A policy that added controversy to the opening of North America’s first women-only pharmacy has been changed. Lu’s: A Pharmacy for Women and the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective now welcome transgendered clients and others who self-identify themselves as women. Members of the relatively new local feminist collective the Femininjas are pleased.

“I feel great about this change,” said a transgendered woman and member of the Femininjas who identified herself only as Brook for fear of employment discrimination. “It just means that the trans women in that area, who are probably the most in need of accessing these services, can access these services and that there’s a change in perception.”

When Brook and other Femininjas heard the policy of welcoming only “women born women” had been changed, three of them visited Lu’s to check if it was true. One had her prescriptions transferred from London Drugs to Lu’s and said she was treated with sensitivity and respect.

Caryn Duncan, the longtime executive director of the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective’s resource centre, left the position shortly before the policy change. Duncan said her departure was not a surprise. She said she’d told the collective’s steering committee that she’d stay until the pharmacy, a social enterprise meant to direct profits back into the collective that runs it, was operational, and her departure was delayed because construction took more than a year, rather than the expected three months.

Duncan says collective members have debated for years who they should serve. She denied Brook’s suggestion that a split in opinion on transgendered individuals comes from a generational divide among feminists.

Duncan said it was time for the nearly 40-year-old organization to restructure and the timing of her departure freed up financial resources for the organization. Volunteers are running the resource centre while Lu’s employs a paid pharmacist. Hours at both have been reduced Monday to Thursday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the pharmacy remains in want of more referrals, said the collective’s new spokesperson, Nataly Richardson. The organization’s website has yet to be updated with the new policy.

Richardson said there’s some truth to Brook’s suggestion that older generations of feminists weren’t confronted with transgender, transsexual and intersex issues in the same way as younger generations. But she said many of the collective’s older feminists give such concerns careful consideration.

The Femininjas wasn’t the only organization pressing the health collective to change its policy. Other groups included Women Against Violence Against Women, Battered Women’s Support Services, RainCity Housing and Qmunity, B.C.’s queer resource centre, according to Brook. Atira Women’s Resource Society wrote the collective to let its members know it did not support the “women born women” policy.

Read more: http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=a55bb741-a52a-4ab2-b574-221991a7ecd9#ixzz0hudF8BIh

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SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center is asking the city for some big financial help to stay afloat.

Since opening in 2002, the $12.3 million, city-subsidized center has struggled to pay its mortgage and is now on the verge of foreclosure.

Officials are now asking the city for a $1 million line of credit.

The LGBT Center’s staff of 24 provides counseling, job training, HIV prevention and other programs. Center officials had expected to rely on income from community room rentals and donations, but both have dropped off in the recession.

The bailout plan still needs approval from the Board of Supervisors and mayor.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty says it’s a tough time for cash-strapped San Francisco but says keeping the center alive would be a “tremendous benefit” for the city.

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WASHINGTON — It’s a day of wedding bells for some gay couples in Washington.

Couples who applied for marriage licenses on the first day they were available last week can pick them up Tuesday and tie the knot.

Three weddings are planned at the city’s Human Rights Campaign office. The advocacy group helps with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

An afternoon wedding is planned at All Souls Church — the same place where DC Mayor Adrian Fenty signed the bill legalizing the unions.

The District of Columbia is the sixth place in the country permitting same-sex unions. Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont also issue same-sex couples licenses.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Dr. Marci Bowers slipped into a chair in Exam Room 3, folded one long leg over another, looked at her patient — a young woman with wide eyes and a nervous smile — and got to the point.

“We want to help make your life better,” Bowers said.

Mariama is as tiny as the 5-foot-10-inch Bowers is formidable, as soft-spoken as Bowers is confident. Mariama speaks softly and smiles easily, but a few hours with her make clear that her determination is as strong as it is quiet.

She is 26 and lives with her husband and daughter in Virginia, and didn’t want her last name used. Originally, she is from Guinea, a country about the size of Oregon on Africa’s western coast. Guinea has about 10 million residents, and about

96 percent of the women there have, like Mariama, been genitally mutilated.

