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The Gay World Cup of Soccer - 9/29/07
Ask the Therapist: Am I a
Middle-Aged Sex Addict?
Gay animals out of the closet?
A first-ever museum display, "Against Nature?," which opened last month at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality.
"Homosexuality has been observed in more than 1,500 species, and the phenomenon has been well described for 500 of them," said Petter Bockman, project coordinator of the exhibition.
The idea, however, is rarely discussed in the scientific community and is often dismissed as unnatural because it doesn't appear to benefit the larger cause of species continuation.
"I think to some extent people don't think it's important because we went through all this time period in sociobiology where everything had to be tied to reproduction and reproductive success," said Linda Wolfe, who heads the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University. "If it doesn't have [something to do] with reproduction it's not important."
For pleasure
However, species continuation may not always be the ultimate goal, as many animals, including humans, engage in sexual activities more than is necessary for reproduction.
"You can make up all kinds of stories: Oh it's for dominance, it's for this, it's for that, but when it comes down to the bottom I think it's just for sexual pleasure," Wolfe said.
Conversely, some argue that homosexual sex could have a bigger natural cause than just pure pleasure: namely evolutionary benefits.
Copulation could be used for alliance and protection among animals of the same sex. In situations when a species is mostly bisexual, homosexual relationships allow an animal to join a pack.
"In bonobos for instance, strict heterosexual individuals would not be able to make friends in the flock and thus never be able to breed," Bockman said. "In some bird species that bond for life, homosexual pairs raise young. If they are females, a male may fertilize their eggs. If they are males, a solitary female may mate with them and deposit her eggs in their nest."
Mom and Dad and Dad
Almost a quarter of black swan families are parented by homosexual couples. Male couples sometimes mate with a female just to have a baby. Once she lays the egg, they chase her away, hatch the egg, and raise a family on their own.
"Homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are terms defined by societal boundaries, invisible in the animal kingdom.
"Many species are hermaphrodites," Bockman said. Hermaphrodites have both male and female sex organs. A lot of marine species have no sex life at all, but just squirt their eggs or semen into the sea.
Some creatures even reproduce asexually, by dividing themselves into two organisms. In one species of gecko, females clone themselves.
Like most complex issues, animal homosexuality is challenging and poorly understood. Therefore, educators tend to shy away from covering it in their teaching. Many scientists don't even want to be associated with this type of research.
"I've had primatologists offer to give me their data on homosexual behavior because they didn't want to publish it," Wolfe said.
"Against Nature?" was set up partly to demystify the concept.
The argument that a homosexual way of living cannot be accepted because it is against the "laws of nature" can now be rejected scientifically, said Geir Soli, project leader for the exhibition. "A main target for this project was to get museums involved in current debate; to show that museums are more than just a gallery for the past."
To learn more, see LiveScience's Top 10 presentation, Gay
Animals: Alternate Lifestyles in the Wild
Source: By Sara Goudarzi, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15750604/?GT1=8717
Bisexuality on the Rise Among Young
Women
School Crowns Male Homecoming Queen
Allen, who is gay and performs in drag at nightclubs in the region, said he entered the homecoming contest as a joke, competing as Reann Ballslee, his drag queen persona.
But he considers the victory one of his happiest moments and proof that the suburban Washington, D.C., school famous for its run to the Final Four a few years back celebrates its diverse student body.
"I was very touched by how Mason was so supportive through the whole process of allowing a boy in a dress to run for homecoming queen," Allen said in a phone interview. "It says a lot about the campus that not only do we have diversity but we celebrate it."
The senior from Virginia's Goochland County won the pageant Saturday at a sold-out Homecoming basketball game against Northeastern University.
Large portions of the crowd cheered as Allen, wearing a gold-sequined top, accepted the tiara and the Ms. Mason 2009 sash.
The school, known for racial diversity and a basketball team that pulled off a string of upsets to advance to the Final Four in 2006, was selected the nation's top "school to watch" in the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings.
