It’s been a while since I have created a new post. But I am working on content for redskirt. Redskirt is meant to be a feminist pro choice site that is inclusive of all women and transwomens. New content will deal with issues faced by lesbians and transgender women. I am gathering accurate information on topics such as abortion, rape, prostitution and domestic violence.
Thanks for Reading. 
Zukiswa Gaca was at a bar, drinking with friends in Khayelitsha township, less than 40 kilometers outside Cape Town, South Africa, when a man tried to ask her out. According to accounts she informed the man that she is a lesbian and that she was not interested. The man then claimed that he was “cool” with that and didn’t have a problem with it. Gaca says he was nice and she trusted him, and they left the bar to go to the home of one of his friends, and that is where his friendly exterior turned nasty.
According to a CNN report the man then told her that he hates lesbians and that he was about to show her that she was not a man, as he claimed she was treating herself like a man.” Gaca attempted to explain that she is not a man and never said that she was man but said that she is a lesbian. And then he said “I will show you that I am a man and I have more power than you.”"
Then he raped her, she says, as his friend watched.
This is called “corrective rape” and unfortunately it is not uncommon. This is when men force themselves on a lesbian believing it will change their sexual orientation. It’s a very sick and twisted practice and mindset.
The idea of “curing” someone from being gay, lesbian, bi or transgender is seen in other forms. Although they may not be as twisted as corrective rape, they are still sick in their own ways. An example being the allowance of young gay males to be bullied and harassed many times, some very violently, in order to make them straight, or at the very least act straight. The result does not produce a young straight male, but sadly more often a scared young person that feels his only escape is suicide.
Transgender people are also pushed to suicide or experience rape. I myself have been a victim of rape. And it’s really hard to seek help and be turned away from the very places that are supposed to be there to help. Many transgender people who are going through their transition often find themselves in horrible living conditions. And sadly there is a large view that they somehow deserve to be treated in the horrible ways that many are for trying to pursue happiness by being how they truly are. Too often is the result that transgender women in particular resort to committing survival crimes such as prostitution which places them at high risk or rape and or murder.
These sick views are coming to light and hopefully that light will bring with it some degree of change. Thanks for Reading.
In 2009, Julea Ward, a teacher and an evangelical Christian, was studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. As part of her training, she was required to treat clients, and she expressed her reluctance to work with any who were in same-sex relationships. A professor, heeding Ms. Ward’s wishes, referred a gay client to another counselor.
Ms. Ward when the university expelled her for having made it. Ms. Ward sued, and her case raises the question of whether a counselor’s religious convictions can disqualify her from the profession.
Personally I think that people should make a comparison of the religious views in respect to the sought after profession before going into them. For example I have a problem with killing animals. That is not something that I would be willing to do even for money so naturally I would not seek a career at a poultry farm.
If you can’t do a job for whatever reason then you should not go into that profession. It’s like a pharmacist not wanting to give someone birth control. Then you should not have become a pharmacist. What if a cop said that he or she doesn’t belief in arresting people?
What if a heart surgeon doesn’t believe it is morally right to take the heart out of one person and put it in another? People need to seriously look at these things and think about them. No one should have to change the religious beliefs but a career field should not cease specific services to be in line with someone’s moral convictions. This is a difficult one to say the least. One hand she did not say anything negative about homosexuality but at the same time as a counselor she should not be turning clients away for something such as their sexual relationships.
What many of the briefs fail to investigate is the role of the counselor or therapist. Is it to “affirm” the client’s beliefs, or to offer support and guidance, even to clients whose practices one may find distasteful or morally wrong? Daniel Mach, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief in support of Eastern Michigan, said.
Another recent case, Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley, in which Jennifer Keeton, a counseling student at Augusta State University, in Georgia, was required to enter a remediation program because she planned to tell gay clients that homosexuality was wrong. She refused to enter remediation. The Federal Court of Appeals ruled that Augusta State University had done nothing wrong in removing Ms. Keeton, which I totally agree with.
