Starting a non profit.

The function or purpose of this non profit will be to help trans people get the surgery they need in order to progress through transition. I would like the structure to be set up like a scholarship program.

Life in SF: Better, but worse at the same time

So I have my basic needs met. I have food and medical care available to me if I need it. I even had three jobs there for a brief moment in time. I had a place lined up, but my three jobs have all fallen through and I have had quite a bit of drama. So now the place I was going to be living in for the next six plus months has been given to someone else and I no longer have a source of income (which I am actively working on changing).

I’m looking for work and housing (both of which I hope to have by next month).

In writing that, I feel completely drained of energy and exhausted. I’m so tired of living like this, by the skin of my teeth every month or week or day. I really feel like this is all I want to say for now but I will update later.

Homeless & couch Surfing – GA and food stamps in SF

As of the first Friday of Febuary I am homeless and couch surfing in a city in which I do not know a lot of people. I went and applyed for genrial asstiance and food stamps yesterday. I was supprised as to how easy it was. I was given food stamps the same day and I have to go back two more times to see if I qualify for GA. I did have a little bit of a bad experance, not because of the long lines with people talking loudly to each other, not because the process took about 6 hours, not even because there was some guy causing a ruckus and bashing in phones. I had a bad experance because they refused to use my choosen name over my biirth name.

But I have my food stamps and that makes me feel a little less stressed and now I am able to focous on looking for a better job and where I am going to sleep every night. One of my buddys is taking me to some out reach thing today to see about getting me in to housing! I think that’s really awesome.

My Video blog on YouTube

Testosterone: What to Expect Pt. 2: What it Does

This is part two of three of a video describing what transguys go through when taking “T”.

read more | digg story

Update on Transman documentary to be made.

I’m putting an OPEN SOURCE documentary together.

I am looking for several production crews in the US and Canada to work with me on an open source documentary. This documentary calls for very open minded production crews. We will be documenting Transgender men that is female to male transgender people in their journey of transition, from pre transition to post transition (medical).

What you will need in order to produce usable footage for this this open source film.

1) Legal access and the knowledge to use a 3 CCD camera as a professional. (please white balance, DO NOT TURN ON THE GAIN, and use the rule of thirds!) And shoot at 30fps please. Also please no HD, we are shooting in SD.

2) access to professional sound recording equipment like lav mics and the knowledge to use the equipment as a professional. (Please keep the audio levels reasonable and usable)

3) work and photo release forms, which I will provide once you have assembled your team of 2-4 people.

4) Interview questions which you will get from me once you assemble your team.

5) Shot list (get it from me)

Ok so that right there is a starting point. I am looking to work with students and other amature filmmakers. This may end up paying but I won’t know till later down the road. You will get exposure from this and a heck of a lot of experience.

So I will be shooting here in Vegas, in fact I’ve already started shooting. If you are interested please tell me what city you are in or that you would like to cover, as in if you are in a small town right outside of a large town let me know. I will find the subject in your city unless you already have someone lined up.

NO VIOLENCE . No one gets hurt!

As for the transmen who would like to be a part of this film…
Please read:

The point of this documentary is to shed light on what we go through as transmen, to show the struggle to be acknowlaged as who we are. What kind of impact our transitions have on our loved ones and to show the very human side of transition. The point is to show the process of medical and social transition while showing the effects, wether it be emotional, scoial, economic, whatever it be.

Please CONTACT ME ON MYSPACE, here is my url:   http://www.myspace.com/jacefilmproduction

Or my email: jace.film.production@gmail.com

I’ve been baned

This is me pre T in 2008

I’ve been baned from going over to my friends uncles house because his uncle doesn’t want to expose his kids to a transgender person. It’s not like I’m gonna walk in and say “hi kids, guess what we’re going to learn today!” and proceed to tell them all about trans issues and what being transgender means.

That’s not that big of a deal. to me just wanted to vent a tad about it.