Allen's selection does not appear to have caused much consternation among the school's 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students. An online article in the student newspaper prompted only two comments, both positive.
Alyssa Cordova, an officer with the school's College Republicans,
said she didn't pay much attention to Allen's election and is
surprised by the media attention it has received.
Source: news.aol.com/article/homecoming-drag-queen/352755?icid=200100397x1218402730x1201286417
Vatican says men with
‘transitory’ gay tendencies can still be
ordained
The document has been years in the works, but its existence came to light in 2002 at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the United States. A study commissioned by U.S. bishops found that most abuse victims since 1950 were adolescent boys. Experts on sex offenders say homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest young people, but that did not stifle questions about gay seminarians.
These men can’t be priests because they are in a situation
that “gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and
women,” it says. (Editor's Note: Would this then imply that
a priest must have experienced marriage in order to relate correctly
to married men and women? Hypocracy marchs on into the new
millinium.)
Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10248368/
Viagra May Raise STD Risks in Gay
Men
Silicone Injection Used To Enhance Body
Suspected In Third Death
Study Identifies Triggers For Risky Sex
Among Gay Men
Did You Miss the Queer as Folk
series on Showtime?
Temple to gay love unearthed near
Rome
Zaccaria Mari, the head archaeologist on the site says archaeologists have dug up parts of the walls of the monumental temple and made a couple of exploratory excavations. "We found a series of fountains and planters for interior gardens, niches for statues and very important marble fragments, some with Egyptian hieroglyphics," Mr Mari said.
"I'm sure this discovery will cause a lot of controversy, because it flies in the face of previously accepted theories, but only further excavations will give all of the answers."
Historians are divided over whether the emperor's favourite lover
committed suicide in the river Nile or was pushed in. Antinous was
despised by the emperor's jealous aides, but it could never be proven
that he was murdered. Other scholars claim Antinous committed suicide
before old age destroyed his looks. He was 21.
Source: www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_710095.html?menu=news.quirkies
Just days after Willie Houston's death, Lester Childress, 46, a female impersonator, was found dead in his Chattanooga apartment. Fatal stab wounds were inflicted by 26-year-old Brain Keith Jackson, who confessed to the murder after his capture in Catoosa County, just across the state line in Georgia. Childress, called a "living legend" in the Tennessee drag scene, had worked for more than 20 years at the gay club, The Tool Box. He was known as Mr. Della Reeves. More than 500 friends, fans, and family members attended his funeral. (Source: Southern Voice, August 9).
In July, Colorado was shaken by the murder of 16-year-old Native-American two-spirit Fred C. Martinez, Jr., of Cortez, who was bashed in the head and left to die. 18-year-old Shaun Murphy has been charged with the crime.
(Wonder what the psychological similarities are between these young killers and the young, religious radicals of the Taliban? - Ed.)
Source: Transgender
Tapestry, Win/01.
Landmark Report on LGBT Health Released
A tireless, two-year effort by gay health advocates, providers, educators and government agencies has yielded a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind report on the state of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health in the United States. The report, Healthy People 2010 Companion Document for LGBT Health, supplements the government’s Healthy People 2010 report, which serves as a blueprint for disease prevention and healthcare funding over the next ten years.
The companion document, released March 30, gives a broad assessment of LGBT health, including topics such as cancer, HIV, mental health, family planning, heart disease, tobacco use and injury and violence prevention. The document also focuses on ways to improve the public health infrastructure and increase access to quality healthcare.
"This is a great step forward, because the knowledge about LGBT health is now more accessible," said Judy Bradford of Fenway Community Health in Boston, MA and a member of the National Coalition on LGBT Health, which produced the report. "We know ourselves now unlike we knew ourselves before."
"Knowledge about LGBT health is now more accessible. This is a great step forward."
