Bigoted Housepaint!

Taubmans Paints responds, Update at bottom of article!

Crossposted from equallovearmidale

I was in a Bunnings store in Sydney the other day looking at paint options for a room when i saw something that made my blood run cold. One of the paints on a large display of Taubmans Easy Coat Suede… a nice shade of pink (though in the photos it looks paler than it is to the eye) that is very close to a shade of nail polish i often wear…

Labeled PUNCH ME

We just had to get some photos of this appalling label and these that i’m posting were taken by my partner. Here is the top of the standing display it’s on showing the Taubmans name.

As if there aren’t enough problems with bigotry and violence and bullying of Intersex Transgender Bisexual Lesbian and gay people as it is. And for that matter violence against women. All of whom are at times associated with the colour pink.

When the Nazis who were trying to Exterminate Transgender sent Transgender and Gay people to the death camps they made them wear a pink triangle.

This clear distinct blatant association with a shade of pink and ‘asking for’ being subjected to violence is inexcusable in modern day Australia. That it’s on a public display is extremely disgraceful and disgusting.

With so many young ITBLG people attempting to take their own lives, with homophobic bullying such a serious problem, with so much violence against Transgender people that nearly half of them in a Queensland study had been victims of assault this is an extremely disturbing endorsement of violence, abuse and prejudice!

How the heck did this happen Taubmans? And what are you going to do about it?

Update: I was emailed about a response from Taubmans by Rebecca Dominguez who had sent them this

I just read the blog post:

http://equallovearmidale.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/bigoted-housepaint-taubmans-needs-to-explain-this/

You seriously have a colour of paint (that is pink) called “Punch Me”? What on earth were your marketing department thinking when they came up with that?

Way to go promoting misogyny, rape culture, homophobia, transphobia and violence against women, trans* and queer people.

An apology to women’s groups and queer groups would be a good idea, as well as sensitivity training.

I’ve been told (via another source) that “Punch” in this instance relates to the drink. But as “Me” follows the word “Punch” this doesn’t compute for me.

And they replied:

Hi Rebecca,

We acknowledge & understand your complaint. The name will be changed as soon as is possible.

Regards

Taubmans Paints

Bigotry and Unscientific and Unethical Rot in the Heart of Psychiatry

Once again comments I've written elsewhere strikes me as being worthy once re-edited of a post on it's own.

These are from here: http://www.bilerico.com/2009/11/update_statement_on_gender_identity_disorder_and_t.php

I am especially troubled by a September report from Dr. Raymond Blanchard, chairman of the Paraphilias Subworkgroup of the DSM-V Task Force. He proposes to retain the TF diagnosis, renamed "Transvestic Disorder" with its existing diagnostic criteria that ambiguously label all "behaviors involving cross-dressing" by those assigned male at birth as sexually deviant on the basis of their sexual orientation. Moreover, Dr. Blanchard proposes to add the deeply offensive and inflammatory term, "autogynephilia," as a specifier to the diagnosis. I ask the DSM-V Task Force and elected officials of the American Psychiatric Association to reject his proposal.

Here we have a diagnosis criteria of a mental illness that includes SEXUALITY as one of it's criteria! And SEX as another! From the pdf preview of the report:

"(4) with a heterosexualorientation. There are, of course, cross-dresserswho fall outside this definition: homosexual men who crossdress without sexual arousal and perhaps rare women who cross-dress with sexual arousal. The existence of these other groups has no necessary bearing on whether the combination of male sex, heterosexual orientation, cross-dressing, and sexual excitement constitutes a distinct syndrome. The consensus of expert clinicians, for almost a century, has been that it does."

Does anyone like the idea of sexual orientation being a criteria for diagnosing a mental illness folks? Think it's good that het male to female crossdressers are seperated from gay ones because of their sexuality in this? Or the female to male ones from the male to female ones because they are assumed to be 'rare'. And strange that being aroused wearing lingerie (something they seem to think only happens with het CDs, not gay ones) is somehow bad but a man being aroused wearing leather chaps or a woman finding wearing a tight corset arousing (which is almost every goth woman i know for the record) is somehow different.

