Now we all know that pro-life people are against abortion and contraceptives and blah blah blah. But breastfeeding?

Breast-feeding, like oral contraception, alters a woman’s hormonal balance, thereby suppressing ovulation, fertilization, and, theoretically, implantation. These results were documented in a 1992 research paper, “Relative Contributions of Anovulation and Luteal Phase Defect to the Reduced Pregnancy Rate of Breastfeeding Women.” The authors concluded: “The abnormal endocrine profile of the first luteal phase offers effective protection to women who ovulate during lactational amenorrhea within the first 6 months after delivery.” In other words, breast-feeding prevents pregnancy despite ovulation.

Unfortunately for this guy, I know all this medical lingo and read the summary of this research paper he spoke of. The article says that breast-feeding did NOT prevent pregnancy, but rather it lowers the chances of conception significantly during the first six months postpartum, but not to the extent of prevention. He should have read thoroughly and not just read the title.

Yet, not only was he against breastfeeding, but also against drinking of caffeine and exercise in women of childbearing age. Shit, do you know how much I love Pepsi and volleyball? And I must give it up just because I’m of childbearing age? So not only is this guy pro-life, but he’s also pro-a-lot-of-fucking-kids.

And I end this blog with a very big LOL. I won’t need to get my tubes tied after my first child after all.

Move to Mount Isa, Australia!

Well, that’s what their mayor wants you to do, anyway. Seeing as men outnumber women 5-1, Mayor John Molony thought he would suggest that “beauty-disadvantaged” women move to Mount Isa, cause, you know, all women want is to snag a man.

This quote would be pure amusement, if he wasn’t seriously treating women like commodities for the poor little men in his town to screw:

Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness,” Molony told the Townsville Bulletin newspaper last week.

Obviously it’s because these women are in relationships with men, not because they’re happy with themselves and their lives. What do I have to smile about, then? I’m single. Eesh. I probably just look demented, walking down the street, being happy for no good reason!

But, thankfully we’ve got Mayor Molony to look out for us women. He says he’s a “bloke who respects women.”

Oh. Well, Mr. Molony, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.

Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work-force. It might be because for the last 35 years we have aborted more than a million people each year who would have been in out workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.

Now if many of you don’t know, the Christian Right is very anti-immigrant, but very pro-nativist. The Christian Right is against abortion or anything that has to do with the wonders of sex. Yet when it comes to immigrant’s reproductive rights, abortion and contraception is a-okay. Why? They believe that an immigrant’s sole purpose of coming to America is to have “anchor babies”, which is protected under the 14th amendment.

According to this article, published by the Public Eye:

If anything could discourage the Christian Right from lending support to the anti-immigrant movement, it might be that many of its most prominent organizations were created to advance a population control agenda including sterilization and abortion for immigrants of color.

Please note the “immigrants of color” part. So not only are they being nativist but also racist, as in the case of Jiang Zhen Xing. And unfortunately for these Christian Right nativist, whites will be the minorities by the year 2042.

I think that it is very hypocritical for these people to talk about how we should return to the belief that this country was founded on Christian beliefs, but we were also founded relying on immigration. Last time I was in US History, Christopher Columbus came all the way from the other side of the planet and we also enslaved many West Africans and brought them to the Americas.

I have a Google News Alert set up for the word “transgender“. Usually I get four or five articles emailed to me a day. Last week that number ballooned to twenty plus. The reason? The news that Isis, who is publicly self-identifying as transgender, will be competing in the next cycle of America’s Next Top Model.

My initial reaction was cautious optimism. As I mentioned in a previous blog, we need widespread acceptance of transgender people as, ya know, people. Having a trans woman on a popular reality show, showing that she’s actually not some scary crazy freak who will make bathrooms dangerous and destroy the world, seems like a positive step.

Of course, Fox News has already gone and been their usual ignorant selves. This is where the caution comes in. Yes, I hope increased visibility will lead to increased acceptance, but do we really have to deal with this stupidity and hatred on the way there?

The doctor’s office waiting room. A place of fun: relaxing water fountains, frolicking toddlers, and lots of adorable elderly couples. But the amusement park ride ends when the nurse takes you on the tramway to the doctor’s office and leaves you there alone–sans people to observe–for so long that you begin to wonder if you’re in that Tom Hanks movie “Castaway.” Normally, I would spend those sluggish minutes fiddling around with the instruments, hitting my knees with the little rubber hammer or trying to take my own blood pressure… but a stack of pamphlets hanging on the wall caught my eye.

Erectile disfunction? Nope! Bunions? Not so much. The flu shot? Not until October.

But wait! What’s this? The BEST form of birth control?! So claimed the sticker on display case. Having spent hours of undergraduate classes studying the legality of birth control in American history, and personally being a fan of women’s rights, I decided to take a peek.

And then…
I found…

Lies.
Damn lies.
And damn, lying statistics.

About Natural Family Planning (NFP).

Reason #1, this pamphlet boasts, that YOU should use natural family planning? “It works!” Except it doesn’t. According to Stanford University ( http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHPRC/ch6_nat.html ), typical use of this method has a yearly failure rate of 25%. That means that ONE IN FOUR women who use NFP will be pregnant within a year. But the authors of this piece neglect to tell you that.

