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News

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Cervical Cancer Vaccine – Blocked?

HPV, or the Human Papilloma Virus, is one cause of cervical cancer among women. Spread by sexual contact like HIV and other STDs, it starts as an infection – which sometimes clears up, and other times predicts cervical cancer.
The good news is that there’s a vaccine against HPV that’s showing up in clinical tests as being very effective in preventing HPV infection (and thus the later cervical cancer it causes). You’d think this would be great news, right?
Well, there’s a sticking point: girls will have to be vaccinated before they’re sexually active, and so the usual group of people who want to deny that women are sexual – or that women get sexual diseases from their husbands – are at it again.

  • “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council. She further clarifies: “”Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.”

    • God forbid.

  • Parents often think their own daughters are virtuous, and so not in need of the vaccination.

    • As if teenage girls tell their moralistic parents if they’re having sex…

  • Asian women in Britian already resist getting tested for HPV, because if they’re found positive they fear death at their husbands’ hands – when it’s most likely those very same husbands were the ones who infected them. Even though there is screening for the disease, which is effective in treating it before it becomes cervical cancer, the usual suspects prevent treatment. (If women, however, could get vaccinated, there would be no need to get screened later on.)
  • And then there’s this simple fact: the most effective way to keep women from getting HPV and the cervical cancer it causes is for men to get vaccinated. If they can’t get it, they can’t spread it. But of course men themselves aren’t fatally threatened by HPV – only the women they give it to are.

So once again, women will die because of our ass-backwards attitudes about women’s sexuality, about sex in general, and because – well, women’s lives and health are effectively in men’s hands.
You’d think, once in a while, our rational selves would win. The good news is that the new vaccine might be available as early as next year.
Thanks to Betty for sending me the link, to Arthur Silbur for blogging it, and to The New Scientist for the article.

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Guest Appearance

Author Josey Vogels has a couple of columns (“Dating Girl” and “My Messy Bedroom” she writes about sex online that are also syndicated in several Canadian newspapers. We “met” on a Book Television show a few months back.
She recently got a question from a young woman who was confused by the hot sex she had with her boyfriend when they were both in French Maid outfits, so she turned to me.
Do check out her online column on April 7th to see my ‘guest appearance’ as an advisor, or check one of these Canadian newspapers for the print version:

  • * Hour (Montreal)
  • * See (Edmonton)
  • * Current (St. John’s)
  • * Halifax Daily News (Halifax)
  • * The Baron (University of New Brunswick)
  • * The Interrobang (Fanshawe College, London)
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SAMHSA Stonewall

A few counselors who intended to present a workshop at an upcoming SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) on suicide prevention in GLBT communities were asked to remove “GLBT” from the title of the workshop. Instead of the title being “Suicide Prevention in GLBT Communities” the suggested title is “Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Communities.”
Likewise, any mention of “gender identity” was removed from the workshop’s description (although “sexual orientation” was allowed to remain).
Workshops with the previous title had been given at two other SAMHSA Conferences, but both before our last presidential election.
Currently there’s stonewalling going on, where the counsellors are being told it was all a “misunderstanding,” but no-one has said the original wording is now okay. The counsellors will be speaking to some members of the media about this tomorrow, and hopefully, they will take the lead.
In the meantime, there are few representatives you can contact to lodge a complaint. Please see the MHB forums for further information.

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Protest or Support?

It occurred to me that around this time last year, emails and T newsgroups and mailing lists and blogs were inundated with protests about the nomination of Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen for a Lambda Literary Award. I was against the nomination as were so many of us, and the driving force behind the protest was pretty remarkable, if not always polite.
However, not one trans website I’ve found has actually posted anything about this year’s nominees. I noticed, of course, because I’m one of the people whose book has been nominated, in the transgender category, along with the likes of Morty Diamond, Mariette Pathy Allen, Jamison Green and Julie Anne Peters. There are some other trans writers up for awards in other categories, and yet I haven’t really read anything about it.
Did the Bailey controversy end up nullifying the awards for the trans community? Or are we just way better at protesting than supporting the writers and educators who are doing good work?
So here, without further ado, are a few of the book award nominees for the Lambda Lit Award:
In the Nonfiction Anthology category:
That’s Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation edited by Mattilda, a.k.a Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Soft Skull Press
In the Children’s/Young Adult category:
Luna by Julie Anne Peters, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (which was also a finalist for the National Book Award this year)
In the Drama/Theatre category:
I am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (which has won so many other awards, like the Pulitzer and the Tony, you’ll have to check the website for the entire list)
In the Transgender/GenderQueer category:
Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green, Vanderbilt University Press (which also won CLAGS’ Sylvia Rivera award)
From The Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond edited by Morty Diamond, Manic D Press
Luna by Julie Anne Peters, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
My Husband Betty: Love, Sex and Life with a Crossdresser by Helen Boyd, Thunder’s Mouth Press
The Gender Frontier by Mariette Pathy Allen, Kehrer Verlag

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Judge Strikes Down NY Ban on Gay Marriage