Mariama and the six other women, all originally from Africa, crowding Dr. Bowers’ tiny Trinidad clinic have traveled a long way to get that fixed. The women have come to this former coal-mining town in southern Colorado looking for more than just reconstructive surgery. They want relief from pain. They are looking for a chance, as one put it, to be normal.

“I want to be like everyone else,” said Kady Meite, the only one of the women who agreed to have her full name used. “Now, I feel nothing. I feel pain” during sex, she said.

The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 140 million women worldwide, but especially in northern and central Africa, have endured female genital mutilation, or FGM.

Usually done to girls before age 15, the practice involves at least slicing off part or all of the exposed clitoris. In some cultures, the cutting is more extensive, and disfiguring. It’s done occasionally by health care practitioners but most often by an older female relative.

A lot of people inflict the damage. Bowers, whose clinic is known around the world as a destination for those seeking gender-changing

surgery, is one of a few trained to surgically restore the clitoris, as well as repair other damage.

Since 2003 when she took over the work of Trinidad’s pioneering sex-change surgeon, Dr. Stanley Biber, Bowers’ practice has exploded to more than 200 of the surgeries a year, and there is a waiting list of patients. Bowers certainly didn’t need more to do.

Nevertheless, she went to France a little over a year ago to learn a reconstructive technique developed by Dr. Pierre Foldes, which essentially cuts away scar tissue and surrounding skin to expose whatever is left of the clitoris.

In many cases the procedure also requires more extensive reconstruction.

The women gathered in her office last week are the second group Bowers has performed the reparative surgery for; both times she has donated her services.

Because the procedure is new and rare, insurance seldom covers it. But Trinidad’s Mount San Rafael Hospital has agreed to a flat rate of $1,500 per patient for use of one of its two operating rooms.

Like most of the women in Bowers’ clinic, Meite had no idea repair was possible until she learned about Bowers on the Internet. “I said, ‘Oh, my God. I don’t believe it.’ ”

Meite is 43. She has been married 22 years and has four children. She would like, after all this time, for sex with her husband, Mustapha, not to hurt.

Bowers hugs Meite on Monday before Meite's reconstructive surgery. Bowers donates her skills and has an agreement with Trinidad's Mount San Rafael Hospital to use its facilities for $1,500 per patient.

Betrayal of trust

As Bowers made her way from exam room to exam room Monday, a theme began to emerge as each patient recounted her story: A young girl would visit some trusted female relative in a different town or a distant village. One day during that visit, she would be taken somewhere. Someone would hold her down, and a knife would appear.

“We went on a vacation to visit my aunt,” Mariama said, describing her experience. “Then one day, she took me and her granddaughter — my cousin — to a different village. It was like there was going to be a party or a big ceremony. They were cooking food.”

Mariama remembers being taken outside into the bush, where “a lady had a small knife.” They forced her to the dirt. “I think they didn’t want to get blood on a blanket.”

She remembers being sliced three times. “The knife was not sharp enough. It hurt so much, I thought I was dying. I screamed so loud one lady physically was sitting on my face” to muffle the screams.

It took two months for the pain and bleeding to stop. In the meantime, the wound became infected, and Mariama got sick with a fever.

She was 8 years old.

When Mariama asked her mother why this happened, her mother explained that it was their culture.

The custom is most closely associated with Islam. Newsweek has reported that Dr. Foldes has received death threats as a result of his surgeries. Still, the women who have come to Trinidad don’t believe they are doing anything contrary to the Muslim faith.

“There is nothing written in the Koran saying you need to do that,” Meite said.

Growing up in Guinea and the Ivory Coast, Mariama and Meite watched girls who were not cut be ostracized, whispered about, called “unclean.”

It wasn’t until she came to the United States, as the bride of a Guinea-born chemist, that she learned that in many places what happened to her was not acceptable, or even legal.

The first time she was examined by a doctor in the U.S. — who had never heard of FGM — “his face was like he had seen a ghost,” Mariama said.

When she gave birth to their daughter, it had to be by cesarean section; nurses couldn’t even insert a catheter, she said.

