'When my grandmother got arthritis,
she couldn't bend over and paint her
toenails anymore. So my grandfather
does it for her all the time, even when
his hands got arthritis too. That's love..'
Rebecca- age 8
'When someone loves you, the way
they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe
in their mouth.'
Billy - age 4
'Love is when a girl puts on perfume
and a boy puts on shaving cologne and
they go out and smell each other.'
Karl - age 6
'Love is when you go out to eat and
give somebody most of your French
fries without making them give you any
of theirs.'
Chrissy - age 6
'Love is what makes you smile when
you're tired.'
Terri - age 4
'Love is when my mommy makes coffee
for my daddy and she takes a sip before
giving it to him, to make sure the taste is
OK.'
Danny - age 7
'Love is when you kiss all the time..
Then when you get tired of kissing,
you still want to be together and you
talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are
like that.
They look gross when they kiss'
Emily - age 8
'Love is what's in the room with you
at Christmas if you stop opening presents
and listen.'
Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)
'If you want to learn to love better, you
should start with a friend who you hate,'
Nikka - age 6
(we need a few million more Nikkas on this planet)
'Love is when you tell a guy you like his
shirt, then he wears it everyday.'
Noelle - age 7
'Love is like a little old woman and a
little old man who are still friends even
after they know each other so well.'
Tommy - age 6
'During my piano recital, I was on a
stage and I was scared. I looked at
all the people watching me and saw my
daddy waving and smiling.
He was the only one doing that. I
wasn't scared anymore.'
Cindy - age 8
'My mommy loves me more than
anybody You don't see anyone else
kissing me to sleep at night.'
Clare - age 6
'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy
the best piece of chicken.'
Elaine-age 5
'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy
smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford .'
Chris - age 7
'Love is when your puppy licks
your
face even after you left him alone
all day.'
Mary Ann - age 4
'I know my older sister loves me
because she gives me all her old clothes
and has to go out and buy new ones.'
Lauren - age 4
'When you love somebody, your
eyelashes go up and down and little
stars come out of you.' (what an image)
Karen - age 7
'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy
on the toilet and she doesn't think
it's gross.'
Mark - age 6
'You really shouldn't say 'I love you'
unless you mean it. But if you mean it,
you should say it a lot. People forget.'
Jessica - age 8
And the final one
The winner was a four year old child
whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.
Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy
went into the old gentleman's yard,
climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.
When his Mother asked what he had
said to the neighbor, the little boy said,
'Nothing, I just helped him cry'
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Beautifull Daughters ~ the transgendered
Many transgendered women audition to be part of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues.
The women share with each other the hardships they faced as young children as well as the difficulty in finding love.
The women continue to share their difficult stories in making their life changing transitions.
The women prepare for the opening night of the play.
http://www.logoonline.com/video/interview/beautiful-daughters/95959/beautiful-daughters-part-4.jhtml
Friday, June 12, 2009
Looking for a fair shake of the sauce bottle for transgendered people is tough, this helps...
Darlene, 58, gingerly climbed the stairs to use the bathroom, past a framed box of ribbons and medals, military honors presented to David, the man she used to be.
Two years ago, David, a retired Air National Guard Lieutenant Colonel who served as a navigator and fighter pilot, told his wife, Mary, something he'd kept inside all his life. He was a woman in a man's body.
It tore through their 37-year marriage like shrapnel, and formed a chasm so wide between Darlene and her son that the young man now considers his father dead. They haven't spoken in two years. Darlene is forbidden from seeing her two grandsons.
Ask about the pain of thousands of plucks of electrolysis to remove hair, facial feminization surgery, breast augmentation and finally genital reassignment surgery, and Darlene explains professionally like an officer.
Mention her grandchildren or the pain she caused her wife and son, and tears stream down like rain.
Some of the less supportive comments needed answering. So I did.
Posted by ZoeBrain on June 7, 2009 at 8:58 a.m.
Darlene isn't the only former fighter pilot I know who has transitioned. Officially, the USAF didn't have female pilots in combat in Gulf War I, but in fact, they did. They just looked male at the time.
Transsexuality is devastating, not just to the immediate victim, but the family too. Still, so are many other congenital conditions. So is Cancer. Though many cancers have a lower mortality rate without treatment. And cancer victims are not routinely persecuted as morally corrupt because of their condition.