The information compiled in the report is useful on three fronts. It can serve as an invaluable tool for healthcare providers who care for LGBT patients. The results of future health studies can be measured against the data in the report to track LGBT health trends. And the report can be used to access funding for LGBT health studies. "This document can be used to assist in writing grants -- the information is there," said Nancy Kennedy, Dr.P.H., who served as the intra-agency liaison for LGBT health issues at the Health Services and Resources Administration (HRSA), which funded the report. The HRSA is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The compilation of the companion document began in 1998, after the government released its first draft of Healthy People 2010."There was no reference to LGBT health issues in the first draft of the document," said Patricia Dunn, J.D., director of public policy for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, which co-produced the report. "That started a major process to get the federal government to address LGBT health needs." Last summer, the HRSA provided funding that allowed ten work groups, comprised of 162 people, to focus their efforts on completing the document.
The exclusion of LGBT health in the original report prompted the formation of the National Coalition on LGBT Health on October 14, 2000. The goal of the Coalition is to improve LGBT health and wellness through federal advocacy.
Source: www.gayhealth.com/templates/98710518037875366210800011/news?record=490
In Pakistan, the Homosexual activity is illegal, punishable with life in prison, and corporal punishment of 100 lashes, while Islamic law, which also can be enforced legally, calls for up to 100 lashes or death by stoning. (a report by an international human rights commission about hmosexuality in Pakistan.)
Source: An e-mail from a young gay man
in Pakistan 1/02.
We Need Transgendered People Out Proudly
Among Us
Transgendered people embody the real issue behind the oppression of sexual minorities. To miss this point is actually to buy into the excuses the system itself gives for discriminating against and abusing non-heterosexual people. The dominant excuse is that l/g/b/t people are erotically attracted to the same sex. So, the system teaches that all of this has to do with who is having sex with whom or who is in love with whom.
We might agree, but that's not really the case. One of the common dynamics of any oppression is that lies are convincingly repeated about the reasons for oppressing a victimized group.
White racism claims that the reason for the oppression of people of color is something inherent in "them" - their skin color, culture, or natural abilities. In reality racism functions to keep working-class people apart, blaming and scapegoating each other so they'll never unite to end what is collectively hurting them in the culture and its institutions. It is a way of protecting the system itself. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this and that's why he turned to challenging the whole system, not just personal prejudices.
Yet it's easy for a victimized group to believe those lies consciously or unconsciously and to think that on that basis they can correct something they're doing in order to end the oppression. In l/g/b/t communities this means that we should try to look and act straight, particularly in public.
We should never do anything to show that we are attracted to the same sex unless it is part of excusing ourselves with, "We're just like you, except...." That means we should treat our sexuality in the same sick manner straight people do.
When we recognize what is really going on when l/g/b/t people are victimized and encouraged to think of themselves as second-class citizens, we'll see that we need a different strategy for our own liberation which includes and highlights the transgendered. But it's a strategy far from that of many of us who think that straight people are healthy, and that how they live their lives and what they possess will be our salvation.
The real reason l/g/b/t people are targeted for discrimination is that the oppression is the major means our society uses to keep men and women in their place, to keep them in strictly defined and "opposite" gender roles. It ensures that men will be "masculine" and women will be "feminine."
If any two self-identified heterosexual males walk down a street in the U.S. and hold hands or put their arms around each other, they will be treated the way gay men are with violence, threats, ridicule, and rejection. That's because by doing so they have defied the male role. They have stepped out of the straight jacket of masculinity. They have transcended the limits of their culturally-defined gender.
If a self-identified heterosexual woman refuses to follow male concepts of female beauty, refuses to find her worth in approval and acceptance by men, stands up with her sisters for equal pay for equal work, and decides to live her life in her own self-interest (as men are supposed to), she will be accused of being a lesbian. She too has transcended the stifling gender role society has for her.
As long as we have gender defined as we do, men will be stuck in their place, out of touch with their feelings of hurt, fear, and confusion, and living the "beat or be beaten" mentality with other men they learned in childhood. It's a role enforced with the "privilege" men are taught they have of defending this system by being willing to kill other men and be killed by them in the name of manliness. If they don't they will be treated as "non-masculine" males, as gay men.
