Trans People Need Proper ID to 'Participate Fully in Society'
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Posted:Jul 16, 2014 3:35 am
Last Updated:May 29, 2024 1:21 pm
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Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, schooled viewers on the importance of proper legal identification for transgender people in an appearance on MSNBC’s Live With Craig Melvin this past weekend.
Keisling discussed a newly proposed New York City law that would allow those applying for a city ID to self-identify their own gender. This would be a boon to transgender New Yorkers, enabling them to circumvent antiquated and burdensome restrictions in acquiring identification that properly reflects their presented gender, such as those still in force that prohibit the correction of gender markers on the birth certificates of transgender people who were born in the five boroughs of New York City. New York State has already modernized its regulations and instituted a simple process for correcting the birth certificates of transgender New Yorkers born outside the city limits.
When asked by guest host T.J. Holmes to describe some of the practical impacts of being forced to carry and present ID that doesn’t match one’s presented gender, Keisling didn’t hesitate to give Melvin a list.
“Well, most Americans don’t think about their ID much. They bring it out all the time. You have to use it a couple times a day in many cases,” Keisling told Holmes, “In our post-9/11 world, you can’t have a job … you can’t go shopping, you can’t, you know, buy a beer, you can’t open a bank account. So you can’t participate fully in society unless you have ID that matches who you are.”
Asked about the onerous New York City birth certificate regulations currently still in effect, Keisling told The Advocate, “New York State did the right thing by modernizing their birth certificate policy, allowing transgender people to update their gender marker without expensive and onerous medical requirements. But these same benefits aren’t yet available to transgender people living in New York City. The National Center for Transgender Equality urges New York City to follow the state’s lead in dropping these outdated requirements. And by doing so, the city can be in line with the medical consensus on treating gender dsyphoria and recognizing gender transition.”
“Without modernized birth certificate policies, transgender people will continue to face difficulty enrolling in school or getting a job.” Keisling continued, “Birth certificates are an important source document too, so another challenge is that without accurate birth certificates, transgender people face difficulty getting other forms of ID like driver’s licenses. The problem requires a really simple fix and provides enormous relief for transgender people.
“While NCTE applauds New York State for modernizing their birth certificate policy, they can improve their policy by removing unnecessary burdens for people who are under 18 years old and people who are incarcerated. We urge New York City to reference other model policies, such as the policy passed in the District of Columbia last year, and work with local and national advocates to develop a procedure that facilitates access to updated birth certificates for all transgender individuals.”
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How Sex Affects Intelligence, and Vice Versa - sexual activity can grow brain cells
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Posted:Jul 15, 2014 5:33 pm
Last Updated:Jul 20, 2014 4:32 am
3420 Views
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New research says sexual activity can grow brain cells. Keeping them may be another matter.
Forget mindfulness meditation, computerized working-memory training, and learning a musical instrument; all methods recently shown by scientists to increase intelligence. There could be an easier answer. It turns out that sex might actually make you smarter.
Researchers in Maryland and South Korea recently found that sexual activity in mice and rats improves mental performance and increases neurogenesis (the production of new neurons) in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are formed.
In April, a team from the University of Maryland reported that middle-aged rats permitted to engage in sex showed signs of improved cognitive function and hippocampal function. In November, a group from Konkuk University in Seoul concluded that sexual activity counteracts the memory-robbing effects of chronic stress in mice. “Sexual interaction could be helpful,” they wrote, “for buffering adult hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the suppressive actions of chronic stress.”
So growing brain cells through sex does appear to have some basis in scientific fact. But there’s some debate over whether fake sex—pornography—could be harmful. Neuroscientists from the University of Texas recently argued that excessive porn viewing, like other addictions, can result in permanent “anatomical and pathological” changes to the brain. That view, however, was quickly challenged in a rebuttal from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who said that the Texans "offered little, if any, convincing evidence to support their perspectives. Instead, excessive liberties and misleading interpretations of neuroscience research are used to assert that excessive pornography consumption causes brain damage."