There'll be some who won't believe it's a congenital medical condition, but a "lifestyle choice". The evidence of brain scans and autopsies says otherwise, as do some rather more simple tests. As Professor Ecker MD said in a recent presentation to the APA on the subject:
"We showed how Transgender Brains think, smell, and hear like the opposite sex."
And the MRI images and so on show why this is so. All the claims about "female brain in male body" turn out to be literally true. It's an intersex condition, like hundreds of others, where the body is neither wholly male nor wholly female.
See seminar s10 at the APA annual meeting:
S10. The Neurobiological Evidence for Transgenderism
1. Brain Gender Identity Prof. Sidney W. Ecker, M.D.
2. Transsexuality as an Intersex Condition Prof Milton Diamond, Ph.D.
3. Novel Approaches to Endocrine Treatment of Transgender Adolescents and Adults Norman Spack, M.D.
Lots of people commenting on this article are saying it's a waste of space, time etc. for such a minority. But they'd never dream of doing that for, say, Multiple Sclerosis - a condition that's not as common, and is arguably no more devastating to the sufferer and their family.
No preacher would rail against people with MS as having a morally corrupt lifestyle, and saying that they should be banned from employment by all God-fearing folk. And people with MS are not murdered at a rate 17 times greater than in the average population, nor have 6 women been shot in the head in Memphis in the last 2 years just for having MS. Police don't beat up people just for having MS, and no trial for murder has ended in acquittal because the defendant claimed that he didn't know the victim had MS, and when he found out, he just snapped.
Treatment for MS is not routinely excluded from health insurance policies. Neither is it specifically excluded in the Americans with Disabilities Act, nor from treatment offered by the VA for veterans.
So yes, I think this article is worthwhile. I'm also encouraged to see how relatively few comments there have been calling for a public lynching of the victim. The word is getting out there, slowly, and articles like this help inform the public.
And in return received an honour I will always cherish.
Posted by Darlene on June 7, 2009 at 5:49 p.m.
in response to ZoeBrain
Thank you.
Thank You, Darlene. For your courage and your service to us all. Of course, being an EWO in an F4 requires some courage too, and you served your nation then as well.
Two years ago, David, a retired Air National Guard Lieutenant Colonel who served as a navigator and fighter pilot, told his wife, Mary, something he'd kept inside all his life. He was a woman in a man's body.
It tore through their 37-year marriage like shrapnel, and formed a chasm so wide between Darlene and her son that the young man now considers his father dead. They haven't spoken in two years. Darlene is forbidden from seeing her two grandsons.
Ask about the pain of thousands of plucks of electrolysis to remove hair, facial feminization surgery, breast augmentation and finally genital reassignment surgery, and Darlene explains professionally like an officer.
Mention her grandchildren or the pain she caused her wife and son, and tears stream down like rain.
Some of the less supportive comments needed answering. So I did.
Posted by ZoeBrain on June 7, 2009 at 8:58 a.m.
Darlene isn't the only former fighter pilot I know who has transitioned. Officially, the USAF didn't have female pilots in combat in Gulf War I, but in fact, they did. They just looked male at the time.
Transsexuality is devastating, not just to the immediate victim, but the family too. Still, so are many other congenital conditions. So is Cancer. Though many cancers have a lower mortality rate without treatment. And cancer victims are not routinely persecuted as morally corrupt because of their condition.
There'll be some who won't believe it's a congenital medical condition, but a "lifestyle choice". The evidence of brain scans and autopsies says otherwise, as do some rather more simple tests. As Professor Ecker MD said in a recent presentation to the APA on the subject:
"We showed how Transgender Brains think, smell, and hear like the opposite sex."
And the MRI images and so on show why this is so. All the claims about "female brain in male body" turn out to be literally true. It's an intersex condition, like hundreds of others, where the body is neither wholly male nor wholly female.
See seminar s10 at the APA annual meeting:
S10. The Neurobiological Evidence for Transgenderism
1. Brain Gender Identity Prof. Sidney W. Ecker, M.D.
2. Transsexuality as an Intersex Condition Prof Milton Diamond, Ph.D.
3. Novel Approaches to Endocrine Treatment of Transgender Adolescents and Adults Norman Spack, M.D.
Lots of people commenting on this article are saying it's a waste of space, time etc. for such a minority. But they'd never dream of doing that for, say, Multiple Sclerosis - a condition that's not as common, and is arguably no more devastating to the sufferer and their family.
