Saturday Night Double Feature
July 3, 2011
Donna Nebenzahl’s Transgender Children
July 3, 2011
When I started reading today’s article “Making The Transition” in the Vancouver Sun about the medical transgendering of youth who struggle with cultural sex role enforcement, I knew I had read the same article before. I checked the date- no, it’s a new article published today. But I knew I had read it before so I googled the author Donna Nebenzahl and sure enough, I had read the same exact article with a few minor changes back in March in the Ottawa Citizen as “Life in Transition” . Or was it the Montreal Gazette where it was also published back in March as a “special to the Gazette” feature “Gender Identity Crisis”?
Who was this freelancer pimping out the same article to three different – possibly more, (too lazy to check)- newspapers over the last six months? Donna Nebenzahl is a freelance “lifestyle” journalist and Genderist who mainly writes articles supportive of the chemical castration and medical mutilation of gender non-conforming youth and those children who reject or struggle with cultural sex roles. She does a few other genderist articles on topics such as “Society’s Lost Boys: Child-Men Delaying Adulthood” (Donna reports: “It’s an epidemic, says American family doctor and psychologist Leonard Sax, author of the books Why Gender Matters and, most recently, Boys Adrift.”
“While this change has developed alongside the successes girls now show at university and in the workforce, girls can’t be blamed for it.” Donna continues,” In other words, schools are not boyfriendly places. It starts in kindergarten, where children are expected to sit and learn, which wasn’t expected of them until Grade 1 just a few decades ago. Problem is, reading drills are really boring for a boy, who is hardwired, some psychologists believe, for rough-and-tumble play at that age. He’s distracted, underperforms, gets scolded, hates school.”
“This large gender divide has ramifications, write Frenette and Zeman,” Donna reports, “Women are delaying the age at which they have their first child, and will likely reduce the gender wage gap.” (OH NOEZZZZZ!!!!! -GM)
Donna helpfully leaves us a list of resources at the end of her article. (click on the link above to read the whole piece of crap)
and “Guyland- Why are so many young men adrift?” (“While this change has developed alongside the successes girls now show at university and in the workforce, girls can’t be blamed for it” Donna says familiarly. She warns: “In the past, marriage and family were markers of adulthood, writes Michael Kimmel in his book Guyland, but in a world where young women put off children for careers, where job security is a thing of the past and their parents’ values hold little allure, young men can postpone adulthood almost indefinitely.”) and also some overtly genderist home design articles such as “Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice- That’s What Little Girl’s Rooms Are Made Of” which was published two weeks ago Also years ago when she was pretending to be feminist (or at least sucking up scant feminist grants) she authored a book ostensibly about Women Activists called “Womankind: Faces of Change Around The World” in which she and a photographer, according to Publisher’s Weekly: “With funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, they traveled the world “to get to the heart of why women care enough to dedicate their lives to helping others.” For each of the 45 women or teams of women, they present four pages of photos and text in various font size, with a listing of contact information at the book’s end.”
“A few, mostly in the developed world, work to improve the status of women (e.g., Kathe Kollwitz’s Guerilla Girls fighting sexism in the American arts community). The volume skews toward African activists (caring for AIDS orphans, empowering rural women) and is curiously devoid of Middle Eastern women. American readers may be surprised to find so few grassroots activists (there’s Katsi Cook, a native healer; and Clementina Chery, an anti-gang violence activist in Dorchester, Mass.), but a full spread on writer Robin Morgan. Although the sepia-toned photos are very handsome, the selection seems strange: some of the American entries are tired, recycled and even irrelevant in the company of other women struggling for more basic causes.”
As far as I know only one of the activists was talked into being photographed as a nude, so that is a good thing. According to the book jacket she is a married hetero with two children and no ties to the Lesbian and Gay or Trans communities. (Although it is possible she is having one of her children medically treated for gender non-compliance). What I can say for certain is that she is a genderist activist who has no interest in feminism and deliberately avoids mentioning any connection between social sex roles and the female class. As seen above she is mainly concerned with how females are impacting the quality of life for men.