As long as we have gender defined the way we do, the limitations on women will remain. They will be suspect for acting powerful, assertive, decisive, and feminist. They will be put down for showing anger, reason, and clarity of thought and goals, for finding fulfillment in their own wholeness, for deciding how they want to look and act, and for no longer believing that "getting a man" is the key measure of their worth.
As long as gender is strictly defined and enforced with little if any fluidity, gay men and lesbians will be attacked, demeaned, and thought of as second class citizens because the oppression has nothing to do with hem and everything to do with gender roles -- roles that are not human, freely chosen, or healthy. These roles result in inhuman relationships: one role relating to another rather than one human being relating to another.
Transgendered people embody our real issue. Their "coming out" threatens the entire system of gender identity and gender roles. Their presence announces boldly that none of us "has to be" either of these roles. And that's a major threat to everything that oppresses us. Suzanne Pharr was absolutely right when she wrote *Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism*, now in its second edition (Chardon, 1997). And I would put it, "Homophobia: A Weapon of Gender Rigidity."
Society's fear is that if we take away the two gender roles we will not know who we are. In reality, we'll get in touch with our unconditioned humanity by rejecting externally imposed, dysfunctional, and inhuman, definitions of what it its to be human, male and female. That fear - that I won't know who I am -- might be the scariest of all while it opens us up to one of the most exciting frontiers of exploration in the universe.
We will not be free until transgendered people of all types can define who they are and how they want to express their self-chosen identities. It's not really about sexual orientation. It's not really about us. It's a system that can't stand the idea that people can be free of the limitations of gender roles. Championing this will free gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. And transgendered people will also benefit.
Source: Robert N. Minor, Ph.D. is Professor of
Religious Studies at the University of Kansas and author of the new
book Scared
Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard
to Be Human. He may reached at or
www.fairnessproject.org
Genital Surgery Pandering to Social
Prejudices
You see, just like our military, the Boy Scouts don't mind gay people in their ranks as long as they act "straight." It's just another "don't ask, don't tell" policy. And it has nothing to do with sex or sexuality.
If a Scoutmaster mentions to his troop that he and his wife saw the movie "Pearl Harbor," there are no consequences. Should he say he and his male companion did, he will be out of scouting ASAP.
That's because this, as other attempts to oppress gay people, has nothing to do with sexual orientation, sex, or who is in love with whom. It has everything to do with maintaining the rigidly installed gender roles our society still needs to operate its institutions, particularly its military and its businesses.
The Boys Scouts, like the military, must look "manly." That means its image must conform to "straight" manhood. And conditioned manhood today still has as its goal the creation of warriors, of men who will be willing to be killed by and to kill other men for the system. Even in a "peacetime economy," we are still looking for ways to keep our defense industry and our arms sale industries going. "Jobs are on the line," we say. We have not figured out how to become a peace-time nation which no longer needs males trained into a warrior stance.
And the greatest way to enforce warrior manhood on men is to threaten them with what happens to gay men if they should step out of the role.
This means we need to install homophobia in every man. And I mean "homophobia" in its root sense -- the fear of getting close to one's own gender.
If men start getting too close to each other, it would be harder for them to beat, defeat or destroy another man, all of which is supposed to be done at that other man's expense.
I was standing outside the campus building where I teach when two male students celebrating "Gay Pride Week" walked by holding hands. One of my students asked, "Professor Minor, what do you think of that?"
I answered. "I think we should all hold hands. If we held hands, we couldn't shoot each other or hit each other. We could help each other get along and cross the street the way we did as small children."
Yet if two self-identified straight men walk down any street in the US and decide to hold hands, they will receive the same treatment gay men do daily - ridicule, humiliation, threats, and rejection.
The fact is then, the oppression of gay men must end so that all men will be free to relate as human beings again, and not as potential warriors.
