transgender

The Sexual Freedom Project: Can You Believe This?

Why isn’t everyone equal before the law? Why are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people subjected to a level of discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation and/or gender identity that heterosexual people don’t have to worry about? Why does a transgender woman walking through a park have to fear being harassed and arrested by the police who are supposed to be ‘protecting and serving’ her? Why do people fear what is different?

What role do governments and religions play in crushing individuals and relationships they are not comfortable with, not familiar with, or that they do not approve of? How does our silence or refusal to confront this oppression enable it to continue?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.


Google Sets New Industry Standard in Transgender Health Care Benefits

It’s nice to see an industry leader such as Google step out front on this important issue. Google’s stance will make it easier for other companies to follow suit and offer similar benefits, and, as a matter of competition, make it harder for other companies to refuse to do so. When employers in the same field are desperately fighting to poach top talent from each other, as they are (see the Microsoft bacon cart for more evidence of this trend), Google’s new policy sends a strong message about how they value all of their employees. It can only be a sign of better things to come in the high-tech world, and eventually across the entire corporate spectrum.

At Google, a Transgender “Gold Standard”

The updated benefits, announced internally by company officials on Friday and effective immediately, cover transitioning procedures and treatment in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care, and include gender reassignment surgical procedures determined to be medically necessary by a doctor.

Some of the procedures covered by Google’s health care plan include genital surgery, as well as facial feminization for transgender women and pectoral implants for transgender men — surgeries that can be considered medically necessary depending on the “unique clinical situation of a given patient’s condition and life situation,” according to WPATH’s seventh version of care standards, published in September.

The article goes on to say:

Google also has more than doubled the maximum dollar amount for transgender health care benefits, from $35,000 to $75,000, the minimum amount required for a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2012 Corporate Equality Index, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The benefits are covered by the company’s existing insurance providers and apply to domestic employees, Newman said. Google is considering extending similar benefits to international employees, though it does not currently have a timeline for doing so.

The Sexual Freedom Project: Take It Personally…Please

Thursday at 1:00 PM in Washington, DC, the Transgender Day of Action will confront the Metropolitan Police Department, the United States District Attorney for DC, the Mayor, and Members of the City Council about systemic bias against the trans community in our nation’s capital. Local activists, members of the LGBT community, and concerned area residents will be participating in this action to bring media and political attention to the serious ongoing problem of neglect and abuse of trans folks in DC. It is in honor of that action that we bring you today’s video, “Transgender People In The Workplace.”

Have you witnessed biased and prejudiced jokes or remarks about someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity? What was your reaction and action? Did you take it personally even if it wasn’t about you?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.


The Sexual Freedom Project: “I AM” Gina

Here’s another great video from the I AM: Trans People Speak project of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Please be sure to check out their website for more information and videos of trans individuals telling their own stories in their own words.

Gina identifies as a union elevator constructor, a parent, a dog owner, and trans. She talks about the results of coming out as trans to her mom and dad, her children, and the owners of her company and her union, and her joy in how she has been accepted and welcomed. Gina reminds us that by living one’s truth and walking through our fears, we open our lives up in new, better, and unpredictably exciting ways.

What is your coming out story, and what were the results?

Tell us your story, let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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What is the Word of God?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español In my recent post What is the Name of God? I explained that one must recognize two concepts of deity. One is the absolutely perfect omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent deity (the omni-cubed god), whose acts in infinite space and eternal time are necessarily uniform and invisible, who putatively makes possible and upholds everything that is or can ever be. We recognize that Love is the best descriptive name we have for this deity. Though no physical image can embody all this represents, an image of Aphrodite/Venus, the classical god of Love, provides a convenient symbol.

Aphrodite, god of Love

The second deity is the agency of both cause and necessity in an evolving universe of space and time. This is the god that creates and shapes the development of finite reality. This is the ongoing expression of the fully integrated deity that in some Transhumanist visions of destiny (Frank Tipler‘s Omega Point or Martine Rothblatt‘s Terasem or the Supreme Being of The Urantia Book) stands at the end of time as a fully integrated mind encompassing all prior consciousnesses of supreme value in the universe, and reaching back through time to assure its own emergence. From the viewpoints of origin rather than destiny, this is the ongoing expression of the creative power that gives rise to all events and occasions that come into being and develop their destinies towards a final supreme culmination in evolved perfection.