The published and re-published (re-hashed) article published (republished) today, about correction of gender non-conforming (mainly gay) children is the most genderist slanted conservative crap this side of the American Family Association – or the Ayatollah Khomeini- with no mention whatsoever of any viewpoint that questions the nature of sex roles. A pretty amazing feat for someone writing about them. Nebenzahl, if you couldn’t tell from the info cited above, is an unaoplogetic right-wing genderist through and through.
Some excerpts from the piece:
“At age 5, Shamai was a boy in a little girl’s body. He remembers demanding a short haircut and when a lady on the street “mistook” him for a boy, turning to his mother and saying: “This lady knows better than you! She knows I’m a boy.”
(Rejection of sex-role+desiring short haircut= birth defect. See how simple?)
“ They are transgendered youth, all in their 20s now, from different backgrounds but with stories that are similar: moments of childhood clarity when you realize that you’re not who you appear to be turning into an aching discomfort often leading to despair. In the majority of cases, these conflicts and concerns take years to work through, as the young person living inside a body they don’t understand, or want, often deals with isolation, self-loathing, bullying and suicidal thoughts. Then they make the frightening and often lonely journey to transform that body into the gender they identify with, coping with depression, the grief and possibly loss of their family, and a complex medical process.”
(These are actual fucking verbatim quotes. Check the article if you don’t believe me. Tropes Galore. Young adult subculture with shared narrative- nothing trendy to consider there, huh Donna? Then she says these kids are “not WHO you appear to be” she means that sex and sex-roles are “Who We Are” , the ultimate in conservative gender essentialism. Guess what Donna- our sex, our race, our various body types aren’t “Who We Are” on a desert island. They only MATTER in a sexist, racist, ablest society. And it might be okay for you to play a little fast and loose with that for the sake of your exposition were it not for the fact that you are doing it in the context of a piece advocating for the sterilization, castration and medically sanctioned disabling of children. Children you pathologize and refer to as “cases”. And ya know what Donna, you know this. Because in one sentence you refer to the “cases” – I mean children, as not being WHO they are because of their “defective” healthy bodies, but in the next you refer to them as living “inside a body”, beings not defined by their vessel. So get real. We’re talking about social roles applied to bodies according to reproductive function here. And you fucking know it.
The narrative of: they struggle for years and then they transform that body “into a gender” insinuates that all kids that struggle with sex roles have a one way path to “a complex medical process” is an incredibly damaging insinuation to make about children who fight sex-roles, most of whom when left to mature turn out to be well adjusted Lesbians and Gays. The fact that you never mention that 98% of gender non-conforming children referred for “treatment” will, when left to mature naturally STOP suffering from “gender dysphoria” on their own is the HEIGHT OF JOURNALISTIC MALEFEASANCE. Your homophobic agenda is undeniable. NOT ONCE does “Donna” MENTION the statistics of childhood HOMOSEXUALITY in these articles on gender non-conforming children!!!!!!!! NOT ONCE!!!!!! NOT ONE SINGLE TIME! When we know the vast majority of children referred for “treatment” are homosexual kids who will simply grow up gay. Donna Nebenzahl is a gay exterminationist- and anti-gay “correctionist”. And here is the kicker:
“While some professionals continue to see gender identity issues as psychological, ongoing research is moving toward the hypothesis of biological changes that take place in the womb rather than environmental influences,” Donna claims.
“Moving toward a hypothesis”=“Moving Towards a Proposed Explanation for a Phenomenon”. Can you believe the editors at the Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette and Ottawa Citizen allowed this bigotry? Would they allow it on an article about race or ethnicity? Or religion? Or any other oppression that involves straight males? Genderism isn’t a hypothesis. Genderism is a philosophy.
