Silverfoxesclub-digest
Wednesday, December 6 2000
Volume 01 : Number 067

In this issue:

-Fw: Many, many questions! (+ responses)
-Re: UK version vs The New US Queer as Folk
-The shoe on the other foot doesn't fit.
-Gay-rights foes gathered signatures

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 10:37:36 -0800
From: "Ben Boxer"

Subject: Fw: Many, many questions!

The following is an abbreviated version of many, many questions from Bob the questionbox and his guide dog Harley who knows all things, Bob says, but ain't talking!

The questions were inspired by my posting about the English vicar who transgendered to vicaress (vicarette?) and was allowed to keep his/her pulpit. (No, they didn't cut off his/her pulpit during the sex change operation!)

Interestingly, Bob's posting came in just as I was reading an article on the BBC News which was headlined: "U.K. National Health Service to triple number of sex changes." LOL! The National Health Service's Charing Cross Hospital in London (in case one of you chaps/chapettes in the U.K. needs to know where to go) will perform more such surgeries due to increasing demand for the procedure.

I call that coming out of the closet with a vengeance!

No, I am not an authority on this subject, but am widely read on it (as widely as my butt, which is quite a spread) so I shall venture forth and expound upon it, perhaps revealing more ignorance than knowledge, but let me try.
====
...gender reassignment surgery....question(s):
====
Let me preface these remarks by saying I collected TV documentaries on the subject over a few years, and also managed (in San Francisco) a hotel with an office building attached, in which was located a clinic where sex-change surgery was performed, and also met several transgendered people in Brazil. The San Francisco clinic was run off the premises after a houseman found severed penises in the garbage. It probably relocated to the Castro (SF's major gay district)!
====
...is it obvious...this person is not a biological woman?
====
It is a cliche that drag queens are most easily recognized as male by their hands and legs. This is not always true, and even less so among the transgendered. The law of averages prevails. Some show, and some don't. It is most often undetectable in people who were androgynous to begin with. The most famous of all was Christine Jorgensen, the first known sex-changer, an American military man who went to Denmark when I was a teenager and changed over to a female. It shocked the world. She never looked like anything but a man in drag to me, and I saw her nightclub act at three different stages of her life. Conversely, a Frenchman who started out as an exceptionally beautiful drag queen at a fashionable gay nightclub in Paris after WW II was totally believeable as a woman. I saw him/her perform once at that stage of her life and could hardly believe that she was really a man. Only gay people knew until she got drafted into the French army. She reported for her physical in a slinky outfit as a gorgeous dame and got wolf calls from all the men on duty, who recognized her as a leading Parisian cabaret star. The doctor came out after the exam with a very red face. That was the end of "her" Army career. She was surgically transgendered after that and became a major international movie star (as a woman) and played opposite the top leading men of the day. One can only wonder how much they knew about her! The most savvy Europeans knew, but it remained a sort of private joke, and still is not generally known. I was in a dyke bookstore in San Francisco a few years ago and saw a huge poster of this babe on the wall. The girl in the shop proudly pointed out that the woman on the poster was a lesbian. I didn't tell her the truth. It might have turned her off to know she was looking at a man.
====
...would the vaginal area be different, or scarred?
====
These days, I am told, they work wonders, and it can be quite undetectable. A female tennis star who had been a male before the operation had a male lover as a woman. He did not know he was fucking an artificially constructed pussy until she was exposed by the press as a transgender. Feeling "dirty" and "betrayed," he dumped her, fearful of the "stigma" attaching itself to him. I have to giggle here, remembering a movie that told the story of a female whose face was messed up somehow and an enterprising surgeon re-created her lips with tissue cut from her labia majora (the "wings" of her cunt). It was a true story, and the lady had trouble getting boyfriends after that. Maybe she turned lesbian.
====
Have you ever met a person who had this kind of surgery, or known a person before and afterward?
====
In Brazil, I knew two lovely women who performed in cabaret. They had nice tits, etc., and bodies that were unmistakably female, but both had been born men. One of them showed me her snatch proudly and offered to let me try it. I didn't, but it sure looked real to me. I saw pix of both of them when they were very young and male. Both looked more like girls than boys even then.
====
Can they truly find happiness.....?
====
Once again, some do, some don't. That depends more on the character of a person than on his or her gender. I understand that transgendered male to female can often experience a feeling of internal orgasm during sex, not only from the spray of semen squirting out of their male partner's penis, but also within themselves. Some find it very satisfying. Just as there are certain people constituted to love a large, older man like me, there must surely be a sexual orientation aimed at the transgendered on both sides of the fence.
====
Is it more common for men to reassign as women than the other way around?
====
I haven't been able to find those stats yet. Maybe someone else knows. I am beginning to think, though, that there may be more women becoming men than vice versa. That switch can be fantastically effective.
====
Is the operation very painful?
====
Probably. I knew a 36 y/o man who got himself circumsized. He said recovery was awful, but he was up and fucking in a week or two. So I would think sex-change surgery would be painful in recovery, but judging from my open-heart surgery, the operation itself would be done while you're unconscious, so who cares?
====
Do some women reassign as men? Wouldn't this be more difficult?
====
In one documentary, I saw several women who had beome males, and a couple of them were absolutely darling guys I could have gone for. Macho and butch-voiced and very male. Plus, the advances in prosthetic cocks has been amazing. When I first began to suffer from erectile dysfunction, I went through classes at an HMO dealing with impotence and its cures or alternatives. A lot of men who are not transgendered are having them installed surgically. Some can make it erect by pressing on one side of the body and render it flaccid by pressing on the other. It looks and feels like the real thing, I am told. I would love to hear from someone who has been through it or -- hee hee -- has hands-on experience. I don't know about orgasms in these cases. Hey, son, buy daddy a new dick for Xmas!
====
...is this need to reassign because of biology, or because of circumstances?
====
Unless they are born as hermaphrodites (both sexes combined physically. with varying degrees of development in the genitalia), I suspect it is a mind set established by DNA and combinations of other factors, but I don't know. What I do know is that it is as valid as my homosexuality. Biologically, I am male and I like being male and I don't want to be female but I love men and not women and have sometimes used my body like a woman's as well as like a man's in the act of sex and have found this to be my natural bent. My brain cells, an element of biology, must somehow have been automatically programmed with this orientation because I sure in hell would not have been able to do it myself. I do feel that sexual orientation is not a lifestyle, but a life process, and that goes for all the socially taboo ones, as well. Too little money and too little time have been invested by exploratory science in the study of what makes us what and who we are, but each of us has validity and should be respected for same.

