GENDER FLUX

On Benjamin's "Sexual Orientation Scale"

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:58:34 -0400

Expression and identification outside the borders of typical gendered behavior were viewed by professionals in the mid-twentieth century as illegitimate and/or fetishistic unless very specific guidelines of non-normative gender presentation were adhered to. In addition to this, it was almost exclusively transgender women who were considered by professionals for evaluation and (hopefully) transition; transgender men were almost never given opportunities to “prove” themselves in order to receive desired medical or surgical treatment. Pictured below, Harry Benjamin’s Sexual Orientation Scale, (abbr. SOS,) was largely considered by his colleagues in psychology and medicine to be the standard reference for addressing “issues” of transvestitism versus transsexualism versus homosexuality, general fetishism of biologically female individuals, and other “faults” of the mind professionals like Benjamin started to address with growing frequency in the 1950s and beyond.

The fact that Benjamin’s scale is no longer standard in addressing trans* individuals from a psychiatric standpoint is comforting because its obsoletism in professional circles indicates that enough has been learned about trans* individuals by professionals in the past fifty to sixty years to render the information presented above virtually useless in modern assessments.

anarcho-queer: hagereseb: NYPD Profiling and Targeting LGBTQ...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:37:19 -0400

anarcho-queer:

hagereseb:

NYPD Profiling and Targeting LGBTQ People of Color

Here is a vignette from March 2013: A 24-year-old gay man named Yhatzine Lafontain is leaving a restaurant late at night with a friend on Roosevelt Avenue and 95th Street in Queens. Both are dressed as women, Mr. Lafontain in a jacket, short dress and heels. Exchanging goodbyes outside, they are approached by a man who tells them they look good.

In Mr. Lafontain’s account, they chatted briefly to avoid seeming rude and the man departed. Within a few minutes, an undercover police officer approached Mr. Lafontain and his friend and arrested them, suspecting them of prostitution. “We were surprised,” Mr. Lafontain told me, “because we had never talked to anyone about sex or money.”

I met Mr. Lafontain last week in Jackson Heights, not far from where his arrest had taken place, at the offices of Make the Road New York, a community-organizing group that works primarily with Latino immigrants. It has tried, along with various anti-violence projects in the city, to call attention to the perverse specifics of stop-and-frisk policing — a practice currently on trial in federal court in Lower Manhattan — as it applies to gay, lesbian and transgender New Yorkers who are Black and Latino. Last fall, the group issued a report on policing in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood with a vibrant gay and transgender community and attendant club scene (and also a prostitution problem), and found in its survey of more than 300 residents that while 28 percent of straight respondents reported having been stopped by the police, 54 percent of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender respondents reported this kind of treatment.

(Read More)

By the way, I changed the title of the article because I felt that the original title (“Arrests by The Fashion Police”) created by the people at the New York Times was mocking the severity of the issues being discussed in the article.

This is a must read/reblog. Although prostitution is only a misdemeanor in NY, a conviction will result in the victim being kicked off food stamps and subsidized housing.

Related: NYPD Will Arrest You For Carrying Condoms

Yes. Yes this is exactly what we wanted to find

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:24:00 -0500

Yes. Yes this is exactly what we wanted to find

equality4mankind: Why is it that it’s not accepted all...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:18:08 -0500

equality4mankind:

Why is it that it’s not accepted all throughout the country, and THE WORLD?

Godspeed New Mexico.

Photo

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:18:00 -0500

imawes0me20: fatal-encores: Exactly. This is very...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:12:08 -0500

imawes0me20:

fatal-encores:

Exactly.

This is very interesting. I would assume traits from the other gender would show through

Not necessarily! That’s exactly what “passing” is, after all - assuming traits of one’s preferred gender in an attempt to be assimilated into society as that gender by other people. There are a lot of transgender individuals who will likely never be seen as anything other than what they want to be seen as because they make a conscious effort to pass. Not all transgender people are particularly concerned about passing, of course, nor should they be, but many are.

transmissives: izzyandrade: “Video about artists who defy...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:08:57 -0500

transmissives:

izzyandrade:

“Video about artists who defy gender norms and challenge the gender binary in their work” - heather cassils and zackary drucker

Heather Cassils gained 24 pounds in muscle over six months for the sake of art. Zackary Drucker asked audience members to tweeze the hairs from her bare body.

These LA artists use their bodies as canvases to defy gender norms.

Video by Mae Ryan

Music:
Rotation by Blindfold

This video, to me, related to the topic of trans representations in popular culture. These two individuals serve as representations of trans people in the art/visual art world by using their bodies as living art. As a visual arts major this really spoke to me because usually an artist separates themselves from their work and rarely ever makes themselves a part of their art (other than self portraits).

Heather Cassils is on a panel at a conference at Rutgers on March 5, called Trans Technology. Info here: http://iwa.rutgers.edu/home/

Man, this is really great.

Photo

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:07:33 -0500

loveyourrebellion: D.C. Launches First Ever Transgender Respect...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:39:37 -0500

loveyourrebellion:

D.C. Launches First Ever Transgender Respect Ad Campaign

This response is slightly late, but has nevertheless been submitted in response to this week’s...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:30:50 -0500

This response is slightly late, but has nevertheless been submitted in response to this week’s Tumblr prompt. I had to watch the documentary on my own time since I was sick last week, but I finished watching it.

I agree in part with Nikki Sullivan’s idea that Venus Xtravaganza’s desires to become rich and spoiled were symptomatic of a heterosexual matrix as opposed to subversive in nature. Venus dressed in a traditionally female way and wanted to be perceived and treated as traditionally female, because that was how she felt about herself as an individual in terms of her identity and presentation, and that is how she wanted to be received by onlookers and clients, (and eventually by her partner, whom she wanted to be a man who would spoil her.) Her desires were not inherently subversive. However, she seemed to acknowledge that there was some level of wistfulness to her desires, because she was pining to live the life of a rich white suburban woman when she was already self-aware of her status as a minority and transgender woman.

Regardless of any observations of Venus’s expectations of herself, however, her observations were just that - observations. There seemed to be very little “ulterior” ideas in Venus’s mind; she simply wanted to fit the mold of a typical heterosexual woman in her time and live the “American dream.”

Intersex: A biological variation from the male/female sex binary, (not a gender variation,) which is...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:40:57 -0500

Intersex: A biological variation from the male/female sex binary, (not a gender variation,) which is often caused by chromosomal make-ups other than XX or XY and more often than not also influences the sex characteristics and sexual/reproductive organs of the intersex individual in question. “Intersex” and “hermaphroditism” cannot be used interchangeably, as the term “hermaphrodite” is used exclusively to refer to individuals who have both male and female reproductive organs.

ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:25:39 -0500

This is a test post to gauge whether or not my posts are legible.

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:13:57 -0500

This is a test post to gauge whether or not my posts are legible.