This is an arbitrary definition. Built on policing gender roles from a transphobic gender-binary as well as sexuality double-standards and sexist double-standards. There's something wrong in that affecting everybody! And the knock-on effects through the psychiatric field could effect anyone!

And as Kelly, the author of the original post i was commenting on reminds us:

...the TF diagnosis defames a huge population of CD, genderqueer, and other trans folks who have been inexplicably silent on this issue. Moreover, a person does not actually have to be sexually aroused by gender expression to be diagnosed. Criterion A in the current and proposed diagnosis is (conveniently) ambiguously worded to be met by "or behaviors involving cross-dressing." The mere "involvement" of "cross-dressing" is all that is required. Even worse, the second criterion fails to distinguish distress actually caused by gender expression from distress caused by societal prejudice. So a CD individual who is perfectly happy and well adjusted and has been outed and fired can be further bashed by a TF diagnosis, because being a victim of job discrimination can be considered "impairment" in the diagnosis. Dr. Blanchard's TF diagnosis was designed to ensnare as many gender nonconforming people as possible on the basis of male birth-assignment and sexual orientation. It should be removed from the DSM-V.

There is a phenomenon I've been observing, and repeatedly subject to in fact.
It's where bad science with poor evidence poor logic poor conclusions and cherry picking of evideence and failing to apply proper scientific method by searching for disproofs of contrary evidence rather than only corroborative evidence get accepted and placed on high because it's consistent with presumptions and unscientific beliefs and what suits the mainstream.

It happens regularly with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyalitus/Fibromyalgia where psychologists are still getting pieces published and supported that the illness is psychological in origin and exaccerbated psychologically despite findings of genetic switch activity in blood, despite mitochondrial function evidence, despite evidence in cerebrospinal fuid and evidence of cerebrospinal swelling/inflamation and now the evidence of a retrovirus XMRV previously linked to prostate cancer being found in the majority of CFS sufferers.

In other words in total contrast to empirical evidence which must be ignored and pretended does not exist in order to make these claims the more comfortable stereotype-affirming view gets undue support and acceptance.

If Blanchard GENUINELY wanted to test his theories the very first thing that should be done is to apply all the tests that have found biological corellates in transsexuals upon crossdressers, looking for milder forms or varient forms of the same traits. An obvious thing to rule out surely? But major tenants of Psychiatry are under threat from Neurology, that'd be fraternising with the enemy. And i doubt any genuine test would be applied to his theories by him. He wants to build a theory, not test one. Construct an explanation that fits his preconceptions, not find the truth.
And here is an important question.

Why is it that despite years and years of homophobic and transphobic murder....
There is no sign of homophobia or transphobia listed as mental illnesses? No sign of treatments for them?

Cause there is an Unethical notion at the heart of much psychology.. that social norms are right because they are social norms and deviation from social norms and resistance to social conditioning is an aberation. Thats a Philosophical and Unethical cancer at the heart of psychology.

Until all Ethical actions and behavior is removed from the DSM and Unethical and Irrational Hate is included then there is Human Rights Abuse at it's heart!

Chronic Ablism pervaisive throughout Net, Law and Bussiness

Not a study, not an article. Just a blatently obvious fact anyone with an ounce of imagination can realise. So routine is it that even us who often suffer it really don't realise exactly how pervasive and unjust it is.

It's at the deepest fundamental levels.

Shall I start with the signiature? How often do we use our signiature? A piece of hand-art intended to be regularly repeated as well as unique to the individual.

Now imagine what thats like for someone whose hand is not always steady! Or whose muscle-memory can be every bit as interferred with as their short-term or long-term memory. Or who suffers sudden muscle spasms or twitches or whose coordination is irregular. And those are just the ones I've experienced personally! Imagine the embarassment when trying to pick up a parcel from the post office and having your own signiature not match!

Ah but the world is going increasingly electronic blah blah blah.
That is not helping!