© 2001 Robert N. Minor
Robert N. Minor is author of the new book *Scared Straight: Why
It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human*.
He is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas and
many be reached at www.fairnessproject.org
Another really dumb idea someone ginned up -- probably while tweaking on Tina -- is "barebacking," which is glamorizing sex without condoms. "Hey, let's make HIV infection sound like a night at the rodeo!"
The latest harebrained notion to toxically slither into the gay vernacular is "condom fatigue." This is the theory that the rules for safer sex have to be reinvented because people are fed up with using prophylactics. Proponents say that a "Just Say No" approach to unprotected sex is impractical.
"I think in reality, people don't like using condoms, and we don't talk about this a lot," Atlanta HIV educator Malik Williams told Southern Voice.
Well, I don't particularly like stopping for red lights, either, because it tends to slow me down. Nor do I like pausing at crosswalks for rumbling trucks. Let's not forget seat belts: They totally suck. And riding a motorcycle with a helmet keeps the wind from freely blowing through my hair. I'm also over the gym and would prefer that the government declare TV-watching an aerobic sport and cheese fries a food group.
Unfortunately, there are laws of nature and common sense that can't be defied, no matter how annoying or cumbersome. However, this hasn't stopped some well-intentioned prevention experts from trying.
Williams went on to tell the Voice that if someone has unprotected anal sex five times a week and chooses to replace one of those encounters each week with oral sex, "this is a success story."
Huh?
I'm sure Williams is trying to do the right thing and should be commended for working to find innovative solutions from a place of care and compassion. I'm not convinced, however, that playing Russian roulette with one bullet instead of two will lower the HIV infection rate. This idea that we can run every other red light will weaken the overall prevention message and allow people to justify potentially deadly transgressions.
There are those who would argue that my approach isn't realistic because the HIV rate is not significantly decreasing, even though we've known for more than two decades how the virus is transmitted. I respond by pointing out that the glass isn't half empty. The condom message has reached tens of millions of people who do practice safe sex.
Instead of promoting irresponsible strategies that will compound the epidemic, here are a few practical steps that will reduce HIV:
Repetition: People need to be constantly reminded that wearing condoms is the norm and the expectation. Advertising should be ubiquitous, with the message: "No Bag, No Shag." Positive reinforcement is crucial to limiting new infections.
Availability: It isn't the 1970s anymore, and most people go to the bar to meet up with friends, not hook up with strangers. So when connections are made they are often spontaneous and neither partner has emergency gear. This is why bars and clubs -- gay and straight -- should make condoms and lubrication widely available. Easy access helps people make the right decisions and protect themselves.
An end to lying: Sex does feel better without a condom. One-night stands can be really pleasurable and emotionally satisfying. Drugs can sometimes enhance sexual pleasure. Telling people that they didn't have as much fun as they know they did is remarkably counterproductive. When we lie about these simple truths, we undermine our credibility and become part of the problem. The message should be: Yes, these activities are fun, but they can also be fatal. Is it really worth your life or the aggravation of drug cocktails? If we talk to people like adults, they often act like adults.
Having a plan: Take a moment to create a safe-sex strategy. Think about sexual boundaries. For example, if you can't handle your alcohol, make a rule that you won't go home with someone if boozing. Having such boundaries is key because negotiating them during the heat of passion often leads to bad decisions.
Trust: Don't trust the guy you just met on the Internet. If he lied about his penis size, what makes you think he's telling the truth about his HIV status?
People are human and will make mistakes. None of us is immune to letting his guard down. Instead of complaining about condom fatigue, we should put on fatigues and declare war on unsafe sex. Where the rubber meets the road, there is still no safer alternative for sexually active people than condoms.
Syndicated columnist Wayne Besen is the author of "Anything But
Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth." He
also maintains a blog at waynebesen.com
Source: Wayne Besen, www.gay.com/news/roundups/package.html?sernum=1275
A small but growing number of people are identifying themselves as transgender. Richard/Renee Ramsey is likely the oldest to make the surgical switch.