However the two cases are not the same as in the case of Ms. Ward counseling was not refused, instead a referral was made. Thanks for Reading.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation cutting Planned Parenthood funding is just another socially conservative attack on pro-choice. See the below article acquired from the Huffington Post.
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s website appeared to be hacked briefly early Thursday morning.
A banner on the website was changed from “help us get 26.2 or 13.1 miles closer to a world without breast cancer” to “help us run over poor women on our way to the bank.”
(Compare the images at The Atlantic Wire.)
The nation’s leading breast-cancer charity halted its grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates Tuesday. Planned Parenthood said the grants totaled $680,000 last year and $580,000 the year before for breast-cancer screening and other related services.
The Huffington Post’s Laura Bassett reported that the move came less than a year after the Komen foundation hired a new vice president, Karen Handel, who publicly stated her opposition to Planned Parenthood in her 2010 campaign for governor of Georgia. The foundation said that the cutoff comes as the result of new rules adopted by the organization barring grants to organizations under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. Planned Parenthood is the focus of an inquiry by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) over its handling of federal funding.
Since the Komen foundation cut ties, Planned Parenthood has seen a huge influx in donations, including an announcement Thursday that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would be donating $250,000.
This is yet another example as to what happens when the GOP and the conservative right pick up seats or any type of majority. The recent election that saw the GOP pickup majorities has resulted in nothing but attacks on women’s rights, attacks on organizations like Planned Parenthood. Other attacks have been on the gay, lesbian, bi and transgender communities in places like Tennessee that have done nothing but push bills that aim at hurting those in communities that are opposite of conservative religious views. Nothing has been done to create the so-called ”jobs” promised during campaigning.
Thanks for Reading.
Why do people complain about everything? Especially about things that have nothing to do with them. It seems that there are a lot of people out there that like to complain and go on campaigns about things that other people do that have no effect on anyone else. If these things affect you then you probably need to seek psychiatric help. Here is a short list of things that I’m sick of hearing people complain about.
1. Complaining about people how wear leggings as pants.
People that where leggings as pants are not naked so for one they are for the most part not in violation of indecent exposure. And yeah leggings my not be sold in the pants section but there are a lot of leggings designsed to look like pants. So, if you are complaining about this then perhaps you should just look away. If you can’t seem to look away then maybe you like what you see. So the solution then; if you don’t like then don’t do. If you don’t want to see then find something else to stare at instead. Bottom line it has nothing to do with you. And for those that want to use children as a scapegoat for their complaining, I’m sure you kids have already seen far worse than the sexy curves of a beautiful woman.
2. Complaining about people women that get breasts augmentation “boob jobs”:
This one really gets me. If you like your natural breasts then that great. But it seems to me that people that go over the top complaining about women that get a boob job may be a bit jealous. Why are you so concerned with them choosing to not go natural? How is this affecting you or your kids for those that want to try that argument? I’ve never had breast augmentation but I can’t afford it. I’ve seen women that don’t go over the top with it and they look great.
3. Complaining about people that have a sex change:
The only thing I can say about this one is the bottom line is if you agree with having a sex change then don’t get one. Move on and worry more about what you are doing and less about what someone else wants between their legs or doesn’t want. People that seem to have an over obsession about this and claim that they are against it probably need to do some self searching. You can’t be that obsessed with something and be totally against it as claimed.
4. Complaining about people that choose to be child free:
I think children are wonderful and one day hope to have one. However there is nothing wrong with not wanting one. If you choose to have them later in life or never at all is up to the discretion of that individual person. Why complain so much about something that someone is choosing not to do when it has nothing to do with you. It’s a lot of responsibility caring for a child so for those that claim to really care about children here is a question. Why would you want to force someone to have a child or talk them into having one if they don’t want it? The child will know if they are wanted or not and it will affect them.
Bottom line is that people need to stop coming so much about things that have nothing to do with them. It seems that these people think the world revolves around them and whatever it is that they believe in. So when they don’t like something that someone else is doing then that something needs to be stopped. Oh, please. Just get over it and move on.
