Three stories being compressed into one post here. Please bear with me. I’m sticking this behind a cut as it is getting long.
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Thank you again, people of California, and indeed everyone else who commented, joined protests, wrote to the station and so on. We have made progress.

Much of the discussion around the blogosphere about the KRXQ shock jock case has focused on freedom of speech. Surely, people argue, Rob Williams and Arnie States have a right to say what they want about transgender people. And of course under current US law they do. The fact that much of the rest of the country is outraged at their ignorant and hateful comments should be punishment enough. But sadly such issues also have wider ramifications. As one commenter here noted, transgender people are 17 times more likely to be murdered than the average US citizen. Other statistics, published by HRC but now a little old, suggest that transgender people living in the US have a 1 in 12 chance of having their lives ended by murder.

In September 2008 the body of a transgender woman, Ruby Molina, was found floating in the American River in Sacramento – part of the area that KRXQ serves. The police identified her death as “suspicious” and offered a $1000 reward for any information that might help them resolve the case. As far as I can see from trawling the Internet this morning, no progress has been made on this. Whoever murdered Ruby Molina has got away with it.

This is by no means an isolated case. Transgender people are murdered on a regular basis all over the USA. Mostly their killers are not brought to justice. Even if they are, they are often let off because juries take the attitude of another commenter: that transgender people are “weirdos and freaks”. If you dehumanize someone in this way, then killing them apparently doesn’t matter.

My search for news about Ruby Molina did bring up this report from the Sacramento News & Review about a memorial service for Ruby and other victims of anti-LGBT violence. The report quotes Dr. Gregory M. Herek, a professor of psychology at UC Davis:

Herek also pointed out that “when individuals perceive that they have some sort of ‘permission’ to attack members of minority groups, they will do so.”

This is what people like Williams and States have in mind when they launch public attacks against people they hate. They know that they may not get away with murdering people themselves, and probably they don’t have the courage to do so. However, they are well aware that by defaming particular groups of people in strident and defamatory tones on the radio they will encourage other people – people who are less smart and less cowardly than themselves – to do the dirty work for them. Because they haven’t explicitly incited murder they know that they can hide behind their freedom of speech rights and avoid any responsibility for what they have said, but they know all too well what the effects of their words will be on others. It is murder by proxy performed by cowards.

I’m beginning to dig my way out of the email and blog backlog and I’m pleased to discover that progress is being made on the KRXQ-FM shock jock case. I learned from this blog that Dr. Pepper and Chipotle restaurants have both pulled their advertising from the station. Hopefully some of the public outrage prompted those decisions. Good work, people of California. Let’s keep up the pressure. Because, you know, inciting violence against children is not a good use of radio station air time.

Here’s GLAAD’s coverage of the issue. And from this blog post I see we can add Verizon, Bank of America and Carl’s Jr to the list of ad withdrawals.

It is a tough life being a right wing shock jock in the US right now. The Rethuglicans appear to be making the classic mistake of reacting to an electoral mistake by emphasizing the sort of policies that got them chucked out of office in the first place, and to stay shocking the radio hate merchants have to somehow manage to move even further to the right. But therein lies a problem. In the “good old days” it was probably possible to get a rise out of people by suggesting a lynch mob, or a roasting of a witch, or some other such random act of violence. These days, however, your victims might actually decide to fight back, and that might be painful (either physically or in court). What is a poor demagogue to do?

Well, two smart arses in Sacramento have come up with a whiz idea. Being too timid to suggest going after adults they don’t like, they have decided to prove their manliness by encouraging their listeners to go out and bully children. I wonder how many cans of Bud they had to sink before getting up the courage to do that?

And nothing to do with ToiletGate either. If Pride London was actually intended to discourage trans people from attending I don’t think they could have done much better than instruct said trans folk that they have to all dress up like drag queens (or football players if they are men).

I shall, in any case, be at the Diana Wynne Jones conference in Bristol that weekend.

