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Deployed US Soldier Begins Sex Change

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She’s a lesbian, and almost everyone in her unit knows it.

She wears her hair cropped short and has a distinctly boyish appearance.

And she’s becoming manlier by the day, now that she’s started taking male hormones.

Call her Keith. That’s the name this 26-year-old specialist, now deployed to Afghanistan, plans to take when she completes a transition begun several months ago when she started giving herself testosterone injections every other week, under the direction of a civilian doctor who specializes in gender changes.

“It’s going well. My voice is deeper, I’m getting more muscle. I feel more energy. I feel more like myself,” she told Military Times in a recent interview via Skype from her containerized housing unit in Afghanistan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Insanity: Federal Judge Orders Sex-Change Surgery for Convicted Murderer

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A federal judge on Tuesday ordered state prison officials to provide a taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate serving life in prison for murder.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled in the case of Michelle Kosilek, who was born as a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison. Robert Kosilek was convicted of murder in the killing of his wife in 1990.

Judge Wolf is believed to be the first federal judge to order prison officials to provide the surgery for a transgender inmate.

Kosilek first sued the MassachusettsDepartment of Correction 12 years ago. Two years later, Judge Wolf ruled that Kosilek was entitled to treatment for gender-identity disorder but stopped short of ordering surgery. Kosilek sued again in 2005, arguing that the surgery is a medical necessity.

In his ruling Tuesday, Judge Wolf found that surgery is the “only adequate treatment” for Kosilek’s “serious medical need.”

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FAA Drops Psychological Testing for “Transgendered” Pilots

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Individuals suffering from gender identity issues will no longer be required to undergo psychological evaluation in order to qualify for a pilot’s license, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has decided. The change, reported the UK’s MailOnline news site, came after a “transgender” individual identifying himself as Tamsyn Waterhouse (pictured, from YouTube video) campaigned to have the long-time safety policy dropped. Waterhouse, who lives in San Francisco, “learned to fly as a child under her [sic] father’s supervision and gained her private pilot’s license in 2003 at the age of 23,” reported the news site. “But when the 32-year-old attempted to get her medical certificate renewed after finishing grad school in 2009, the Federal Aviation Administration made it near-impossible for her.”

In a YouTube video posted by the Transgender Law Center, which assisted in the case, Waterhouse explained that at the time he applied for the medical certificate renewal, he was also “in the process of gender transition” — meaning, apparently, that he was going through various surgical and hormonal procedures to assume a female identity. “The aviation medical examiner I saw had to defer my app to the FAA,” explained Waterhouse. “And the FAA responded by demanding a litany of psychiatric tests, which one psychologist I spoke to described as ‘every test in the book.’ ” Waterhouse explained that the tests “would have taken days and thousands of dollars” to complete, “and the FAA would still have the discretion as to whether to issue certification after that.”

The man-turned-woman complained that “even if I could have paid the money, passed the tests, and got a limited form of certification back, every transgender pilot in the U.S wold be subject to the same discrimination,” something he and the Transgender Law Center determined was unacceptable. With the help of, among others, homosexual Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Waterhouse and the Transgender Law Center succeeded in forcing the FAA to drop the policy. “Over the course of several years, and a lot of hard work,” Waterhouse said on the YouTube video, “now we’re proud to announce, finally, that the FAA has removed this unnecessary, burdensome, and prejudicial, psychiatric testing requirement.”

Waterhouse, who hopes to be in the air soon with a renewed medical certificate, said [s]he felt that the effort was “a big first step” toward ending discrimination against people who feel like changing their gender identity. “Someday I hope that all pilots can be treated fairly with regard to gender,” Waterhouse told ABC News.

Matt Wood, the Transgender Law Center attorney who helped Waterhouse with the case, argued that the FAA policy was tethered to “outdated stereotypes that someone who changed their gender had something mentally wrong with them. Anyone who is transgender has to undergo medical or psychological treatment to help their external body match their internal sense of self. That is no different from any other kind of medical condition….”

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God determines your sex … but not on an Alaskan driver’s license

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Photo credit: Jason Hargrove

New regulations are set to take effect in Alaska that will allow transgender drivers to change the sex designation on their drivers’ licenses.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state on behalf of a transgender woman. The lawsuit alleged the woman, identified only as K.L., was denied a driver’s license listing her gender as female unless she provided proof she’d undergone a sex change operation. ACLU went to court to appeal an administrative ruling in the case.

Earlier this year, in March, Superior Court Judge Michael Spann ordered the Division of Motor Vehicles to adopt a new regulation. He did not suggest the form or scope of the regulation but advised DMV to take into consideration the “constitutional implications” that such a regulation might have on the right to privacy and protection of “sensitive personal information.” He allowed 180 days for the state to comply.

ACLU worked with the state in crafting the regulation, which underwent public comment. The regulation will still require proof for the change in sex designation but in the form of a licensed provider certifying he or she has been involved in the person’s case and expects the change in description to be permanent.

Whitney Brewster, director of the Division of Motor Vehicles, said Thursday that hopefully this will be a fairly easy process to follow. The division plans to provide a form that will need to be filled out.

Read more from this story HERE.