A hypothesis is: “human individual and social character traits may be caused biologically” . Genderism is: “Males are inherently dominant and females are inherently submissive to males and if the role doesn’t fit, the physical sex must be corrected because incongruence to this principle is against nature.”
Here’s another winner from old Donna Nebenzahl:
“Psychologist Françoise Susset’s specialty, within her family practice, is sexual minority issues. President elect of the Canadian Professional Association for Transgendered Health (CPATH), she is particularly concerned with supporting parents and with educating educators about gender expression – especially when exhibited by boys.”
Whut? Why especially when exhibited by boys? WE DON’T KNOW. Donna’s comment is completely unqualified. Never explained. Like it should be obvious to us all. Look at the article- I’m not making this shit up! To exterminate gay boy children more effectively? One might think with all the recent coverage on psychiatric abuse of gay boys Donna might feel it prudent to qualify that statement but no, we are all supposed to “know” what that means. Wink wink nudge nudge.
Listen to this unselfconscious gem quoted from “counsellor Rhonda Buckland at the youth advocacy centre Head & Hands.” ”Buckland, who teaches human relations in the department of applied human sciences at Concordia University, has been seeing trans clients for more than eight years. “Some come because they’re really trying to establish their gender identity and Dr. Tellier will often suggest they come to see me before starting hormones”
Donna reports: “Just think, says Buckland, how complicated it is for the average person to go through puberty and adolescence – “and on top of all that to feel so uncomfortable in your own skin and to be so ashamed of your body because you don’t feel the body parts fit how you want to approach the world.”
Duh. Why would body parts have to fit how you want to approach the world? On a desert island, how does skin color or sex effect how you “approach the world”? This is fucking HATE SPEECH. We’re talking about constrictive outdated conservative right wing SEX ROLES here. And this from a person with the professional authority to green light mutilating sex role protesting children.
Donna on “James” a 14 year old girl hospitalized for anorexia:
“He recalls the psychiatrist asking him why he presented himself in such a masculine way. “And I really wasn’t sure. She said, ‘If you could become a guy and no one but you would know, would you do it?’ I said, ‘Of course!’ I realized I thought all girls wanted to be guys!”
The psychologist (sic- Donna does not know there is a difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist and neither do her editors) gave James the number for Project 10, a resource centre for trans people that provides names of trans friendly doctors and psychologists, who might write letters to give them access to hormones and surgeries – and he began his journey into maleness.”
Donna on a gay male youth:
“Samantha’s struggle was also acute, and lonely. “I suppressed or denied it. Used mental acrobatics. But I wasn’t really good at acting like a boy,” (he) says. “I’d wear a T-shirt and jeans and sweaters but in high school people would say that I was feminine.”
On lesbian Shamai who Donna states: “At age 17, (she) came out as a lesbian, but discovered it wasn’t enough”. (According to Donna, Lesbian is a lesser form of “male”. Thanks Donna!)
“The therapist asked to see (her) journal writings and pointed out to Shamai that the journal, written in Hebrew, was written in the masculine form.
“She said, ‘Will you talk to me the way you talk in your diary?’ and when I tried it, talking in a masculine form, I felt like someone released something from inside. It changed everything.”
Hey I’m an authority figure and you’re a baby dyke. Your writing is very “masculine”. Please talk to me in that masculine way and I will give you approval. Funny you didn’t talk that way on your own without being prompted, but hey, that’s what I’m here for. Let me give you a number to call for some treatment. You must be a man.