John Zebedee was the youngest of Jesus’ inner circle of male disciples (the 12 apostles of Christian legend). He called himself “the disciple Jesus loved best” and much has been made over the exact meaning of this statement, especially in view of Jesus’ other close male associations (John the Baptist, Lazarus, and the youth John Mark, who came to play a major role in the spread of Jesus’ vision in both Rome and Egypt). In any case, of the four authors of the “canonical” legends of Jesus’ life, John Zebedee seems to have most fully grasped the transcendent nature of the divine power he believed incarnate in the human Jesus, as reflected in this opening of his biography of the Jesus he knew and recalled.:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (KJV John 1:1-3)

And that pretty well sums up the nature of the finite deity I have identified with the descriptive name Truth. Love is the desire to do good to others. Truth is the power of effective action that takes the inspiration of Love and accomplishes Good and makes Beauty. John identifies the Word as the aspect of total deity represented to earthborn humanity by the person of Jesus as he writes:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, … full of grace and truth. (KJV John 1:14)

Though no physical image can embody all this represents, I have suggested that the meme of Hermaphroditus, the classical divine two-sexed child of Aphrodite/Venus and Hermes/Mercury, may provide another convenient symbol for the reality of cosmic Truth as the supreme finite deity, the coordinator of Goodness for the creation of Beauty. I submit that such an image more fairly symbolizes the physical cosmic Truth, the genuine Word of god than any conventional image of a cruelly murdered divine avatar.

Hermaphroditus, god of Truth

Most assume that Truth knows no gender. Nothing could be further from the truth, for Truth must encompass all genders, all sexes, and all possible actions, manifestations, and phenomena that are Good manifestations of Love, even objects of Beauty.

The classical deity Hermes/Mercury is the god of action. In Hermaphroditus, the powers of the god of Love are united with the god of action to embody an objectively androgyne deity able to shape action through will, through Word, to the service of Good. And this same Hermaphroditus is naturally portrayed as androgyne. I have explained in my rather long paper, Why We Are All Transgender, why the cosmic forces that govern our planet and commune with our persons are perceptible as intergender, transgender, or pan gender influences—that is, having the nature we recognize as androgyny—the combining of masculine and feminine forms of conventional gender expression.

Thus the meme of Hermaphroditus serves as an image of Truth, reminding us of the need to acknowledge the unification of all dual things, to transcend meaningless dichotomy, and to function both as a receiver and giver of True Love in all its forms. Furthermore, this meme represents a genuine cosmic reality that, even today, breaks out in the intergender impulses of people most sensitive to the intuitive appreciation of the full character of Truth and its potentials for expression in human lives. And that sensitivity is the great liberator that has always given us the true leaders of society, the Lesbian, the Gay, the Bisexual, and the Transgender, who seek to incarnate the nature of Truth.

Though Truth is a deity of action, finding expression of the desires of Love in doing Good and making Beauty, Truth is also the True Will of Love. Truth is the singular expression of the True Will, the Word, of God to our universe. Thus, Truth is the best descriptive name for the deity of finite time and space, and this deity is the Word of Love to our universe, the expression in time and space of the will of Love.

 

What is the Name of God?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español In his 1953 sci-fi story, The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke imagined a Tibetan monastery where monks labored ceaselessly to list every permutation of letters in their alphabet and thus to list every possible name of god, fulfilling their destiny and bringing about the end of the universe. With the help of a computer (in 1953!) they finish the job in three months instead of 15,000 years, after which…

Ten emanations of deity

Humanity has long been preoccupied with knowing the name of god. Priests, magicians, and other charlatans tell the gullible that knowledge of the name gives power. For priests, it gives the power to tell the faithful to believe the priests are uniquely able to speak to god on their behalf, both to solicit the boons of providence and atone for past transgressions. For magicians, it gives the power to summon and direct divine forces and influences, as if, by knowing the name, one could forge god’s signature on an order to a company of angels. And, just to make sure the rubes don’t figure out the scam, the unholy are forever barred from ever uttering the name on penalty of eternal damnation. Isn’t it odd that so many people have blindly accepted this kind of bulshyte?

