Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Well Rupert Murdoch started News in Adelaide SA, and I have to admit they have not been an organisation with the most friendly TG attitude.

So today I did a two hour interview with one of their reporters on TG issues following Caitlyn Jenner's coming out.

Her name is Lisa Black and she was very nice, hopefully I get to see the copy before it goes to print.  There is a headshot of me (an old pic) but I am identifiable. My name is used as is my career details.

She warned me I would or may get hate mail, I told her I didn't care.

I told her the only thing I was clear on was that my Community was not insulted.

So the Adelaide Sunday Mail will be the new 'Vanity Fair'

Watch this space :laugh:

Sounds exciting  8)  Keep us posted

Oh god, Cindy - I hope it does work out OK. Most Murdoch press outlets have the tendency to totally turn things around to suit their tiny minded bigoted attitudes. The reporter may have been nice but ultimately it is up to the editor to decide the line, tone and spin of the article - and a lot of Murdoch editors are not very nice. Given it is the Sunday news though it may be a bit softer in approach. The Sunday Tele in Sydney is usually less vociferous compared to its week day Daily Terror counterpart. Fingers crossed for you!!

Certainly interesting "news" Cindy... Trust you will get a "proof" copy to review...
Please let us know when... would it go national press (being News Ltd)?

I know News Ltd ran a small article on Heather Stokes, very open and frank... back in June 2013... so there is a precedence for non biased reporting?

L Katy  :-*

Just got the copy and changed lots, nothing rude, it was just illiterate.

Jeez, news reporters who do not know how to construct a sentence!

<Heather is my lawyer >:-)>

Hi Cindy,

will you share the article on here when it is in press? Also, any local reactions from the article would be interesting to know. Good luck and I hope it goes well :)

Quote from: Cindy on June 05, 2015, 04:42:10 AM
Just got the copy and changed lots, nothing rude, it was just illiterate.

Jeez, news reporters who do not know how to construct a sentence!

<Heather is my lawyer >:-)>

Haa that's good

I dunno professional writers, where on earth did they learn their skills!

L Katy  :-*

"Professional" writers! The incredible News Crew here are light years ahead of them! Wynternight runs a Department that sees professional writers look like two year olds.

Ye Cynthia I will share, I have the preliminary copy. It is awful.

having once worked for New Ltd they should be fine.

They do get told that they have to beat things up a lot to sell papers, but they do have lines.

If you think the Murdoch press is bad with trans* issues in  Australia, you should see how atrocious Fox "News" is here in the U.S.

Sadly those of us who are antipodean to you will not be able to see it as its behind a paywall - so we get demands to subscribe first... :( However I'm sure you did as well as anyone can do in the press.

Thankfully my 1980's outings in the UK papers are now so long in the past that even the pre-digital archives seem to have lost the copies.

(I don't suppose I could ask you to scan it sometime and email me a pdf could I Cindy?) ;)

Rosie posted a link on my FB page that sometimes works. When I tried to put the link here is goes back to the paywall. :'(

I have a hard copy and will scan it when I get to work.

Otherwise we need a subscriber to post a link.

The transcript:

How SA laws hinder the fight for transgender acceptance

    * Elisa Black
    * Sunday Mail (SA)
    * June 06, 2015 9:00PM
    Emacs!
Share
Share

I Am Cait promo

I Am Cait promo

SMOKEY-VOICED and tall, even without her heels, Dr Rosemary Jones talks
frankly of her adopted state's contradictory attitude to transgender men
and women.

"I think South Australia is very sophisticated, very understanding. It is
recognised countrywide that Adelaide is the city that is most accepting
of transgender people,'' she said.

"Brisbane, well, what can you say; Sydney is good for gays but not trans,
Perth is pretty naff. We are more progressive here and have been a
socially innovative state.

"But we have a law ­ The Sexual Reassignment Act of South Australia
(1988) ­ that restricts practitioners working in the field. That needs to
be repealed."

