INTRAA's Blogs

to renew the blog. seems things have gotten awfully quiet. i'd be interested in hearing from any and all mtf transsexuals about their personal feelings on female impersonation as entertainment. i'm not talking about drag queens or people who do drag. no moral judgement, just how you feel you are personally affected by the place of drag in our society. i specify mtf transsexuals because i am interested in their opinions. i believe there is a different dynamic involved in how crossdressers and transvestites experience drag so for this limited conversation i'd like to hear from ts's only.

NCTE has been awarded a significant two-year grant to start a much needed Privacy and Documentation Project. While NCTE will raise additional funds to fully resource the program, this grant will allow us to jump start the Project.

Its nice to hear good news sometimes:

Amazing Progress - Reading the Transgendernews yahoogroup this weekend, made me happy. There were stories about progress in three different states: two of which are in the advance stages of progress.

This article brings up some interesting questions of whether GID is covered as a disability and how religions get involved.

Gender Change Costs Dean a Job

Religious institutions have long had leeway to hire and fire based on creed. But what happens when a man who professes the faith also starts to appear on campus as a woman?

At Spring Arbor University, a Michigan institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, the pending termination of a transgender faculty member (and ordained Baptist minister) has raised just that question...

This is a short but pretty interesting article. It definately starts to present a case for the declassification of GID and GD as a psychiatric disorder:

This is a short but rather interesting article. It definitely starts to present a case for the declassification of Gender Identity Disorder and gender dysphoria as psychiatric disorders:

This is pretty cool, you should check it out

More U.S. employers cover sex transition surgery
Large corporations follow city's lead in offering benefit
- Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

People who change their gender must undergo rigorous mental health evaluations and trial periods that last years, and they sometimes face stigma, but the biggest challenge for many is paying for the process.

In the past few years, however, following the model of San Francisco, some of the world's largest employers have begun covering surgical procedures, including gender-reassignment surgery, and a host of other related care...

i just saw a good one here. "you must be the change you wish to see in the world." -ghandi now that's something we can use every day. i get so doggone frustrated with tg's sometimes. went to a support meeting down here in bloomington the other day. nothing but a bunch of whining and lamenting all the wrongs in the world. sure the world is tough, always has been and always will be, but where did we ever get the idea that we are entitled to justice, happiness and success? only true justice any of us will ever get is gonna come from God and that will be in another time and dimension. when i offer a positive approach to living all i hear is, "yeah, but you don't understand how rough things are for me!" everybody on earth can't possible have lived the most horrible life ever.

The trans support / discussion group that I formed had it's first meeting tonight. There were a grand total of four people there, and I think it went rather well, despite the low numbers.

Too much testosterone kills brain cells

This article has been circulating on trans mailing lists. Maybe it's worth being a little concerned about the effects of testosterone on FTMs brains, but generally speaking, haven't we been at least a little concerned since we started T about the other health risks posed by testosterone?

There's lots really interesting stuff going on here around the gendering of biology as well. Lots of feminist theorists would remind us that our understanding of sex is always already gendered. That is, the way we understand masculinity and femininity strongly influences our scientific approach to sex and biology. Emily Martin, feminist medical anthropologist has written an article called "The Egg and the Sperm" where she talks about how scientific and medical textbooks talking about eggs and sperm gender those cells. Sperm gets characterized as aggressive and active--swimming and the like--while the egg is passive and waiting like a damsel in a castle.