The ancient cultures of the levant had many gods with many names—El Shaddai, El Elyon, Yahweh, Elohim, El, and more—all of which finally collapsed into the tetragrammaton, YHVH, in Romanized Hebrew. With no vowels, like most written semitic languages, the letters merely indicate a spoken word already known to the reader. More to the point, with so many possible vowel substitutions, nobody has any idea (unless informed by an oral tradition) of how to correctly pronounce the word. And, of course, be it prayer or magic, everybody knows that god won’t pay attention if you don’t get the inflection of his name exactly right. Of course, YHVH is pretty much the way you’d write Yahweh if you left out the vowels, except it’s an improved form and you can’t be sure the old vowels really work to get the old guy’s attention anymore. In the meantime, the variant Jehovah or Jehovih has been accepted widely in fundamentalist, evangelical, pentecostal, and some other really batshit crazy cults.

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, features a singular omni-cubed deity presiding over a legendary cosmic horde that somehow takes care of whatever happens on earth (and maybe elsewhere if there is an elsewhere). Although this idea is usually called God, that is a presumptive description, not a personal name. Cults that have a Christian origin frequently use the term Father, which derives from Jesus’ use of the term during his ministry, as recorded in the Christian gospels, as well as the prior beliefs of the Jews. And Christians further identify Jesus with the Father, since Jesus is said to be the Son of God. And he was called Yehshweh or Joshua, written as YHShVH. And of course mystical significance is attributed to the appearance of the Sh, symbolic of the spirit, in descent at the precise midpoint of the YHVH. Wow!

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury

To name God, we must define God. Unless we know who or what we are talking about, have identified him or it, there’s no point in asking for a name. Around 1070, Anselm of Canterbury framed the idea of God as “that than which a greater cannot be thought” in his famous Ontological Proof of the existence of God. While most philosophers today accept the validity of the proof, with some qualifications, it clearly does not prove the existence of God, unless you accept Anselm’s definition, which is basically that of an omni-cubed deity that is totally all-pervasive and totally involved in the dynamic upholding of everything we perceive as finite reality as well as (probably) a great deal more. Thus, if this presumptive deity is to treat all creation equally, we will not find this God personally intervening in the affairs of individuals, except by providence. In effect, although one may choose to believe in the existence and power of the omni-cubed deity, one is forced to admit that there is no objective way to directly and unambiguously observe that God’s existence in Real Life.

Suppose we clarify Anselm’s term “greatest” to be “perfectest.”Ahhh, we are not allowed to compare perfections (at least not in conventional English language). Rather, we say things are imperfect, partially perfected, or completely perfect as a first approximation to the relativity of perfection. So we might say God is “that which is absolutely perfect in all respects.” But Anselm’s simple logic doesn’t make sense here, because our ability to imagine such a thing is questionable and perfection is an absolute reality outside space and time towards which the finite universe is evolving. We can only utter a sound offered as a name, but we cannot properly describe or conceive of such perfection. The absolute deity is, from the viewpoint of time and space, irrevocably committed to upholding the causal consistency and realizing the inevitable destiny of the finite universe as it evolves towards final perfection.

Venus, god of Love

So, in reality, we see the possibility of two concepts of complete deity. First is the absolute deity outside the finite universe who is committed completely to keeping the framework of finite reality intact and ongoing, along with a lot of other universe activities. Second is the supreme force of destiny manifested by its influence over space-time affairs and its interactions with volitional beings of its own creation and evolution.