On June 15, Richard Ramsey checked into Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township for major surgery. When he left three days later, Ramsey was no longer Richard, but Renee. Her first words to her doctor when she awakened after the operation were, "Now I'm the lady I always knew I was."
Ramsey, a tall, lean woman, neatly turned out in black tailored pants and a lavender turtleneck sweater that used to be her wife's, is likely the oldest person in the United States to have surgery to change genders, experts say. She is 77.
He couldn't have the surgery when he was in his 20s or 30s because he didn't know about it then. He was still groping for his identity in his 40s. And he couldn't have the procedure in his 50s or 60s because he was in love with his second wife. When she died in March, there was no longer a reason to delay.
"I would have liked to be a lady a long time ago," says Ramsey, a U.S. Navy veteran of 20 years who also says he served in special operations in the Army.
"Now, the hardest thing I have to do is learn to be a lady," said Ramsey, who grew up in northern New Jersey and still lives there. "Little girls learn it from the time they're 5 or 6 or even younger. I'm just starting out. I have to learn and unlearn. When I get angry at someone, I have to practice acting like a lady instead of sounding off like I used to do.
"But now I feel calm, happy, and relaxed. And do you know what makes me feel the best? When I get on a train and the conductor says, 'May I have your ticket, ma'am?' I feel like a million dollars."
Ramsey is one of a small but growing group of people in this country and around the world who are identifying themselves as transgender. No one knows exact numbers because many people are still secretive about it.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, estimates that at least 700,000 in the U.S. would describe themselves as transgender. The American Psychological Association puts the prevalence rate at 1 in 10,000 for male-to-female and 1 in 30,000 for female-to-male, although Washington-based psychologist Michael Hendricks, who specializes in gender issues, says those numbers are decades old. Males still switch more, but the differential is not nearly that great, he says.
These calculations do not include those who are merely cross-dressers, who get a thrill from wearing their wives' silk underwear, or like to go public in a dress and high heels. They refer only to those who identify as being of the opposite sex from their birth and who may or may not have had sex-reassignment surgery.
In any case, according to a recently completed four-year study in Britain, a rise in the incidence of transgender people may be around the corner. "Our data provide strong evidence that the trans population is growing," concluded Stephen Whittle, professor of equalities law at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, the study's lead author.
Sherman Leis, the Bala Cynwyd plastic surgeon who performed Ramsey's surgery, is not surprised. "Hormone advances and new state-of-the-art plastic surgery techniques make it possible for more people to fulfill a lifelong yearning," he says. "And the greater acceptance of gay men and lesbians makes it less of a stretch to be OK with those who feel compelled to change their gender."
Leis has performed more than 250 of what he calls "bottom surgeries" (changing the genitals) on men and women since he opened his Center for Transgender Surgery in 2004, an additional 1,000 or so "top surgeries" (breast augmentation or reduction), and 1,000 or more additional procedures, primarily on male-to-female patients to alter facial features that will make them more feminine - fuller lips, more delicate noses, narrower chins, lower frontal hairlines.
None of his patients has ever returned with regrets, he says. "I'm selective in whom I choose to operate on," Leis says, "to make sure they are certain about their decisions. They have all waited a long time to change gender and have given it a lot of thought. . . . They are eager to do it and happy after they've had it done."
Ramsey says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 that he was "different." He shunned trucks and toy soldiers, preferring to dress up and play house with his two younger sisters. "I felt like I was their big sister, not their big brother," he says. "I liked doing lady things like cooking, sewing, and doing laundry. I didn't go for rough-and-tumble sports, never went out for baseball or football."