The following is an article from the Huffington Post. It’s a good article on the violence and discrimination that many transgender people face with police.
Credit for this article goes to Michelangelo Signorile. Thanks.
In an atmosphere of increasingly aggressive, militaristic tactics by police against American citizens, the brutal treatment of transgender people by law enforcement exposes the intensity of hatred in society against an entire class of people — and how ramped up police actions are playing out against them.
Long before the pepper spray incident at the University of California-Davis outraged the world, an Occupy Wall Street protester, a transgender man who was arrested during an October 1 march on the Brooklyn Bridge, was separated from other protestors, put in a cell with violent criminals and humiliated. A Morristown, Tennessee transgender woman was held in jail for 21 days last month after protesting in the parking lot of the local motor vehicle department office; she’d merely gone topless in protest, trying to bring attention to the DMV’s hypocrisy since it wouldn’t recognize that she is a woman and allow her a name change. And in the latest incident to surface in the media, a California transgender woman who presented no threat to anyone was allegedly tasered in the stomach and then in the crotch while on the floor by federal rangers who seemed hellbent on tormenting and torturing her.
This kind of brutality by police against transgender people, sadly, is nothing new. In almost every study of violence against LGBT people – which itself has increased in proportion to other groups in recent years — transgender people bear the highest proportion of violence, from bashers on the streets and from the police. But in this climate of increasingly militaristic tactics by the police amid an era of protest it’s important to note how it is playing out for a despised minority.
Justin Adkins, after being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, told me how he’d been subjected to a humiliating genital pat-down, something that no other protestor of the over 700 arrested that day was forced to undergo. He was segregated from other protestors, put into a cell with violent criminals. Police officers came by, mocking him and laughing at him. Later, he was chained for eight hours to a railing inside the only rest room for prisoners, humiliated as others were brought in to use the rest room. Justin Adkins was given no food or water while other protesters were fed.
Andrea Jones was arrested after she took her top off in the DMV parking lot in Morristown, Tennessee, outside Knoxville, after the DMV would not recognize tht she is a woman and change her name on her driver’s license (as the Social Security office had very easily done). If she wasn’t considered a woman for the sake of getting a license, she reasoned, why should she be considered a woman if she goes topless, exposing her breasts? The police arrested her for indecent exposure, calling her “Mr. Jones” throughout the incident;. the charge carries a possible lifetime of being included in the National Sex Offender Registry.
Shockingly, Andrea Jones was held in the local jail for 21 days on an simple indecent exposure charge, pressured each day to plead guilty (which she refused to do) in order to receive a two-day sentence and be released. In an interview she told me that she was treated terribly in the Morristown jail, put in cramped quarters with violent criminals — men, not women – and she lost ten pounds because she was not fed adequately. On top of this terrible indignity, she lost her job at the American Book Company because of her arrest and incarceration.
Then there was the video that went viral in recent days. Brooke Fantelli, a transgender woman and a former off-road race car driver, well-known in the off-road community, can be seen in a video standing up with her arms in the air, clearly no threat to anyone, as a federal ranger then uses a taser on her after stopping her during a photo shoot in the Imperial County desert in California. The shot to her abdomen causes her to drop to the he ground, writhing in pain. Then once on the floor, the ranger tasers her again – in the crotch.
Blooger Autumn Sandeen, who spoke with Fantelli, gives some of the details:
Although Brooke began her transition two years ago, Brooke’s California driver’s license still had her old male name and her old male photo. She was incorrectly told by her physician that she needed to live two full years as a female before she could change her California identification.
After Ranger Petter saw Brooke’s identification card, Brooke said he went from referring to her as “ma’am,” “her,” and “she” to “sir,” “him,” and “he.” She then said the ranger went to referring to her as “dude.”
