Annie Lennox has been interviewed several times lately and expressed some ideas worth noting.

We’re coming to a place where [feminism] needs to be inclusive.

I think the LGBTQ community are a part of that movement and we’re all sort of connected on this particular level and it’s very exciting – watch that space.

I am so happy to see now that transgender women and men are able to come out of the shadows finally and say ‘Look we’re here. Why do we need to pretend we don’t exist?’

It’s a very interesting time.

–Lennox

For many transgender people the hardest thing is maintaining or finding employment.

Today I focus on three cases.

Personally i transitioned as a tenured college mathematics professor at the University of Central Arkansas.  So while I feared the university might seek to fire me, I definitely had more leverage than most people.

In fact, when I was approached the Chair of my Department, who sought to bait me into violating my contract, I told him,

The University cannot hire me based on my gender, nor can it fire me based on my gender, so my gender is no business of yours.

So on to the case studies, in New York City, Oregon, and Florida.

Closed Circuit TV cameras show  PFC Joseph Scott Pemberton, 19, and three other  Marines  were drunk when they entered a Ambyanz Disco in Olongapo City around 11pm  on Saturday, October 11.  They show Pemberton leaving the bar a few minutes later with Jennifer Laude and three friends.  Pemberton is seen holding hands with Jennifer’s friend Barbie as they left Ambyanz for Celzone Lodge.

At around 11:35 Pemberton’s buddies were seen returning to the bar, looking for him.  They asked the bar employees if they might know where he was.  They had midnight curfew and had to get back to the ship.

One witness identified Pemberton from a photo line-up by Philippine National Police.  That witness also identified the 26-year-old Barbie as a witness of interest.  Both witnesses have asked for government protection.  Barbie also identified Pemberton.

Barbie has told investigators that she was sent away by Jennifer, who sensed there might be danger because they were transgender, so she and another friend went to another room in the lodge.  Barbie said that a room attendant (Elias Gallamos) knocked on their door around 11:45 to tell them that Pemberton had left, leaving the door ajar and Jennifer “passed out” in the bathroom of her room.

Jennifer was, in fact, dead.  She had been strangled and drowned in the toilet.  Autopsy listed the cause of death as asphyxiation by drowning.

Every once in awhile the stories pile up and in trying to remain current, I publish a compendium of transgender news stories.  I know that makes for a long read, but if I didn’t do this, some storries wouldn’t get any overage at all.

I hope you’ll at least scan the stories.  A better educated public is a fairer public.

Among the of current links of interest are Suggested Links between discrimination and suicide attempts by transgender people, which delves into a Williams Institute study from much earlier in the year and the Movement Advancement Project’s A Broken Bargain for Transgender Workers, which was published about a year ago.

These were woven together in the story of the recent suicide of Kate Von Roeder

One of the most commonly voiced perceptions about transgender people is that because we are transgender we are of necessity also mentally deficient.

This is not a new belief.

When an individual fails to mature according to his (or her) proper biological and sexological status, such an individual is psychologically (mentall deficient).  The psychological condition is in reality the disease.

When an individual who is unfavorably affected psychologically determines to live and appear as a member of the sex to which he or she does not belong, such an individual is what may be called a psychopathic transexual.

–David O. Caldwell, Psychopathis Transexualis, Sexology: Sex Science Magazine vol. 16 (1949)