Jayne County is a punk musician with a career spanning three decades, several media, and two continents. She was at the Stonewall riots back in the day, before acting in a Warhol play, moving to London and recording punk albums, publicly transitioning in the middle of a theater and musical career, and performing in Les Girls. And that's just going into the 80's. Today she's blogging.

This is Jayne County talking about gay life and drag in the 60's and the Stonewall riots:

Musical clips after the jump.

Continue reading "Queer music Friday - Jayne County" »

The New York Times reported yesterday that "Transgender Candidate Is New Judge."

The The Oakland Tribune, a local paper, reported that "Alameda County has become home to the first transgender trial judge in the country as Victoria Kolakowski won the race to fill an empty seat on the county's Superior Court bench."

CNN put her on a website of "intriguiging people."

The San Francisco Chronicle ran the story a few days ago as "An Alameda County Superior Court election remained undecided Wednesday, with Victoria Kolakowski - who would become the nation's first transgender judge - holding a slight lead over John Creighton."

Is Judge Kolakowski a judge, or a transgender judge? Is Clarence Thomas a Supreme Court Justice, or a black judge? Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg a judge, or a lady judge?

I'm reminded of what Dr. Johnson reputedly said: ""Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Continue reading "Victoria Kolakowski: A Judge, Or A Transgender Judge?" »

It's late on a Friday afternoon and while I should have spent all day researching stories and slaving over the keyboard, I've spent most of the morning lazing around the house and my afternoon hanging out with contributor Jarrod Chlapowski learning more about the history of DADT repeal. (Hey, that counts as research, right?!)

So to make up for it, here's a video of kittens being shot my lasers. If I had more time, I'd tie this into Dan Choi's recent misogynistic comments because that would tie together the military and... Good thing I'm pressed for time, eh?

For those of you with fine sensibilities, those aren't real lasers. The cats have myotonia congenita aka fainting goat syndrome.

Editors' Note: Today's guest post comes to us from a midwestern transman who asked to stay anonymous. He is not comfortable having his name attached publicly, but felt compelled to write about this topic.

I wrote this post in response to some comments on an article about Kye Allums, the first openly transgender female-to-male person to play NCAA Division I basketball. Most of the comments on the article were positive since it was on a GLBT site; however, a few brought up several points that are typically used to refute the very notion of transgender people, such as the following:

... humans are either male or female. 'Transgender' people are not 'men' born into a woman's body or 'women' born into a man's body. They are simply men or women who are confused as to their gender ....

...those who believe themselves to be 'transgender' need counseling and perhaps medication like any other person with a mental of psychological disorder.

The fact is that there are some things in life that you cannot 'change' like your sex.....

To those of you who believe that there are two distinct sexes - that we are created physically male or female and that is all - you may be surprised to know that it is estimated that every day surgeons perform surgery on 5 newborn infants (without their consent and sometimes even without their parents' consent) in order to change their "ambiguous" genitalia to what some doctor decides is more "conforming."

Continue reading "We Exist" »

The only anti-gay ballot initiative that passed this week that I know of was in El Paso. Surprise surprise, it was poorly-worded and now everyone's getting benefits cut:

By a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, voters passed an initiative saying, "The city of El Paso endorses traditional family values by making health benefits available only to city employees and their legal spouse and dependent children."

In response, the city attorney's office released a statement Wednesday saying there could be legal challenges, but the city will eliminate health coverage of:

• Gay and unmarried partners of city employees.
• Children such as foster kids who are not dependents under the federal tax code.
• Grandchildren of city employees.
• Retirees who are eligible for health coverage through another employer.

Now homophobes are rushing to reinterpret the wording of the ballot initiative, saying that no one meant to hurt anyone but the gays and unmarried straight couples (they're living in sin too). Turns out their telepathic powers are better than anyone could have imagined:

Continue reading "Anti-gay ballot initiatives hurt straight people too" »

We now know the outcome, more or less, of the Washington State US Senate race--and it looks like it's going to be Patty Murray, D-(Actual No-Kidding Progressive), over Dino Rossi, R-(Guy Who Will Be Running Again For Something As Soon As He Can).

Murray managed to win in a State that is far more "purple" than you might think, in a vote-by-mail election that guarantees at least few days of uncertainty.

You have to do some unusual math to figure out how these elections will go, and we're going to walk through how this race got called by NBC just a couple hours ago.

Continue reading "WA-Sen: Can Murray's Math Teach Democrats a Lesson?" »

Last month I got the opportunity to visit New York and be a part of the Red Umbrella Diaries. It's a monthly storytelling series where people who've tangled with the sex industry tell personal stories about the complications that arise when you mix sex and money, with a different theme each month.

