaway."

But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini said mainstream medicine did not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He said it was a psychiatric disorder qualifying under American guidelines as a psychosis because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality". "What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief."

The Chief Justice said Alex had not had any urgent plans to proceed with further surgery when he turned 18. She did not make Alex wait for the mastectomies until of age because the teenager had been living as a boy since the age of 13. "Everyone was absolutely adamant that he wasn't going to change his mind. He was very comfortable . . . that he was going to continue on this path."

The written judgement is due to be published soon. Justice Bryant said it was better for the teenager to have the surgery at 17 because this was an age where she would qualify for support from state social services. This was also a crucial time in her development: "It's a year when he's really cementing his friendships with peers that will stand him in good stead for moving into university and the wider world, and it was very important to him that he be able to do that confidently as a boy."

Justice Bryant said having breasts constrained Alex socially. She had to avoid being hugged by friends, could not go to the beach and had to wear binding. "So it was quite an impediment to his social development, which everyone thought was very important." The decision was not irrevocable: "You can have prostheses and things. So if he changed his mind later on, it's reversible."

Justice Bryant said she heard evidence from medical experts and from Alex, her counsellor and an independent children's lawyer, and she called in the Office of the Public Advocate "because I wanted a contradictor". The vidence was overwhelmingly in favour of the surgery, she said.

Mr Tonti-Filippini said he was also concerned that in previous Family Court cases involving gender dysphoria, the medical experts had been confined to a small group of Melbourne doctors who work with sex changes. Mr Tonti-Filippini said a Melbourne man who had had sex-change surgery at 22 was now suing his doctors because he regretted the decision and felt they had not explored his doubts at the time.


The Family Court's 2004 ruling allowing Alex to take hormones provoked a debate about when children are old enough to make serious medical decisions. There was another furore about a Family Court ruling in 2007 allowing a 12-year-old girl code-named "Brodie", who also wanted to be a boy, to begin a course of puberty-suppressing hormones. The court was told that Brodie had threatened self-harm at the prospect of her periods starting. It was later claimed by a relative that Brodie's mother had had postnatal depression and had "brainwashed" the child by buying her boy's clothing from the time she was a baby and fostering boyish behaviour. Brodie's father had opposed the hormone move.'

Some Days My Brain Hurts

From NineMSN today:

'Educating children as young as two about how gay parents have children should be a low priority for the NSW government, the opposition says. Responding to a book titled Where Did I Really Come From, which also includes in-depth descriptions of sex, opposition community services spokeswoman Pru Goward said the subject matter was not of interest to young children.The book is advertised as being part of the NSW Attorney General's Office Learn to Include program.

"There is nothing wrong with encouraging tolerance and diversity but why you would do that by talking about same-sex relationships? I find it a mystery," Ms Goward told AAP.

She said the book was more about social relationships than sex education - and that was the responsibility of parents to explain to their children. "Most toddlers won't take much interest, they are more interested in toilet training," Ms Goward said.
"I think there should be other government priorities well ahead of this."

The book's author, Narelle Wickham, says the book is suitable to be read to two-year-olds and has defended it as a mainstream publication. "It is just trying to normalise to children that there are many ways to conceive a child," she told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.'


Umm... did I miss something here? "There is nothing wrong with encouraging tolerance and diversity but why you would do that by talking about same-sex relationships? I find it a mystery" .Mysterious indeed. Perhaps someone should call Poirot?

Silver Linings

* Monster and I are both sick with some sort of (hopefully not porcine) flu-type configuration. Actually more like a headcold, but has knocked us both considerably. On the upside, this has made for many days of cuddling and caring for each other in soft, gentle ways. Of fluffing pillows and making tea and filling up hot water bottles. Aside from feeling like crap its been kinda nice!

* I have given up eating seafood, and have begun to miss it a bit. On the upside, there are many fun mock-meats to help me get through, and I will be scoffing many of them tonight at the Green Gourmet. Yummy!

* I have been researching booze in relation to vegie/veganness. Some of my fave brews do use fish scales and whatnot. On the upsdie, Coopers doesn't. Neither does Grolsch, or many other yummy pints! Huzzah!

* My thesis has been causing me considerable angst. On the upside, the moments when I do make sense of it all somehow and see that glimmer of hope, those magical minutes when I stumble upon a new article or poem that makes it all seem that little more possible... oh! Sheer delight!

Of Dykes And Men

Here is a email I sent to a women's kink list, as a response to the persistent harrassment one of my friends gets whenever she goes out in certain 'pervy dyke' crowds. It's not just her either, its happened to almost anyone with tits and a skirt in the scene, and its bloody tedious. Some days I forget that queer does not exist for everyone, and that for some the pinnacle of lesbian/gay/bdsm enlightenment is apparently the right to behave just as badly as the worst examples of heterosexual mandom (aka the Lord Daddy Master Of The Universe Sirs). Stomp! Now, the email:

'This may seem like a bit of a Miss Manners 101, but needs to be said. Apologies for stating the obvious, but it seems its not obvious to all, still:

As women, whatever incarnation that may take for each of us on this list, we have no doubt all experienced the unwanted attention of sleazy men at some point. The persistent, lecherous, hands in all the wrong places, non-consensual insinuation and groping. None of us would agree that this is the price we should have to pay for going out dressed as we want, where we want, with whom we want. Nobody would accept that short skirt= wants to be molested by creepy dudes. Nobody would accept that being out in public with a partner= invitation for obnoxious men to be aggressive and insulting towards our partner. None of us would suggest that when a slimy guy in a pub cops an unsolicited feel we should just giggle and shrug 'oh those boys! they are soooo cheeky!'.

Now, let's extend this a little. Try to substitute 'butch' or 'top' for 'sleazy man' in these equations. Swap 'corset' for 'short skirt'. And think about it next time you are at Manacle, or a SLPA event, or crawling about the Sly Fox. Maybe the 'femme' in the cincher is not actually 'asking for it' and doesn't want your hands all over her. Maybe the woman out with her girlfriend doesn't actually think you are funny or tough for cutting in and being a smartarse. Maybe when the girl you are hitting on says 'no' she actually means it. Maybe the fact that you are a 'woman who plays with women' doesn't give you an excuse to behave like a horrible ill-mannered straight man.

This is a community that I would expect to be well-versed in the concepts of respect and consent. Sure, you can be flirty, you can be witty, you can make bawdy innuendo and double entendre. You can hunt, you can chase, you can play the game. But the game does have some rules, no matter how long you have been around or how much of a super-top-butch-Daddy you consider yourself to be. Hands off when the 'lady' says 'hands off'. Simple.

If any of you are still struggling with this concept, maybe we could run a workshop? I'll be wearing the fishnets and tutu, and carrying the cattle prod.

Thankyou for your attention.'

Life Drawing

Sydney Leather Pride Association Life Drawing – Tue 5 May

Location: Aurora Gallery

Address: 43 Bedford St Newtown

Cost: Booking essential.

RSVP: curator_leather_pride@yahoo.com.au