Whether or not porn "addiction" literally damages the brain, even brief viewing of pornographic images does interfere with people’s “working memory”—the ability to mentally juggle and pay attention to multiple items. A study published last October in the Journal of Sex Research tested the working memory of 28 healthy individuals when they were asked to keep track of neutral, negative, positive, or pornographic stimuli. “Results revealed worse working memory performance in the pornographic picture condition,” concluded Matthias Brand, head of the cognitive psychology department at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
One myth about sex—or perhaps it’s just a joke?—is that “testosterone poisoning” makes young men stupid. Actually, a 2007 study in the journal Neuropsychologia measured the level of testosterone in the saliva of prepubertal boys, including some who were intellectually gifted, with an IQ above 130, some who were average, and some who were mentally challenged, with an IQ less than 70. They concluded that “boys of average intelligence had significantly higher testosterone levels than both mentally challenged and intellectually gifted boys, with the latter two groups showing no significant difference between each other.”
But if having sex can make people smarter, the converse is not true: being smarter does not mean you’ll have more sex. Smarter teens, in fact, tend to delay their initiation of coital activities. A 2012 study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that high working memory decreases the likelihood of early adolescent sexual debut. Some researchers have attributed the delay to greater overall “competence” among smarter teens. But a 2010 study found that adolescents at both the upper and lower ends of the intelligence distribution were less likely to have sex. Most recently, a study of 536 same-sex twin pairs concluded that intelligence may be a red herring: the association is really between school achievement, not IQ per se, and age at first sexual experience.
In old age, too, cognitive abilities affect one’s chances of getting lucky. A study published just last month found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment, often a forerunner of Alzheimer’s disease, were only about half as likely to have engaged recently in sexual activity as were their cognitively healthy peers. Of those with MCI, just 32.5 percent had recently engaged in sex, compared to 62.3 percent of those without MCI.
Perhaps, however, the dream of getting smarter through sex is just an alluring fantasy. Tracey J. Shors, a psychologist at the Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University, has reported that while many activities can increase the rate at which new brain cells are born, only effortful, successful learning increases their survival. As she said at a meeting on “Cognitive Enhancers” at the Society for Neuroscience in 2012: “You can make new cells with exercise, Prozac and sex. If you do mental training, you’ll keep alive more cells that you produced. And if you do both, now you have the best of both worlds—you’re making more cells and keeping more alive.”
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Your Brain on Porn - It's NOT Addictive
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Posted:Jul 15, 2014 5:25 pm
Last Updated:Aug 8, 2014 2:02 pm
3198 Views
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What neurological research ACTUALLY shows about the people who use porn
There has been a tremendous amount of hyperbole about porn use, with many authors and doomsayers claiming that viewing porn triggers dangerous neurochemical changes in the brain. But, groundbreaking new research says that it just ain’t so, and that people who are problem users of porn are actually people with high libidos, NOT people whose brains have been warped by sex and porn.
Popular antiporn advocates such as YourBrainonPorn and the group called Fight The New Drug, argue that porn use is a public health issue, not a free speech issue. These advocates often assert that if people and society only knew the damage that porn use was causing to our brains, that we would regulate it, in ourselves, and in the access that is allowed.
Over recent years, these fear-based arguments often invoke brain-related lingo, and throw around terms like dopamine bursts and desensitization, to describe what allegedly happens in the brains of people who watch too much porn. Brain science is hot these days, and it’s attention-getting to use brain and neuroscience lingo in arguments, because it sounds so gosh-darned convincing and scientific. The problem is, there has been extremely little research that actually looks at the brains and behaviors of people using porn, and no good, experimental research that has looked at the brains of those who are allegedly addicted to porn. So, all of these arguments are theoretical, and based on rhetoric, inferences and applying other research findings to try to explain sexual behaviors.
Fascinating, rigorous new research has now been done, which actually examined the brains of alleged sex addicts, and guess what? The results are a bit different than the rhetoric. In fact, the results don’t support that sex addiction is real, or reflects any unique brain-related issues at all.