Reason #7 says that NFP is inexpensive… “very inexpensive,” when compared to the “hundreds of dollars per year” that you may spend on birth control pills. But wait… NFP has a 25% failure rate. How much does an abortion cost? I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that birth control pills are a hell of a lot cheaper. And certainly the pill is cheaper than HAVING A CHILD! WTF, mate?

I could continue to illustrate the logical fallacies, blatant LIES, and religious propaganda disguised as medical advice contained in this pamphlet. I could expound upon my (now former) doctor’s religion interfering with her medical duties, and how many ethical lines she crossed. I could even hypothesize that she is negligent, if not malicious, for providing such deceitful materials without any prefacing statement that highlights the religious nature of NFP and detailed, impartial statistics about its success rate.

But instead, I’ll let you read the brochure for yourself.

Read this article on the second page by student Alex Lew.

Some Titles of Our Work:
“For All We Know” - dance piece
“I Am But a Canvas” - a monologue in three segments, capturing different phases/cases of HIV
“Smoke” - transgender queer story
“The Meeting” - a discussion with men (gay, straight, queer, and transgender) about sex and being HIV positive
“Many Rivers to Cross” - dance piece
“I Choose Life” - a song
“Who’s Living With Who” - acceptance and struggles of living with HIV
scenes from Cheryl West’s “Before It Hits Home”

Be Enlightened, Be Engaged, Be Encouraged….For more information, please email Artistic Director William Ridley, william_ridley@yahoo.com

Happy Almost-Friday!

It’s taken me a while to blog about the murder of Angie Zapata because of how shaken I am. A warning: this post will be triggering, in many ways.

Angie Zapata, a 19 year old transgender woman, was murdered by Allen Ray Andrade, a 31 year old (presumably) cisgender man. The two were on a date at Zapata’s house that lasted through the night (they slept in separate rooms, though). Zapata performed oral sex on Andrade, but remained clothed. After seeing some pictures that made him question Zapata’s gender history, Andrade confronted her, grabbing her crotch. He felt external genitalia and then, according to Andrade’s own testimony as reported by the Associated Press:

…he took a fire extinguisher off a shelf, struck Zapata twice in the head and thought he “killed it.”

…

Andrade told investigators he covered Zapata with a blanket and started gathering evidence he thought might link him to the crime when he heard gurgling sounds and noticed Zapata was sitting up. That’s when he picked up the fire extinguisher and hit her again, police said. He left the scene in her car.

Remember, this is all according to Andrade’s own testimony. The viciousness, the deliberate nature of the murder, the dehumanization of Zapata is really just stunning. He bashed her brains in, started to clean up the scene of the crime, then when he saw she was struggling for life, finished the job. “Killed it”? “Killed IT”? I don’t care how much you don’t understand the identity of another person, no human being is ever an “it”.

I wish I could say my strong reaction to this murder was because it was anomalous. The fact is, though, trans people face violence and murder at an unbelievable rate, especially trans women of color, one of, if not the most targeted group in the US.

Apparently, Andrade will be using a “trans panic” defense, arguing that the shock of discovering that his perception of Zapata’s genitalia did not match up with his perception of her gender. Um, excuse me? This is a defense? “My bigotry made me do it”? Andrade’s own testimony undermines any sort of “temporary insanity” argument; he clearly still felt the same way when he talked about how he “killed it”. Regardless, in what world does panicking because someone doesn’t fit into your narrow perception of the world an excuse for murder?

In addition to first degree murder, hate crime charges are being pursued. Colorado law was revised in 2005 to include crimes against transgender people under hate crimes. I’m glad this recognition of trans folk as people who experience identity-based oppression exists. But the legal weight exists after the fact, as a way for the state to punish, rather than a way of preventing such a heinous act. It doesn’t change the fact that Angie Zapata is still dead.

We need, NEED a fundamental culture shift. We need trans rights, a major area of civil rights that we are very far behind on and where there has been too little movement. Here in Washington, DC the Department of Corrections feels so strongly about keeping basic rights from incarcerated transgender people that the Office of Human Resources may end up undermining hard fought-for protections of the health, safety, and rights of gender non-conformists throughout the District. The transgender community got thrown under the bus by gay groups this year regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). But, as the amazing Kate Bornstein pointed out, the extension of basic rights to trans folk is not going to change the culture. It’s not going to create a world where Angie Zapata isn’t brutally murdered because of her gender identity.

There is so much fear of transgender people. People seem to think that trans women are a constant threat, as evidenced by groups that fight to keep bathrooms segregated based on their narrow, ignorant understanding of gender. Trans women are even seen as a threat by supposedly feminist groups.

I’ve read a lot of articles about Zapata’s murder, and I can’t think of one that doesn’t have an error in how it talks about her gender specifically and trans identity in general. Hell, the AP story I linked to earlier identifies the victim as Justin Zapata, “who was known as Angie Zapata”. Even after her murder, AP still can’t accept her identity.

We need a complete culture shift. People need to have a better understanding of who trans folk are, what transgender means. On a more basic level, everyone everywhere, regardless of ideological beliefs, must accept the basic humanity of everyone in the trans community. Maybe when people stop thinking of trans folk as “it” there will be easier access for everyone in this community to healthcare, to employment, to everything needed to live a dignified life.

I keep coming back to something Donna Rose said at Angie Zapata’s memorial service:

“It takes courage to live in a world that tries to force you into a box,” Rose said. “It’s a shame that we have to die to see our community loves us.”

It shouldn’t be like this.