Sandeen knows first hand about the subhuman treatment of transgender people by many police. A Navy veteran, she was among several protesters who bravely chained themselves to the White House fence last year to bring attention to President Obama’s foot-dragging on “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal. She was referred to by federal police as “it.” Her account, as well as those of Justin Adkins, Andrea Jones and Brooke Fantelli, are just a few among scores of cases in the media in recent years, and many cases just in recent months, of often brutal treatment against transgender people by police amid a climate in which all Americans, and particularly those who exercise their free speech rights, are increasingly subjected to harsh police tactics.
Thanks for Reading
I wanted to post a letter that was sent to me by a dear freind regarding a serious issue that seems to for some reason still not be taken seriously enough in this country especially in places like Tennesssee. Below is the letter. I will post my feed back in the comments section. P.S sorry it took me so long to post this letter.
Dear Red Skirt,
Our hearts go out to the family, friends, classmates and teachers of Jacob Rogers, a student at Cheatham County Central High School in Ashland City, TN who completed suicide yesterday. A news report alleges that Jacob Rogers complained of frequent bullying at school based on sexual orientation. A friend reported that Jacob dropped out of school before Thanksgiving after feeling ignored by school officials. This terrible event serves as a reminder to all parents, teachers and school administrators that they share a responsibility for supporting the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Individuals, families, communities and the whole of society have a responsibility to promote a culture that welcomes, accepts and supports LGBT students for who they are. During this difficult time, we encourage students to take advantage of grief counseling offered by Cheatham County Central High School or other mental health resources in the community. Discussions that follow youth suicide deaths present an important opportunity to remind people – and families of LGBT youth in particular – of how important it is to love, embrace and accept their entire child for all of who they are.
Following this terrible event, Tennessee Equality Project calls upon the Cheatham County School Board to fully investigate the school’s response to the bullying of Jacob Rogers. We also call upon the School Board to implement the following recommendations from GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) for addressing anti-LGBT harassment and bullying:
Revise district policy to explicitly prohibit student discrimination, harassment, bullying, and intimidation based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. The school district must establish an enumerated policy for unwelcomed conduct that focuses on sex, race, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. An enumerated policy is crucial to ensure that anti-bullying policies are effective for all students. Require staff trainings to enable school staff to identify and address anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying, and harassment effectively and in a timely manner. Support student efforts to address anti-LGBT bullying and harassment on campus, such as the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance or participation in events such as the National Day of Silence and Ally Week. Institute age-appropriate, inclusive curricula to help students understand and respect difference within the school community and society as a whole.
Click HERE to share this call to action with members of the Cheatham County School Board.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cole TEP President and Chair
The recent funding cuts to planned Parenthood are already being felt. But this is not just an issue of abortion. It’s a shame some political personal beliefs are taking away resources that make sure women access to basic family planning health care.
Now as I stated in a recent post on abortion, I have mixed feeling over the issue. But my feelings have nothing to do with the fact that I think babies are beautiful and it has nothing to do with my being liberal. My mixed feelings are based on the factual arguments over whether or not a fetus is human at conception. And a woman’s right to control over her own body, not control by church or government. But abortion is not what this post is about.
The recent cuts to places like Planned Parenthood seem to be more religion driven than fact based. If it were only about abortion there are ways to cut funding for abortions but still allow funding for other services provided by organizations like Planned Parenthood. It’s a little thing called regulation.
Take non-profit organizations for instant. In order to continue to receive their funding, there are certain things that they cannot do. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be funding for the other things that they offer.
There are people who base their pro-life positions on facts like one that were presented to me a reader in reply my post titled “Abortion: A Woman’s Choice.” Those were very arguable facts that had some science to them. But the funding cuts are not based on facts. It is a tactic to designed to hurt pro-choice facilities that do not make judgments towards the people who utilize their facility. Access to birth control, other contraceptives and STD testing have been attacked by these cuts.
