8/14/13

Pussy Riot Sentencing COMMEMORATIVE Festival Manchester Aug 18-19

REVOLUTION: PUSSY RIOT COMMEMORATION FESTIVAL IN MANCHESTER








11 Stevenson SquareM1 1DB Manchester, United Kingdom
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  • Tomorrow (Thurs) morning from 9AM, listen to All FM 96.9 (Manchester) where Fiona Ledgard will be putting questions to Olivia from Shatterjapan about the event and you can hear some cool tracks from some of the bands playing Sun/Mon at KRAAK. Listen here http://allfm.org/listen 
    Unlike ·  ·  · 11 hours ag




American Bar Association calls on courts and legislatures to end the "Transpanic" Defense

I thought the despised "transpanic" defense met its end with the brutal murder of Angie Zapata when it took the jury just hours in 2009 to convict Allen Andrade of the highest charges against him, first degree murder. Andrade unsuccessfully attempted to use the transpanic defense saying his actions were uncontrollable when he was surprised by Ms Zapata's transgender status after having sex with her as an excuse for acquittal or to mitigate his punishment.

Apparently lawyers have souls too.


Source: ABA Now.org

113A
ADOPTED AS REVISED

Urges action to curtail use of the “gay panic” defense

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges federal, state, local and territorial governments to take legislative action to curtail the availability and effectiveness of the “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses, which seek to partially or completely excuse crimes such as murder and assault on the grounds that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction.  Such legislative action should include:
(a)    Requiring courts in any criminal trial or proceeding, upon the request of a party, to instruct the jury not to let bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion influence its decision about the victims, witnesses, or defendants based upon sexual orientation or gender identity; and
(b)   Specifying that neither a non-violent sexual advance, nor the discovery of a person’s sex or gender identity, constitutes legally adequate provocation to mitigate the crime of murder to manslaughter, or to mitigate the severity of any non-capital crime.


8/12/13

Victory In California! Governor Jerry Brown Signs AB 1266 Empowering Transgender Students

Today marks the beginning of a new era for transgender equality. AB1266 is now law.

 What this means: As our next generation of citizens matures they will have first hand knowledge and respect for their transgender peers and vice versa.

What this doesn't mean:  APFox and ABC's first paragraph states that California transgender students can now use 'whatever restroom they want".

Being that this extension of the bathroom meme is repeated by all of the major media outlets in this way, at this time, lends to the impression that it is fact, and could lead one to assume that a trans student could sit down and make a decision which gender they want to be, on that day.

Setting the record straight. Its not a spurious, frivolous or an apocryphal decision which guides trans students to the correct restroom. In fact, it's not a decision at all. It is the universal innate knowledge of ones gender. There are always factors which could preclude a young person from from transitioning, but that does not alter ones gender awareness.





8/11/13

"I'm a Girl" The last words by Jamaican 16yo Dwayne Jones before her 2hr beating death began

Truly heartbreaking to die alone, rejected by family, homeless, tortured for hours for expressing ones true gender, but that's how Dwayne's life ended after being outed at a dance. Heartbreaking that not one of the 300 people at that dance would be caring enough to identify her attackers.

There has been controversy in the social sphere if Dwayne was transgender. If I knew I was about to be beaten for my gender expression on that Montego morning my last words as a trans woman would have been the same as hers ergo I use female pronouns in reference to Dwayne.

Source AP:
Dwayne Jones was relentlessly teased in high school for being effeminate until he dropped out. His father not only kicked him out of the house at the age of 14 but also helped jeering neighbors push the youngster from the rough Jamaican slum where he grew up.

By age 16, the teenager was dead — beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car when he showed up at a street party dressed as a woman. His mistake: confiding to a friend that he was attending a "straight" party as a girl for the first time in his life.

"When I saw Dwayne's body, I started shaking and crying," said Khloe, one of three transgendered friends who shared a derelict house with the teenager in the hills above the north coast city of Montego Bay. Like many transgenders and gays in Jamaica, Khloe wouldn't give a full name out of fear.


Caribbean-based reporter and editor David McFadden who authored the AP article lives in Jamaica has first hand knowledge of the transphobic and homophobic atmosphere and was allowed interviews with Dwayne's housemates who miss her dearly.


Dwayne was the center of attraction shortly after arriving in a taxi at 2 a.m. with his two 23-year-old housemates, Khloe and Keke. Dwayne's expert dance moves, long legs and high cheekbones quickly made him the one that the guys were trying to get next to.


Dwayne had been very careful not to tell anyone about attending this dance in her authentic gender. No one knew except a girl from her church who she confided in who in turn outed her.


Minutes later, according to Khloe and Keke, the girl's male friends gathered around Dwayne in the dimly-lit street asking: "Are you a woman or a man?" One man waved a lighter's flame near Dwayne's sneakers, asking whether a girl could have such big feet.

 Then, his friends said, another man grabbed a lantern from an outdoor bar and walked over to Dwayne, shining the bright light over him from head to toe. "It's a man," he concluded, while the others hissed "batty boy" and other anti-gay epithets.

Khloe says she tried to steer him away from the crowd, whispering in Dwayne's ear: "Walk with me, walk with me." But Dwayne pulled away, loudly insisting to partygoers that he was a girl. When someone behind him snapped his bra strap, the teen panicked and raced down the street.

But he couldn't run fast enough to escape the mob.