In research invited for submission to the journal Socioaffective Neuroscience of Psychology, authors Steele, Staley, Fong and Prause used EEG testing to examine the effects of visual erotica, on the brains of people who felt they had problems controlling their porn use. 52 sex addicts, including men and women, had their brain’s electrical activity examined while they looked at erotic imagery. Sex addiction theory predicts that these individuals would show brain patterns consistent with that of cocaine addicts, who demonstrate specific electrical changes in the brain’s activity, in response to drug-related cues. Sex addiction proponents, from Rob Weiss to Carnes have long argued that sex and porn are “like cocaine” in the brain.
But, when EEG’s were administered to these individuals, as they viewed erotic stimuli, results were surprising, and not at all consistent with sex addiction theory. If viewing pornography actually was habituating (or desensitizing), like drugs are, then viewing pornography would have a diminished electrical response in the brain. In fact, in these results, there was no such response. Instead, the participants’ overall demonstrated increased electrical brain responses to the erotic imagery they were shown, just like the brains of “normal people” as has been shown in hundreds of studies.
Ah, but the sex addiction proponents might argue that this is because these porn addicts have a stronger response to sexual stimuli, and that is why they are addicts. This is one reason that porn and sex addiction theories are so tough to argue – they are unfalsifiable, by presenting opposing things as part of their theory, and having very fluid arguments, that explain when data or results don’t match their theories.
This is where the authors of this study were very clever. The researchers included measures of sexual desire or libido and multiple measures of sex addiction in the questionnaires they administered to the participants. The EEG results of this study were predicted by the measures of libido, and there was NO relationship between measures of sex addiction, to the neural measures. In other words, the EEG findings of increased response to erotic stimuli were consistent with the responses of people that have higher levels of sexual desire. The alleged sex addicts of this study have brains that look like those of other people, who have high libidos, but don’t identify as sex addicts.
Another part of this sophisticated analysis is that the researchers looked at the different tests that measured aspects of sex addiction/hypersexuality, and at the tests that measured libido. They then conducted statistical analyses to identify if any of these test results varied consistently with the difference in brain responses. Again, the tests of sexual addiction had no connection with the neural findings. But, a significant portion of the change in neural responses was explainable by the participants’ level of sexual desire – when a participant reported higher levels of libido, they also demonstrated lesser neural responses to the sexual stimuli they were shown. This was a somewhat surprising finding suggesting that people with high libido may find pornography less novel, and thus have less neural response – this is consistent with some other studies, which have shown that those with high levels of sexual desire have less response to visual erotica. But, this is not unique to sex addicts, and was predicted by levels of sexual desire, NOT symptoms of sex addiction. Higher rates of sexual addiction symptoms, no matter which of three scales of sex addiction were used, had NO relationship to the neural response to the erotic pictures they were shown.
Porn addiction advocates will surely cry "aha! See, there it is, porn addicts have a LOWER response, and that's why they are addicts, they've been desensitized." But remember, it was the measure of libido that predicted decreased neural response, not measures of sex problems or even porn use. Even amongst the study group of problem porn users, there were varying levels of libido. And, just like other people who don't have problems controlling their porn use, it is the higher levels of sexual desire that predict this decreased effect. Lots of people with high libido have this same effect, but report no problems controlling porn use.
One can argue that this is merely one study, and only one measure of the brain’s activity. Porn addiction proponents will undoubtedly argue that other types of brain studies such as MRI’s, MEG’s, SPECT scans, or other brain scans will show the effects they believe are there. I’m sure others will argue that looking at an erotic still-picture is somehow different from looking at “high-speed Internet
porn.” The interesting thing in these arguments is that they are arguing against the validity of science, by asserting that their theories are somehow more true and reliable than is actual scientific research or data. In other words, will they only believe data when it confirms their theories? If so, I’m sorry, that's called confirmation bias, not science.
