Being Transgender in America

If you haven't seen or heard this yet, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry featured a show last Sunday on being Transgendered in America.
I'm going to post this video here in the condo in our "Home Entertainment Center" .
Here's a quick look from guest "Mara Keisling" who is the Founding Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality who said:
"For one of the first times that I can remember, trans people got to outline to the public at least part of the trans political agenda for ourselves. From health care access, to barriers to updating identity documents, to talking about jail and detention reform and raising awareness of CeCe McDonald's story, we finally had a chance to bring trans issues to a national audience as trans people. 
From the first appearance at a trans event by a sitting Cabinet Secretary to the incredible list of policy victories we’ve achieved in the past year, trans policy is now firmly part of the political debate.  Of equal importance is that now, the conversation around the country is moving in our favor, symbolic of  important cultural progress in our movement."

She will join the Melissa-Harris Perry Show on a nationally televised panel discussing the movement for transgender equality. Mara will join other trans advocates Kate Bornstein and N.Y.C Council Candidate Council Candidate Mel Wymore to examine recent trans policy victories and current challenges.
The whole video to me took on a surreal feel to me.  All these years of watching all the other groups explaining their feelings, lifestyles and rights-now I'm watching my group.
It's about time!

Transgender Comics?

On the heels of the huge "Glee" episode we featured when they added a real live transgendered character. Not a gay or a lesbian character-a transgender character. For once we get separation from the other two.
Now Archie Comics has announced that Issue #636, which is scheduled for release on August 22, will focus on issues related to gender and perceived gender roles by featuring gender-swapped versions of the three main characters.
In "The Great Switcheroo," Archie, Betty and Veronica will become Archina, Billy and Ronnie thanks to a magical spell cast by two special visitors to Riverdale -- Sabrina the Teenage Witch and her cat Salem.

I picked up this story from the "Huffington Post"
Check the story for a couple more very interesting links plus I'm going to post a couple other illustrations here (in the "Gallery") and on "Trannsnation"!

Fluid Transsexuals?

As we continue to beat one another up internally and as a community for what we are,  yet another fascinating study is coming to light which proves once again much of our anguish is something we had no control over.
This look at being a man in the morning and a woman at night comes from the "Scientific American" site:

"A graduate student of famed neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has found a group of men and women who report that their sexual identity can switch involuntarily to that of the opposite sex and back again. The transgender metamorphosis, these people assert, can occur several times a day and at inopportune moments. It is also accompanied by the sensation of phantom breasts or genitalia of the non-biological sex.
The research grows out of Ramachandran’s long-standing fascination with the study of body image and how it contributes to a basic sense of the self, work that has included investigations into the phantom limbs of amputees.
The preliminary study by Laura Case, Ramachandran’s student, raises the prospect of a new category of transgenderism. “Alternating gender incongruity (AGI),” the neuropsychiatric term the researchers have tentatively proposed, describes the involuntary change of gender identity, along with perceived phantom sex characteristics, a tendency toward ambidexterity and bipolar disorder, all signs that suggest a biological basis for AGI. (A related term, bigender, defined as blending or alternating gender states, precedes AGI.)"

Of course there is much more to this study. Just go to the "Scientific American" link above to read more.