(more…)

ciao ciao
Carolyn - my ebook is HERE.

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

(more…)

For the full article from the BBC News, Click Here.
ciao ciao
Carolyn

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

(more…)

(more…)

ciao ciao
Carolyn

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

(more…)

This morning’s headlines on Democracy Now! included reports of people having problems at the polls during the early voting process that has already begun in many states. Two weeks out from Election Day and we’re already hearing this - what does this bode for November 4? The DN! reports include claims from voters in West Virginia that the touchscreen machines they used changed their votes from Obama to McCain, allegations from Democratic Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio that the Republican Party is trying to scare newly registered voters by challenging the status of almost 200,000 new registrations, and this most chilling report from North Carolina (a contested state that has been swinging towards Obama):
McCain Supporters Harass Obama Voters in North Carolina
In North Carolina, over 200,000 residents have already cast ballots in early voting. In Fayetteville, a group of John McCain supporters heckled and harassed a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama as they voted on Sunday. The Washington Times reported the McCain backers shouted and mocked the voters as they walked into the voting place. The website Facing South reports the McCain supporters likely broke the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits anyone from intimidating or threatening a person for voting or attempting to vote. On that same day in Fayetteville, North Carolina, thirty people reported having their tires slashed after attending an Obama rally.

UPDATE: Christina Bellantoni provides video of the hecklers and the heckled in NC on the Huffington Post.
And although it’s not an example of direct voter suppression per se, DN!’s next headline is inextricably linked to Republican efforts to cast aspersion on the newfound empowerment of newly registered, formerly disproportionately disenfranchised voters, many of whom have been registered by ACORN and similar organizations:
Obama Campaign Volunteer Assaulted in Wisconsin
In Caledonia, Wisconsin, a fifty-eight-year-old Obama campaign volunteer was assaulted on Saturday while canvasing. Nancy Takehara was attacked by a disgruntled homeowner who accused her of being connected to the community organizing group ACORN. Takehara said, “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming.” Takehara said she was not seriously injured.

Between reports like that and the vile, racially-charged garbage that’s been coming out of the McCain camp and his supporters of late, it really does feel like we’ve been forcefully transported back to a darker time in American history. Or, more accurately, the venom and bile that’s been mostly simmering under the surface all along is boiling up thanks to McCain, Palin, and their surrogates stoking the flames.
It’s getting scarier and scarier out there. And we’ll all have to be that much more vigilant and vociferous in our defense of everyone’s right to cast their vote and have it properly counted - no matter who they are or who they’re voting for, and no matter the color of their skin or their chosen candidate’s.
Cross-posted at Feminste

(more…)

UPDATE: Check below for info on the Oct 23 rally in NYC.
After granting Troy Anthony Davis a stay of execution on September 23 in order to decide whether or not to consider his case, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal last Tuesday. Georgia has scheduled Davis’ execution for 7pm on October 27, 2008 - next Monday, one week from today.
(Click here to skip to ways to take action over the coming week to save Davis’ life.)
I’ve been meaning to blog about this news since hearing it last Tuesday, but I think I’ve been avoiding writing about it until today. Troy Davis’ case has really gotten to me; over the past week it’s been difficult to think, talk, or try to write about his situation with beginning to cry. I know it’s important to stay hopeful and keep fighting, but it’s been difficult to muster much hope. This case has only decreased my already minimal faith in getting any true justice out of the American system. It defies logic that so many judicial bodies, right up through the U.S. Supreme Court, have failed to step in and assert that even just a shadow of a doubt should be enough to prevent an ultimate and immutable sentence of death from being carried out. In this case, with seven out of nine non-police witnesses recanting their testimony, far more than a shadow of doubt has been cast - and yet all of these authorities that have had the opportunity to intercede seem content to let this man die.
In trying to understand what twisted logic or legal technicality the U.S. Supreme Court followed in denying review of Davis’ case, I turned to SCOTUS Blog for further details and analysis. Unfortunately, they reported that “in denying review on Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave no explanation, as is its custom with such denials.” SCOTUS Blog also supplied this rather disturbing information:
In appealing to the Supreme Court, Davis’ lawyers urged the Court to issue a definitive ruling — something it had only assumed previously — that the Eighth Amendment creates a right of an innocent person not to be executed.

