Judge Allows Lawsuit Over Transgendered Bathroom Controversy to Proceed

A judge in New York paved the way for a lawsuit brought by the Hispanic AIDS Forum to proceed against the HAF’s former landlord. The Hispanic AIDS Forum is suing based on a claim of discrimination against transgendered persons.

The landlord received complaints that transgendered clients who were born male but later became female were using the women’s restroom. When the HAF’s lease was up, the landlord refused to renew the lease and the organization was forced to relocate.

Transgendered advocates argue that there is essentially no criteria — other than personal preference — to dictate which restroom an individual should use. HAF executive director Heriberto Sanchez Soto told Columbia Radio News,

You cannot go to the subway and say I feel uncomfortable with all of you being here, while I am here, I am god, y’all get out so I can have the space to myself.

Jennifer Levi, an attorney at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, told Columbia Radio News,

It is a privacy claim which basically says that it’s inappropriate for an employer or a landlord to ask questions about somebody’s genital makeup in order to determine what appropriate restroom facility they should use and it’s very significant that a judge agreed that info relating to a person’s anatomy is not relevant in determining what restroom they should use.

And, for good measure, an ACLU spokesman compared complaints over transvestites born male using the women’s restroom to Jim Crow-era segregation. James Esseks, Litigation Director of the ACLU’s AIDS Project, told 365gay.com,

It is unfortunate that the bathroom has once again become a battleground in the fight for equal rights. The landlord’s decision to exclude transgendered people from the bathrooms and common areas was just as wrong today as it was 50 years ago when business owners in the South tried to force African Americans to use separate bathrooms.

We’ll see who comes out on top in this pissing contest.

Sources:

Suit against transphobic landlord moves forward. Doug Windsor, 365Gay.Com, October 16, 2003.

Transgender Bathrooms (Transcript). Emily Grossman, Columbia Radio News, March 28, 2003.

Measuring Parental Preferences for Boys Over Girls

A couple of researchers recently published the results of a look at marriage patterns based on the sex of the children in the marriage and came up with a startling conclusion — the fewer male children, the larger the likelihood that a marriage will end in divorce.

Gordon Dahl, with the University of Rochester, and Enrico Moretti, with the University of California at Los Angeles, examined census data on 6 million mothers from over 60 years of census data.

They found that a couple with one daughter is 5 percent more likely to divorce than a couple with one son, and that the more daughters the higher the likelihood of divorce. Couples with three daughters, for example, were 13 percent more likely to divorce than couples with three sons.

Moreover, couples who had only sons were the least likely to divorce, while those who had only daughters were the most likely to divorce.

This follows research by the University of Washington’s Shelly Lundberg which found similar results for single mothers. Single mothers were 42 percent more likely to get married to the father of the child if the child was a boy.

There are a number of possible explanations for this phenomenon with the most obvious being that men appear to have a strong desire to have at least one son. This is consistent with a Gallup poll that for more than 50 years has asked Americans if they could only have one child, would they prefer to have a boy or a girl. Women show little preference, preferring a boy 36 percent to 32 percent for a girl (the remaining having no preference), while men choose a boy 45 percent to 19 percent (the remaining having no preference).

Sources:

Oh, No: It’s a Girl! Steven Landsburg, Slate, October 2, 2003.

Boys help make dads stay. Sarah Baxter and Judith O’Reilly, The Sunday Times (Australia), October 13, 2003.

It’s a Girl! (Will the Economy Suffer?) David Leonhardt, New York Times, October 26, 2003.

Do daughters cause divorce? The Age (Australia), November 13, 2003.

Studies: Women With Breast Implants Have Higher Suicide Rate

Two recent studies of women with breast implants confirmed what previous studies had found — such women had a higher suicide rate than women without breast implants.

A Dutch looked at the cause of death for 3,521 Swedish women who had breast implant surgery between 1965 and 1993. In that group there were 15 suicides. In a similar group of women who had not had breast implant surgery, however, there were only 5 suicides.

Another study in Finland looked at 2,166 women who had breast implant surgery between 1970 and 2000. It also found about a three-fold increase in suicides compared to the regular population, and 6 of the 10 suicides among those women occurred within five years of the breast implantation surgery.

There are a number of possibilities to explain the increase in suicides.

One possibility is that women with serious psychological disorders related to feelings about their body seek out breast implantation surgery. Researchers in both studies urged that cosmetic surgeons do more to screen patients for psychological problems.

Another possibility is that this is simply demographics — young whites tend to have the highest rate of suicide and also tend to be disproportionately select cosmetic surgery.