Consider all the rules one must obey in nettiquette. the differing rules from forum to forum, keeping up with changes of rules... imagine what that is like for those with memory issues, dyslexia and other reading difficulties, cognitive difficulties.

Again this is something I experience myself when my CFS 'brain fog' cognitive impairment is at it's stronger levels and i really have to struggle through some things.

Consider that criticising people on their spelling is considered quite acceptable on much of the net. How repugnant is that really? It is patently ablist privilege. Oh sure there are 'spell-checkers', largely culturally-biased constantly trying to change my S's to Z's because American English is different to Australian English! And it's not my fault many spell checkers have vastly lower vocabularies than I.

Nope, criticising spelling, grammer etc is nothing more than ablist bigotry pure and simple!

But the net is full of so very much more than that. I've been on several forums where breaking of some rules occurs frequently enough that people get auto-bans for it. Not behaviour like flaming mind but mistakes like posting in the wrong section. Seems reasonable if it's a constant problem doesn't it... or does it? Why is the problem reccurring? No-one asks that, it is just assumed that some people are stupid or bloody-minded.... wow... consider the bigotry and stupidity in those assumptions!

Stupid? Like people with lower IQs don't deserve access to forums and the internet? Bigotry, pure and simple. Bloody minded? What kind of ignorance is involved in that assumption! A purely rational person will have a purely rational reason to act thusly. If they are not purely rational as many people aren't then any system that assumes a basic level of competance or standard of behaviour that requires people to be purely rational whe many many people are obviously incapable of such is again bigotry pure and simple!

The net is a cornocopia of ablism at nearly every turn!

And returning to law and government systems there are copious hoops we all have to jump through that are substantially ablist. The requirements of Centrelink for those who benefit from the various pensions are often quite ablist. I get so furious having to negotiate through messy automated phone services and irrationally complex forms etc when I'm going through bad brain fog. C'mon you gits not every disabled person has a career to do these things for them! Not every person who fails to report something or who doesn't get a form in on time or turn up at the appointed time (asssuming you genuinely sent that letter Centrelink... as you got caught out on that penalising people for your own staffs mistakes more than a few times!) do so to deliberately defraud. Deeply entrenched systemic ablism!

And as for business!
Just consider telemarketing for starters. Pestered at a random unexpecting time, badgered to accept a deal which may or may not be reasonable. Now if someone has anxiety issues, confussion issues, slowed cognition, difficulty in evaluating budgets or just plain arithmatic at short notice how disstressing traumatic and potentially manipulative is that?

I occassinally have tried asking these telemarketers to send me the details of the deal they are offering in writing for me to evaluate when I can think clearly.. but nope, they can't do that can they. ABLISM. And I'm not referring to some piddling cruise or mobile phone thing. I'm talking about the large Australian telecommunications companies here like Telstra and Optus!

I have missed good deals because of this, but to avoid countless good-seeming but actually bad deals that is what I've had to do.

When most people think of disability issues they think of wheelchair access and eyesight. Those a big deal, still. But it is the issues of cognitive and learning and reading and memory and concentration that people are taking for granted to a massive extreme!

And people are penalised on forums all over the net for not being able to live up to ablist standards! People are financially penalised, getting criminal records even for not fullfilling ablist legal obligations! People are penalised in business or manipulated by it by ablist systems.

Vast amounts of daily life are filled with ablist systems, assumptions of certain levels of ability that just are not so for many people! Often the people most in need of those services!

A housebound disabled person often rellies on the net for their social interaction. When they get kicked out of communities whether it's forums mmorpgs or what-have-you that is extraordinarilly wrong!

A disability pensioner who has only the pension to survive on who suffers a financial penalty for failing to meet some ablist obligation is suffering a profound wrong!

I could go on. There are so many examples. All it takes is a little imagination to realise how utterly common these wrongs are. Just take a little time to consider it and to mention it to others as it really is something more people, especially people who work on these systems and in fields, need to think about!