No preacher would rail against people with MS as having a morally corrupt lifestyle, and saying that they should be banned from employment by all God-fearing folk. And people with MS are not murdered at a rate 17 times greater than in the average population, nor have 6 women been shot in the head in Memphis in the last 2 years just for having MS. Police don't beat up people just for having MS, and no trial for murder has ended in acquittal because the defendant claimed that he didn't know the victim had MS, and when he found out, he just snapped.
Treatment for MS is not routinely excluded from health insurance policies. Neither is it specifically excluded in the Americans with Disabilities Act, nor from treatment offered by the VA for veterans.
So yes, I think this article is worthwhile. I'm also encouraged to see how relatively few comments there have been calling for a public lynching of the victim. The word is getting out there, slowly, and articles like this help inform the public.
And in return received an honour I will always cherish.
Posted by Darlene on June 7, 2009 at 5:49 p.m.
in response to ZoeBrain
Thank you.
Thank You, Darlene. For your courage and your service to us all. Of course, being an EWO in an F4 requires some courage too, and you served your nation then as well.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
KRXQ Sacramento Radio Hosts Encourage Violence Against Transgender Children
Even by the flexible moral, ethical, and professional standards of American talk radio, the May 28th segment of KRXQ 98.5 FM Sacramento's Rob, Arnie, & Dawn in the Morning radio talk show makes for a sickening half-hour of ugliness and cruelty. For once, the focus was not LGBT adults, but minors. The hosts, Rob Williams and Arnie States, devoted the segment in question to a vicious diatribe against transgender children, some as young as five, focusing in particular on the case of one Omaha family raising a gender dysphoric child, and their decision to support her transition from male to female.
Williams and States took turns referring to gender dysphoric children as "idiots" and "freaks," who were just out "for attention" and had "a mental disorder that just needs to somehow be gotten out of them," either by verbal abuse on the part of the parents, or even shock therapy.
"Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals," they said.
For his part, States bragged that if his own son were to ever dare put on a pair of high heels, States would beat his son with one of his own shoes. He urged parents whose own little boys expressed a desire to wear a dress to verbally abuse and degrade them as a viable response. "Because you know what? Boys don't wear high heel shoes. And in my house, they definitely don't wear high heels.
"I'm going to go, 'You know what? You're a little idiot! You little dumbass!'" States sneered, adding later, "I look forward to when [the transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down. And they wind up in therapy."
Or dead.
In light of the well-publicized suicides this year of the two boys who took their own lives because of bullying and harassment for "acting gay" (which, in the argot of modern North American teenagers, often refers to acting in a way considered unmasculine by their peers) the stunning lack of moral sensibility on the part of States and Williams is breathtaking. But it also points to the increasingly degraded landscape of talk radio.
The causal link between Bill O'Reilly's obsessive baiting of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller on FOX and Tiller's murder on Sunday, May 31st as he was ushering in his Kansas City church, is currently being explored, an exploration particularly relevant in the case of Rob, Arnie, and Dawn in the Morning, and the potential violent fallout from their inexplicably rage-filled invective against not only transgender children, but even boys who err on the feminine side of standard adolescent behavior, behavior States and Williams consider unnatural because "men are hunters and women are gatherers."
I shudder to imagine the response of the late Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover's mother if she'd had the misfortune to hear the KRXQ broadcast.
"They were always saying [to Carl] 'You're gay, you must be gay, you act like a girl'," Sideaner L. Walker told the press in April, speaking of the dead son she had to cut down from the support beam he hung himself from after months of taunts from his peers---taunts that likely bore more than a passing resemblance to the invective used by States and Williams on their May 28th broadcast.
"I'm not open-minded once I look into sumpin'" one of the two men grunted at the beginning of the segment, their voices interchangeable. "I have every right to call you a freak and judge you on that. It makes me sick. 'Mommy, I'm a girl trapped in a boy's body,'" he simpered, mimicking an effeminate little boy. "I want to wear a dwess."
They berated co-host Dawn Rossi, who seemed genuinely horrified by the rising crescendo of ugliness towards the children and their parents from States and Williams.
"You're actually defending allowing people to become freaks?" they seethed. "A boy who wants to wear a dress is a freak. A nut." Comparing transgender children to "fat bastard kids on Maury," States and Williams urged advocates of transgender children to "stop hiding behind research and laws," whose authority they wholeheartedly reject. Braying with the certitude of the jubilantly ignorant, States and Williams revealed to listeners that "transgenders [sic] did not exist four decades ago," apparently unaware of the historical fact that transgender individuals have existed in every culture throughout recorded history, including in native American cultures where the "two spirited" were revered as teachers, healers, and shamans.