The first, absolute deity, is thus the existential foundation of all that can be and is. Uniform in power throughout space and time, this first deity gives all that there is to the realization and support of a universe populated with potentially deified identities. If we seek to name such a power, a stable form that gives meaning and consistency to our universe experience, we would have to call it “Love.” And if you stop thinking “God” with all the craziness your culture has attached to that word, and think “Love” instead, you will soon be developing a healthier viewpoint and attitude. In the final analysis, Love is the desire to do good to others, and Love is the best name for God that we have.

Hermaphroditus

The second, finite deity, is thus the source of the evolution-driving force of destiny that bends finite sequential linear factual causation to the arc of destiny’s fulfillment. Love inspires action, but action cannot be satisfied unless good is actually being done. It is necessarily the work of this second, finite deity to arrange orderly evolution of the universe towards a goal of finite perfection, akin to the absolute perfection of Love, but evolved in time from initial existence to final perfection. If we name such a power, a dynamic influence that shapes our Love-inspired actions to maximize the accomplishment of good, we would call it “Truth.” And, if you stop thinking “what do I do now” with all the confusion of everyday life and act in the spirit of “Truth” instead, you will soon be developing an easier, more orderly, and much more effective approach to life. We have called this god “Truth,” the guidance of will in the application of action to the doing of good and the realization of beauty. We will explore this concept more fully in our next post, “What is the Word of God?”

When you think about what kind of God might mean something to yourself, remember that the omni-cubed existential absolute and perfect deity is unnoticeable unless one seeks to find a cause to explain the existence of the universe. We affirm that such a God is known to us through recognition of Love as the upholding structure of reality. On the other hand, the active, evolving, self-perfecting deity manifest as the force of destiny acting in time and space we can observe as we draw on Truth to direct our actions of will in the doing of good. Truth is the name of the active, saving deity that saves us from the uncertainties of right and loving action in seeking to do good and make beauty.

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Room for Change

Do you agree that gender roles define or control our personal behavior? limit our freedoms, opportunities, and ability to be ourselves? Is location, where you are in the world, the greatest indicator? What will be the results of raising children today with more relaxed ideas about gender? Do you foresee a future in which gender gradually disappears?

We want to know what you think, hear your voice. Make a video. Write u an essay or a poem. Paint us a picture, write us a song. If we feature your views here on the site, we will send you a VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Video by Tiye Massey.

TRANSCRIPT by David Kreps.

Um, oh, I don’t know actually . . . our gender… that’s a difficult one. I think it’s definite qualities that lead to, that lend themselves to a different gender, but I don’t think it’s this is clear-cut. It’s not black and white. You know, I grew up with all boys, so  even though I’m very much female, I still have a few male qualities, and I don’t think gender, I don’t know . . . I get kind of not annoyed, but I get kind of worried at the fact that everything is based on that gender specification, as opposed to just being human and being allowed to be who you are and whatnot. I think there’s definitely, obviously, there is something to be said about genders and how do they have their specific traits, but just to concrete them as that and not have any room for change, I think as the world changes, it’s just a bit silly, really. It’s definitely religion, I think it’s just we’re in a generation in the moment where it’s not been long enough out there in the open for people to realize that’s a thing, you know. When something’s been concreted for so many generations and since relationships in humans began, that males were males and females and were females, if you think about it, instead of being the last couple of generations that it’s sort of been coming out in the open, that there are, there is room for difference. There is room for people being who they are. And there is, there is biological reasons why people are who they are, for every facet of everything. I think it’s just we’re just too soon into it with only the second generation of [us] having that out there. So I think religion plays a lot, a big part of it. Your family upbringing plays a big part of it, the country you reside in plays a big part of it. I mean, even London is not as accepting as maybe here in New York. I know New York is more accepting than maybe the rest of America. So it’s just a lot of contributing factors. I think it takes a while for people to catch up with actually what’s happening in the world, if that makes sense.


 

The Sexual Freedom Project: “I AM” Justice

Thanks to theMassachusetts Transgender Political Coalition we are able to see powerful videos from its I AM: Trans People Speak project. Check the other ones out.