From 1010 WINS – New York’s All News Station
Feb 4, 2005 2:23 pm US/Eastern
A Manhattan judge declared Friday that the section of state law that forbids same-sex marriage is unconstitutional — the first ruling of its kind in New York and one that if upheld on appeal would allow gay couples to wed.
State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan ruled that the words “husband,” “wife,” “groom” and “bride” in relevant sections of the Domestic Relations Law “shall be construed to mean ‘spouse,”‘ and “all personal pronouns … shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women.”
Ling-Cohan ruled on the side of five same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses. She said the New York City clerk could not deny a license to any couple solely on the ground that the two are of the same sex.
Susan Sommer, Lambda Legal Defense Fund lawyer who presented the case for the five couples, called the ruling “historic” and said it “delivers the state Constitution’s promise of equality to all New Yorkers.”
“The court recognized that unless gay people can marry, they are not being treated equally under the law,” Sommer said. “Same-sex couples need the protections and security marriage provides, and this ruling says they’re entitled to get them the same way straight couples do.”
One couple, Mary Jo Kennedy and Jo-Ann Shain, said they were very happy about the ruling and believed it would offer their family increased legal protection. They have been together 23 years, registered as domestic partners in 1993, and have a 15-year-old daughter who is Shain’s biological child.
“We’re just overjoyed,” said Shain. “We didn’t think it would ever happen.”
Kennedy said she wants to marry Shain as soon as possible. “I can’t wait,” she said. “We went to buy a (marriage) license in March 2004 and couldn’t get it. That’s what started this whole thing.”
Shain said, “We’re looking forward to trying to buy another one, and this time actually getting it.”
“I’m going to sleep better with the legal protection of a marriage,” Kennedy said.
The city Law Department issued a statement saying only, “We are reviewing the decision thoroughly and considering our options.”
Ling-Cohan noted that one plaintiff, Curtis Woolbright, is the son of an interracial couple who moved to California in 1966 to marry. She said California then was the only state whose courts had ruled that interracial marriage prohibitions were unconstitutional.
Some courts, Ling-Cohan wrote, justified anti-miscegenation laws (bans on interracial marriage) as defending tradition rooted in “natural” law. They “rejected the rights of adults to choose their marital partners based on outmoded prejudices that are now recognized as illegitimate grounds for government action.”
(I for one am happy to finally see New York acting like New York! It’s about time. No matter what the long-term ramifications are of this ruling, I’m still glad to see it. – hb.)

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Subordinate

Here’s some depressing news from The New York Times:
“A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.”
(The entire article can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/opinion/13dowd.html?oref=login&hp)
I doubt this is going to be big news to any women out there, but it’s kind of frightening that it’s actually supported by a survey.
The implications?
Men choose women who are subordinate to them for marriage.
If you look at it one way, the man with an IQ of 150 who makes $100k a year is most likely to marry a woman who has an IQ of less than 150 and earns less than $100k.
Which also means that a woman with an IQ of 150 who makes $100k a year is either going to end up single or marrying a man who has an IQ that is higher than her own and who makes more money – because the men in this study ARE CHOOSING TO MARRY WOMEN WHO ARE SUBORDINATE.
I’m sure plenty of powerful women are dating younger, less powerful hotties. But that’s not the point. The point is that when those hotties choose to get married, they’re going to marry a woman who is subordinate to them, too.
If this trend continues, every single one of my nieces is going to have two choices: to marry a man more powerful than her or to marry a man more powerful than her (or being single, or a lesbian, I suppose).
The study also indicates that it is also unlikely that the guy even pick someone who is an equal in these regards.
To me, it’s like playing any game or sport you’re good at. The guys in this survey are basically saying that they always want to play with someone they’re superior to. The intimation is that they are stacking the odds in their own favor.
One of the researchers, Dr. Stephanie Brown, is quoted as saying: “Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.”
Men are choosing subordinate partners because they are insecure around powerful women. They are concerned that strong, smart, salaried women might not be faithful. Imagine if women did that: no one would ever get married, both sides standing off to the sides waiting to be the more “dominant” partner.
This report is sickening & depressing to me. Deeply. Because I do have ten nieces, and I thought the world had changed a lot more since when I was a kid, but this survey – and the report about it – pretty much shows that girls are in the same shitty position they’ve always been in: either be okay with being subordinate and married, or be single. Or marry a tranny, I guess.
Since the study was done on undergraduates, I can only that eventually men do wise up – maybe once they’re dating more in their 20s and 30s, and maybe they come to appreciate having an equal, challenging partner.
Still in all, depressing news.

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Illinois Anti-Discrimination Bill Close to Passing

HOUSE of REPRESENTATIVES Passes Illinois Anti-Discrimination Bill
Only Remaining Step is Governor’s Signature
The bill that passed the Illinois Senate yesterday, easily passed through the House of Representatives and is on to the Governor’s desk. Sixty-five members of the House voted for the bill.
Upon the Governor’s signature, Illinois will become the fifth state with anti-discrimination protections for transgender people and the fifteenth protecting people based on sexual orientation.
Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard on this bill which has been on the works in various forms for thrity years.
For more information on the bill and its passage in the Senate, see the Illinois Gender Advocates (IGA) website at www.genderadvocates.org/TakeAction/TakeAction.html or the Equality Illinois website at www.equalityillinois.org.
(thanks to the NCTE for the press release!)

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Namaste

I’m not the type to ask for prayers, ever, for anything, but Southeast Asia is a place near and dear to my heart. It’s going to take years for them to recover.
Please donate to your charity of choice (Betty & I favor Doctors Without Borders).

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Transgender Activists Celebrate Victory in New York City

Transgender advocates and activists are celebrating the release of Guidelines Regarding Gender Identity Discrimination from the New York City Commission on Human Rights this week. These guidelines interpret the Human Rights Law and are designed to educate the public about the prohibition on discrimination based on gender identity and expression that became part of New York City human rights law with the passage of Int. No. 24, the transgender rights bill signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as Local Law 3 of 2002 in April of that year.
Continue reading “Transgender Activists Celebrate Victory in New York City”