Ben Boxer
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 00:49:33 -0000
From: "Pewit"

Subject: Re: Many, many questions!

Comments below and Footnote below that

Pewit

Question about this surgery: is it obvious from looking that this person is not a biological woman?
****
See the before and after pictures on this link and make your own mind up.
****
Question: And, would the vaginal area be very different, or scarred up?
****
Question: Depends on how much they went through the sex change process. Details of the various operations on this link.
****
Question: Have any of you ever met a person who had this kind of surgery, or known a person before and afterward?
****
Yes - rather unconvincing as they get past 60 IMHO (he/she was an ex-colonel in the army!)
**** Question: Can they truly find happiness with the pressure of others that this is wrong?
****
See this link.
****
Question: Is it more common for men to reassign as women than the other way around? Is the operation very painful? I know very little about this topic, but would like to know more. Do some women reassign as men? Wouldn't this be more difficult?
****
Yes - see above.
****
Question: And lastly, is this need to reassign because of biology, or because of circumstances?
****
This is the same arguement you see about homosexuality - - is it nature or nurture? Interesting that in certain culturess (India/Iran - see link above for details) men who would posibly be classed as gay in other cultures become transexuals or undergo (crude) surgery, in order to safely express their identity.

Footnote:
You are all connected to the worlds largest ever encyclopedia where you can find out about anything - you just have to know how to look for it.

I used a search engine (Yahoo) for this research and found the answers in less than 5 minutes.

I would urge any of you who are internet newbies to spend the time to find out how to conduct simple and advanced searches, becuase you can find what you want so easily once you know how - if only finding Mr. Right was that easy!

Pewit

p.s. Robert, this is not a dig at you personally

Editor of the Gray Gay Guide, the online guide to places for mature men and admirers worldwide
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 23:30:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Feinstein

Subject: Re: Fw: Many, many questions!

Wonderful post, Ben. You write with such clarity and sensitivity. I think respect for other's choices is so important. I wonder how my cock would react if I hugged a woman who had a sex change.

Amazing that the vagina can be constructed so well, and how angry people get when they realize they have goofed.

Hugs,
Bob and Harley
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:42:27 +0100
From: "SGMS"

Subject: Re: Many, many questions\!

Pewit,
Learning how to use a search engine is a relatively trivial task for someone in full posession of his/her physical capabilities.