Her daughter, now 5, has never been to Guinea, and she never will, Mariama said.

“I refuse to go back. I won’t let them near my daughter.”

A path toward healing

After they met with Bowers and filled out paperwork at the hospital, the women went to their rooms at the Morning After Guest House.

Typically, the Morning After is a haven for those who have come to Trinidad for sex-change surgery. But this week, it had been reserved for the women.

The night before the surgeries, that guest house was a bustling, noisy place. The television on, the radio was blaring, exotic smells wafted from the kitchen as owner Carol Cometto threw a dinner for them.

The women come as a group for pragmatic reasons — Bowers blocks out time for surgery, the guest house is reserved.

But there is another less tangible benefit to the mass scheduling. As the evening proceeded, the women got acquainted, and for many, it was the first time they met others who faced the same traumas and made the same decision to seek healing.

Eventually, a woman in a plaid schoolgirl miniskirt, fishnet stockings, boots and a fur-trimmed white jacket walked in, carrying a large box of vibrators.

“Tonight I get to play Santa Claus,” Nadine Gary said.

Gary is with the organization Clitoraid, which she describes as working toward twin goals of “ending FGM worldwide and to help as many victims as possible through surgery.”

To fully help them, Gary believes, means more than just ending the women’s pain. It also means beginning their pleasure.

Female genitalia is “just like any part of body that has been cut,” Gary said. “You need physical therapy so it starts to work again. The nerve paths need to be reactivated so they reach the brain.”

If that notion was a bit much for a group of women whose childhood lessons taught that sex may be enjoyable for men but a source of pain for women, they didn’t say anything.

Early Tuesday morning, while darkness still clung to Trinidad, a car pulled up outside the guest house, for the first of four trips that day to the hillside hospital.

The surgeries took little more than an hour each, and by 3 p.m. four women were back at the guest house, sore and resting.

Wednesday, the process was repeated with the remaining three.

Bowers had prepared them for some post-op pain, but that didn’t deter them.

Meite, who said she has converted to Christianity, believes “God has a purpose for everything.” Now, she said, she has found the answer to why this happened to her.

“Now, I have found someone who can help me, and so I can help a lot of other women.”

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14527014#ixzz0hdFwdCm6

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Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10066/1040649-82.stm#ixzz0hdD1E7sI


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A GROUP of Adelaide cross-dressers says it is no longer welcome at its favourite hotel, after having been refused entry.

Despite drinking and dining regularly at the carnival-themed Boho Bar, on Unley Rd, for at least six months, members of Adelaide’s transgender community say management’s attitude has changed.

Two male cross-dressers in female clothing were refused entry to the bar in January. A customer, who contacted the Sunday Mail, said he witnessed a group of male cross-dressers “forcibly removed” in early February.

These reports followed an incident before Christmas in which another male cross-dresser in female clothing, and his wife, were directed to use the bar’s disabled toilet instead of the women’s facilities.

The new policy has stunned the “trannies”, who say the ban affected a night out in which some members of their party were seated inside and others were refused entry.

The Boho Bar, part of the Booze Brothers hotel chain, is a flamboyantly decorated and styled venue offering “elements of the circus, the old burlesque sideshows and classic, Bohemian cabaret theatres”, according to its website.

Male-to-female transgender retail worker Susan claimed she was made to feel “almost unclean” after she and cross-dressing friend Cherry were refused entry to The Boho Bar while out with three non-cross-dressing friends.

“Because we were the first two there, they pulled us aside and said, `I’m sorry, you’ve been refused entry’. We were like, ‘What for?’ ” Susan said.

“In my heart I knew what it was about, because us two were the only cross-dressed pair in the group; there was a guy and his wife and another guy – they were dressed as normal.”

Susan said her cross-dressing friends Sharyn and Heather were already inside but Sharyn was later prevented from returning when she went outside to meet the others.

Susan said she contacted Booze Brothers co-director Leon Saturno two days later seeking an explanation and was told there was a new policy that “no cross-dressers (would be) allowed anymore”.

Susan, of the southern suburbs, was adamant there had never been previous issues at the bar about the group’s dress.