This study has been criticized recently, but but overwhelmingly, these criticisms are unfounded:
•There was no "control group" - in fact, this study used a "within-subjects" design, where the subjects themselves were their own control group. This is a methodologically-rigorous, well-accepted design;
•Results of analyses which were not significant were not described in the publication - this is a common scientific practice, and the authors are usually willing to share the results of these analyses, at request;
•This study used very good scientific method, in creating a study to test the "theory" that porn use works "like" a drug addiction. This is how good science works, by testing theories;
•Because there is no accepted definition or criteria for sex/porn addiction, the study used multiple commonly-used assessments strategies for sex addiction;
•The use of EEG technology is an accepted method, extensively used in addictions research, and allowed a valid, useful comparison of these results to the existing research on drug and alcohol addictions. The P300 results cited in the study are internally, and externally consistent with their own findings, and with prior literature, and are supportive of the interpretation that the subjects showed a neural response based on libido and sexual arousal, NOT demonstrating changes to the brain that are indicative of an addictive response.
The increasing weight of scientific investigation, as opposed to speculation and theorizing, is indicating that sex addiction is not a distinct construct, but reflects the behaviors of individuals with higher levels of sexual desire and libido, especially as those behaviors lead people into conflict with social values around sex. Like any other human characteristic, sexual desire occurs along a spectrum, with wide ranges of individual variation. The problems and complaints reported by self-identified porn and sex addicts have to do with the context within which these individuals are expressing or pursuing their high libido, NOT with a unique disease.
The proponents of porn and sex addiction may do well to begin to change their dialogue, from attacking porn and sex, to increasing the dialogue about how sexual desire and sexual expression can conflict with public/private social values and ideals. Rather than trumpeting the danger of porn, they may be more effective and evidence-based to argue for education about the varying levels of sexual desire and the need for both society and the individual to be responsible for and responsive to those differences.
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Looking at 'Art Quotes'
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Posted:Jul 10, 2014 5:32 am
Last Updated:Jul 11, 2014 2:55 am
3329 Views
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I love pithy words of wisdom. A lifetime of experience wrapped up in one simple declarative sentence. But, when I was looking up notable quotes from Great Artists - I ran into a lot of ads online. The interesting, or dated, the artists thoughts were secondary window dressing for ads, ads, ads, and more ads. So, I copied some and put them on my 'wordpress' blog -- with no ads. The wisdom of the ages -- without ads. At least the sex on this site is blatant -- almost 'all strip and no tease.' The other dishonest sites are all 'bait and switch.'
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Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.
Art is dangerous, that is one of its attractions. When art ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
I always feel that art in general, and acting in particular, should make the audience a little more uncomfortable, to slap them, and wake them up.
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is no conceptual idea going on.
Art is the chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
The reward of art is not fame or success, but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
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Quoting others about Art.....
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Posted:Jul 8, 2014 10:17 am
Last Updated:May 29, 2024 1:21 pm
3123 Views
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Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in the living forms and social intercourse.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Great art picks up where nature ends.
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
An artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me.
Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man’s fate.
The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist.
Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.
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New Hampshire - Nation's First Transgender Legislator Eyes Comeback
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Posted:Jul 7, 2014 10:40 am
Last Updated:May 29, 2024 1:21 pm
3005 Views
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Stacie Laughton, a Democrat from Nashua, lost a Ballot Law Commission ruling this week but has eyes on running for state representative in four years.
NASHUA, N.H. – Stacie Laughton made national headlines when, in 2012, she became the country's first transgender legislator. Her term quickly ended, however, when a past conviction surfaced and sunk her eligibility to serve as a state representative.
Laughton refuses to give up, even after the state's Ballot Law Commission ruled this week that she is not eligible to be a candidate again for another four years.
Laughton for State Rep – 2018?
That is her intent, Laughton said in an interview with Nashua Patch. "It's a lifelong dream and a passion to be involved in government," she said July 1.
Laughton won election to the state House of Representatives in 2012, only to resign after a past conviction for credit card fraud surfaced in Laconia from 2008, when she was living as a man, Barry C. Laughton Jr.