I’ve just been filling in a questionnaire for Press for Change, who have been trawling through the trans sections of the proposed new Equality Bill for gotchas. As far as I can make out, the bits of the bill that relate to trans people go as follows:

1. It shall be illegal to discriminate against transsexuals (but not other gender-variant people) in cases of employment, provision of training or provision of services.

Except that:

2. Any person or organization who believes that allowing transsexuals access to employment, provision or training or provision of services is inappropriate on the grounds of their being transsexuals may discriminate against them.

3. It shall be a criminal offense for transsexuals to fail to disclose their nature when applying for jobs, training, etc.

Yes, that’s an “Equality” bill. George Orwell would have been proud.

The American Psychiatric Association’s annual general meeting is taking place in San Francisco next week. In advance of that an online petition has appeared. It is a rather good one. Here’s what it says:

“We, the undersigned, support the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) own goal of making its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) a scientific document, based on empirical research and devoid of cultural bias. A diagnosis of a mental disorder can have a severe adverse impact on employment opportunities, child custody determinations, an individual’s well-being, and other areas of functioning. Therefore we urge the APA to remove all diagnoses that are not based upon peer-reviewed, empirical research, demonstrating distress or dysfunction, from the DSM. The APA specifically should not promote current social norms or values as a basis for clinical judgments.”

Got that? The APA specifically should not promote current social norms or values as a basis for clinical judgments. I think that says it all really. The purpose of psychiatry should be to help people who are distressed, not to invent “paraphilias” as an excuse for persecuting people who are going about their lives peaceably and happily, but don’t happen to conform to what some psychiatrist thinks should be “normal”.

This is not just about pathologizing trans people. It is about protecting kids from being forced into rigid gender roles; it is about not going back to the days in which being gay was seen as a “mental disorder”; and not going back to the days in which a woman who enjoyed sex could be labeled a “nymphomaniac” and put in an asylum.

You can find the petition here.

And if you are in San Francisco on the 18th details of the protest can be found on Facebook.

Thank you.

No, this is not news of another US state passing civil rights legislation. IDAHO is the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia. It takes place on May 17th, so expect to see more news in the next week or so. For now, however, I’d like to note that this year’s campaigning will be specifically targeted towards tacking Trans issues. There’s an appeal, directed at the UN and WHO. At some point they’ll doubtless be asking for signatures, but for now they are apparently just looking for high profile people and organizations who would like to sign so that they can roll out a whole bunch of big names on the 17th. I know I’m not famous enough, but maybe some of the people reading this are. Further details here.

Around this time last year I did a blog post about the psychiatry and gender identity that attracted a lot of attention (thank you again, Patrick). The basic issue here is about the use of diagnosis of “mental disorder” to stigmatize and bully not only adult transgender people, but also children who fail to conform to their parents’ or psychiatrists’ views of what is “normal” gendered behavior.

One of the things that prompted me to make this post was watching an excellent TV program about the issue. It was made by In the Life, an Internet-based LBGT TV company, and it is well worth a look. The material on gender disorder occupies the first half of the program, and lasts about 15 minutes.

(The rest of the program is also worth watching. There’s an interview with Mara Kiesling about US Federal law issues. I’ve been following Mara’s tweets from the House of Representatives today and I’m delighted to report that the Hate Crimes Bill passed with a majority of 249-175. Bay Area people, please ask Pete Stark why he didn’t vote. And the final segment is about the very wonderful Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.)

Of course there is a reason why such things are suddenly news again. The working group set up by the American Psychiatric Association to look into revising their diagnostic guidelines has recently produced an interim report. As this analysis by Dr. Kelley Winters explains, the news is not good. Indeed, due to the inability of the psychiatrists concerned to write grammatically clear English, the proposed new rules can also be interpreted as defining masturbation as the product of a mental disorder.

In addition the APA is having their annual conference in May. Guess where it is. Yep, got it in one. Moscone Center, San Francisco. And in answer to your next question, the Facebook event organizing the protest can be found here.