It’s apparent that some people are willing to accept any amount of casualties and damage done in order to achieve their agenda. Some people cannot seem to understand that not everyone has to accept their view on God, how the Universe was made or their views on sexual behavior. So what happens is that when people don’t agree with these views then they go and try to pass laws or legislation to indirectly force people to abide by their beliefs. How this still happens in America today is a head scratcher for me.
I have never used a place like Planned Parenthood for abortion referrals; however I have used their service for STD testing. Yes I’m a sexual active person and not ashamed of it. Although since meeting my fiancé I have settled down to having just one partner. But also I feel more comfortable in a health facility that I don’t have to worry about someone trying to push their personal religious beliefs on me. If I wanted that I would go to church not to a clinic but when I go to have a medical exam or test then that’s all I’m looking for.
It is very clear now that the recent elections had nothing to do with the economy or creating jobs. How do you safe money by cutting funding for one organization and giving it to another unless it’s a savings organization. Common sense you don’t save money by spending it on something else. When an elected Politian is overtly religious you can be sure that his of her agenda is more personal than not.
Thanks for Reading.
A woman’s self-confidence affects her thoughts, feelings, behavior, and body. For women of every kind there is something thing that is a very important tool… self confidence. A woman’s self-confidence affects her thoughts, feelings, behavior, and body. It affects a woman’s decision-making. Sadly throughout history have been oppressed by way of destroying self confidence. Women can achieve great things: inspiration leaders, healers, teachers, innovative business owners and history makers. But confidence is an important part of what women have become and what women will continue to achieve. We are reshaping the world.
However there are still too many places in today’s society where women self-confidence is the target of attack. This has taken place by the suggestions that women have to meet a certain look. Whether it be telling a skinny woman that she doesn’t have enough curves, telling the more curvy that they need to be skinny, making dark-skinned women feel that they are not light enough, telling transwomen that they don’t belong and the list goes on.
Women don’t fit into one box. Women are different shapes, sizes, heights, skin tones and expressions. We have different view points, backgrounds, goals and aspirations. Some feminine (i.e. I’m a girly girl) and some are masculine. People that think women should be confined to a box are not running on all eight cylinders. Here are three short tips for women to gain or improve self-confidence.
1. Self Confidence is multi layered- We have different levels of self-confidence when it come to different things. Someone may feel confident about going to work but less confident about voicing her opinion to a large group. There may be a lot of confidence around a good friend but less around another specific person due to past put downs. The improvement of self-confidence starts at the areas of needed improvement. (Pawlik-Kienlen, 2007)
Self Confidence depends on what we are doing. One way to fix this is to avoid self labeling. Labeling can lead to falling into that void to fit that label. Building self-confidence requires being honest about who you are.
2. See What Fits- This one is one that I learned on my own. Find what fits you. Your look, your walk, your speaking. Find your own smile. Because what fits you is the perfect fit. Too many times we try to fit into “her” fit or “their” fit. Yes sometimes because we live in a biased, stupid society; we have to fit “their” fit in certain situations but don’t lose your fit. Keep it. It’s you.
3. How do you want to be Treated- People a lot of times are taught improperly how to treat women. They learn from the stereotypes and negative things they see on TV or hear in music. They are stuck in the “just the way it is” mentality. When someone addresses you incorrectly don’t be afraid to correct them-they may not know any better. And if they do know better, then that makes them just stupid and not worth your time. Do you want to be called Miss or does that offend you?Do you want to be address by a changed name or a title that you’ve worked hard for? If yes then stand up for that. Everyone deserves respect. People don’t have to like it but they need to respect it.
Hope my references placed correctly.
References
Pawlik-Kienlen, L. (2007). More self confidence for women. Retrieved from
http://http://l-pawlik-kienlen.suite101.com/building-your-confidence-a14518
Hello Dear Readers,
Thank you for your comments and taking the time to read the articles. It has taken me some time to moderate some of your comments because they have been going to my spam box and not showing up as having comments to approve. So if I have taken a long time to accept a comment it has not been intentional. I post all comments the ones I agree with or disagree with so please continue to read a share your opinion.
Thanks for reading.