Laughton is transexual, meaning she identifies as a female, as Nashua Patch reported in 2012. Laughton further explained her challenges, and her passion to serve, in a segment on Access Nashua with Rep. Ken Gidge.
Laughton said she went before the Ballot Law Commission to get a clear determination of when she would be eligible to run again. The eligibility hinges on 10 years good behavior, she said after sitting through the BLC meeting in Concord.
"I knew that was a possibility going in," she said.
Laughton, who has worked as a building manager and a janitor, said she continues to get encouragement from fellow Nashua residents. And that is why, despite being on the losing side of a Ballot Law Commission ruling, she remains upbeat.
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Guy Bourdin - Pictures Speak Louder
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Posted:Jun 24, 2014 8:27 am
Last Updated:Jul 3, 2014 4:49 pm
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What did Guy Bourdin have to say about his work? I don't know. Who cares. He speaks to me through his work. He was a photographer for a high class shoe company and his work appeared once a month in women's fashion magazines. Some said he should put his pictures in a museum because they were like fine art. He refused. Millions saw his work every month. He is dead, I think, but his work lives on. What's the message? Exactly. "What I'm trying to do - is get you to stop trying to figure out 'what it means.'"
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Guy Bourdin - Mysteriously Sexual Images
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Posted:Jun 24, 2014 8:21 am
Last Updated:May 29, 2024 1:21 pm
3360 Views
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The man created images that seem to tell an elusive story. As if the idea were on the tip of my tongue...but....what. These strangely surreal photographs stay with me as half thoughts, half dreams. What does it mean? He was a shoe salesman. Who were his customers, and what were they really buying. Dreams?
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Art Quotes Again
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Posted:Jun 23, 2014 9:31 am
Last Updated:May 29, 2024 1:21 pm
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It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.
Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.
Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I’ve heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something eight-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years.
Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.
I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.
Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.
A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
The beginning of a friendship, the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends, seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don’t mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.
Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Shadows sometimes people don’t see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.
I can’t bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.
I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, ‘Where’s the art?’ They weren’t doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had… maybe I could even quit renting.
The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.
Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.
Artists don’t talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it would be ‘stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.’
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Art Quotes of Note - I'm haunted by words.....
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Posted:Jun 23, 2014 9:26 am
Last Updated:May 29, 2024 1:21 pm
3596 Views
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I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
Art is born of humiliation.
I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?
For me, pointing and clicking my phone is absolutely fine. People say that isn’t the art of photography, but I don’t agree.
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.
Art is dangerous, that is one of its attractions. When art ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
I always feel that art in general, and acting in particular, should make the audience a little more uncomfortable, to slap them, and wake them up.
Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is no conceptual idea going on.
Art is the chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
The reward of art is not fame or success, but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
In my world history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them, or who lost them, unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem, that speaks of the event.
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WATCH: Bamby Salcedo's Moving Speech on Trans Rights
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Posted:Jun 22, 2014 1:57 pm
Last Updated:Jun 22, 2014 1:58 pm
3627 Views
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The trans activist elicited laughter and tears during her acceptance speech at the 2014 West Coast Liberty Awards.
Trans activist Bamby Salcedo gave a stirring speech on transgender rights, focusing on issues of oppression and privilege, at a Lambda Legal event.
Salcedo, who was honored last Friday at Lambda Legal's 2014 West Coast Liberty Awards for her groundbreaking work in Angels of Change, an organization that provides health care services for trans youth, spoke candidly about the ongoing fight for LGBT equality and pinpointed the key issues to address in this battle.
“I want to talk about two things that I think are very important. One of them is oppression, and one of them is privilege,” Salcedo told the audience at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles after an introduction by trans actress Candis Cayne. “And I do want to say that I’m a very privileged trans woman. I do have a job. I am able to go to school. I have a car — a cute car too! But that’s not the reality of my community.”
After an emotional pause, Salcedo revealed that a tragedy almost prevented her attendance that evening. But ultimately, the terrible event had galvanized her to come out and speak against the systemic, legal, and social discrimination faced by trans people.