Justice, a trans man learned a lot about life at college, and still ponders the racism, classism, sexism,  homophobia, transphobia, and oppression all around him. His mother’s unconditional love helped form his own activism and desire for healthy communities.

What experiences in your life has radicalized you, inspired your own activism?

Let us know, okay. We’ll give you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt for taking the time to tell your own story, make your own video, write an essay or create a piece of art to express your stor

Transgender Transhumans! Are you headed to Venus Plus X?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español Depending on how you space it, VenusPlusX or Venus Plus X, it’s no accident that you may have stumbled over a novel by Theodore Sturgeon of the same name. Since first reading Venus Plus X in 1960, it has invoked a strong resonance with my own inner truth even though it was Sturgeon’s creative imagination, a perhaps fantasy. It is our namesake because it stands as the earliest and still clearest exposition of the world’s essential ideas and ideals in the world of sex and gender, and guides the our work as advocates, educators, and activists.

In the novel, a 1950’s human male, Charlie, is transported through time to a distant future where the surviving population of earth is a people called the Ledom (that’s model spelled backwards). The Ledom are fully functional androgynes, being capable of mutual impregnation and of resulting individual pregnancy. Most of the novel is focused on exploring the emotional and dramatic situational differences between normative human bi-gender society (envisioned through time flashbacks) and the behaviors of the Ledom, who are free of all sex and gender inequalities and limitations.

Throughout most of the novel the reader is led to think that the Ledom are some natural product of human evolution or genetic reengineering. Near the end, after Charlie has become friends with some Ledom and given them some feedback on their society vs. primitive human society (1950s), they give him a rather detailed explanation of how they view the society from which he came and how that view has come to shape their own. This is Philo’s Manifesto, which is an authoritative debunking of human history, philosophy, religion, and pretty much everything else, while showing the way to a vastly higher and transcendent body of truth. This short statement it is a must read for every person on earth.

Although Philo’s Manifesto is surely one of the most remarkable and complete syntheses of rational human knowledge of a subject normally considered too exotic to be open to intelligent, unbigoted, unbiased discussion, the final reality of the Ledom is even more remarkable. While the directed biological redesign of the human race into the Ledom is surely enough to be called Transhuman, in the final chapters of the story it is revealed that Ledom reproduction is not entirely biological, but involves a complex symbiosis from conception to adulthood with elaborate medical machinery that continually reshapes the “natural” human biology of development into a series of stages that lead to reproductively mature Ledom. That is truly a Transhumanist idea and far ahead of its time!

Without the medical machines, Ledom infants would be ordinary human infants. The creation of the Ledom is a deliberate act of human creativity, expressed in biomedical technology. This is a transformation of a very basic human character as all members of society enter into this reproductive symbiosis with the machine as a way to perfect their society. They have diagnosed the problems of humanity and conclude they all begin with sexual dimorphism and the resulting bi-genderism that rises from ignorance and refusal to examine reality carefully. Their reproductive symbiosis with the machines allows each to mature into androgynes indistinguishable in hermaphroditic sexual function and completely without gender.

Like Sturgeon’s Ledom, we examine many of the problems of humanity. Like Sturgeon, we feel many of the problems would not exist if humans were perfectly androgynous; however, we see many technological alternatives to the “brute force” approach in the novel (remember that DNA had been discovered only a few years before the novel was written, and nothing was known of its detailed structure and function). For example, a simple reduction in the expression of secondary sexual characteristics and the adoption of extracorporeal fertilization and gestation could achieve similar objectives.

Thus, unlike the Ledom, we do not expect to abolish sexual dimorphism. Rather, we seek to encourage health and longevity by discouraging extreme dimorphism that causes the incorrect and unproductive bi-gender model, and encourage either biosex to develop as symmetrically as possible to enjoy the full range of psychosexual and gender experience available to the human nervous system.

Extracorporeal gestation remains a distant technological objective, although planned fertilization is now part of the culture.

Today, as we learn to accommodate the needs of consciously transgender pre-pubescent children, we know that even crude pharmacological intervention at puberty can greatly enhance the experience of androgyny for the matured adult.