Donna elaborates,“Shamai started dressing as a man, although never at (her)parents’ home”
Whaa? This sort of hyper- genderist fear may sound strange to most Gays and Lesbians but it’s why these kids get taken in by the authority figures who want to “correct them”. They are raised very conservative and very fearful at being gender non-conformist. They are terrified! The rest of us started wearing gowns or suits for fun when we were kids and insisted on choosing our own clothes but these kids have internalized the right-wing conservative genderism philosophy. Can you imagine a girl being afraid to wear “men’s clothes”? Jesus maybe a boy wearing a dress takes some balls – although many do, both gay and straight- and more every day- but jesus a girl hiding “men’s clothes”? This is a level of Genderist conservatism unprecedented in the modern age- major cultural backlash. If you look at any of the trans sites there are thread after thread about “getting a male haircut” and “how to stop trembling while shopping in the men’s department” and for the boys “how to grow your hair out” or “how fun it is wearing a blouse”. Holy moley less than 2 centuries ago it was the men wearing powder and wigs and being the fancy peacocks. We need a revolution and we need it NOW before one more kid gets run through the medical machine that trash journalists like Donna “Hack” Nebenzahl make nickel promoting.
(All bolding in this article is mine-GM.)
Sunday Afternoon Double Feature
June 26, 2011
Because I forgot to set this to post last night- lol.
Boys Just Wanna Have Fun. As Fake Lesbians.
June 14, 2011
Transbian "Butch" blogger Tobi Hill-Meyer
You’re not even gonna BELIEVE this one. About four years ago while looking for Lesbian sites on the internet I was confused by a site called LezGetReal. By all appearances it seemed to be one of the most active Lesbian blogs on the internet. But something seemed off about it. Like the fact that contributors all had big giant hair. And tons of makeup. And the articles were more often about M2T transgenders than Lesbians. And that it seemed strangely off key, non reflective of any Lesbian community I had every been a part of. And the fact that none of my friends ever posted on it. I was quickly informed that LezGetReal was a proxy site- a Lesbian proxy site, or more accurately, a Transbian site where transgendered males pretended to be Lesbians. A site for “Trykes”. But not for out proud Transbians, but for ones that thought they were “on the down low”: Stealth. I haven’t gone back to it in years although it pops up with annoying frequency on internet searches of Lesbian issues.
WELL WELL WELL. Come to find out, courtesy of The Washington Post: The editor of LezGetReal, Paula Brooks “is actually Bill Graber, 58, a retired Ohio military man and construction worker who said he had adopted his wife’s identity online. Graber said she was unaware he had been using her name on his site.
Brooks’s identity came under suspicion after news broke that a woman called Amina Arraf on the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” might not really be a Syrian lesbian.
Over the weekend, as journalists, bloggers and fans of Amina hunted for clues to the identity behind the blog, Brooks came under review as a possible suspect. Liz Henry, a Web producer at BlogHer.com, questioned Brooks’s involvement with Amina, as Amina had started to write about the Syrian uprising on Lez Get Real before starting her own blog.
MacMaster came forward Sunday to admit that he was behind the persona of Amina, but questions still remained about Brooks.
Brooks had told reporters at The Washington Post that she could only speak on the phone through her father because she was deaf. She provided a photograph of her license as proof of her identity, which showed a woman named Paula Brooks.
On Monday, we continued to question her identity. We spoke to the man who identified himself as her father, who finally admitted after numerous telephone conversations: “I am Paula Brooks.” That man turned out to be Bill Graber.
Graber said he started the site to write about gay issues after seeing the mistreatment of close friends who were a lesbian couple. He said the site was “done with the best of intentions.” As a former Air Force pilot, he also said he used the site to argue in favor of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal.
“I didn’t start this with my name because… I thought people wouldn’t take it seriously, me being a straight man,” he said.
He felt secure that no one would discover his true identity until the story of Amina started to unravel. He said his connection to Amina was purely coincidental and started when Amina commented on a post on the Lez Get Real site in February. It “was a major sock-puppet hoax crash into a major sock-puppet hoax.”
In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.”
"Lesbian" Editor of "Lesbian" website LezGetReal: Bill Graber
Holy shit. Men will go to ANY LENGTHS to play Lesbian, to infiltrate the Lesbian community, to colonize, co-opt, pollute, dilute, ruin, and destroy the Lesbian community. And always the same excuse “I just wanted to have access to a community which excluded me as a heterosexual man”. “I wanted to force my way into a community of women”. “I wanted to feel like one of them”.