“I almost didn’t make it tonight … yesterday, a very dear friend of mine was found dead in an alley, and I was notified today,” Salcedo said of Zoraida Rayes, a 28-year-old trans woman who died in Santa Ana last week. “And it saddens me, because she was a woman, a trans woman, who was actually walking beside me in the movement. She is… she was one of the few young activists that are doing this kind of work. And for me to learn she was dead today was really devastating. So I want to give honor to Ms. Reyes, who is no longer with us.”
“Let’s look at our privilege and let’s be grateful for where we are tonight. But at the same time, let’s not forget those that continue to be oppressed,” she said, adding, “We also need to be mindful of the way we advocate for laws that are supposed to protect us. Trans people are not protected the way we should be protected.”
At the conclusion of her speech, Salcedo elicited cheers and applause when she turned the stage into an impromptu runway, performing a few triumphant turns on the catwalk.
Lambda Legal is at the forefront of legal advocacy for transgender people and has published an online legal guide titled "Know Your Rights."
In addition to Salcedo, the legal organization also honored Rep. Henry Waxman, actor Dan Bucatinsky, and the creators and executive producer of ABC Family’s The Fosters at the 2014 West Coast Liberty Awards.
Watch the video of Salcedo’s emotional awards speech, courtesy of Lambda Legal, below. http://FriendFinder-x.com=uz9KjxBs6r0
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The Time Is Now for Transgender Equality - Eoghann Renfroe
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Posted:Jun 22, 2014 8:36 am
Last Updated:Jun 22, 2014 1:43 pm
3663 Views
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Transgender Rights Organizer, Empire State Pride Agenda.
Just days ago I sat in the New York State Assembly chambers and watched legislators debate, and then pass, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) for the seventh consecutive year. As Transgender Rights Organizer for Empire State Pride Agenda, New York's statewide LGBT rights organization, I watched as assembly member after assembly member stood up and explained why they were voting yes, why transgender lives matter. I watched as the most vocal conservative opponent was forced to acknowledge that transgender issues are serious, and that discrimination should not be tolerated. Assembly member Richard Gottfried, the bill's sponsor, ended simply by saying, "The reality is this is an important bill for human rights, and I vote in the affirmative."
Last week I was able to walk into a drugstore and buy a copy of Time magazine with transgender actress Laverne Cox on the cover, next to the headline, "The Transgender Tipping Point: America's Next Civil Rights Frontier." I was able to use that cover in a presentation I gave to employees of the Department of Health on transgender issues. During that presentation I was able to announce to the room that the state of New York had, after years of advocacy from Pride Agenda and other allied organizations, updated its policies on gender changes for birth certificates, doing away with the outdated practice of forcing transgender people to go through invasive medical procedures -- a practice that essentially resulted in the state-mandated sterilization of transgender New Yorkers and had already been long-discarded when it came to updating driver's licenses and passports. The entire room broke into spontaneous applause at the news.
Just days before the news on birth certificates broke, headlines across the nation proclaimed that exclusions on transgender-related health care were being lifted from Medicare. The week before that the mayor of Rochester, Lovely Warren, announced at the Pride Agenda's annual Spring Dinner that the city of Rochester would join a daily-growing list of cities across the nation to offer transgender-inclusive health care to all municipal employees. Last month Maryland became the 18th state in the nation to pass a law barring discrimination against transgender people. Not long before that was the announcement made by the New York City Department of Education that it had updated its policies to make sure that all New York City public schools would be safe and inclusive spaces for all transgender students. Janet Mock has spent months bringing widespread media attention to transgender lives, and her memoir, Redefining Realness, became a New York Times bestseller. Laura Jane Grace has been touring the country with her band Against Me!, making dance and mosh to the tracks on their latest album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Keeping up with every video about a transgender gone viral, every article about a transgender prom king or queen, every op-ed from The New York Times' editorial board calling for transgender rights (three in the past month!), every new transgender character on a television show or in a comic book, every legislative or policy victory is like trying to keep up with a growing snowball rolling down Mt. Everest.