By no objective standard are dumbed-down, Wal-Mart versions of O'Reilly like States and Williams journalists. Nor are they really experts on anything other than plunging the overflowing toilets of their listeners' psyches and selling the sewage back to them, repackaged as "insight," "common sense" and "plain talk" from fake-macho blowhards hiding behind radio microphones.
One doesn't need a primer on transgender or transsexual history in order to appreciate the awesome brutality of the KRXQ shock-jocks' diatribe. All one needs is to know a child, any child. They're small, they're vulnerable, and their world is populated with gods whose divinity is derived solely from their adulthood and perceived authority.
States and Williams chose to use that authority to attack a segment of the childhood population who are more vulnerable than almost any other. Transgender children are at a point in their lives when they feel their own bodies are the enemy, and alien to them. Many of them go to bed praying that when they wake up their bodies and their inner gender will be aligned.
"If the kid ever gets to be eighteen," States snarled, "and says 'I still feel like a woman!' you say, 'Get out! Go be a freak! And understand, SON, that society will never accept you because we still have some moral judgment."
As disturbing as it has become to an increasingly enlightened segment of the mainstream American population to hear LGBT adults vilified and degraded in the media as the discussion over gay marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell reaches a boiling point, no one with even a passing acquaintanceship with decency could have been prepared for KRXQ's May 28th pageant of brutality towards transgender children.
Who are, after all, children, first and foremost. Trusting, innocent, and vulnerable, they ought to be beyond the reach of the violent, hate-mongering adult rhetoric that is taken for granted in American talk radio. One needs no particular sympathy for transgender people to understand the prodigious boundary transgression of promoting contempt and disgust towards children,anyone's children, on a radio show.
This should give serious pause to adults of every political, economic, and social background, whatever their stand on LGBT issues. It should be of particular concern to KRXQ's advertisers and their customers.
My little godson Michael is the light of my life. His father was a hockey player and his mother is a legendary beauty. He embodies the best of those two people to absolute perfection. It's been educational to watch his awareness of his own masculine gender assert itself in the last few years. His gender identity wasn't "learned," it came to him already hardwired, in the same way studies continue to show that a transgender child's gender is hardwired. And whatever else his struggles may be in later life, I personally doubt that gender identity is going to be one of them.
But his gentleness and his vulnerability brings my protectiveness into hyper-focus. And if he wanted to wear a dress, or told me he was a girl, my instinct as an adult would be to protect him and try to understand him.
I can only imagine the perfect horror of having someone like States as a father. But if anyone ever called my godson a "sick little freak," or a "nut," or a "freak of nature," or beat him with a shoe for being himself, I could not, and would not, be held accountable for my reaction, or my inevitable response.
Williams and States took turns referring to gender dysphoric children as "idiots" and "freaks," who were just out "for attention" and had "a mental disorder that just needs to somehow be gotten out of them," either by verbal abuse on the part of the parents, or even shock therapy.
"Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals," they said.
For his part, States bragged that if his own son were to ever dare put on a pair of high heels, States would beat his son with one of his own shoes. He urged parents whose own little boys expressed a desire to wear a dress to verbally abuse and degrade them as a viable response. "Because you know what? Boys don't wear high heel shoes. And in my house, they definitely don't wear high heels.
"I'm going to go, 'You know what? You're a little idiot! You little dumbass!'" States sneered, adding later, "I look forward to when [the transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down. And they wind up in therapy."
Or dead.
In light of the well-publicized suicides this year of the two boys who took their own lives because of bullying and harassment for "acting gay" (which, in the argot of modern North American teenagers, often refers to acting in a way considered unmasculine by their peers) the stunning lack of moral sensibility on the part of States and Williams is breathtaking. But it also points to the increasingly degraded landscape of talk radio.
The causal link between Bill O'Reilly's obsessive baiting of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller on FOX and Tiller's murder on Sunday, May 31st as he was ushering in his Kansas City church, is currently being explored, an exploration particularly relevant in the case of Rob, Arnie, and Dawn in the Morning, and the potential violent fallout from their inexplicably rage-filled invective against not only transgender children, but even boys who err on the feminine side of standard adolescent behavior, behavior States and Williams consider unnatural because "men are hunters and women are gatherers."