Yeah, Lez DO “GET REAL” fellas. I wonder what percentage of online Lesbians are actually female. And IRL also. All the creepos and lurkers so famous for frequenting dyke bars are putting on their “women suits” to bully their way into Lesbian space where they are not wanted. Or jerking off at home playing with their sock puppets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/14/second-lesbian-blogger-exposed-paula-brooks
“June 17th Saudi Women Drive” Organizer Manal Al-Sharif Arrested, Facebook Twitter and YouTubes Scrubbed
May 22, 2011
Update to this story: http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/“on-june-17-we-will-drive”-saudi-women-plan-mass-protest-for-freedom-to-drive/
One of the organizers of the June 17th Saudi Women Drive protest has been arrested, and also family members. The Facebook page, Twitter account, and YouTube channel have been deleted by Saudi government authorities. The facebook page had over 13,000 women who committed to participating in the driving protest before it was deleted. The arrested are Manal Al-Sharif, the woman shown driving on the now deleted YouTube video, and her brother.
Saudi police arrested the woman even though there is not actually any law against female drivers. It is on the authority of conservative religious zealots that the ban is in place, even though there is no such prohibition in Islam. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world with such a ban against women.
According to Arab News there is an anti-women driving campaign now started which advises men to beat women who drive: “Among these calls is a campaign demanding all men to beat up women attempting to drive. The men have been told to use their igals (head bands) to strike women behind the wheels in the streets.”
Another campaign was started by men pledging to protect women drivers, including a Facebook page called Protecting Saudi Females on 17th June.
The Saudi Women’s Revolution FB page is still up, and a page showing worldwide support of Manal Alsharif- https://www.facebook.com/pages/We-are-supporting-Manal-Alsharif/229788737035282
The page states:
founder of “I will drive starting June 17″
a campaign which encourages and enables saudi women to drive.
She is an inspirational leader that will be remarkable for future generations as the first Saudi woman ever to announce driving a car by herself
Manal Al sharif, is one of hundreds Saudi women who seek their rights, justice, and dignity. She’s now another victim to the oppression of the Saudi police men. Manal in her attempt to challenge women driving ban in Saudi Arabia by the most pacifist way, through an event on facebook, has been arrested twice late at night Sunday, May 22, by the hands of the religious police and without any apparent legal reasons.
We’ve been fighting for so long in a country where human rights are barely applied. We ask for your help and media support to our essential case.
Spread the news and join us.”
The Codes of Gender: Ritualization of Subordination
May 22, 2011
OK so you know how I sometimes do a “Saturday Night Double Feature” and throw up a few vids that may or may not be of interest. Well tonight it’s Saturday Night Main Event singular because this video is THE SHITE!!! This is a MUST SEE for anyone interested in Gender. To my trans readers: This video will HELP YOU PASS as the opposite sex! So WATCH it! To all women and girls: WATCH this video! It WILL be on the mid-term. Please don’t comment if you haven’t watched. Thanks.
Sit back, relax, and fire up the Colortinis. Enjoy.
A group of Saudi women are organizing a mass “drive-in” for June 17, 2011. They will risk arrest, the loss of their jobs, and possibly further restriction on what little freedoms they have.
From The Seattle Times: “Saudi Arabia enforces the ascetic Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam. Women aren’t allowed to have a Saudi driver’s permit. They can’t travel or get an education without male approval, or mix with unrelated men in public places. They aren’t permitted to vote or run as candidates in municipal elections, the only ones the kingdom allows.
The last time a group of women publicly defied the driving ban was on Nov. 6, 1990, when U.S. troops had massed in Saudi Arabia to prepare for a war that would expel Iraq from Kuwait. The Saudi women were spurred by images of female U.S. soldiers driving in the desert and stories of Kuwaiti women driving their children to safety, and they were counting on the presence of international media to ensure their story would reach the world and lessen the repercussions, according to Noura Abdullah, 55.