Sure I ramble, Brain Fog, gender identity and other issues

Yep, I ramble.
Its a part of the way I think, the curse of creativity that there is always more than one subject being considered in my mind at one time.
And the 'brain fog' of chronic fatigue syndrome means that on a moderate day these thoughts can run together somewhat along whatever line they may be linked and on a bad day... on a bad day my brain can crosswire and my mouth says one word while my brain thinks another.

Brain fog. It sounds like it should be announced melodramaticly in a deep echoing booming voice accomapanied by a theramin. Some days thats exactly what it feels like too.

It's hard to describe what it feels like. It is a sort of fog in an abstract sense, it interferes with my vision and hearing for example. The light gets into my eyes, the sound into the ears but the data doesn't go through to the brain right. Sounds end up not being recognised or seeming dull and distant. An object right in front of the face doesn't attract attention. It is an impediment to awareness.

It's a little like being groggy, half awake, in that state where dream and reality combine and reality is sort of blurred and indistinct.

And this week, this week it's bad!
Brain fog impedes reasoning and concentration too. It's not like just being walled in by fog, it's in the car with you. It's in the brain not just between the brain and it's senses. It reduces the IQ by, according to stuff I read almost a decade ago, up to 40 points. I can attest it does get bad. I remember the day I couldn't recall what the number 6 meant.

Oh sure I knew it was a number, but the links and connections, the associations you build between numbers, the awareness of the significance of the number six was a big blurry blank in my mind.

Thats not fun. Its not just unpleasant. Its sheer unadaulterated HORROR! To have something so basic, so familiar be suddenly wrapped in void can trigger utter panic. Especially when so much of my life has been wrapped up with my intellect.

So a couple of days ago when I couldn't remember the name of my nice next-door neighbour I realised that this week my brain fog was really, really bad again. I almost butst into tears right then and there but I didn't want to cry in front of the people I was talking to.

I certainly have done a fair bit of crying lately which would be good as I would consider that I was unbottling a lot of the emotions I had to supress over the years but its often been random. Only about 60% can I attrivbute to a reaction to something or other and the rest just hits me seemingly at random.

And like everything else in my life my self-acceptance is affected by the variation of my symptoms. Finding a balance between expressing my feminine aspects and getting basic housework done is not easy. Fail at either and misery is the result and when my brain fog is bad i can find myself procrastinating, thats always a bad sign.

Procrastination often means I'm starting to repress or avoid something important again. A stupid and hurtful reflex. It had it's purpose though. If I'd expressed my gender variance as much in the past as I do now I'd be dead for sure. I suffered enough ostracism, bullying and attacks of physical violence as it was through my school years. But now its just a bunch of old infected wounds that need to be cleaned to heal, bad habits, bad reflexes I need to undo.

I'm still not sure why my gender variance was something I repressed when I have always been so anti-conformist. Not that it was ever utterly repressed after all I wad teased aplenty for being feminine anyway but I kept telling myself I was just an effeminate boy and compartmentslised my crossdressing, kept it to enough of a minimum to ignore as an important part of who I am.

I remember getting upset over conflicted gender issues back when I was three or four. I know it was no later than that because it was before my parents seperated. I don't know the order of events though. I was kicked out of ballet for being a boy. I'd done nothing wrong, I loved ballet. I went there on doctors orders to strengthen my severely poor arch muscles in my feet. But some parents were upset that there was a boy in the class with girls, even a perfectly behaved boy that young. I was told I couldn't have a couple of toys because they were girls toys. I don't remember the situations well but I remember one toy well, a treehouse playset. I recall another time at the show, they were selling these 'antenae' things attached to hairbands and I wanted one but also got distressed because they were 'girls' and i thought i wasn't supposed to have them. The memories are fragmentary. But somewhere even back then I had this deep conflict of feeling like a girl and liking girl things sometimes and feeling that it was wrong.

Through my life it's been like that. Somyetimes it wasn't a problem, sometimes it was. Some days I was happy being a boy, weird sensitive boy that i was, and other days I'd cry myself to sleep hoping that this time, please this time, when I woke up I'd be a girl. I'd come up with excuses to watch shows like She-Ra and Jem as well as He-Man and Transformers and convince myself of them till I could believe them for a while.