When I was growing up in Dutchess County, New York, hanging out at the South Hills Mall and talking about the latest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my friends, I would have been hard-pressed to find a single snowflake. I'd never knowingly met another transgender person, let alone another transgender boy. I'd never seen a transgender character in a book, on a television show, or in a movie, with the exception of a couple of fanciful and stereotypical depictions in movies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I'd never heard of a real, successful transgender person, ever. I didn't even know the word "transgender."
I didn't have a word for who I was.
We are witnessing a truly remarkable moment, brought to us by the intersection of decades of hard work by fearless activists, and by the unstoppable dissemination of history made possible by information technologies. When I was a watching my VHS copy of A Clockwork Orange and marveling at its groundbreaking soundtrack, I had no way to learn that the musician who created it was a transgender woman, because that history had been erased from the books I'd read, just as the homosexuality of Bayard Rustin and Lorena Hickock had been expunged from the history I'd been taught. Now history is at the fingertips of everyone with access to a wi-fi connection, and we in the transgender community have made the most of the opportunity presented to us and finally made it impossible to erase our voices, once and for all.
And finally, people are listening.
After I graduated from high school, I left New York to go to school in the Midwest. That day on the El train when I stared down with a shock of recognition at an article on transgender Chicagoans in one of the cheap, throwaway daily papers that another passenger had left on the seat next to me, I could never have imagined where I am now: a proud, gay transgender man, fighting for transgender rights in the state where I had grown up thinking that no one else in the whole world could have any idea what it felt like to be like me. Now I know that I was never alone, that I had allies -- family -- all across the state, and the country, and the world.
I want to be able to go back to my hometown and walk past the places I grew up and know that I finally have the same rights that everyone else in New York has -- the right to be free of legal discrimination at the drive-in theater where I used to go with my friends, the diner where I used to eat with my family, the grocery store where we used to shop. I want to know that I could get a job there without fear of being fired just because my employer found a piece of paperwork with my old name on it. I want to look at the house where I lived when my dad first taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels, where my sisters and I used to play and pretend to be cats or spies or Ninja Turtles, and know that if I wanted to live in that house, if I wanted to create my own family there, I couldn't be refused just because of who I am.
At the beginning of the GENDA debate in the Assembly last week, another assembly member asked Richard Gottfried why, since the New York State Senate had refused to bring GENDA up for a vote time and again, the Assembly was wasting time on GENDA again. Gottfried said, "Well, to quote the great Martin Luther King, 'It's always the right time to do the right thing.'"
It is time for the New York State Senate to do the right thing and stop transgender New Yorkers from being treated like second-class citizens. It is time for Gov. Cuomo to become an integral part of this historic moment in transgender rights and call for the Senate to bring GENDA to a vote. It is time for GENDA to become law.
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Guy Bourdin - Photographe
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Posted:Jun 21, 2014 8:48 pm
Last Updated:Jun 22, 2014 6:59 pm
3196 Views
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Guy Bourdin est un photographe de mode et de pub.
Il y a quelques années, je suis tombée, je ne sais plus où, peut être dans un magazine VOGUE ou autre, sur une photo de ce photographe.
Je ne sais pas comment expliquer ce qui me plait dans ses photos… Je dirais peut être leur côté inquiétant (voire carrément flippant de certaines), leur couleur rétro qui me fait parfois penser à un vieil épisode de chapeau melon et bottes de cuir, leur beauté pour certaines aussi…
œuvre se caractérise par des images troublantes, souvent provocatrices et pourtant mystérieuses, qui ont instauré un changement radical dans la manière d’aborder les campagnes publicitaires dans le domaine de la mode. Ses images, très « léchées », sont éclairées crûment et les couleurs sont très saturées. Les modèles sont souvent malmenés, posant dans des positions provocantes et inconfortables dans des décors claustrophobiques.
Je vous laisse découvrir cet univers dérangeant que j’adore,
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