Abdullah was one of 47 drivers and passengers who stayed out for about an hour before being arrested. They were banned from travel for a year, lost their jobs for 2 ½ years and were condemned by the powerful clergy as harlots.”
According to the United Nations 2010 Human Development Report’s Gender Equality Index, although Saudi Arabia scores high in development, they are one of the worst nations in the world when it comes to gender equality. “The country shows high human development, with a global HDI [Human Development Index] ranking of 55, an HDI of 0.75 and income per capita of nearly $25,000. However, despite good female educational attainment, women are nearly absent from parliament, and female labour force participation rates are only one-forth those for men, giving the country a GII [Gender Inequality Index] value of 0.76, and a ranking of 128 out of 138 countries.”
The Saudi government has hinted many times over the years that the restriction on female driving would be lifted, but it has never followed through. The Guardian reports that a 2004 study showed 47% of Saudi women own a car! But they are not permitted to drive them. According to http://www.saudiwomendriving.blogspot.com/ , a site devoted entirely to news surrounding Saudi women driving, the fact that average families cannot afford to pay for taxis or drivers means the ban has an even more severe effect on women of lower income and their families.
A Facebook Page has been set up by some of the women who are planning the protest. As of today nearly 2000 have pledged to participate. They declare: “On June 17th, 2011.. We women in Saudi Arabia, from all nationalities, will start driving our cars by ourselves
We are not here to break the law or demonstrate or challenge the authorities, we are here to claim one of our simplest rights
We have driver’s license and we will abide by the traffic laws..
Enough with the talk… we are here to walk the talk and just do it.. it’s about time!”
(The participating women are being advised to have international driver’s licenses, since Saudi licenses are not issued to women. That way additional charges cannot be brought against them).
Also a twitter site has been set up to gather support, and to post updates on the day of the event. http://twitter.com/#!/Women2Drive
Saturday Night Double Feature
April 24, 2011
Saturday Night Double Feature
April 10, 2011
Saturday Night Double Feature
March 27, 2011
Man Wearing Skirt Protested, Censored
March 24, 2011
This photo of a male wearing a skirt in protest of restrictive gender norms caused a shitstorm of outrage from transgenders after it was posted on the Equality Maryland facebook page. From one activist: “Do the cisgender people who posted this image realize how insulting it is to transsexual women? It’s no different than if I attended, say, one of Martin Luther King’s rally in blackface and claimed to be an ally. It’s insulting.”
“We aren’t interested in redefining what it means to be a boy or a girl.” complained another.
“I think part of the issue here is that you can’t get past the fact that most trans women generally aren’t invested in caring about men stepping outside of acceptable masculinity.”
“The haters are going to have a field day with this pic. Again, mocking the trans again. So, so, cis.”
Trans-jacktivists have become increasingly vocal about protesting media images of gender-nonconforming males and drag performers. This despite the fact that crossdressers and drag queens are included under the political banner of transgenderism. In recent months trans have protested an actor wearing a wig on the Craig Ferguson Show, protested and attempted to censor the Comedy Relief benefit performance of Susan Boyle’s duet with drag performer Peter Kay, and protested a Drag Bingo benefit for an LGBT rights organization.
Trans activism increasingly centers around protesting males who crossdress and impersonate females without claiming an internal self-reported male “female identity”, as well as media images of transgenders who fail to conform to conservative female gender roles and presentations. We are witnessing the increasing conservatism of the transgender movement, the prime tenet of which is the belief that males and females have differently gendered neurological brain “sex identities”, and that such speculative brain differences form a biological basis for sexist cultural gender roles. Transgenders who identify as non-binary “genderqueers”, and the largest demographic of the transgender umbrella: heterosexual male crossdressers are not only being pushed to the margins politically, but are actively being shunned and silenced by the current transactivist movement. This reflects a general tendency in trans people to consider some trans (themselves) “true” transgenders (males with “female brains”) and others “false” transgenders (pretenders and “mere” female impersonators). The trend of censoring images of all people who fail to follow conservative social gender traditions is the latest iteration of the highly conservative and sexist transgender philosophy, as is the trend of protesting gender performers who do not claim to possess an “opposite-sexed brain”.