In this country that claims such civility and advanced morality, it hasn’t even been officially established that one has the right to not be executed if they are innocent. It boggles the mind.
But despite the daunting odds against Troy Davis, despite how utterly Davis and his supporters have been let down by just about every institution that purports to deliver justice in this nation, we can’t just let ourselves be sickened to the point that we give up hope and thereby give up the fight. Troy Davis is only one person, only one life out of the many lives on the brink on death row, but his life is essential, his life is precious, and his life demands a continued struggle. The disgust and disbelief and frustration that we feel at what’s happened in Davis’ case so far must be channeled intensely over the next week so that we might save his life and pave the way to saving many more lives in the future.
TAKE ACTION

Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP) and Amnesty International are calling for a Global Day of Action on October 23 (this Thursday.) For people who can get to Atlanta, there will be a rally from 6-8pm on the front steps of the State Capitol (see this flyer for details.) People elsewhere can help to organize a solidarity event in their own towns and cities or contact Amnesty International to find out what might already be planned.
UPDATE: A NYC rally is being organized by Amnesty International for Thursday, October 23, 5:30pm at the southeast corner of 33rd St and 8th Ave.
Write letters to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and the governor of Georgia
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspapers about Davis’ case. You can use a handy online tool from the ACLU or send it on your own; Amnesty International provides tips for writing your letter.
GFADP suggests writing a letter to the physician whose company has a contract with the Georgia Department of Corrections to participate in executions. See the GFADP website for info.
Check the GFADP and AI websites for updates and more ways to take action.

Remember: this isn’t only about saving Troy Davis’ life; this is also about making sure that no one else ever finds themselves in the situation that he’s in. If you have time to take action in any or all of these ways this week, please do.
Cross-posted at Feministe

(more…)

You want to look like a hot, sexy woman with a body to die for! Breasts are fun, but they’re only half the battle. You also need lower body curves!

Here are 2 secrets to having a killer butt and awesome hips …

1. Get a padded panty

A quick Google search brings up 142,000 results for padded panties, but beware: Most padded panties have padding on the cheeks and upper hips only.

Women’s hips are naturally fullest BELOW the hip joint, not at the upper hip, so this looks totally unnatural in pants or a fitted skirt.

Make sure your padded panty has curves in the right places! (The best I’ve seen are by ClassicCurves.com, which offers custom made butt and hip enhancers.) A very cheap and effective solution are also the products from Underscore at J.C. Penny. You can buy them on the internet and have it sent to you. If you want to see their products, click here (I do not get any commission here! This is pure help.)

2. Make your own hip and butt pads

If you’re the creative type, you can make your own hip and butt pads fairly easily. Just get some 1″-2″ thick packing foam from a packing supply store and use an electric carving knife to cut out custom-shaped pads.

Two things to keep in mind …

A.) There should be a smooth transition between your body and the pads, so use a carving knife to taper the foam edges.

B.) If you’re making hip pads, they should start at the upper hip and stop at mid-thigh for a natural look.

Keep the pads in place by wearing them underneath a tight pair of pantyhose.

To complete the look, suck in your gut with a waist cincher. Now you’re rocking some SERIOUS curves!
ciao ciao
Carolyn

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

(more…)

Three courageous ‘girls’ talk sexual ambiguity with Lin Sampson.

In 1991, Chrissy was a young soldier in the South African army. She looked like any other male soldier. Yet, in her mind, she was a girl. Now she is a sculpted, supermodel beauty, pale blonde, with long limbs and a graceful walk. She is 34 but looks 10 years younger. Her manner is cautious, but the story she tells is one of certainty.

“My earliest recollection was from when I was about three. I remember wanting to be a girl. I was a small, desperately lost little soul. When I was 12, I started stealing my mother’s menopause hormones. Just a couple of hours of my voice being lighter made me joyous.”

At school she was bullied, and life was such hell that it crossed her mind to try to perform a sex-change operation on herself.