However, something a little more emotional happened today. My girlfriend and I adopted a puppy over the weekend and he died today, of Parvo. We found out on wednsday that he had it and he died tonight in my girlfriends arms. We were to start treatment tonight by order of the vet. We had pills for him and we were hoping he would pull through this. His name was sparrow and he was one of the sweetest little dogs I’ve known. He was three months old, he will be missed. We got him from Lied Animal Shelter also called “The Animal Foundation”in Las Vegas. I found out today that Lied does not vaccinate or test for Parvo when a dog is taken in by them. We will not be using Lied again, instead we will be going to the Henderson Animal Shelter which does test and vaccinate for parvo and other deadly virus’s when they are taken in.

There are two forms of parvo: intestinal and cardiac. Puppies are most susceptible. Most dogs that are infected, however, (more than 80 percent) will show no symptoms. With severe disease, dogs can die within 48 to 72 hours with no treatment. In the more common, less severe form, mortality is about 10 percent. Certain breeds, such as Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, Labrador Retrievers, and Pit bull terriers as well as other black and tan colored dogs may also be more susceptible to CPV  Along with age and breed, factors such as a stressful environment, as well as concurrent infections with bacteria, parasites, and canine coronavirus increase a dog’s risk of severe infection

Gender Crash

First off…why isn’t transgender a word that my spell check recognizes

All of the information below was obtained from gendercrash.com (you can find the link in the links I have posted to the right of my blog)

It’s good information for people who are just learning about transgender and gender variant people.

Transgender

Transgender is the common umbrella term for people who transgress gender norms or cross society’s idea of gender lines. Transgender folks can identify their sexual orientation as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Transgender is about gender identity and gender expression not sexual orientation.

Gender- Self-expression, performance, actions, behavior, dress, grooming of culturally prescribed norms based on binary of male and female.
Gender Identity – Inner sense of ‘being’ male or female, both, or neither, includes sense of self and one’s image presented to the world. Self-identification.
Gender Binary System – Culturally defined code of acceptable behavior only for 2 gender system of male/female. Men/boys are to exhibit masculine gender presentation, behaviors, and social roles. Women/girls are to exhibit feminine gender presentation, behaviors, and social roles.
Assigned Sex/Gender -Based on physical anatomy of genitalia.

The Transgender community includes, but not limited to the following labels and identities:
Transexual
MTF (male to female) transsexual woman- person born/ Assigned Gender at birth as male/boy transitions to live and identify full time as female/woman
FTM (female to male) transsexual man- person born/ Assigned Gender at birth as female/girl transitions to live and identify full time as male/man
Live Full Time- to live and identify in the gender they have transitioned to or self identify as, may or may not use medical intervention such as hormones or sex reassignment surgery (SRS) depending on financial ability, health, and access, but does do a socail transistion and identify and live as the “opposite” the gender they were born. Social transistion can include changing name (legally or through common usage), dressing in clothing of gender they identify with and using pronouns of gender they identify with. Sexual orientation may or may not change with the person’s transition and transsexuals can be heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Other identities under the Transgender umbrella:

Cross Dresser- person who wears clothing opposite their assigned gender, usually not all the time. Does not identify as the opposite gender identity. Example, men who wear what we consider to be women’s clothing and women who wear traditionally male attire.
* Why cross-dress? This varies and can include playfulness (i.e., performance), sexual pleasure, or feelings of comfort and relaxation. Some describe feelings of relief when cross-dressed as the pressures associated with their gender role are shed with the clothing. identify as cross-dressers may question their gender role or gender expression (how they are “supposed” to appear or act), but not their gender identity. They generally do not want to live as the opposite gender; in other words, most male cross-dressers identify as male, are comfortable being male, and do not want to change that.
* Adapted from Making Women’s Shelters Accessible to Transgendered Women Allison Cope & Julie Darke October 1999

Drag Queen- person, sometimes gay men, impersonating famous females, usually for performance also called female illusionists.
Drag King- person, sometimes lesbians, impersonating famous males, usually for performance

*GENDER NON-CONFORMING PEOPLE “Gender non-conforming” refers to people whose gender expressions do not match stereotypes of how girls/women or boys/men are “supposed to” look and act. In reality, most people in general don’t meet all gender expectations and stereotypes either; almost nobody is perfectly masculine or perfectly feminine. The reason gender nonconforming people are included in the list of transgender people is that there are some people who identify as transgender, but are not transitioning gender, and do not consider themselves cross-dressers, androgynous, or genderqueer.
* Adapted from TRANSITIONING OUR SHELTERS

GenderQueer

GenderQueer term started to come into use in approximately the late 1990’s. It has been associated with primarily youth communities and those who are white and where born female and are now along the masculine spectrum, but there are many folks along the age and race/ethnic spectrum that use it to describe themselves and also those who where born male and are along the feminine spectrum. Has also been written as Gender Queer or Genderqueer.