Autumn Sandeen "Good"- claims to have "female brain"
Peter Kay "Transphobic"- does not claim to have "female brain"
The photo of the young man in a skirt was removed from Equality Maryland’s website as a result of the outcry from trans activists.
Sources:
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/18902/two-different-thoughts-about-the-man-in-the-skirt
http://accept-embrace-live.blogspot.com/2011/03/with-friends-like-this.html
http://endablog.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/first-drag-bingo-now/
Transgender: Time To Change
March 19, 2011
TRANSGENDER: TIME TO CHANGE
A meeting organised by the
Royal College of Psychiatrists’
Gay and Lesbian Special Interest Group
Friday 20th May, 2011
15 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PG
“This will be an extremely stimulating meeting exploring the most recent academic, clinical and contemporary thinking on transgender issues, for all people interested in this field.
SPEAKERS:
Domenico Di Ceglie M.D. Dip.Psychiat (It), FRCPysch
Domenico Di Ceglie is Director of Training Development and Research, Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London.
Previously Director, GIDS (1989-2009) and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the Adolescent Department, Tavistock Clinic; Honorary Senior Lecturer, The Royal Free and University College Medical School, London; Visiting Professor in Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Perugia, Italy (1992-1996); Psychotherapist (retired) Lincoln Centre for Psychotherapy, London.
He has a longstanding interest in adolescence and has worked in adolescent in-patient units and has been widely involved in consultative work to organisations and to professional networks. He has been Organising Tutor of an MA course accredited by the University of East London in Adolescent Mental Health for professionals.
In 1989 he founded a specialist service for children, adolescents and their families facing gender identity issues at St. George’s Hospital, London, now based at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust. He was the service Director until March 2009. The GIDS provides a multi-disciplinary service countrywide, consultation, training and research and has been nationally designated and funded by the National Specialised Commissioning Group, UK. He has developed models of care and treatment for children and adolescents with gender identity disorder and has been involved in research projects. He has published papers about his work and edited a book “A Stranger in My Own Body – Atypical Gender Identity Development and Mental Health” (Karnac Books, London). He was highly commended in the Health & Social Care Awards, 2004. He gives frequent lectures in the UK and abroad and has undertaken extensive research in the area of Gender Identity
Julie Bindel, Journalist
Julie Bindel has been involved in campaigning to end violence against women and children for 30 years. She is the co-editor of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys, Astraia Press, 2003, and a number of chapters and papers on topics such as domestic violence and homicide, rape, stalking and harassment, and trafficking and prostitution. She currently divides her time between research and journalism. In 2010 Julie was named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the 100 most influential people from the lesbian and gay community in the UK.
Christina Richards BSc (Hons), MSc, MBPsS, Senior Specialist Psychology Associate
Christina Richards is Senior Specialist Psychology Associate at the WLMHT Gender Identity Clinic (Charing Cross) where she practices individual and group psychotherapy as well as psychological assessment. She is also a part time postgraduate lecturer on sexuality and mental health. She has published several chapters and papers and, along with Dr Penny Lenihan at the WLMHT GIC and Dr Meg Barker at the Open University, will have her first book: Sexuality and gender for counsellors, psychologists and health professionals: A practical guide published by Sage in 2012
James Barrett, Lead Clinician, Gender Identity Clinic
James Barrett is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Senior Lecturer and is the Lead Clinician at the West London Mental Health Gender Identity Clinic (Charing Cross). Over the last 25 years working in this field he has assessed and treated about six thousand patients. He is the Editor of and main psychiatric contributor to: Transsexual and Other Disorders of Gender Identity: A Practical Guide to Management, which is the standard text in the field. He is also a General Medical Council Assessor and Supervisor, a College Fellow and Examiner, a keen cyclist and the holder of a British Cheese Society Diploma.