“In those days I was suicidally confused. I knew I wasn’t gay. I knew I wasn’t a freak, but because there was so little information around, I didn’t know what I was. In 1998 I went to a psychologist. This is where I learnt about my true condition, and began the rocky road to transition.”

Before her lay many tumbles, but she knew that if she didn’t become a woman she would fall into fits of depression and she even believed she would die of misery. She says she only got through because of her sense of humour.

“I had my gender-change operation when I was 32, but I started living as a woman when I was 27. The reason I didn’t start sooner was because there wasn’t as much information available then,” explains Chrissy.

There was also the permanence of the action to be taken into account. She was about to embark on something that would irrevocably alter her external nature in a manner that would be difficult to reverse. “I kept thinking what am I going to look like at the end of the day? I was a very masculine guy, big male, 1.8m tall. I loved cars. I might look dreadful.”

But she took the plunge and faced up to prejudice. “I even had a death threat. I am still in the military, and I work in a unit where I am familiar to them. But if I go to another where the people used to know me as a man, they might treat me as a bit of a freak show. There was a ‘do’ a few months ago with guys I used to know 15 years ago and they made a few jokes. One of them told me they had taken a bet that I was wearing a pink G-string. I know how men think about women. I know the lack of respect they treat them with,” she says.

The operations were expensive but, with the help of friends and her mother, Chrissy had her first op, the orchidectomy, in 2004. “That was what you take your dog to the vet for — I literally got ‘fixed’.”
Castration was only the first step. The second operation was the SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery), and then, finally, the labiaplasty. “But,” says Chrissy, “this was only the beginning. I then had to start living as a woman and I had to learn so many things.

“It is important to finesse your look and I did exhaustive research. I didn’t want to end up looking like a drag queen.”

She says that ever since she had the operation her life has been just as she always wanted it to be.

Monique is a striking man in the process of becoming a woman. She has a buoyancy and flourish of confidence that is both courageous and encouraging. It is this straight-talking, outgoing personality that has eased the transition process.
You just can’t help loving Monique for her raw honesty.

She has lived as a woman for two years but, as yet, has had no operations, although for a while she did take hormones, which she has now given up.
“Oestrogen,” she says, “allowed me to concentrate (and produced two very perky breasts) but it also made me edgy. I feel calmer now. ”

She works in photography and today is wearing a tasteful décolleté top and is secure enough to wear a trousersuit.
“The thing with most trannies is that they try to be too feminine, they go over the top.”

Monique looks like a woman, but when she gets up each morning and looks in the mirror, she sees a man. She pulls back the hair from her forehead to reveal the gentle rise of bones above the eyes and the M-shaped hairline that are male characteristics. She has learnt how to adopt female expressions, to talk and walk like one. “I can fool some people but I know some people read me.” She rubs her chin in the manner of a man and says “I need to shave twice a day.”

Once she had to learn to be blokish, sitting with her legs apart, downing a beer. Now the process is reversed.

Monique was brought up in Fish Hoek with three younger brothers. “They said, ‘We always thought of you as our older brother.’ Then one day I said, ‘I am not your older brother, I am your older sister.’ Today, if anyone criticises their ‘older sister’ they’ll know all about it.”

When Monique left school she became an electrician and started working on building sites. “I had started taking hormones and had grown breasts, but I also had a beard. It wasn’t long before people began whispering. Then my boss called me in and I told him the whole story. He was a very straight guy, a Christian and he just didn’t know what to make of it. He said, ‘You know, we just can’t have this on a building site. These guys just won’t take orders from you.’” However, she did stay on working for him and people just began accepting her, but she was still not dressing entirely as a woman.

She took a small flat and would spend most of her time lying around dressed as a woman. “I remember the first time I went out as a woman. My stomach was full of butterflies, and all I was doing was going to a shopping mall.
“Then I woke up one morning and thought, ‘Enough of this! From today I am going to be a woman — I am sick of living with the background noise of not being what I feel I am!’ I felt much of my true personality was left zipped up on the hard drive of my mind because it just didn’t match my face. At first, I couldn’t decide what to call myself. I needed something starting with an M. I hit on ‘Monique’.
“I put on a blue pantsuit and flat shoes and caught a bus to work. Some people did a sort of double take. Is that Michael?”

