This Week in Sex: Porn for Prisoners
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Is sexual-reassignment surgery a right?
Sam Adams, the mayor of Portland (not the Revolutionary War Hero/beer maker), wants to offer coverage of surgery for transgendered employees seeking sex reassignment. There is a committee assigned to review such policies, but for the second year in a row, they could not reach a decision on the topic of sex reassignment surgery, so Adams is overriding them.
Portland isn’t the first major American city to cover this surgery — that honor goes to San Francisco, but it's still a major move of support for transgendered citizens. This won't cost the state much money (they’re estimating about $32,000 more per year), but the support it shows for equal rights among all residents is priceless. Imagine the kind of morale this must stimulate in Portland — when you live here, you’re taken care of.
And then Texas has to come along and ruin the high I just got.
A judge in Wharton, Texas has declared not only that marriage is only viable if it’s between a man and a woman, but also that a “man” and a “woman” are determined at birth, not by what they choose to become with the aid of surgery, counseling, hormone-enhancing drugs, or other such methods.
This ruling comes after the case of a firefighter who was married to a woman, until he found out she’d been born biologically male and divorced her. In an effort to legally annul that marriage, the counsel stated that “a person’s sex is a biological fact, not a state of mind, and altering one’s outer appearance doesn’t change that.” While in this case, it might make sense (since allegedly, the guy was deceived about his wife's gender), this is the sort of legal precedent that could have nasty ramifications for transgender people across the state.
Commentarium (13 Comments)
coverage for sexual reassignment is complicated for me not on moral grounds, but in terms of precedent and scope. that is, when does it stop? if a small-busted woman feels that, deep down, she is a large-busted woman and must have surgery to achieve the appearance that she feels most truly conveys her identity, then why shouldn't she be covered as well? what about penis enlargement? what about permanent cosmetics? it's an interesting proposition, but they "why" of it (beyond improving morale) needs to be more clearly defined.
I agree that reclaiming the n-word is dubious. It's co-option attempts to take away it's power to hurt from the outsiders who use it, but it's just such a powerful, nasty word that is too connected to slavery and cultural genocide. I would say that the biggest success story in these realms has to be embracing the word queer.
I think that Lady Chatterly's Lover or some of Henry Miller's works probably "angry up the blood" just as much, if not more, than garden-variety porno.
Me you sex
oddly enough the Chicago Tribune reported that the proper verb for Civil Unions is to certify. So people have been "certified"....which just sounds so technical and unfeeling.
Hmmm... shortage of men in Russia, (scarier) shortage of women in India and China... I think we need to hook that up.
I don't want to sound judgemental, but how do you not know that your wife was a man?
She spent tens of thousands of dollars chaning jnto a woman her penis isnt there and she pronablt didnt look like a man at all thats how he didnt know his wide was a man
No kidding, well I figured she had had surgery, it just seems like you would be able to tell the difference between a biological vagina and one that was constructed, especially if you're married and presumably putting fingers or penises inside of it.
Hey, that post leaves me feeling floiosh. Kudos to you!
It would appear that you have never heard of a book called The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt. The subject matter of which you speak is hardly new or even really that profound anymore, as it's been around and discussed in feminist circles of academia for well over a decade.
Stay with this guys, you're helping a lot of peolpe.
Yeah, it'll only cost $32,000 extra per year... We have problems with cuts in education and unemployment but we can afford to pay for people to get a sex change? My tax dollars will NOT support this. This is absurd. If they think they were born the wrong sex let them pay for it to be corrected from their own pockets.