Today, transwomen seeking surgery must travel to Melbourne or overseas
because of tough laws that the health minister must approve those
authorised to perform operations. Surgery is around $18,000 for a male-
to-female operation.

Transmen must travel to the US or Belgrade. The surgery can cost around
$180,000 and is generally not as successful.

Dr Jones, 76, a gynaecologist who works predominantly with menopausal
women but whose caseload is around 15 per cent transgender patients,
started living as a woman full-time in 2005 and had gender confirmation
surgery in 2007.

Dr Rosemary Jones is a gynaecologist who works a lot with the transgender
community, and has made the change from man to woman. Picture: Tricia
Watkinson

She was married for 18 years, has two children, and doesn't regret
waiting so long to transition as she wouldn't be without her children.

"(Life pre-transition) seems like a strange dream,'' says the North
Adelaide resident.

"The surgery was just tidying up loose ends. When I first started
oestrogen I thought 'this is the stuff', it was like coming home. Today
is a more forgiving and accepting atmosphere.

"The whole thrust of transsexual medicine now is to deal with the problem
in adolescence. It is a great disaster for any of us to go through
puberty."

She says the highly public debut of Caitlyn Jenner this week is not
indicative of the average transgender person's life.

"I don't think she would be seen to be a champion. I would have thought
there are a lot of people who are far more brave than her. A lot of our
folk have no money, they are deserted by their families.

"One patient I know of was 12 and told her mother in the car about being
transgender. Her mother stopped the car and told her to get out, that she
never wanted to see her again. I had a patient in her 80s. She said she'd
lived all her life as a man but she wanted to be buried as a woman."

Associate Professor Cindy Macardle from Flinders University com

Associate Professor Cindy Macardle from Flinders University completed her
transition to a woman this year ­ but is struggling with legal
restrictions around her new identity.
Emacs!

Emacs!

Bruce Jenner's transition to Caitlyn Jenner was publicly formalised with
this cover story in the current issue of Vanity Fair. Picture: Annie
Leibovitz/Vanity Fair

A recent study suggests 41 per cent of transgender people self-harm or
attempt suicide. Worldwide, a transgender person is 14 times more likely
to suicide than any other group.

Dr Robert Lyons, a psychiatrist, foundation president and now vice
president of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Transgender
Health, began working with the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, Intersex) community in the early '80s.

In 1988 the Flinders Sexual Reassignment Clinic closed and the then
Health Commission banned Gender Services in public hospitals and referred
inquiries to him.

He sees around one to two new cases per week and around 30 follow-up
cases and says referrals are growing exponentially. He says public
attitudes have changed with media exposure and high-profile transitions
but that there is still considerable discrimination and harassment.

Common misconceptions still remain ­ "that it is a choice, a perversion.
That it can be 'cured'.

"The biggest problem in SA is access to appropriate care,'' he says.

"The Act restricts practitioners in either the public or private system
from acting unless they have permission from the government.

"The Minister for Health needs to reverse the ban on surgical services in
public hospitals and set up a public Gender Clinic to service those who
can ill afford the high costs of private treatment. This clinic could
take on an educative role to students and service providers to increase
the knowledge base.

"The Family Court needs to exit its involvement in the treatment of those
under 18. The Sexual Reassignment Act of South Australia (1988) needs to
be repealed to stop the restriction of medical practitioners working in
the field.

It should be replaced with a bureaucratic procedure in Births, Deaths and
Marriages for legal gender change."

Greens MP Tammy Franks has introduced a Bill to repeal the Act in part
because it "hinders effective and quality healthcare" for transgender
people.

Cindy Macardle, a Professor of Immunology at Flinders Medical Centre,
agrees that a major issue in SA for transgender people is the lack of
access to medical care and that the Act should be thrown out.

The 62-year-old finished her transition in February.

Because same-sex marriage is not legal, Cindy cannot change her birth
certificate to reflect her gender unless she divorces her wife. She has
been married for 33 years.

