Press for Change: The UK's Leading Authority on Transgender Law

By Emma Ruby-Sachs, 365gay blogger

The call for an end to the gender binary is not new. … For the first time, an individual has eschewed gender identity and legally become a person without a gender..  Norrie May-Welby of Australia, calls herself a neuter. This wouldn’t be so incredible except that Australia is calling her a neuter, too. Officially. …

May-Welby has taken herself out of the gender conversation altogether. It is a radical move. Maybe one that we need in this world to truly open up gender norms to everyone; … it is certainly a break from how many have challenged the binary to date.

March 15 2010 Gay, trans seniors come out late, start second lifetime  ... original story here

By The Associated Press
(Miami) On his 75th birthday, Bill Farthing decided to be reborn. In the six years since he’d buried his wife of 45 years, he’d felt as he did long before: Lonesome, different, outcast. He wondered if he was going crazy; he contemplated suicide.

Looking back, the clues leading to this day had been scattered throughout his life, but only made sense just now. So Farthing dressed in the most basic of blue wool skirt suits he could find on the Internet, … went shopping. Arms loaded with skirts and blouses from the clearance rack, Farthing approached the checkout.

“Did you find everything you wanted, ma’am?” the cashier asked. Farthing looked over his shoulder, then realized she was talking to him. … He had become a she.

A neighbor runs indoors now when Farthing comes outside of her Oakville, Mo., home. A brother-in-law and other relatives have cut her out of their lives. And her volunteer work at a nursing home had to end when her secret became known. But those who are closest have accepted her. And now, in life’s twilight, she says she finally feels whole, finally feels normal.

“For the first time ever my life feels like it’s in the right place,” she said. “I’m going to check out of this world the way I was meant to come into it.”

… Dr. Loren Olson, a psychiatrist in Des Moines, Iowa, who has studied late-in-life outings, said for most such seniors, there are losses, though they are typically less than they fear, and often vary greatly by socioeconomics.

 “We don’t like disharmony in our thinking so sometimes we block out things that really are in opposition to really what we believe is true,” he said. “It’s like a child believing in Santa Claus: You just hang on to that as long as you can.”

PFC write to top charity to encourage change, and best practice.

A Devon gay charity has defended its decision to bar straight people from applying for jobs. The charity is advertising two jobs on its website – one for a 'community advocate' in Cornwall and one for a helpline worker and administrator in Exeter.

The Intercom Trust, which serves people across the south-west, said that it needed staff who had experience of being gay, lesbian or bisexual, claiming that "It is a genuine and determining occupational However the workers they will employ will be offering an LGB and **T** service.  Requirement of this post that the post-holder is lesbian or gay or bisexual."

Press for Change has written to the charity, INTERCOM, to express our concerns. PFC has explained that defining the sexuality of trans people is extremely difficult, our bodies and sexual practices simply do not fall into neat boxes.

Surveys of the trans community have shown that over half identify as ‘not–heterosexual’, and most of those as LGB or queer, poly-, pan- etc. As many say, it all depends upon your point of view; whether you define relationships through body parts or through minds. As time passes, for many trans people the freedom to be one’s self post transition can often lead to a broadening of experience and of the mind. Throughout history trans people have said “I realized that what matters is between the ears, and not between the legs”.

However, either way, to leave out Trans People as possible applicants for the post, because the current INTERCOM staff do not understand and cannot define the sexuality of trans people, is arbitrary and unfounded discrimination.

PFC has asked INTERCOM to rethink it’s recruitment policy, to ensure it does not discriminate against trans people, and to stop making assumptions about the lives of others whom you will

But Intercom Trust executive director Dr Michael Hall said that requirement was parallel to a rape crisis centre only employing women.

He told the newspaper: “This position for a helpline worker and administrator requires the person to answer the helpline and speak to people who have often suffered terrible emotional damage. ...

The adverts cite section 7.2 of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, which allow discrimination if being of a particular sexual orientation is a "genuine and determining occupational requirement" for a job and if the requirement is proportionate.

If such requirements are found to be not genuine or proportionate, employers may be accused of direct discrimination.

By The Associated Press

(Havana) Looking in the mirror used to make Yiliam Gonzalez sick to her stomach.

“I would see myself, and my body didn’t match who I was,” said the 28-year-old wedding pianist, who went by William before receiving a sex change under Cuba’s universal health care system.

Gonzalez is living proof of a small but remarkable transformation for the rugged revolution of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and a band of ever-macho, bearded rebels, who long punished gays and transsexuals – but now are paying for sex changes. ...

The operations have begun anew under President Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela, Cuba’s top gay-rights activist, and 22 more transsexuals are waiting to have it performed.

Mariela Castro says the government is moving cautiously, doing only a few per year.

“There has been a lot of resistance because homophobia remains strong in our culture,” she said at a recent conference on sexuality.

In the 1960s, Cuba was ferociously anti-gay, firing homosexuals from state jobs, imprisoning them or sending them to work camps. Many fled into exile. Transsexuals, though not gay, were considered the same. While gay jokes remain as common as shots of strong espresso in Cuba, government media campaigns now discourage homophobia. Hundreds of gay Cubans marched down Havana’s spiffy “La Rampa” boulevard last spring, just a year after authorities had forbidden a gay-pride parade.

“I’d like to think that discrimination against homosexuals is a problem that is being overcome,” former President Fidel Castro said during a series of interviews with French journalist Ignacio Ramonet between 2003 and 2005. “Old prejudices and narrow-mindedness will increasingly be things of the past.”

Mariela Castro has seen to it that the state formally recognizes transsexuals. A state-trained kindergarten teacher with a degree in sexuality, she runs the National Sexual Education Center. It spent years lobbying communist officials, who finally agreed to lift bans on sex changes in 2008 – though the resolution was never made public to avoid unwanted attention.

“These processes of negotiation are sometimes done very quietly,” Mariela Castro said, “so as not to stir up ghosts.” ...

Two specialists from Belgium performed it over eight hours with a team of Cuban doctors.

By Ruth Schneider, 365gay.com
The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act quietly passed throught the New York Assembly on Tuesday with at 91-40 vote. This is the third consecutive year the Assembly passed the bill that protects transgender New Yorkers from discrimination in housing and employment.

The bill now faces a series of hurdles in the Senate, where it is currently stalled in the Investigations and Government Operations Committee.