Current working definition:
GenderQueer: those who identify their gender outside the gender binary system of male and female, maybe fluid with gender presentation or not conform to gender stereotypes and may use gender neutral pronouns such as “sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself” or “zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself” or choose to use the pronoun closest to the end of the masculine or feminine spectrum they are presenting. Some may do some or all of medical transition or none at all. Some may change their birth name. It is also used by some to describe both their gender identity and their sexuality as queer.

Other terms that gender non-conforming or those who have gender identities outside the binary gender system are boy dyke, dyke boy, boi, and by some youth in communities of color are femme queens, butch boi, or drags.

Building the GenderQueer Definition and Timeline
When did you first hear the word Gender Queer?
What is your definition of Gender Queer?
Do you use it as one word “genderqueer” or two “gender queer” and why?

“ I think I personally first heard of the word genderqueer in 2001…my definition of the word is a mindset that sees gender as a spectrum…you can be anywhere within and not just boy or girl man or woman. And yes, I use it as one word. I think I do so because I see genderqueer as being one whole mindset, one whole concept, and for some one whole identity, thus one word.”

“ I first heard the term genderqueer… probably about 2 years ago… maybe. genderqueer by my definition is one who rejects the binary gender roles set up by this society. my personal favorite word is gender fucker. I use genderqueer as one word because I think it gives the term more validity and it flows well ”

“ I only heard the term rather recently, but once I heard it, it stuck. Mostly because I can’t seem to find many ways to describe myself and genderqueer fit better than anything else. I think genderqueer is what you get when you refuse to limit yourself to the culturally-defined stereotypes of gender. I like it because it doesn’t seem like using the term is appropriating anyone else’s struggle, but it’s more obviously boundary-breaking than bi-butch-femme-fag-dyke-drag queen (and also easier to say in one breath)–also, I have a problem with “bi” because I don’t believe there are only two genders, and I usually am attracted to people who wouldn’t be able to be neatly placed and labeled. I like it as one word.”

“ I can’t remember exactly when I first heard the term, probably in 1999, I know that I facilitated a workshop/caucus at the Creating Change conf. in 2000 for genderqueer ID’ed folks. So I’ve been using the term for at least that long”

” As someone who ID’s as both gender queer and FTM, I use the term because I don’t believe in the binary gender system, and therefore don’t feel like I transitioned from one and of the gender binary to another, but instead have a queer gender identity.”

Intersex (is not a transgender identity)
*intersexuality is a set of medical conditions that features “congenital anomaly of the reproductive and sexual system.” That is, a person with an intersex condition is born with sex chromosomes, external genitalia, or an internal reproductive system that is not considered “standard” for either male or female.
*Adapted from “Introduction to intersex activism” from Intersex Society of North America www.isna.org

Other terms and definitions
“ Outing”- The act of disclosing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, transition status, HIV status, etc.. to others.
“ Closeted” Not disclosing or concealing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity to others
Homophobia – The irrational fear of homosexuals (gay/lesbian)
Biphobia – The irrational fear of bisexuals
Transphobia – The irrational fear of transgender/transsexuals

Steps of transition I have choosen

These are the steps of the transition process I have choosen to undergo.

1) Endocronlogist appointment
2) Get Testosterone
3) get chest surgery
4) possibly get some sort of bottom surgery

Not everyone chooses these steps. These are the steps that I have chosen to undergo.

check out the links I have on my page to find out more about the transition process of female to male transgender people.

I’ve entered a contest to win money for school

that is the link there. They want a picture of your face and a single intresting fact about yourself.

so go and vote and post your own if ya want. Maybe you could get some extra cash as well.