Dreams Into Lightning 2

Zoe Speaks Out on Trans Youth

Zoe at A. E. Brain clears up some misconceptions about transgendered kids.

Kuwait Makes Cross-Dressing a Crime

I spent seven months in the desert for this?

(New York, January 17, 2008) – Authorities should immediately release more than a dozen persons jailed under Kuwait’s new dress-code law, Human Rights Watch said today. The law, approved by the National Assembly on December 10, 2007, criminalizes people who “imitate the appearance of the opposite sex.”
“The wave of arrests in the past month shows exactly why Kuwait should repeal this repressive law,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East division at Human Rights Watch. “Kuwaiti authorities should immediately drop all charges against those arrested, and investigate charges of ill-treatment in detention.”

Security officials have arrested at least 14 people in Kuwait City since the National Assembly approved an addition (Article 199 bis) to Article 198 of the Criminal Code. The amendment states that “any person committing an indecent act in a public place, or imitating the appearance of a member of the opposite sex, shall be subject to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or a fine not exceeding one thousand dinars [US$3,500].”

Dress codes based solely on gender stereotypes restrict both freedom of expression and personal autonomy, Human Rights Watch said. The only known targets of the new Kuwaiti law have been transgender people – individuals born into one gender who deeply identify themselves with another. Kuwait allows transgender people neither to change their legal identity to match the gender in which they live, nor to adapt their physical appearance through gender reassignment surgery. The new law, coming after months of controversy, aims at further restricting their rights and completely eliminating their public presence. In September 2007, the newspaper Al Arabiya reported a new government campaign “to combat the growing phenomenon of gays and transsexuals” in Kuwait.

On December 18, 2007, Al Watan newspaper announced the arrests of three people at a police checkpoint in Salimeya, 10 km southeast of Kuwait City. Days later, police arrested three more people at a checkpoint in Kuwait City. On December 21, security officials detained another three people on Restaurant Street in the Hawalli district, 8 km south of Kuwait City. The same day, two other people were detained at another police checkpoint. Authorities have reportedly arrested three more people in January, one in a coffee shop and two in a taxi stopped by police. Police arrested all 14 because they believed they were “imitating the appearance of the opposite sex.”

All the people detained are being held in Tahla Prison. Friends of the accused told Human Rights Watch that police and prison guards subjected the detainees to physical and psychological abuse. Al-Rai newspaper quoted police as saying that the “confused [men were] deposited in the special ward,” and that the prison administration ordered guards to shave their heads as a form of punishment. The paper quoted a prison administrator as saying “this step [shaving heads] follows the passage of the law concerning men who imitate the appearance of women.” Friends report that at least three of the prisoners were beaten and one was left unconscious. Authorities deported one Saudi Arabian national among those arrested, to face trial in that country. None of the detainees has access to legal representation.

Transgender people in Kuwait tell Human Rights Watch that they are now afraid to leave their homes – even for work or to meet basic needs – for fear of arrest and ill-treatment. Arbitrary and intrusive gender-based codes for acceptable demeanor and dress violate the rights to privacy and to free expression protected under international law. The beatings and ill-treatment to which authorities reportedly subjected the prisoners violate internationally recognized prohibitions against torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

“The intent of this measure is clear: to eradicate the freedoms and visibility of people who already face discrimination daily,” said Stork. “When states impose dress codes, whether on women or on men, they deny their basic rights to both privacy and free expression.”

In a December 31 private letter to Kuwait’s minister of justice, Abdallah Abd al-Rahman al-Matuq, and to the speaker of the National Assembly, Jassem Al-Kharafi, Human Rights Watch urged the government to release the detainees and drop charges against them. In the same letter, Human Rights Watch called on the government to work toward repealing the recent addition to Article 198.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Kuwait has acceded, sets forth the prohibition against torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Article 7). Article 14 of the same treaty affirms the right to counsel. The treaty also bars interference with the right to privacy (Article 17) and protects freedom of expression (Article 19). Kuwait has the obligation to respect and ensure these rights, and to do so in a non-discriminatory manner, as set forth in Article 2.

The Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, adopted by a group of 29 experts on international human rights law in 2006, calls upon states to “take all necessary legislative, administrative and other measures to ensure the full enjoyment of the right to express identity or personhood, including through speech, deportment, dress, bodily characteristics, choice of name or any other means” (Principle 19[c]).

HT: Or Does It Explode

G, L, B ... and what's the other thing?

Transsexual neocon Zoe at A. E. Brain clears up a few points:

1. First, we're all human beings. That needs saying because we too often lose sight of the fact that everyone, even those we don't identify with, even those we feel uncomfortable being around, have human rights. And I speak as a conservative neo-con, not a tree-hugging kumbayah-singing liberal.

2. Then some of us are GLBT - people who do not fit in in some way with the standard bigendered model, where men look and act in accordance with society's norm for men and are only attracted to women, and women look and act accordance with society's norm for women and are only attracted to men. About the only thing such people have in common with each other is that it's the same people who persecute them. Many in this conglomerate - that is, a matrix containing parts of very different nature - don't remotely understand each other, and there's both phobia - fear - and loathing even when they do understand.

There's Androphobic Lesbians who see men, even Gay men, as a threat, Gynaphobic Gays who see anything redolent of femininity as beneath contempt, Homophobic Transsexuals who resent being conflated with those they see as morally corrupt, you name it. And straight Intersexed people who don't see why having an unusual medical condition automatically drafts them into a political activist group made up of weirdoes like mentally ill Transsexuals, Fetishistic Crossdressers, and perverted GLBs.

3. The there are some who are T. This is where it really gets confusing. T for Transgender. And what that word means changes from day to day. ...

Go read it all.

Diane Schroer Discrimination Suit Moves Forward

Queerty:

Diane Schroer will get her day in court. The Library of Congress originally hired the military veteran as their top terrorism researcher. After hearing that Schroer - then David - planned on becoming a woman, the Library refiled her application in the trash can. ...

UK Gay News:

WASHINGTON, November 28, 2007 (ACLU) – Rejecting the federal government’s attempt to throw out a transgender veteran’s sex discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress, a federal judge ruled today that the case can go forward.

The American Civil Liberties Union brought the lawsuit in June 2005 on behalf of 25-year U.S. Army veteran Diane Schroer who was offered a job as a senior terrorism researcher but was later told she was not a “good fit” after her future boss learned she was in the process of transitioning from male to female.

“After putting my life on the line for my country for 25 years, I couldn’t believe that I could be refused a job that I was told I was the most qualified for solely because I happened to be transgender,” said Diane Schroer, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Officer who specialized in fighting terrorism.

“But today’s decision makes me proud that I served a country that values equality and fairness.”

The article explains:

In its motion to dismiss, the government argued that Title VII, which protects against sex discrimination, does not protect transgender workers.

The court rejected this argument, ruling that the fact that Ms. Schroer is transgender does not bar her from bringing a sex stereotyping claim.

The court said: “Title VII is violated when an employer discriminates against any employee, transsexual or not, because he or she has failed to act or appear sufficiently masculine or feminine enough for an employe,” the court ruled.

Previous posts.
Update on Diane Schroer.
Lavender Alert - June 14, 2005.

Oh, sister!

Before and after:

Stanford, California, USA. A FtM scientist says the relative lack of women in academic research is due more to bias than aptitude. Writing in the July 13 issue of the journal Nature, Professor Ben Barres says "For talented women, academia is all too often not a meritocracy. Very few men or women are willing to admit that discrimination is a serious problem in science."

Ben A. Barres, M.D., Ph.D.Barres ponted his argument at critics such as Lawrence Summers who claimed innate differences between men and women may explain why so few women work in academia. Summers resigned as Harvard University's president during the ensuing controversy. Barres sees discrimination istead of the innate differences seen by Summers sees innate differences.

Professor Barres recalls that he was discouraged from trying for the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) because he was perceived as a woman. Once he arrived at MIT, he was told a boyfriend must have solved a hard math problem that Barres solved and had stumped most men in the class. Barres eventually earned his bachelor’s degree at MIT.