I shudder to imagine the response of the late Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover's mother if she'd had the misfortune to hear the KRXQ broadcast.
"They were always saying [to Carl] 'You're gay, you must be gay, you act like a girl'," Sideaner L. Walker told the press in April, speaking of the dead son she had to cut down from the support beam he hung himself from after months of taunts from his peers---taunts that likely bore more than a passing resemblance to the invective used by States and Williams on their May 28th broadcast.
"I'm not open-minded once I look into sumpin'" one of the two men grunted at the beginning of the segment, their voices interchangeable. "I have every right to call you a freak and judge you on that. It makes me sick. 'Mommy, I'm a girl trapped in a boy's body,'" he simpered, mimicking an effeminate little boy. "I want to wear a dwess."
They berated co-host Dawn Rossi, who seemed genuinely horrified by the rising crescendo of ugliness towards the children and their parents from States and Williams.
"You're actually defending allowing people to become freaks?" they seethed. "A boy who wants to wear a dress is a freak. A nut." Comparing transgender children to "fat bastard kids on Maury," States and Williams urged advocates of transgender children to "stop hiding behind research and laws," whose authority they wholeheartedly reject. Braying with the certitude of the jubilantly ignorant, States and Williams revealed to listeners that "transgenders [sic] did not exist four decades ago," apparently unaware of the historical fact that transgender individuals have existed in every culture throughout recorded history, including in native American cultures where the "two spirited" were revered as teachers, healers, and shamans.
By no objective standard are dumbed-down, Wal-Mart versions of O'Reilly like States and Williams journalists. Nor are they really experts on anything other than plunging the overflowing toilets of their listeners' psyches and selling the sewage back to them, repackaged as "insight," "common sense" and "plain talk" from fake-macho blowhards hiding behind radio microphones.
One doesn't need a primer on transgender or transsexual history in order to appreciate the awesome brutality of the KRXQ shock-jocks' diatribe. All one needs is to know a child, any child. They're small, they're vulnerable, and their world is populated with gods whose divinity is derived solely from their adulthood and perceived authority.
States and Williams chose to use that authority to attack a segment of the childhood population who are more vulnerable than almost any other. Transgender children are at a point in their lives when they feel their own bodies are the enemy, and alien to them. Many of them go to bed praying that when they wake up their bodies and their inner gender will be aligned.
"If the kid ever gets to be eighteen," States snarled, "and says 'I still feel like a woman!' you say, 'Get out! Go be a freak! And understand, SON, that society will never accept you because we still have some moral judgment."
As disturbing as it has become to an increasingly enlightened segment of the mainstream American population to hear LGBT adults vilified and degraded in the media as the discussion over gay marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell reaches a boiling point, no one with even a passing acquaintanceship with decency could have been prepared for KRXQ's May 28th pageant of brutality towards transgender children.
Who are, after all, children, first and foremost. Trusting, innocent, and vulnerable, they ought to be beyond the reach of the violent, hate-mongering adult rhetoric that is taken for granted in American talk radio. One needs no particular sympathy for transgender people to understand the prodigious boundary transgression of promoting contempt and disgust towards children,anyone's children, on a radio show.
This should give serious pause to adults of every political, economic, and social background, whatever their stand on LGBT issues. It should be of particular concern to KRXQ's advertisers and their customers.
My little godson Michael is the light of my life. His father was a hockey player and his mother is a legendary beauty. He embodies the best of those two people to absolute perfection. It's been educational to watch his awareness of his own masculine gender assert itself in the last few years. His gender identity wasn't "learned," it came to him already hardwired, in the same way studies continue to show that a transgender child's gender is hardwired. And whatever else his struggles may be in later life, I personally doubt that gender identity is going to be one of them.
But his gentleness and his vulnerability brings my protectiveness into hyper-focus. And if he wanted to wear a dress, or told me he was a girl, my instinct as an adult would be to protect him and try to understand him.
I can only imagine the perfect horror of having someone like States as a father. But if anyone ever called my godson a "sick little freak," or a "nut," or a "freak of nature," or beat him with a shoe for being himself, I could not, and would not, be held accountable for my reaction, or my inevitable response.
I know which end of the shoe I would be on if I ever met another adult who took the official Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning child-rearing advice to heart after hearing it on KRXQ 98.5 FM Sacramento.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/krxq-sacramento-radio-hos_b_210637.html
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