"I came to Australia from Liverpool with the intention to undergo gender
reassignment but I fell in love and got married,'' she says.

"SA has the most restrictive laws in Australia, if not the Western world.

"For the transgender woman, it means you can't get gender reassignment
surgery on the public health system in Australia. You can have GRS
performed privately in Melbourne; this can be partially covered under
Medicare and private health if it can be proven it is not a cosmetic
procedure.

"A lot of trans men and women do have difficult times at school and
suffer years of bullying. PTSD can be common. Employment can be
difficult. Violence against transpeople is not uncommon,'' she says.

"I knew from about five-years-old that I was female. I ended up
chronically depressed and a life of the horror of waking up every day in
the wrong gender can be overwhelming. In the end, it was do I accept
myself; or do I end up in the 41 per cent.

"When I transitioned my staff were wonderful.

"On a Friday afternoon I told them I was transgender and I was going to
come in the next week as me; I did and they were most accepting.

"I remember looking in the mirror and Peter had died and Cindy was there.

"I have great admiration of Peter, he looked after me, but I was me,
finally.

"I share his memories and knowledge but that's all I share. He's
gone."

Laverne Cox Starts #TransIsBeautiful Movement

Laverne Cox Starts #TransIsBeautiful Movement

Jesse's story: Being trans in a country town

Jesse, 21, shares his story of growing up transgender in a country town.

When I was a child, I had some quirky personality traits that I always
thought were related to just being a child; I was always curious about
why my body did what it did.

I avoided buying a bra until I got bullied about it because I didn't want
to acknowledge my breasts, but I never kicked or screamed about girl's
clothes, and I had a love for high heels when I was 13.

It was only when I was 16 and a friend explained to me about how
transgender people feel like they are in the wrong body that I finally
understood why I felt and thought the things I did; I was a female-to-
male transgender teenager.

When I began coming out to people, I had a mix of reactions. One friend
said I was too girly to be a guy, but another one let me borrow his
clothes. I didn't dare come out to my family at this point, because I
knew what they'd say; "I don't think this is right for you, you're
too young to know what you want."

These reactions are understandable as it can be very difficult for
families to adjust to such a big thing.

Negative reactions are a big reason why many transgender people don't
come out, and statements like the ones above are why it took Caitlyn
Jenner so long to come out.

These reactions are exactly what I got when I came out two years ago.

It has been the hardest two years of my life, but also the years that
have helped me to heal the most.

The feeling of gender dysphoria is something that I have always struggled
to put in to words. For a moment, I want you to imagine something that
you despise about your body. I want you to think about how it often
overshadows your life, how you can't stand looking in the mirror because
of it. That's what gender dysphoria feels like. The person you see in the
mirror is not how you imagine yourself in your head and when you speak,
it's like someone else's voice is coming out, but you don't really
know whose.

I wear a binder to flatten my chest and I do exercises to deepen my
voice, however I'm at the point in my transition where I'm not able to
go any further.

Living as a transgender person in a country town has been difficult.

Country towns have very few resources for transgender people. To undergo
this process you have to see a gender therapist, who is in Adelaide, and
I have spent a lot of money travelling to see him only to be told that
testosterone treatment was likely to kill me because of unrelated health
problems. I told him not to write the referral to the endocrinologist.

Even changing your name costs a lot of money and it's incredibly
difficult to hear your birth name being used all the time when you don't
even recognise it as who you are.

Once your name has been changed, you need to change it on everything else
licence, doctor, Centrelink. This takes a lot of time and energy.

Transgender is something that many people don't understand because they
haven't been educated about it and I feel like there should be more
teaching in school on the subject.

Being transgender doesn't define who I am; it's just a fragment of it.

That seems like a remarkably supportive piece! Well done Cindy.

And well done for getting this through Murdochland!!   :)

She was a very nice reporter and we have a new ally. She became quite upset when I told her of some of the things we go through.

I'm impressed with the article. Thank you for sharing it. Hugs
Mariah