Okay But Really, This Contraception Thing Is Silly

I mean… wow…

When this whole “war on women/contraception” thing started, my initial reaction was just one of a little bit of anger and frustration and disappointment, but not really outrage or “ARGHY MUST BLOG AND KILL AND STOP THIS ARGHLKJ;k’l;!!!11!!”. The things people were saying like “the best birth control is an aspirin between the knees” and “college girls are going broke buying birth control for all the sex they’re having!” were unimaginably stupid, but it’s not like it was anything particularly new for the religious right and GOP to be sexist, sex-negative, scientifically and medically illiterate, irrational idiots.

Besides, not my problem, right? I’m not cis, I’m not fertile, I’m not interested in partners of the sex with whom I could even hypothetically conceive, and I don’t live in the United States. Also, historically, these kinds of pushbacks against women’s reproductive rights haven’t ended up managing to make it very far. It’s also at least a slightly fair fight… although hetero cis women do not have nearly the amount of wealth and political power in the USA that their hetero cis men do, they aren’t a minority, and they should have enough of a presence in the voting public to put up a decent fight and keep this horrible legislation from moving too far forward.

I figured this was just an electoral strategy designed to distract from other issues, a new appeal to the USA’s “culture war” and division of ideology  that could keep the 99% from noticing the economic biases and corruption of the Republican party and keep them focused on “family values”- and an appeal now sorely needed due to how rapidly the demonization of homosexuality is ceasing to be a viable political strategy. I figured this was something that wasn’t really meant to have any substance, and would be over pretty quickly. A week or two, tops.

So my plan was just to keep on doing what I do, focusing and blogging on other issues, on things that most people don’t talk about, on things where the fight isn’t remotely fair… and then go to the Winchester, have a cold pint, and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

As a general rule, my plans are stupid. [Read more…]

Sandra Fluke now no longer a whore, but an evil supporter of trans rights!

I’ll just let you guys read this and come to your own conclusions…

Sandra Fluke, Gender Reassignment, And Health Insurance

In a funny way, I actually appreciate these idiots bringing attention to this fact. Since we already know Ms. Fluke’s detractors have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to contraception, maybe this will help people who support Ms. Fluke, but don’t yet see the parallels between attempting to limit women’s reproduction and medical choices and the denial of trans people’s choices about their bodies, understand how these issues intersect, and why it is important to defend the right of every human being to have access to appropriate medical care and a range of options, even if it involves girly hormones and icky lady parts.

Preserving Choice: Lupron And The Medical Ethics Of Treating Transgender Children

Over the past year or so, there’s been a curious and sudden surge of awareness in the general public consciousness about the issue of transgender children. While their existence is something that has been going on for… well… forever, and the trans community has certainly been aware of the likely fact that gender identity is typically developed very early in life (even if not always precisely articulated and negotiated until later) and have been aware of the issues related to it, it seems that it wasn’t until 2011 that it was all that discussed or considered in the general imagination.

Yet now we’re beginning to find it in the news. The actual, mainstream news. There was Storm, the child in Ontario who was not openly assigned a gender by hir parents, the story of the identical twins Nicole and Jonas in Boston, one a trans girl and the other a cis boy, and the issue of Bobby Montoya, a young trans girl, being included in a Colorado Girl Scout troop. Last week a 10-year-old trans girl from England who has faced significant exploitation, dehumanization and misgendering by the media (I wonder which paper, possibly beginning with the word “Daily” and ending in the word “Mail”, may have been involved?), appeared with trans media activist Paris Lees on BBC Breakfast. I found out about this through the shower of horribly transphobic tweets that followed. And recently there’s been a controversy surrounding a father in Berlin’s efforts to have his 11 year old transgender daughter involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital so as to ensure that she cannot follow through on her wish to prevent a masculinizing puberty (and ideally, in his view, “cure” her and have her somehow become a typical cisgender boy).

There’s a very key thing to remember: prevention. [Read more…]

“Reiki For Trans People”

So I was fucking around on Twitter the other day, as I am often wont to do (@nataliereed84, hint hint hint), and happened to catch a re-tweet from some place called trans-health.com. This site has existed since 2001, but sort of fell under the radar for awhile before recently being purchased by transguys.com and re-launched this past December with some very spiffy, slick, professional-looking, doctor-y science-y medicalish graphics. [Read more…]

Phytoestrogens and Natural Transition

So I’m at this Christmas party thingy for a trans support group last month, and I’m catching up with a girl I know, and she begins asking me weird, akward-ish questions, like “how are your boobs doing?”

These kinds of things tend to go with the territory at trans support groups.

Providing my usual evasive, non-committal response, she proceeds to inform me that her own have been developing fantastically. First, she explains that she’s been taking progesterone. I reply that I’ve heard mixed things about it, that it, more than any other HRT medication, tends to be a bit unpredictable and rather on the “your mileage may vary” side of things- negative effects being reported just as often as positive ones. She then says that she’s on the “brand” of progesterone that has “only two side effects”, one of which she claims is breast growth. I begin to become a bit suspicious of whether she wholly understands the concept of “brand” as applied to medication (particularly a hormone like progesterone, which is going to be progesterone no matter who is actually manufacturing it) and also how much she understands what “side effect” means.

And then it got worse. [Read more…]