Az Hakeem, Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist
Az Hakeem has run a specialist psychotherapy service for patients with transgender and other gender identity disorders from the Portman Clinic for over a decade. The service is the only one of its kind in the UK’s NHS and covers a national catchment area. Patients are seen for assessment and psychotherapy either individual or group of a modified analytic model specifically tailored for gender identity patients on which he has published numerous papers over recent years.
Az Hakeem is also the Head of The Dartmouth Park Unit, a specialist Mentalization Based Personality Disorder Service which he was instrumental in setting up for Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust five years ago. He is a Tutor and external advisor for the College and also delivers teaching to medical undergraduates at University College London. Az Hakeem also works as a psychiatrist for the media and has been involved in a number of television programmes both on and off screen.”
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This upcoming conference of gay and lesbian psychiatrists on the topic of treatment modalities for transgender clients has the trans-jacktivist communities up in arms.
Dominic Di Ceglie has long stated how problematic current transgenderist “treatments” of drugs and surgery are for the youth population he treats, a full 25% of whom rapidly drop the whole transgender philosophy upon entering talk therapy. Not to mention the overwhelming majority of gender role non-conforming children (98%) turn out to be homosexual or to a lesser degree hetero non-trans adults.
Az Hakeem is the author of “Transsexualism: A case of The Emperor’s New Clothes?”, “Changing Sex or Changing Minds: Specialist Psychotherapy and Transsexuality”, and “Deconstructing Gender in Trans-Gender Identities” as well as other psychiatric papers and remains one of the only practitioners of psychiatric treatment available to transgender patients in the UK which integrates analysis of cultural gender norms.
Predictably, pro-medical/surgical treatment trans-jactivists, who have long fought to prevent any further scientific study of, or alternative treatment for transgenderism are responding with the usual tactics of abuse and harassment. Notably, M2Ts have singled out feminist lesbian journalist Julie Bindel for the most egregious abuse.
Anti-Gay and Lesbian and Anti-feminist Trans-jacktivist Paris Lees
Trans-Jacktivist Paris Lees
Spokesman for UK non-profit The Gender Trust:
Has started an online campaign called “Julie Bindel’s Genitals” on Facebook and WordPress:
Paris Lees' campaign
Like many tran activists Mr. Lees has confused a diagram of the female reproductive system with “genitals”. This is common among a male population that believes cosmetic surgery that transforms their penis into a rough visual approximation of exterior female genitalia “makes them women”. Anti-feminist activist Mr. Lees, who claims on his YouTube page that he is employed by the Millivres Prowler Group , has not included any of the male conference participants in his campaign nor their genitals or reproductive systems. Mr Lees main objection to Bindel seems to be her feminist analysis, as he states:
“And furthermore, I am a rad fem. I am reclaiming the term. There is nothing radical about Bindel’s rather stale and circular brand of feminism. She and various other bigoted cis ‘thinkers’ have suspected for quite some time that trans women who identify as feminists are merely trying to enter women’s ideological space. So let’s do it.
Henceforth, ‘rad fem’ will refer to a trans person who believes that the personal is political, that biology does not equal destiny, that human beings deserve bodily autonomy and that it is morally objectionable to place meanings and judgments onto other people’s gendered bodies. It means a belief in equality and judging people on their words and actions – and not their appearance. In short, it will now mean everything that the words ‘Julie Bindel’ do not.
Enjoy Julie Bindel’s genitals.”
"Transwomen" raped by own genitals
Seems this upcoming conference (or at least Julie Bindel’s invite to speak) has the anti-organic treatment option crowd up to their usual tricks. This is yet another split among the increasingly failing transgender political coalition, as the minority of trans who agree with increased treatment options get tossed yet again under the bus by pro-surgical anti-feminist transgenders.