Last month the theme was Healing Touch and the story I shared was about my partner, Briar, and my work with hir as an outcall escort. You can listen below or at the Red Umbrella Project. Relatedly, I recently wrote about my experience doing security for Briar in the article My Life as a "Pimp." In some ways, this has been a hard story to tell, but I feel it's a story that really deserves to be heard.

When Target contributed $150,000 to conservative anti-gay Minnesota Candidate for Governor Tom Emmer, they quickly became a target of boycott from the LGBT community and progressives.

More importantly their $150,000 bought millions of negative impressions on social networks, and even more clicks to negative stories on every major news outlet in the United States. Their $150,000 tarnished a well crafted image that cost Target their trendy cutting edge image that young urban people loved.

Target also bought a losing candidate. Tom Emmer lost on Tuesday by about 10,000 votes. He was the first Republican to lose the Governor's seat in Minnesota in 24 years.

Will Target's stupid move stop other companies from contributing to campaigns in the future? No way. They will just be sneakier about it.

Austen Crowder's post, "3 Things You Can Do After the Election to Move Us Forward," got a comment from contributor Amy Hunter that's worth lifting up.

After a hellish couple of months and an even worse few, sleep deprived days of GOTV, the last thing I wanted to do early this morning was go talk to a Human Sexuality class at a local university. I muttered all the way there, spilled coffee on my skirt, couldn't find a parking spot, discovered RM 1310 no-longer existed as rm 1310, kicked myself for not putting the professor's cell in my blackberry and considered just-not-showing-up.

All that angst had dissolved within about 10 minutes of (finally) finding the lecture hall. The prof had prepped the class well, the students weren't to a person texting or sitting all the way in the back and there was only one one big, thick-necked guy who scowled at me with his arms crossed.

90 minutes of (mostly) having a conversation rather than talking at them and I felt better and was glad I went. The best part is afterward when usually, someone asks if they can give my contact info "to a friend". Sometimes they call, sometimes not, but I know how lonely I was. The very least I can do is make myself available.

You remind me- My sole purpose needn't be manifest by bugging people to vote, organizing voluteers, haggling with the union printer, or being publicly outraged at press conferences. Maybe, I'll start going to TransCend meetings again.

What are you doing to move us forward after these disastrous elections?

Despite NOMs bullying of the judicial system, one Iowa politician refuses to give into hate, "no matter how ugly it gets."

There could be no truer ally to the gay and lesbian community than Iowa Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal.

The Des Moines Register reported:

Republicans will occupy the governor's office and will control the Iowa House next year, and there's a chance that final results could give Republicans a 25-25 deadlock in the Iowa Senate.

But Senate Democrats will maintain at least equal power -- which will give Majority Leader Mike Gronstal authority to prevent a vote on a marriage amendment to the state constitution.

"There's no mechanism whereby senators, even a majority of senators, can override the majority leader," according to Secretary of the Senate Mike Marshall, a staffer who ensures rules are followed.

Continue reading "Democratic leader in Iowa Senate vows he'll block vote on gay marriage " »

It's been a common mantra coming from the Democratic Party, the Obama Administration, large beltway equality groups like the Human Rights Campaign, and many others for years: just be patient and wait. We'll get to you and your basic civil rights eventually, but we're a little busy. Stop griping and hop on board or you'll be a wedge distraction that makes us lose elections.

So how has that plan worked out?

The LGBT community has been blamed, cajoled, insulted, courted, and ignored depending on whether our votes and dollars are needed, yet when it comes time for real leadership on issues that matter to basic, day-to-day rights, we are told to wait. Now, after the disastrous midterm elections, we've lost the chance of a generation to push forward on civil rights and equality for LGBT people.

We waited and once again got burned.

Continue reading "Waiting for Rights Never Works" »

In 2008, Virginia trended blue on the promise of hope and systemic change, which was the hallmark of Barack Obama's in retrospect completely disingenuous campaign. A number of Republican seats in Congress went Democrat and there was much talk that Virginia was now "purple."

Not anymore. Virginia is back to solidly red. Some fault lies with the various Democratic Congressional candidates, some of whom tried to be all things to all people and ended up standing for nothing. Many others, however, were swept out of power by the disgust and lack of enthusiasm aimed at national Democrats for their failure to deliver on promises.

The result: Democratic turn out was significantly down. In some cases by almost 60%. I had feared that the 2010 midterms would be a reprise of the 2009 elections in Virginia and, sadly, I was totally correct. The Democrats need to grow a spine and they need to be planning for a new standard bearer in the 2012 presidential elections or else 2012 will likely be another debacle.

Currently, the Democrats' number one liability is the occupant of the White House.

Continue reading "In Virginia the enthusiasm gap was very real" »