After his transition in 1997, Barres overheard another scientist compliment him on a great seminar one day. The scientist compared Barres' work to that of his "sister", saying it was much better than hers.

Of course, the "sister" was Ben Barres himself in an earlier life. ...

The new face of Pakistan?

And now for something completely different.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Begum Nawazish Ali flirts with the country's law minister, batting her long eyelashes and calling him darling. She kisses one of the minister's sons on the cheek and practically asks another son to marry her. All in front of the television cameras.

"Look at my hands," she tells the minister, showing off her French manicure.

"Your hands are beautiful," he responds. "I feel like kissing them."

This is the most outrageous TV program in Pakistan, one that has regularly violated conservative Islamic rules and Pakistani customs while becoming a top-rated talk show. But Ali is more than just a mouthy woman, and that's what makes this popular show truly revolutionary, even subversive.

Ali is actually a mouthy man in drag. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Chess and Gender

Via Normblog: 'Why are there so few women among chess grandmasters? (Of 894 in 2004, eight were women.) Pure Pedantry reports on the results of a study by Chabris and Glickman, and the answer, in a word, is participation.'

Veil Debate

Phyllis Chesler at NRO:

... The veil in Muslim lands is imposed upon women whose religious training and opportunities for scholarship and ritual authority is practically nonexistent. The veil is no more freely chosen than is their religion, which neither women nor men are allowed to leave without risking exile or death. Muslim women in Muslim lands or in immigrant communities in the West might gain their only access to public attention and approval if and when they espouse a fundamentalist point of view, namely one that favors Islamic gender and religious apartheid and that upholds the view that women must be veiled.

However, when Muslim women in Western countries wear the veil it has some additional connotations. Veiling is a visible, public, symbolic, and very aggressive statement about refusing to assimilate into a Jewish-Christian and modern democracy. It is a way of remaining apart, different. ... It is a way of rejecting sexual promiscuity, sexual availability in the West and paradoxically, embracing Islamic gender apartheid (arranged marriage, polygamy, wife-beating, segregation, female genital cutting, honor killing, etc.).

If veiling did not mean any of the above I might have one view about it — but might still view it as a slippery-slope problem. But since veiling does have the above meanings I say this: If we allow our Western views about tolerance to force us to tolerate the intolerant; if we allow human-rights violations to flourish as expressions of religious liberty — then we are lost. Thus, I would ban veiling in the workplace, at school, and in public venues but at this time take no position about it at home or in the mosque in the West.

Sweden's Nyamko Sabuni.

An elegant, vivacious woman who uses subtle make-up and wears soft clothes in pastel shades and tight woollen sweaters, she argues for a total ban on veils being worn by girls under the age of consent, which is 15 in Sweden.

“Nowhere in the Koran does it state that a child should wear a veil; it stops them being children. By putting a veil on a girl you are immediately saying to the outside world that she is sexually mature and has to be covered. It’s wrong,” she said.

Discussion on comments threat at Feministing.
Discussion on comments thread at Feministe.

Minneapolis: Muslim Cabbies Refuse Trannies

Fox 9 (via LGF):

By Tom Lyden
Web Produced by Michael Durkin

MINNEAPOLIS – In her bright pink hat, Paula Hare has found herself waiting on her stoop a lot lately, for taxi cabs that never come.

Not to avoid confusion, Paula even tells the taxi dispatcher she’s transgendred. But on three occasions when the taxi actually showed up, she says Muslim drivers have refused to give her a lift.

“This is more than just religion, it’s flat out discrimination,” hare said. “And we’ve got laws against that in this state.”

The city of Minneapolis says she’s right.

Of the nearly 2,000 taxis in the Twin Cities metro, estimates are as many as half the drivers are recent immigrants – many Muslim. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Venus, Mars, an Australian Passport, and Belgian Chocolate

Congratulations to Zoe, the brains behind A. E. Brain, on the first anniversary of her transition. You go girl!

Go check out Zoe's blog. Liberal, pro-Bush, and a space geek ... what's not to like?