Although his father encouraged him to lift weights and exercise to develop his muscles, nothing worked. "Finally he gave up," Ramsey says. "He just shook his head when I told him, 'I'm not a boy. I'm a girl.' "
By 13, Ramsey was certain he had been given the wrong body, although he didn't know the name for what he was feeling. In school, he kept to himself and even got a medical note that excused him from gym because he was too embarrassed to get undressed in front of the boys. He felt he looked too feminine with his long, shapely legs and skinny body while the rest of the boys were more bulky and muscular.
When he was 15, his mother wandered into his bedroom and caught him slipping into her underwear. The next day, she made him an appointment with a psychiatrist. After months of therapy, the psychiatrist declared, "It is just a phase he's going through. . . . he'll get over it." Ramsey was devastated.
In 1952, he joined the U.S. Navy, thinking military service might make him more of a man. It didn't, and he endured being teased and called "little girl."
Two years later, while a boatswain third class in the Navy, and still struggling for conformity, he married his first wife; they remained together until he confessed to her that he believed he was a woman. Ramsey says that despite having four daughters, their sex life was "just OK - we could take it or leave it." They got a no-fault divorce in 1973 and Ramsey agreed to give his wife custody of the children. They moved to Arizona, and he has not seen them since.
Still dealing with denial, Ramsey married his second wife, Vesla, in 1982, a pretty 5-foot-1 woman he met at an American Legion convention in Wildwood. He didn't tell her he was transgender, but three years later she had figured it out. "She began wondering why there were so many panties and pantyhose in the laundry," Ramsey says, "and it finally dawned on her that I was wearing them too."
"We had a sex life," Ramsey says, "although I admit that when I was making love to her, I kept imagining what it would feel like to be her." Vesla had a daughter with a mental disability to whom Ramsey says he became a devoted stepfather. Recalling that now, she catches herself and smiles. "I should say stepmother." Ramsey says his birth daughters do not know that their father is now a woman.
It took Ramsey decades to make an appointment with a surgeon to discuss the possibility of transitioning from male to female. In keeping with the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, Leis referred him to a mental health practitioner for evaluation and guidance and to an endocrinologist to discuss hormone therapy.
Since that time, Ramsey has been swallowing both estrogen and testosterone-suppressing drugs daily and removing leg and body hair with depilatories. He has seen two mental health practitioners; one is still helping him wrestle with the disparity between his brain and his body. Before undergoing gender-reassignment surgery, each had to produce a letter verifying that Ramsey would be an appropriate candidate.
"I've been encouraging Renee to consider being able to live in both worlds," says her therapist, psychologist Jeanne Seitler who practices in Ridgewood, N.J. "Being Richard, being in the military, marching in parades, carrying the flag, and wearing the beret has been a big part of her life, and a lot of her supports are with those in the military. So a lot of her activities are in military dress. At the same time we're working on how she can be a woman, too, and feminize herself through dress and makeup. She really wants to be accepted as a woman."
Since having the surgery, Ramsey has not lost friends, but admits that many of them don't want to talk about her transition. "At home I dress like a lady and I always wear ladies' underwear, but most of the time when I go out with my friends, I dress like a man," Ramsey says.
With trepidation, she confided recently in her longtime buddy whom she sees every day. "He can't put his head around it," Ramsey says. "He's on the fence. But we go out together. It's like 'don't ask, don't tell.' "
No one in the medical community is certain what causes someone to be transgender, but Norman P. Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital Boston, says the condition is not a mental illness and should not be classified as such in the psychiatrists' bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. "It has something to do with the wiring in the brain," Spack says. "It could be a gene that is expressed at a certain stage of fetal development or hormones that have gone awry during gestation."
In any case, people who are transgender almost always know it, as Ramsey did, from the time they are young children.
Being transgender has nothing to do with being lesbian or gay. Ramsey says she is heterosexual: When she was a he, he was attracted to women. Now she is drawn to men, although, at her age, she says she isn't interested in a romantic relationship.
As Spack says, "It isn't who you go to bed with, it's who you go
to bed as."
Source: www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/69543837.html
A government that would deny a gay man bridal registry is a Fascist state. - Margaret Cho
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