Why? I don't know. I just locked up those feelings and pretended they weren't there. Something I wouldn't have been able to do if they were constant, or of constant strength perhaps.

Like the day I found all my muscles and joints weren't hurting was the day I realised they had been hurting non-stop for years. Those days I thought they were hurting I realised they'd only been hurting more. It took the absence to reveal what the concious mind had adapted to. So have even on my most 'male' days I been still rather female? How can that be tested? Experience is so subjective anyway.

So here I am. Too tired to shave away the light fuzz of beard growth since the day before yesterday, fingernails painted black and decorated with little white and green skulls, clothing of mixed sexes (mostly only mixed cause some of the guy stuff I have is warmer) and some lipstick on just to let enough girl out to stop crying or wanting to scream and just keep screaming. Just pouring out my feelings, letting them through the chink in my logical and rational mind. The stream of underground water that eats away the limestone that forms the hollow that is the cave of rationality.

Cause frankly my brain is just too blurry to try and write poetry. And my hands shaking from the CFS too much to paint or draw today.

And then there is the anger.
I have plenty of that.
You don't go through life as an outsider without picking up some. You can wear it as armour of course but like steel in the sun it can scald as well as save. I've known my share of bigotry. I've suffered for not liking 'male' things like sport and cars, for looking feminine (and/or 'gay' for those numbskulls who don't notice their are masculine gay people too) I've suffered for being intellectual, for being a goth, for appearing to look like a particular ethnicity, for my actual ethnic heritage, for having a different skin colour to my brother even though we at other times have been mistaken for twins so it was assumed we had different fathers. Oh I know what bigotry feels like, what it tastes and smells like.

With all its petty excuses and false justifications.

You know what I'd like? I'd like to meet a non-bigoted HBS supporter! One who can handle the notion of 'transgender' identity being as valid as HBS, of crossdressers and non-hbs definition yet self-identified transexuals still having the same human rights as them. All the ones I talk to claim that it's just about their own self-identity and a medical definition but they fight against the possibility that crossfressers and drag queens et al have the same rights, the same validity. Thats where their bigotry shows. Even if there was proof that non-HBS transgender people are all of purely psychological causation which isn't as conclusively proven as they often claim the human rights of those people are undiminished! Their right to self-expression, to self-definition, to decide what treatment they do or do not undergo and how their body may or may not be modified is no greater or lesser than any other humans! Being Homosexual were it biological or psychological is nonetheless a human right. Gay people are equal to straight people. There are those who claim that religiosity or conservative or liberal outlooks are biological in origin too. It matters not one iota to the validity of those people.

When I meet an HBS supporter who can handle that, who can support transgender peoples rights and needs and recognise their validity as much as they want HBS to be recognised and who can handle the possibility of people holding different views on the medical and scientific arguments of each... that day I'll be happy because so far all the ones who I meet on the net are a pack of bigots hiding behind their self-created medical definition as an excuse for their anti-trans views. Any genuinele decent and reasonable HBS suporters risk being stigmatised by association with these bigots.

I have plenty of other things to be angry about of course.
CFS is one of those 'invisible' disabilities. People assume your not disabled till they know otherwise. Not a lot is known about CFS in the general community, little is raised for research and the CFS resources are crap because of the past stigma of 'yuppie flu' reporting, assumptions by biased researchers that the illness was spychological in origin and all the sufferers are all too disabled to run support services. CFS is socially isolating, deeply disstressing and just plain unfair! Even the reports of people dying from it hasn't raised it's public profile much.

I've been managing a moderate social life but it's taken a tremendous effort to do so.

And then there's all the pain and anger left from my last relationship.

I'm generally an optimistic and positive person, not that this post shows that.
But sometimes it's good to express the pain and fear and anger and suffering. It's a part of being human after all.

Is there any value to a reader? I can't know. Nor if anyone will even read this. But I feel a bit better for having said it.

