The Transgender Center is happy to announce a new TG Self-Defense class! Beginning Sunday, June 13th (3 – 5 PM) the TG Center will host a monthly defense class designed to meet the needs of the transgender population, lead by professional self-defense teacher, Dakao Do.

About the Class:

This 2-hour class will address 3 key topics of self-defense: confidence, awareness, and physical confrontation. You will learn to assess and avoid high-risk situations, communicate clearly and strongly, and use simple physical movements to protect yourself.

About the Instructor:

Dakao Do has 11 years’ experience in martial arts (kung fu, muay thai, aikido, taijiquan, European hand weapons, escrima), modern combatives (Systema), and other violent studies which have almost nothing to do with self-defense. He has found fighting experience and athletic skills to be wonderful confidence builders and a solid foundation, but no more than that. Dakao has also trained in parkour for 3 years, which teaches the much more important self-defense skills of situational assessment and running away effectively. Finally and most relevantly, he has experienced, studied, and explored the dynamics of social confrontation and exploitation in clubs, parties, and a family of 7.

MORE INFO:

Cost: FREE, donations accepted

When: Sunday, June 13 from 3 to 5 PM

Where: The TG Center

RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=125211127501975

A.) Houston should do away with the whole idea of a TG Center all together.

B.) Houston should move the TG Center into the GLBT Center.

C.) Houston should keep the functions of the TG Center, but drop the name, “TG Center.” TG Center activities should continue, but they should happen out of the GLBT Center.

D.) Houston should open a new TG Center. A house should be rented and reopened as the Houston TG Center.

Since TFA is a community-based organization, the Board of Directors want to ensure that the community’s voice is taken into account in this important decision. To that end, the Board solicited written opinions from the TG Community and set up an anonymous 3rd-party hosted survey to ensure the TG community’s would have the ability to express their wishes. Within 72 hours of issuing the survey, the entire sample size of 100 was reached.

The results of the survey are below:

A.) “NO TG Center: Houston should do away with the whole idea of a TG Center all together. All TG Center activities should be halted!”

Number of votes: 1

Response Percent: 1.0%

B.) “TG Center at the GLBT Center: Houston should move the TG Center into the GLBT Center.“

Number of votes: 14

Response Percent: 14.0%

C.) “Merge with the GLBT Center: Keep the functions of the TG Center, but drop the name, ‘TG Center.’ TG Center activities should continue, but they should happen out of the GLBT Center.”

Number of votes: 14

Response Percent: 14.0%

D.) “Open a new TG Center: The community needs it’s own space. A house should be rented and reopened as the Houston TG Center.”

Number of votes: 71

Response Percent: 71.0%

The survey is now complete. However, if you would like your opinion to be heard by the TFA Board of Directors, please post your thoughts here:  http://tgctr.org/tfa/?p=356 .

Thanks to all who participated in the survey!

Matchbook from Compton’s Cafeteria: The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was the first recorded transgender riot in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City by three years.

Matchbook from Dewey’s: The Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit-In and Protest (AKA, Dewey’s Coffee Shop Protest ) happened in April 25, 1965. One hundred and fifty “gender non-conforming” people showed up at Dewey’s to protest the way the establishment treated the GLBT community. After 3 protesters refused to leave after being denied service, they, along with a black gay activist, were arrested. This lead to a picket of the establishment organized by the black GLBT community. In May, another sit-in was organized and Dewey’s finally agreed to end their discriminatory policies. This militant action preceded the Stonewall Riots in New York City by four years.

The Janus Society had this to say about the event: “All too often there is a tendency to be concerned with the rights of homosexuals as long as they somehow appear to be heterosexual, whatever that is. The masculine woman and the feminine man are looked down upon…but the Janus Society is concerned with the worth of the individual and the manner in which she or he comports himself. What is offensive today we have seen become the style of tomorrow, and even if what is offensive today remains offensive to some persons tomorrow, there is no reason to penalize non-conformist behavior unless their is direct anti-social behavior connected with it.“

Annise took the time to meet, talk and laugh with the attendees of the Transgender Center’s monthly Social.