She said she and her cross-dressing friends wore “appropriate” clothing: “We don’t dress like drag queens or anything like that,” she said. Sharyn, 53, said: “We had been going there for quite a while without any problems whatsoever.

“We never had any problems with the staff there or the patrons; actually, quite the contrary – we seemed to get along pretty well with some of the patrons there.”

Several weeks earlier, cross-dresser Roxxy said she was among a mixed group of male-female couples and transgender friends, when the bar’s security staff told her: “In future, you have to use the handicapped toilet.”

“I went into the ladies’ loo with my wife to do my lippy and powder my nose. She used the loo but I was outside touching up my makeup and stuff,” Roxxy said. “When we left the ladies’ loo, two security guys came up to us.”

Roxxy said they had “assumed” his wife was also a cross-dresser.

She said the bar should now display its entry conditions at the door. “If someone doesn’t want us in there, it doesn’t bother me; if they don’t want us in there, I don’t want to be there.”

Equal Opportunity Commissioner Linda Matthews said she was yet to receive a complaint but “on the face of it, this would meet the necessary criteria”.

“We would certainly take up a complaint; we would write to the club and ask them on what basis did they refuse entry to these people and see what they say,” she said.

“If it did come down to their chosen gender, they could find themselves in breach of the Equal Opportunity Act.”

Mr Saturno did not wish to comment when contacted by the Sunday Mail.

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Australia’s Senate rejected a measure to legalize same-sex marriage February 26. The vote was 5-45. Twenty-six senators failed to vote.

The bill, introduced by the Greens, was opposed by the Labor, Family First and Liberal/National/Country Liberal Coalition parties.

“The coalition believes the [opposite-sex] definition of marriage, as contained in the existing provisions of the Marriage Act, reflects the standards and mores of contemporary Australia,” said Liberal Senator George Brandis.

The organization Australian Marriage Equality denounced the vote and vowed to make same-sex marriage an election issue.

“It is arrogant of [Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd and [Liberal leader] Tony Abbott to ignore the 60 percent of Australians who, opinion polls show, support same-sex marriage,” said AME National Convener Alex Greenwich.

“However, the fact that 26 senators were absent from today’s debate is an indication that there is dissent in the ranks of the major parties, dissent which we believe will only grow. Because the leaders of the major parties are clearly deaf to the wishes of mainstream Australia we have no choice but to make this an election issue when the nation goes to the polls later this year,” Greenwich added.

AME said, “there’s no such thing as half equal” and criticized same-sex “relationship registers” as conferring an unacceptable second-class status.

A Galaxy poll released last June found that 60 percent of Australians support same-sex marriage, including 64 percent of Labor voters and 50 percent of Coalition voters.

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Several decades have passed since the West stopped considering homosexuality a mental illness. But for transsexuals, that kind of milestone has been elusive — until now. Last month, France became the first country in the world to remove transsexualism from its official list of mental disorders — a major victory when it comes to acceptance of this oft misunderstood condition. “I’m relieved. People might begin to look at us differently,” says transsexual blogger Caphi (a blended name she’s chosen to represent Philippe, the man she was born as, and Caroline, the woman she’s transforming into). “It’s a start.”

But only a start, many transsexuals in France say. In practice, the declaration will do little to improve their legal or medical rights in the country. For example, transsexuals are still required to have a sex-change operation before they can change their gender in the eyes of the law. And to get the green light for surgery, they must still undergo extensive medical and psychiatric evaluations. “It’s a symbolic victory,” says Georges-Louis Tin, president of the Paris-based IDAHO committee, which fights homophobia and what it calls “transphobia,” or discrimination against transsexuals. “Transsexuals are no longer mentally ill,” he says. “They’re normal citizens. But we haven’t yet reached the point where they’re allowed to make their own decisions instead of depending on doctors and psychiatrists.”

Some transsexuals say the country’s open-minded Health Minister, Roselyne Bachelot, removed transsexualism from the list of mental disorders because it was an outdated classification and because she wanted to acknowledge the work transsexuals have done to further their cause. But others see a potentially more troubling motive. Tin worries that politicians may be making allowances on this front to avoid engaging in debate on legalizing gay marriage or removing barriers to allowing gay adults to adopt.