Bob, the man who asked these questions in the first place, happens to be blind. His computer uses a voice-synthesiser to "talk" to him and is well integrated into his DOS environment. This specific equipment would not work in Windows, or in any operating system other than DOS for that matter. This means that he has full e-mail access, but his surfing capabilities are extremely limited as they rule out any and all graphics-intensive pages like most search engins where the "go" button us more likely to be a glyph than a string.

GRS
----------------------
From: "J T"

Subject: Re: UK version vs The New US Queer as Folk

is there any place to get a copy of the tape? British or American version.

Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 20:29:14 -0000
From: "Pewit"

JT:
www.amazon.co.uk has the UK version but make sure your player can handle PAL format.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 00:01:51 -0800
From: "Ben Boxer"

Subject: The shoe on the other foot doesn't fit.

An interesting argument has been presented by lawyers for the Boy Scouts in a suit the Scouts have filed against the Broward School Board in Miami, Florida.

Protesting their exclusion from school facilities because of their discrimination against gays, the Scouts are arguing the proposition that the Broward School Board is violating the organization's constitutional right to equal protection of the laws because the Board is allowing other organizations -- namely religious groups and the military -- to continue using the facilities despite similar discriminatory views.

Wow! I LOVE that one! The shoe is on the other foot. Now THEY want the sort of "special" protection they accuse us of demanding!

It will be fascinating to see how this argument reverberates across the country because the School Board has decided to re-examine its position on churches and the military.

Don't ask, don't tell! Hee hee!
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 00:04:49 -0800
From: "Ben Boxer"

Subject: Gay-rights foes gathered signatures

No matter how wrongheaded they may be, true believers in almost anything are convinced that they alone are the standard bearers of righteousness and truth. Hitler, a lifelong Roman Catholic, wrote in Mein Kampf that he was engaged in the work of the Lord by eliminating Jews and verbally bragged to that effect as late as 1943. The Reverend Phelps of Kansas stands firm on his misreading of Scripture when he declares that God hates fags, who sully the human race by their very presence on earth. To both, any means to the establishment of their ends was and is justified. Enter Take Back Miami's coalition of conservative Christians. Take Back Miami from what? The 1998 ordinance banning discrimination against gays and lesbians. God forbid that GLBTs (Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgenders) should enjoy equal rights and equal protection under the law in Dade County, Florida.

Or anywhere.

Headline:
Gay-rights foes gathered petition support at polls in Dade
(Miami Herald, 12/06/00)

Text:
A group of conservative Christians took advantage of a high presidential election turnout to gather 51,026 signatures -- ammunition the group hopes will force a referendum to overturn Miami-Dade County's 1998 ordinance banning discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Minutes before 4 p.m. Friday, Take Back Miami's Ron Bagwell, flanked by several allies, pushed a cart carrying six boxes filled with signatures through a throng of opponents gathered in front of the office of the county clerk.

Friday's deadline fell 60 days after the county had approved the language of the petition.

To force a countywide referendum, the Christian group needs about 35,000 certified signatures, or 4 percent of the county's voters.

The earliest the election can be held is in 2002, during the next countywide election. And the certification of the signatures is unlikely to happen immediately because elections supervisors are in Tallahassee, involved with the presidential ballot controversy.

In February, Take Back Miami -- a group made up of more than 250 community organizations and church groups that includes the Christian Coalition -- tried to gather enough signatures against the ordinance but failed.

However, emboldened by the recent controversy over funding for the Boy Scouts of America and eyeing a tide of voters heading to the polls in November, the group tried again.

``This amendment is necessary,'' said Take Back Miami communications director Eladio Jose Armesto, because the ordinance is ``a cruel hoax on homosexuals. It's very divisive in the community. It's being used to harm children, to not fund the Boy Scouts, and attack their programs.''

Members of SAVE Dade, who support the ordinance, gathered on the 17th floor of the Stephen P. Clark Center. In silent protest, they watched the delivery of the signatures, many of them filming it with still pictures and videos.

``SAVE Dade would like to have a record of what's happening today,'' said member Julia Dawson. ``Plus, we'd like to know who our foes are.''

SAVE Dade Chairman Jorge Mursuli said it's a sad day anytime a group tries to eliminate the rights of minorities. He said his group will be able to see copies of the petition through the Freedom of Information Act and intends on making phone calls to ensure voters understood what they were reading.

Mursuli said he was at the polls Nov. 7 and was disgusted by the Christian group's misinformation.

``The things they were saying during the presidential election were offensive, inflammatory and deceptive,'' Mursuli said.

------------------------------

End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #67
************************************