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From our fabulous News Hawks!

Have you seen a TG-related news story online or in your local paper? Send it in to TGF and become a News Hawk! Don't assume we know everything that's out there, because you are our eyes and ears. To file a story, send it in to Cindy.



MP Praises
"Coronation Street"

Contributed by Rachelle Austin and Elizabeth Parker
via Reuters
October 24, 1998

Member of the British Parliament Dr. Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak - Labour) has presented a parliamentary motion to praise the writers, actors and producers of the venerable TV soap opera "Coronation Street" for what she calls their "sensitive and realistic" portrayal of a transsexual. Although some trans-activists (who say their offers of consultation were rebuffed) have been much less happy with the process of the show's development than Jones, she believes it is helping the public to better understand the issues transsexuals face.

Jones has been a vocal advocate for transsexuals for more than five years, and hopes the government will move to grant them both new birth certificates after sex reassignment surgery and the right to marry.

Marriage has been part of the plotline of "Coronation Street," as character "Hayley's" boyfriend proposed to her and she had to explain to him it would not be legal. As it happens, a closeted British transsexual who has been married, last week publicly identified herself in the hopes of encouraging MP's to meet with her to discuss the marriage and birth certificate issues. Britain won in the European Court of Human Rights the right to remain the only member of the European Union which does not amend birth certificates after sex reassignment surgery.



Japan's First SRS Patient Comes Out

Contributed by Rachelle Austin and Elizabeth Parker
via News Planet
October 24, 1998

After years of waiting, Keiichi Nakahara last week underwent the first stage of surgical reassignment from female to male, and he's now given a lengthy interview to the "Weekly Asahi" magazine to call for changes in the nation's official registry. The government's family registration system describes individuals by their gender as perceived at birth. Throughout his adult life, the 30-year-old woman worked jobs -- about 20 of them, currently carpenter -- that did not qualify for social insurance programs, because he did not want to show identification that clashed with his male presentation. Nakahara also described the personal experience of always feeling like a male, from the shock of seeing a little boy's genitals at age 3, to the sense of being "sentenced to death" on menarche, to having always fallen in love with women but never having felt right about his body in sexual relations with them.

Nakahara was diagnosed with gender identity disorder in mid-1992, but Japanese physicians did not consider sex reassignment surgery to be ethical before 1996, and didn't complete development of guidelines for performing the surgery until this year. Meanwhile, feminists and othis supporters of transgender rights have announced they will be meeting with transgenders in Tokyo October 26 to examine how their shared experiences of sex role oppression can help them to support each othis in finding authenticity.

In the article in the Weekly Asahi, Nakahara criticized the family registration system which requires clarification of a person's sex, in light of the number of people with gender identity disorder who wish to live like members of the opposite sex. Nakahara said he would like to live in a society whise people with this disorder are not be discriminated against due to incompatibility between their physical appearance and actual sex registered in documents. All Japanese citizens are required by law to be registered in a family registration document as part of a government-controlled system. In an eight-hour interview with the magazine, Nakahara, who works as a carpenter in northeastern Japan, said he had felt uncomfortable about his sex for more than 20 years.

Nakahara said he first felt discomfort about his sex when he was only about 3 years old. "I was greatly shocked to see a boy who stripped at a nursery school pool, because I didn't have the genital organs he had, " he said. When he was a second-year high school student, about 16 or 17, he had his first period. "I felt as if I had been sentenced to death," he said, adding that his dream of living in the future like a man was destroyed at that time. Graduating from high school, he got a job at a gas station hoping to work as a maintenance man. However, he quit the job on the first day because he was told to work in the general affairs section wearing a female uniform. Since then, he has had more than 20 different jobs, including printer operator, guard, plumber, electrical engineer and bartender in a gay bar.

Nakahara has been forced to choose jobs which do not guarantee social insurance so that he does not have to submit a copy of his family registration document which reveals his actual sex. Nakahara said he has always fallen in love with women. "I felt great discomfort with my body when I slept with my old girlfriend," he said, adding he decided to have a sex change after such uncomfortable experiences.

He consulted a doctor at Saitama Medical College in Kawagoe, north of Tokyo, in July 1992, and in winter of that year his condition was diagnosed as gender identity disorder. In July 1996, the college's ethics committee accepted a sex-change operation as the proper medical treatment for Nakahara, and the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology released guidelines this May allowing sex changes under certain conditions for the first time. Following this move, the college's committee approved an operation for Nakahara in May, on condition that complete psychological support measures be provided afterward.

There have been no such operations in Japan since 1969, when a gynecologist who had conducted sex-change operations for three male prostitutes was convicted of violating the country's former Eugenic Protection Law. Since then, sex-change operations have been considered taboo in Japan, doctors say, and those who have wanted such operations have eithis had them in secret or have gone to countries whise they are legal. Nakahara said he will apply to have his new sex entered in his family registration after the operation is completed. "As a transsexual, I've come to think about my life more seriously," he said. According to an estimate by Saitama Medical College, up to 7,000 people in Japan want to live as transsexuals.

TS "Witch" Daughter Gets Hexed

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker and Bobbi G
via Associated Press
October 25, 1998

BALTIMORE -- The official referral form lists the reason for Jamie Schoonover's suspension from school as "Casting a spell on a student." The 15-year-old freshman admits she practices witchcraft, as does her mother.

But she knows better than to cast a spell.

"Casting a spell isn't something that just any novice is going to know how to do," said Colleen Harper, a transsexual who was Jamie's biological father but now calls herself the girl's mother. "If she ever were to cast any spells, it would be along the lines of wishing prosperity on someone or healing someone," Ms. Harper said.

Miss Schoonover and Jennifer Rassen, who broke down in hysterics Tuesday when she thought she had been "hexed," met Wednesday with Southwestern High School's principal to try to sort things out. According to Miss Schoonover, she and some friends were sitting beneath a tree on school grounds Tuesday when they noticed the names of other girls scrawled on a wall. One of the friends wanted to cross out the names, so Jamie lent her a correction fluid pen. The friend crossed out the names, then wrote, "Is life a virtue of death?"

When Miss Rassen saw her name crossed out and the question, she ran to Principal Earl L. Lee saying the other girl had cast a spell on her.

"She was hysterical," said schools spokeswoman Vanessa Pyatt. "She was distraught and crying violently." Miss Schoonover was sent home because school officials considered the alleged spell a verbal threat that violates the student discipline code. She was allowed back to school after the meeting. "We do not believe that anyone was threatened," Ms. Pyatt said. "Everyone emerged from the meeting, I think, satisfied that the issue had been resolved."

Ms. Harper called it all a misunderstanding -- and a perfect example of misconceptions about witchcraft, or Wicca, the modern form of paganism that she and her daughter practice. Wicca is more like a folklore-tinged herbalism that dictates that "whatever you do comes back to you threefold," she said.

Tokyo TG Symposium

Contributed by ElizabethParker
via Kyodo News
October 20, 1998

TOKYO -- A symposium on a possible cooperation between feminists and those who have a psychological urge to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex will be held Sunday in Tokyo, organizers said Tuesday.

The confab, organized by supporters of sex changes, will include a panel discussion with feminist activists and transsexuals, the group members said. Feminists complain that people who are not satisfied with their sex are often pressured to ignore their true feelings and assimilate by adopting traditional male and female roles.

Participants in the panel discussion will look at ways for feminists and transsexuals to work together in supporting each other's efforts to become their "real selves." A report on the Japan's first legal sex change operation, begun at the Saitama Medical College last Friday, will also be given at the symposium. Saitama Medical College estimates that some 2,000 to 7,000 people in Japan want to live as members of the opposite sex.

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