Indeed, the French transsexual community doesn’t exactly consider the country to be at the forefront of promoting the rights of sexual minorities. A just-released study commissioned by the Health Ministry, for example, paints a dreary picture of the treatment of transsexuals from a legal and medial standpoint. Sex-change surgeries and treatments are covered by the state — as in some other countries — but those who opt for surgery have little choice in selecting their doctor. Surgeons complain that they are poorly equipped to perform the complicated procedures and that few have received specialized training, according to the survey. And some even say they are ostracized by their colleagues if they perform such surgeries. For these reasons, many transsexuals choose to undergo the procedure — at their own cost — across the border in Belgium, home to some of the best sex-change specialists in the world.

Laure Laudet, who is scheduled to have an operation in France to become a woman in the fall, has been so worried about French doctors’ lack of expertise in the field that she’s done much of her own research, particularly on which hormones she should take. “In the trans community, people have to find their own information, figure out who the good doctors are and negotiate their treatments,” she says. Recently, she had to travel 250 miles (400 km) to visit with a second psychiatrist — not the one she’s been seeing for two years — to sign off on her operation. At the last minute, she says, the psychiatrist canceled the appointment to travel abroad. “And then they’re surprised that some people try to commit suicide or castrate themselves,” she says.

Transsexuals take part in the annual Gay Pride Parade in Paris Ian Langsdon / EPA / Corbis

But what advocacy groups find most egregious is that France, like many other countries, requires transsexuals to undergo surgery — and become sterilized — before they can receive identity cards and other official documents confirming their new gender. “If we refuse, we’re basically undocumented,” says Caphi. According to most advocates, about half of transgender people — a term many prefer, though the French state doesn’t use it — have no desire to go under the knife, preferring instead to simply live their lives as a member of the opposite sex in their dress and behavior.

This will be the next big battleground. Spain and Great Britain have adopted more lenient stances, even though transsexualism is still technically on the books in both countries as a mental illness. Spain requires transsexuals only to undergo some form of hormonal treatment to modify their physical appearance before it will issue new documents, while the British simply ask applicants, with recommendations from their doctors, to promise to live out the rest of their lives as their chosen sex.

In France, several members of the advocacy organization TransAide have unsuccessfully sued the state in recent years to try to obtain a legal sex change without an operation. They’ve since lodged appeals and intend to bring their cases before the European Human Rights Court if necessary. “We want to prove that sterilization is what’s really at play here,” says Delphine Ravise-Jiard, one of the plaintiffs. And the group’s got friends at the European level. Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, has been fighting to end the mandatory sterilization of transsexuals in the European Union, calling it a human-rights violation.

The tide may be turning. At least that’s what IDAHO’s president hopes. The French Health Ministry has already agreed to push other countries in the E.U. to drop transsexualism from their lists of mental disorders. And that, Tin says, is a start.

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From the time he could crawl, Jack Bowser was totally into being a boy. “I always wanted the boys’ toys, was always outside doing sports or outside with my dad. I always wanted to wear the boys’ clothes, suits, everything,” said the 45-year-old Ephrata man.

Bowser was all boy, except for the fact that he was born a girl.

In the last few years, Bowser has taken hormones and had surgeries to become a man, so his body matches the way he felt inside. He says he’s happier than he ever was as a woman. But he has no relationship with his parents. When he last spoke to his mother 3½ years ago, he realized she would never accept him.

Transgender people like Bowser feel they were born in the wrong bodies. They’ve always felt they should wear different clothes, have different names and be more comfortable in their own skin.

Transgender is an umbrella term, including everyone from cross-dressers and female impersonators to transsexuals who change their sex from male to female, or female to male, according to the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition.

While gay men and women have gained much broader acceptance in the past 20 years, transgender identity still seems foreign to many Americans. Transgender people face rejection from their families, their churches and society, which can all be uncomfortable with the idea that someone would want to change their bodies or even their clothes to look like the opposite sex.