Finally, European countries tend to have very high rates of suicide as it is. American Society of Plastic Surgeons president Dr. James Wells told Reuters Heath that there doesn’t appear to be any increase in suicides among breast implant recipients in the United States,

We’ve been looking at the U.S. breast implant patient population for many, many years and there has been no evidence of increased suicide rates.

Sources:

Women with breast implants more likely to commit suicide. Mark Kaufman, October 4, 2003.

Study: Women with breast implants have threefold higher suicide risk. Joann Loviglio, Associated Press, September 12, 2003.

Breast implant suicide risk. The BBC, March 7, 2003.

Cosmetic breast implants may raise suicide risk. Reuters Health, October 3, 2003.

Efforts to Criminalize Male Rape in Scotland

In Scotland police are investigating a number of sexual assaults on men perpetrated by what is believe to be a small gang. But under Scottish law, raping a man is not recognized as a crime.

Under Scotland’s definition of rape — which goes back to 1844 — rape is a crime which involves only a man sexually assaulting a woman. The perpetrators of this and other sexual assaults against men could be charged with assault, sodomy or possibly robbery if they stole from their victims, but not rape. And apparently, the maximum sentence for a first offense sodomy conviction is a mere three months.

The English legal system formally incorporated a gender-free definition of rape in 1996, but Scotland has yet to make that change, despite estimates that at least 400 men are victims of sexual assaults annually. That figure is likely higher since Scotland doesn’t keep statistics on the gender of sexual assault victims.

Keith Cowan, a spokesman for gay rights group Outright Scotland, has been trying to have the law changed. He told The Sunday Herald,

Rape is considered by the justice system to be much more serious than indecent assault or sodomy. The crime of sodomy confuses the very serious offence of male rape with the minor offence of consensual sex between men, which did not happen in a private place.

A crime as serious as male rape should carry an unambiguous and recognized rape charge so that it is clear from the charge, and from the record of any conviction, how serious the offence is. It must also be included in sexual assault statistics.

Such a change would seem to be a pretty straightforward, sensible thing to do. Why the law hasn’t already been changed is a bit mystifying.

Sources:

Law failing victims of male rape. By Neil Mackay and Liam McDougall, Sunday Herald (Scotland), October 5, 2003.

Call for new laws after male sex attacks. Stephen Khan, The Observer, October 12, 2003.

Where We Will Fight No Supervillains Before Its Time

Mark Millar had an interesting column at ComicBookResources.Com a couple months ago about a fascinating might-have-been-movie — an Orson Welles-produced Batman film.

According to Millar, Welles began working in earnest with DC’s predecessor on a possible Batman film in 1946. Millar writes,

Gathering many of his old friends and colleagues together from “Citizen Kane,” he proposed “a cinematic experience, a kaleidoscope of heroism and nightmares and imagery seen nowhere save the subsconscious of Goya or even Hawksmoor itself.” Welles planned Batman to be an adult psycho-drama, but combined with what he described as the “heart-racing excitement of the Saturday morning serials, given a respectable twist and a whole new style of kinetic direction unlike anything ever attempted in American cinema.”

Welles, of course, would have played Batman/Bruce Wayne, and check out who Welles envisioned as co-stars: George Raft as Two-Face; James Cagney as The Riddler; Marlene Dietrich as Catwoman; and, finally, Basil Rathbone as The Joker.

Holy fanboy casting, Batman! That would have been the bomb. Somebody needs to pick up on that idea and do a “Shadow of the Vampire”-style look at what it might have been like.

Alas, it was not to be, as the studio system intervened to throw a wrench in the works. Rather than have Welles play Batman, the studio wanted him to play The Joker and have Gregory Peck (?!?!?!?) play Batman. That idea pissed off Welles who walked away and the project fell apart.

Ah, but what might have been. As Millar concludes his column,

This could have been his [Welles] masterpiece [uh, hasn’t Millar seen “Citizen Kane”?] and, who knows, might have launched the superhero renaissance we’re undergoing at the moment with quality cast and directors two or three generations earlier. John Ford following up “The Bat-Man” with a “Captain America” movie? Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn as Clark Kent and Lois Lane [Cary Grant? *Gag* Try Gary Cooper as Superman]? In some weird parallel reality these things are DVDs collecting dust on our video-shelves and Clint Eastwood is wishing some studio would give his funny, old “Unforgiven” cowboy flick half a chance at the next pitch meeting.

And, best of all, no Ang Lee “Hulk” abomination.

Source:

Orson Welles and the Bat-Man. Mark Millar, ComicBookResources.Com, September 26, 2003.