In 2003, Parker was elected City Controller, a position second only to the Mayor. She was re-elected in 2005 and 2007. According to the City of Houston website: “During her first two terms as Controller, Ms. Parker helped win overwhelming voter approval (85%) of Proposition 3, which gives the Controller’s Office the independent authority to conduct performance reviews of all City departments, agencies and programs. She was also successful in securing a seat for a controller’s appointee on the Houston Municipal Pension System Board of Trustees, marking the first time the city’s chief financial officer has had any involvement in the pension system. In addition, Ms. Parker was tapped by Mayor Bill White to serve as a member of the stakeholders committee overseeing an independent investigation of the City’s troubled crime lab, helped lead a task force charged with developing new funding options and policies for solid waste collection in the City of Houston and oversaw implementation of a new paperless payroll system that is saving the City $1 million annually.” In 2009, Parker announced her candidacy for Mayor of Houston in a video posted online to her campaign website.

Annise said that she would be proud to have the community help her campaign out in any way possible. Annise’s campaign is looking for volunteers, block walkers and phone workers. For more information:

The Annise Parker Homepage

Annise Parker’s FaceBook

Annise Parker’s YouTube

Annise Parker’s Twitter

On July 27th, the TG Center hosted the Houston TG Hurricane Preparedness Committee. The Committee identified several issues affecting the Houston transgender population during storms and among the most pronounced are safe access to emergency shelters, communication and lack of a central point of contact.

Therefore, the following measures are being undertaken by the Houston TG Hurricane Preparedness Committee:

1. A mobile devise/dial-up friendly page will go up when a storm is present in the gulf. This page will list resources and have a form that will allow you submit your contact information if you would like to be checked on before and/or after the storm.

2. When a storm is imminent, the page will include a very simplistic HTML-based shoutbox and very simplistic forum.  The simple HTML programs will ensure mobile/dial-up access to our community during storms and will allow people to post for help, give updates or "chat" during and after the storm on mobile devices.

3. If you provided an email address on a TG Center sign-in form, you will soon receive an email. This email will ask if you want to be checked on after a storm, if you will need help finding a TG-friendly safe place to evacuate to and lastly, it will ask if you would be willing to host a TG evacuee if you live to the north, east or west of Houston.

4. Five committee members have agreed to be a "Point of Contact" for the TG community during a storm. Each will volunteer to contact community members who have requested a check in, coordinate communication online and act as a conduit of information within the TG Community during and after a hurricane.

5. Lastly, the Houston TG Hurricane Preparedness Committee is working on making the TG Center hurricane ready. Boards for windows are being weatherized and prepared and several have volunteered to close up the Center when a hurricane hits.

tgctr.org/storm

We currently have a low-pressure system forming in the Gulf. Please keep yourself informed, make a plan and buy supplies before the inevitable rush of stores when hurricanes are likely.

The Transgender Foundation of Americ has acquired a first edition copy of Havelock Ellis’ “Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume VII Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies”. This volume is significant to both the transgender lexicon and the development of the understanding of transgender expression.

Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis were the first to really look at transgenders. Both initially concluded the phenomenon of transgender behavior was grounded in sexuality. It is easy t understand why this happened: There are many crossdressers who dress for sexual reasons; and, Freudian psychology was the gold standard of the day for psychological professionals. In 1910, Hirschfel published, The Transvestites: An Investigation of th Erotic Desire to Cross Dress and in 1913, Ellis published a paper in which he looked into the issue of those with a ‘sexo-aesthetic inversion’.

In this book, Ellis states that his term, ‘sexo-aesthetic inversion’ was misleading and should not be used. Through this book, Ellis entered a new term into the transgender lexicon: ‘Eonism’, after the French transwoman, Chevalier d’Eon.

Ellis and Hirschfeld’s work was groundbreaking in that it mainly interested in simply gathering information about transgender people instead of trying to design a cure. Freud and his followers, on the other hand, felt that transgender behavior was a pathology and that it likely stemmed from small boys seeing their mother’s genitalia which created a deep anxiety about the notion of losing his own penis.

Emil Gutheil used the work of Ellis and Hirschfeld to bring the psychological world out of the dark ages of Freudian views of gender normative behavior and into an enlightened age where there was room for a view of transgenders that was not completely driven by the assumption that transgenders are essentially the same in that they are all motivated through fetishistic drive.

This is an incredibly important work in the history of the modern transgender theory. Without the work of Ellis, and the complementary work of Hirschfeld, Freudian views of transgender behavior would have been the only voice driving transgender care when Harry Benjamin decided to begin his historic work with the transgender community.