Although Monique has an outgoing, easy personality, which has helped, there have been times when she has felt very lonely. “As a man I was good- looking and girls would come on to me and I liked girls. Now I just don’t quite know where my sexuality lies. For the two years I have been living as a woman I have had no close sexual relationships. I am still sort of finding myself. I am not in a hurry for the operation. It will come when it comes, but for the moment I am just so happy being Monique. Part of me is still Michael. After all, I lived with him for 28 years. Some transexuals simply forget about their previous being, but I will always acknowledge Michael.”

Although Monique’s stance in life is composed of an unyielding willpower, beneath her larger-than-life presence one can detect wounds and scars that veil the hidden secrets, the fugitive escapades and demented dressing, the struggle to be accepted, the false bravado — but she lacks bitterness and self-pity. “I mean, after all,” she says, “a girl can only take so much.”

I was unable to find reliable statistics, but there are fewer transmales, males to females (M2F) than females to males (F2M).

I talked to Matt, 38 years old, who has been living as a man for nine years. He was born a female but always felt male. “I can remember — as early as three — saying my nightly prayers on my knees and praying that I would wake up as a boy the next morning.”
But it wasn’t until he was 30 that he had the courage to face it head-on. “I had a double mastectomy and that was the best thing that ever happened to me. The hormones are a bit trickier. I have a shot once a week, which is quite terrifying because I am afraid of needles. I was boyish most of my life. I refused to wear panties, my mom had to buy me underpants. I had to pretend that I was interested in girls’ things, just to have a circle of friends. The girls in my class called me ‘lesbian’ or ‘freak’.”

More operations lie ahead for Matt. He still has to have a hysterectomy and penis reconstruction, a trickier option. “Testosterone makes you sexually active,” he explains. “The problem with having the operation is that you can lose this unless it is performed by someone very good. The only surgeon who can do this and guarantee you an orgasm afterwards costs half a million rand.” For Matt, who is unemployed at the moment, this is a far-off dream.
His biggest problem is getting his ID document changed. Even opening a bank account is a mission. “I have been for six or seven interviews in the past month and everything goes well until I have to show my ID, then the wheels come off.” However, according to current law, people in gender transition can have ID books recognising their new gender.

“Right now I am probably the most normal I have ever been. I have a girl who has accepted me and my family has always been very supportive,” he says.

The whole transgender subject has been obscured by misapprehension, superstition and fear of the unknown. The difference between transvestites, drag queens and transgenders is muddy. It is possible to dress, behave and even think like a woman — as many transvestites do both in public and in private — without in fact being a transgender.

Tracy, 38, is a man who likes to dress as a woman, but has still not decided where s/he fits in on the gender spectrum. S/he has been wearing woman’s clothes alone at home, mostly as an erotic turn-on. “When I was growing up, I stole my sister’s clothes. She could never work out why they were missing until one day she caught me in her latest dress. Funny now, but just horrible then. I am deeply attracted to the female form. But I also want it as my own form. And then to complicate it further I also want to complement my female form with a male form — but I am not emotionally attracted to men.”

Transgenders need great courage and determination to withstand the pressures that are involved. Many find their condition distressing, but so inescapable, that they will do anything to follow their dream.

The good news is that we live in “Generation Gender” and the ambiguities are better tolerated. Sophisticated medical techniques now offer feminising facial surgery and trachea shaves to lower the voice. The bad news is that there is a proliferation of porn sites involving she-men.
“You won’t believe how many straight men come onto me,” says Chrissy. “It is every man’s dream”
And prejudice still stalks. Chrissy believes that this is because gender is something that people take for granted. “When they are presented with something like a transgender person, they simply don’t have a frame of reference.”

There is one fact that shines through the fog, and that is if you feel you are trapped in the wrong body, you will do anything — take out huge bonds, abandon a family, even take to crime — to remedy the situation.
As the transwoman in the movie Another Woman said after her operation: “I felt I had been delivered.”

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

(more…)

(more…)