The technology foreseen by Venus Plus X is still in the distant future and may never be developed as an option for directed human reproductive evolution. On the other hand, the social changes envisioned in the novel are ready to move ahead today, since they depend only on changing human hearts and minds, and that means education and socialization, not biology. At VenusPlusX.org, we know how quickly such changes can occur in individuals and in groups, once a successful meme has been sufficiently distributed. While we support research into the technology of androgyny, we understand that the time is here today to empower the Transgender Transhuman community to assume leadership in the revolution for full sex and gender freedom and equality.

 

Transreligion—An Inspirational Framework for Transgender Transhumans

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Religious myth has only degraded and inhibited human progress. Essentially all contemporary religions are myth based. Christianity fails the test of worth when it relies on Hebrew racial myth (the old testament) and Greek philosophical myth (the concept of the Christos and related ideas) as absolute truths. We know that nothing that draws on such ancient Sci-Fi can be either true, good, or beautiful, except by accident, and thus stands forever opposed to the power of love in the world.

Paul Henri Thiry (click)

There are, fortunately, many people (now and in the past 2000 years) who love others, serve others, do good to others, and make our world more beautiful by their efforts. Some of these people call themselves Christians or Jews or Muslims or Atheists or something else, which is their choice, but their lives have taken inspiration from the universal powers of love and truth in the human mind, not from religious myth or dogma.

Transhumanists continue to debate the appropriateness of any kind of religious faith or behavior as a component of Transhuman life. My own post-transition perspective illuminates many ethical and moral concerns of the Transhumanists. Foremost, if we are to foster the emergence of a genuine Transhuman philosophy of life, we need to create an inspirational framework that justifies and motivates rational behavior. We should evaluate candidate inspirational frameworks according to their individual ability to satisfy essential requirements that must be met by any proposed framework.

In my view, a satisfactory transhuman rationally religious world view ought to address five basic requirements that bridge the gaps of sex and gender and merge the physical, psychic, and inspirational elements of joy into a total personal and socially transforming experience of reality. At the same time, we recognize that a genuinely operational inspirational framework, a true transreligion, can only emerge from the collective unification of individual joyful experience. This list is just a starting point for further thought and discussion.

1) Assure complete freedom from reliance on any myth or backstory. Our beliefs are based on plain observational knowledge and insights of personal wisdom.

2) Demonstrate open and informed attitudes, viewpoints, and experiential training for all of the many dimensions of sex and gender.

3) Practice group communion for collective psychic inspiration and empowerment, through the exploration and experience of sex and gender as acts of communion.

4) Fellowship every transhuman living on this planet. Empower them to know the joy of living, showing how love finds expression in true service to others by doing good and making beauty.

5) Be open to alliance with any cosmic government that may make its presence or influence felt in human affairs, with a willingness to facilitate transhuman emergence. In the meantime dedicate your life to the highest principles of love, truth, goodness, and beauty.

To summarize, we help one another by starting with baldfaced mythless truth and showing each other the joy that is really important and gives meaning to life. A universal acknowledgment of the possibility that some external force will intervene keeps us mutually focused on progression towards our ideals of truth and love, regardless of what the future brings. And our intent to combine free and open acceptance of all forms of sex and gender expression with equally free and open communion, joy, and fellowship guarantees our ability to lead the destined evolution of human affairs.

Transhumans may find something like this just fine as the basis for a way of life and be finally able to leave the god talk to the past. But a religion, the social expression of a community of individuals who share common ideals, is not designed, so much as grown through the social customs of the community. Setting aside old, incorrect beliefs, the inherent truth of principles like these will emerge and cause focused will actions. Through trial and error, the community will gradually discover convenient and innovative ways of serving these principles to more and more people. And that will be the emergence of true Transreligion.

Now is the time for a new inspirational framework to replace the outdated and overly interpreted ideas of our pastfathers. I do not know what will emerge, but I trust that it will necessarily be true to ideals and principles such as those stated here.

—Dan Massey