“Anything that deviates from a social norm creates a kind of dissonance within observers,” said Warren Throckmorton, associate professor of psychology at Grove City College.

Observers aren’t sure how to act or what to say or what it means for them, he said. “It brings up questions for social behavior that are not frequently confronted.”

No reliable statistics

No one knows exactly how many transgender people there are in the United States, according to Justin Tanis with the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“Transgender people clearly exist in our society, but we don’t even have reliable statistics,” said Tanis, who is a transgender man.

As many as 2 to 3 percent of biological males engage in cross-dressing, at least occasionally, according to the American Psychological Association. It estimates 1 in 10,000 biological men are transsexuals and 1 in 30,000 biological females.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used by mental health professionals to diagnose patients, labels transgenderism as a psychological disorder. And Diane Gramley believes people who are confused about their gender need help.

Gramley is president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a organization promoting conservative Christian values. The AFA opposes what it describes as the homosexual lifestyle, and rejects the idea of transgender identity.

“To embrace or to affirm that lifestyle or their confusion does not help them. The only compassionate thing would be to provide counseling for them,” she said.

“Counsel this individual that you were born a female or a male, and this is what you were intended to be. To change that, you’re not going to be able to live the life you were meant to live, and it’s going to impact everyone, especially the children.”

The American Psychological Association takes a more flexible position: “A psychological condition is considered a mental disorder only if it causes distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their transgender feelings and traits to be distressing or disabling, which implies that being transgender does not constitute a mental disorder per se.”

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The motion was filed February 19, with the support of Guyana NGO Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination and lawyers in Guyana, St Lucia and at the University of the West Indies Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) on the Cave Hill, Barbados campus.

The litigants were four MtF transgender Guyanese who were rounded up in a crackdown, stripped, denied medical attention, detained over a weekend, and fined US$7,500 under chapter 153(1)(xlvii) of the Summary Jurisdiction (Offences) Act, Chapter 8.02.

Appearing unrepresented before Guyanese Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson in February 2009, they were ridiculed by her from the bench, lectured that they were men, not women, admonished that they were confused, and instructed to go to church and give their lives to Jesus Christ.

The 2009 cases generated considerable publicity, and there were many domestic and international appeals to the Guyanese Government to remove the law. After these went unheeded, the constitutional motion was filed. In addition to raising due process issues, the complaint says the law is irrational, discriminatory, undemocratic, contrary to the rule of law and infringes the constitutional rights to freedom of expression, equality before the law and protection from discrimination.

Organisers at CAISO (Trinidad and Tobago’s Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation), who since their founding seven months ago, have collaborated closely with other gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) advocates across the region, applauded the Guyanese move. ’The way I dress is a fundamental part of who I am, my way of life,’ said Beverly Alvarez, who participated along with one of the Guyanese litigants in the first Caribbean regional transgender human rights and health conference in September of last year.

’This case that Peaches and others in Guyana have filed goes to the heart of freedom of expression, our freedom to express our gender identity.’

Ashily Dior, another transgender activist with the group added, ’It’s a well recognised medical fact that, for transpeople like me, who I am just doesn’t fit with the sex of the body I was born into. This is not a vice. Some of us are lucky to afford hormones and surgery; but many of us just can’t.’

Dior recently represented Trinidad and Tobago at a regional meeting of the International Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association, where she was elected an alternate delegate for the Caribbean; and she is hoping to find work educating the public about gender identity issues.

Trinidad and Tobago transpeople have been on the map internationally since 1998. In a landmark case that year, after police officer Eric George arrested and attempted to strip search a 27-year-old transgender woman in San Fernando when she shoved a photographer harassing her, Lynette Maharaj, wife of the then Attorney-General, both clients of her business, represented her in a successful lawsuit.

’Trinidad and Tobago may not be next in line for GLBT law reform, but we’re definitely in the queue,’ said University of the West Indies (UWI) law graduate Kareem Griffith, another member of CAISO, reflecting on the case. Griffith played a key role in an international meeting held during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last year where representatives of 12 countries planned strategy for sexual orientation and gender identity legal reform efforts.

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