Articles- Collected Articles For The Transgender Community

Renowned plastic surgeons / sex reassignment surgeons Drs. Joel Beck and Marci Bowers join forces in San Mateo, CA.

Dr. Joel Beck, a renowned San Francisco plastic surgeon of Bay Area Aesthetic Surgery, is thrilled to welcome Dr. Marci Bowers, one of the world’s most prestigious genital reassignment surgeons, to his practice in San Mateo, California.

Drs. Beck and Bowers are highly skilled transgender surgeons who have joined forces to make the Bay Area Aesthetic Surgery facility an international hub for feminization and masculinization surgery. On November 8, 2010, the two surgeons made history as they successfully performed their first sex reassignment surgery together. (more…)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Lynda Gledhill (916) 651-4010
December 6, 201
SACRAMENTO – Surrounded by family and friends, Ellen M. Corbett took the oath of office today for her second term as State Senator. Senator Corbett represents the 10th Senate District, which covers the cities of Fremont, Hayward, Newark, Milpitas, Pleasanton, San Jose, San Leandro, Union City, and the unincorporated areas of Castro Valley, Sunol and San Lorenzo.

“It is an honor to serve my constituents for another four years in the State Senate,” Senator Corbett said. “I talk to people every day in grocery stores and on soccer fields and I know that they simply want Sacramento to work for them. I will continue to work hard every day to make sure those of us in Sacramento listen to the people we are here to represent.” (more…)

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, December 10, 2010

(12-09) 18:34 PST SAN FRANCISCO — A few days after Amber Yust visited the Department of Motor Vehicles in San Francisco to register her sex change from male to female, she got a letter at home from the DMV employee who had handled her application.

Homosexual acts, he informed her, were “an abomination that leads to hell.”

The same day, Yust said, a DVD arrived from a fundamentalist church warning of eternal damnation for anyone “possessed by demons” of homosexuality. The DMV employee’s letter had referred her to the church’s website as a source of “critical information for your salvation.”

What’s more, the DMV had kept the employee on in 2009 even after he refused to process another transgender woman’s name-change application, Yust said in a damage claim filed with the state, the precursor to a lawsuit. (more…)

By Diana Scholl – http://www.citylimits.org/

A pilot policy to allow transgender people to choose between men’s and women’s shelters has reduced violence. But women’s shelters are safer for either identity.

Tiffany Jones became homeless when she aged out of foster care last year. Although Jones identifies as a woman and takes female hormones, her legal paperwork identifies her as a man. But Jones was pleasantly surprised when she went to apply for help at a men’s shelter last September and was asked if she was transgender and wanted to live in a women’s shelter.
“They saw that I’m a woman,” says Jones, 22, who has been living in a women’s shelter for 10 months. “There’s still some negative attention surrounding living with women. I had a couple fights when I first came in but not anymore. I had to prove a point that just because I’m transgender there’s no way of beating me. But if I were in the men’s shelter I’d be beaten up or raped,” she said. (more…)

Marianne Betts From: Herald Sun December 03, 2010 12:00AM

MELBOURNE scientists have discovered that the alteration of a single gene causes some male embryos to develop as females.

Sex development disorders, which can cause gender confusion, occur in one in 4500 births – or 16 babies born in Victoria every year.

Lead Melbourne researcher Prof Andrew Sinclair, of Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, said the breakthrough would improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients with these disorders.

It was an important breakthrough because discovery of the gene greatly increased the number of cases that could be diagnosed, Prof Sinclair said. (more…)

By LISA LEFF , Associated Press

Last update: November 28, 2010 – 3:37 PM
SAN FRANCISCO – Before Goodwill Industries opened its newest retail outlet here, no one would have argued that San Francisco had a shortage of thrift stores for its avid recyclers and trendy hipsters. What the city did lack was enough jobs for its transgender population, a group with an unemployment rate thought to be twice the California average.

So when a prime piece of commercial real estate languished vacant in the predominantly gay Castro district, activists and city officials saw an opportunity to put a dent in the problem. The result is the nation’s first Goodwill, and perhaps the first store of any kind, designed as a jobs program for workers whose genders are different from the ones they had at birth. (more…)

Bombay News.Net
Tuesday 23rd November, 2010 (IANS)

Transgenders are at a higher risk of contracting HIV infection, said a UN report on AIDS epidemic released Tuesday.

The 2010 UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic found among the high risk group that got HIV infection in India in 2009 — 9.2 percent were those using injected drugs, 7.3 percent were men having sex with men and 4.9 percent were women sex workers. (more…)

Donna Tam/The Times-Standard
Posted: 12/05/2010 01:23:45 AM PST
Updated: 12/05/2010 01:23:46 AM PST

The transgender community will have access to a new health clinic specifically designed with their needs in mind.

The result of a partnership between Humboldt County transgender advocates and Bay Area agencies, the Humboldt Open Door Clinic is launching a once-a-month transgender health clinic Tuesday.

The clinic is dedicating health services on the first Tuesday of the month from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. for those in the transgender community.

Project HEALTH, also known as Harnessing Education Advocacy and Leadership for Transgender Health, is a partnership between Lyons-Martin Health Services and the Transgender Law Center, both based in San Francisco. (more…)