So I guess i should wrap up this rambling mess of a blog post, find something uplifting and affirming to remind me of the joy of being transgendered and then crawl into bed with an issue of Fortean Times and a hotwater bottle and the hope that my head will be clear enough tomorrow to follow and enjoy the science, psychology and philosophy shows on the radio.

Crossdresser is Not a Dirty Word (and so what if it was anyway)

I posted this as a Diary entry at Pam's House Blend but thought it time I put a blog of my own out there for my infrequent thoughts. Considering the comments flinging back and forth I keep running into I feel this needs to be said and said loud and often.

I'm saddened how often I see people all over the community using the word crossdresser as if it were the highest of insults. Terms like 'recreational' and 'weekend' are often used in the same sentance.
Well I am a crossdresser and I'm proud of it!

I spend time on crossdressing forums and see post after post, topic after topic of people begging for a cure or an explanation for why they have such a deep need, temporarily, to appear different to their birth sex. That is not the behaviour of someone with a quaint hobby or who do this as a recreational activity. Sure most of these people are not transexuals, sure they do not want surgery to permanantly change their sex. Plenty of them also just aren't sure, existing in a state of conflict alternatly considering hormones and rejecting them, wrestling with intense feelings of guilt and confusion.

Many crossdressers I have spoken to wish that they were transexual, envy transexuals because if they could be happy with permanantly changed sex then they feel they'd be more accepted by family and friends... and also by themselves. I am not the only one who has had a close family member screaming in my face 'you can be one or the other but you can't be both!'. Now I'm not saying that this acceptance would be the case, only that this is the way that many I have spoken to feel.

For many of the crossdressers I know there is indeed a sexual component attached to some of their dressing. For many that is a phase that lessens or passes as they increase their self-acceptance while for others it is consistant. That does not however mean that it is a purely sexual act even when there is a sexual component.

And, lets be rational here, so what if it was? Is it unethical to be aroused by a fetish of clothing? It clearly can be practised by informed consenting adult humans. It doesn't intrinsicly involve bodily harm or the risk of such. So then if it was just a fetish then it would be just as valid as any other ethical sexual preferance, activity or inclination. In which case demonising crossdressing as a sexuality is just as invalid as demonising any other ethical sexuality or sexual act from homosexuality to heterosexuality.

Regardless for the vast majority of crossdressers I have spoken to it is much more than a sexual proclivity or a hobby or a recreational activity. It is more than sexual for most (though admitedly so is homosexuality etc). It is a deep intrinsic need that they cannot quit or excise no matter how much they throw their clothes in the garbage, charity bin or fire. It is something that they cannot permanantly stop even when threatened with divorce, loss of custody, loss of family and friends. No matter how hard they try to get rid of it, it comes back.

Crossdressers don't understand why they need to dress the way they do, they do not know why they cannot quit, they do not know why this is an essential part of who they are but they find out, often the hard way, that it is an essential part of who they are. It appears that no-one knows or even has a reasonable idea what the cause is. Is it some form of sexuality? Is it a kind of mild or partial variation of transsexualism? Is it something else again?

Now I'm not trying to co-opt anyone elses movement. In my view there are only two real positions in civil rights, 'everyones rights' or 'rights only for some people' and I hold to the first position as the criteria for the 2nd are in my view arbitrary, illogical and bigoted so I support all civil rights struggles (and yes someone can hold the first position and prioritise the order of their fights, though I'd prioritise it on basis of need, not the ease of winning personally). I'm also not trying to say that crossdressers have greater need or are more sympathetic victims of circumstance than anyone else. I am absolutely not putting hate on any other group of people at all. There are bigots and haters in every single group and community whatever they are and crossdressrs are no exception, there are people who believe in inclusion and equality and tolerance and acceptance in every group and community too.

Just please remember everyone, no matter what your argument with another person might be, no matter how you choose to define yourself, no matter what differences and distinctions are important to you and which are unimportant to you, no matter your opinion on terminology...
Crossdressers are people too. They are human beings. Their blood is just as red, their tears are just as real. They are no more and no less valid as people as anyone else.