The teenager was viciously assaulted and apparently half-conscious for some two hours before another sustained attack finished him off, according to Khloe, who was also beaten and nearly raped. She hid in a nearby church and then the surrounding woods, unable to call for help because she didn't have her cellphone.

Dwayne's father in the Montego Bay slum of North Gully didn't want to talk about his son's life or death. The teen's family wouldn't even claim the body, according to Dwayne's friends.

"I'll be cooking in the kitchen and I'll say, 'Dwayne, you hungry?' or something like that," said Keke while sitting on the old mattress in her bedroom, flinching as neighborhood dogs barked outside. "We just miss him all the time. Sometimes I think I see him."

Dwayne's room is empty except for pink window curtains decorated with roses, his favorite flower.

R.I.P Dwayne. Your LGBT community will hold you dear and will give you your final resting place in our hearts.


8/10/13

US and UK Leaders Reject Call to Boycott Sochi while thousands protest in solidarity with LGBT Russians. #NoPussiesNoGames

It should come as no surprise that both President Obama and now David Cameron, British Prime Minister, have let it be known that while they sympathise with the unrelenting brutal persecution of Russia's LGBT community they are against a boycott of the Russian winter Olympics.

  1. 2/2 However, I believe we can better challenge prejudice as we attend, rather than boycotting the Winter Olympics. DC
    1. 1/2 Thank you for your note . I share your deep concern about the abuse of gay people in Russia...





While it is gratifying that our united efforts have gained these leaders ears it is clearly not enough to have any real meaning in Russia dominated by Putin.

Just days after one bureaucrat said the "gay propaganda" law would be suspended for the Olympics so it would be "safe" for LGBT athletes and visitors Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko  insisted that athletes would "have to respect the laws of the country"  at Sochi meaning the "Gay Propaganda law could be subjectively enforced.

That is exactly why "No Pussies No Games" is petitioning the worlds peoples. We support both a worldwide boycott AND protests at the Sochi Olympics. Politicians more concerned with the number of medals athletes win, not human rights. The Olympic committee is more concerned with the high fees it receives than human rights.

No Pussies No Games: Boycott / Demonstrate at The Russian Winter Olympics




8/9/13

Victory In Taiwan: MTF Trans Couple Abbygail and Jiyi Wu's Marriage is reinstated

In a historic reversal the Taiwanese government has reversed a earlier ruling invalidating this transgender couple's marriage.

The Sun Daily reports: in what was hailed as a "benchmark" ruling, Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior on Wednesday decided that the marriage status of Abbygail Wu, 27, and her 29-year-old partner Jiyi Wu remained legal.

Abbygail graciously gave planetransgender a interview while the couples fate was still unknown. It was her suggestion that the article be titled Can The Taiwanese Gov't Revoke A Marriage With A Letter? It was a wonderful experience for me to learn first hand from these two young people what love means to them and a joy to be in some small way a contributor to what the WSJ described as a important component to this victory.

Abbygail and Jiyi Wu's struggle to love has transcended national boundaries lending their humanity to the realization that trans people worldwide belong together in one community.

While some see this as a leap forward for marriage equality not everyone is so optimistic according to the WSJ
Taiwan’s LGBT rights groups caution that the case does not signal that conservative Taiwan is ready to rewrite its marriage law yet.

“Protection of marriage and the right to marry is part of basic human rights, which means the decision was delayed justice but nothing groundbreaking,” said Chien Chih-chieh, the secretary-general of Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights.

The case, in fact, shows the government is still unwilling to budge from the current regulation that states a marriage can take place only between a man and a woman, she said.

The only silver lining, she said, is that the public and the government seem more willing to discuss the issue, which gives the group hope that a bill on recognizing same-sex marriages they plan to pitch to the legislature in September may meet less resistance.




人一出生,就被賦予性別是男生或女生,但是有一群人,他們無法認同自己的生理性別,長­期不安、痛苦,甚至去做變性手術,這個族群叫作「跨性別者」!接下來,我們要帶您來看­台灣,一對非常特別的「跨性別」伴侶、Abby和小芷的故事!Abby和小芷,兩個人­原本生理上是男生,成年以後,他們都進行了變性手術,就在Abby變更身分證為女性之­後,他們到戶政機關完成結婚登記。當時,身分證件註明,兩個人是一男一女,在法律上沒­有問題。但後來、戶政機關發現,原本登記為男性的小芷,身分證也由男變女!這下子問題­來了,兩個變性人、身分證都成了女性、他們的婚姻還算合法嗎?一場全球罕見的跨性別者­「婚姻保衛戰」,在台灣正式開打!

Men are born, were given gender was male or female, but a group of people, they were unable to identify with their physiological sex, long ­ unease, pain, even for the sex change operation, the group called the "transgender"! Next, we'll take you to see – Taiwan, a very special "cross-gender" companion, Abby He Xiaozhi story! Abby He Xiaozhi, two people ­ was physically to be boys, as adults, they have carried out that operation, after Abby change ­ of identity cards for women, they went to the population administration organ complete marriage registration. At that time, the identity documents indicated, two persons were a man and a woman, no ­ on legal issues. But then, the population administration organs found was originally registered as a male small Zhi, identity card by the MTF! Grabbed the issue ­ came, two transgender people, identity card were all women, their marriage is legal? Rare transgender ­ a global "battle for marriage", in Taiwan officially started!