NEWS ITEM - Rock band's transgender 'joke' backfires...........

The rock band Toto apologised on Saturday for a message on its Web site that falsely announced a member's sex reassignment surgery this summer.
The band's guitarist and founder Steve Lukather said in a June 10 online message that keyboard player and vocalist David Paich would miss the group's summer tour due to the surgery.
"His dreams of becoming who he really is, a woman, need to be realised," Lukather said. "The lie he has been living has been difficult for his family and for us as a band."
Several media outlets reported the announcement last week before the band admitted that it was not true.
"As most of the fans have realised immediately, the last band statement regarding David Paich's absence of the summer tour was a joke and just partially true," the band's Saturday statement read. "It is correct that David won't be able to do the summer shows, however the band wanted to bring a lighter and more funny note to this sad news!"
Paich will not tour this summer because a close family member is very ill, according to the band.
"The band apologises if this joke has offended any one," the statement continued, ending with a quote from Lukather: "One look at Dave and you would see it's an impossible story."

Like other leaders in the transgender community, Gwen Smith, board member of Gender Education and Advocacy, Inc., was not amused by the band's hoax. "If anything, the band's attempt at humour is poor," Smith told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network, "and their 'it was just a joke' retraction is worse -- not only were they transphobic, but engaged in 'lookism' by declaring that it would be 'impossible' for Paich to be a woman."

Toto emerged on the pop music scene in 1978 with the song, "Hold the Line." The group's hits during the 1980s included "Rosanna" and "Africa."

NEWS ITEM - Transsexual City trader evades jail in fraud trial...........

LONDON (As Reported by Reuters) - A transsexual City of London trader fraudulently manipulated share transactions worth one billion pounds, the Old Bailey has heard.
But Peter Young, 45, will never face jail after an earlier court ruling found that his schizophrenia made him incapable of standing trial for his alleged crime.
Stephen Climie, prosecuting, said the £300,000 a year trust fund manager suffered from "hallucinations and delusions," had a "longstanding gender problem" and was prone to "self harm and bodily mutilation".
In earlier court hearings, Young dressed as a woman and the court heard how he had tried to castrate himself in an attempt to become a woman. Young, now in a mental hospital, worked for fund managers Morgan Grenfell in London between 1994 and 1996. Without the knowledge of his employers, he created two companies in Luxembourg, used a share system in Sweden and opened a bank account in Jersey to net nearly 2.5 million pounds through a "golden bond", the jury heard. His employers became suspicious shortly after he bought a 450,000 pound home for himself and his family. The trial continues.

NEWS ITEM - Transvestite Fatallt Stabbed......01 April 2003

A man should be convicted of murder and attempted murder for fatally stabbing his transvestite lover and wounding a transvestite friend more than five years ago, a prosecutor told a jury today.
Luis Manuel Garces, 32, went on trial for the Dec. 4, 1997, death of Yamile Lee, 34, and the wounding of Janet Rodriguez. Garces, who faces a life prison term if convicted, had been released from jail three days before the fatal attack prosecutor Laura Gunn said in her opening statement. He was arrested in Hialeah, Fla. last year and returned to San Diego to stand trial.
Gunn said the defendant was arrested on Oct. 30, 1997, for punching and shoving Lee because he thought she had been with someone else. The defendant also threatened to kill Lee and her family if he found out she was unfaithful to him, the prosecutor said. "It turned out this couple had a history," Gunn told the jury. She said that on the day of the murder, Garces went to Lee's home in Normal Heights and was introduced to Rodriguez. "He pulled out a knife and began stabbing both of them," the prosecutor said. "One of them died, and one of them lived." Gunn said Garces and Lee had been in a relationship for about three years.

The prosecutor said Rodriguez was stabbed when she went down a hallway to get some change. When Rodriguez came to, she saw Lee barely alive on the living room floor, Gunn told the jury. The stabbing victim then struggled next door to a neighbor's home and someone called 911, the prosecutor said. Crime scene investigators found a wood-handle knife near the body and an unplugged telephone, the prosecutor said. Rodriguez was able to identify Garces as the attacker from a police photo lineup, Gunn said. Detectives later interviewed friends of Garces who said he had asked for a ride to the border, the prosecutor said. "But the defendant remained missing for five years," Gunn told the jury. Defense attorney Olivia Gilliam may present an opening statement later.

NEWS ITEM - Transvestite in gay-hating Rwanda........2003

At first glance, Tamara cuts the figure of a striking African woman. She is tall and slender with dark, ebony skin. Long black tresses fall to her shoulders, and a lipstick-coated cigarette dangles from fingers coated in violet nail varnish. Perched cross-legged on her seat, the 27-year-old flicks through a ragged copy of Hello! magazine and enthuses about clubbing, gossip and the merits of "strong men".
But it is a deception. Under the made-up cheeks lies a pale shaving shadow. Her voice has a creaky, high pitch. Beneath the perfumed, feminine gloss, Tamara is a TV.

In many African societies, homosexuality is seen as a devilish aberration. If possible, transvestites are regarded as even worse. Whereas in Britain she might be accepted, in Africa Tamara - not her real name - betrays her secret only to friends and lovers. Carelessness has a cost - being hounded down dark streets, stripped, shaved, beaten and jailed. It is a tough life, but not one of her choosing, she says. As the son of Rwandan Tutsi refugees exiled in Burundi, childhood was confusing.

The young boy found he preferred dolls to balls; later he attended matches only to sneak a peek at the players' muscular legs. When Tamara started experimenting with wigs and dresses in her teens, relatives were scandalised. But her mother, after some pain, has accepted her. "She loves me so much," Tamara says with a smile. Not everyone else does, as she has discovered in subsequent travels around East Africa. At 20, she left home.
In Zanzibar, policemen denounced her as "sick" and threw her in prison, where they shaved her head and confiscated her dress and jewellery. Inside the grimy jail, her saviour was a sympathetic and "rather handsome" warden who saved her from beatings and shared his food.
A month later she got out, after a Norwegian boyfriend greased the magistrate's palm with $200.
Returning to her parents' homeland, Rwanda, there was also trouble. Officials delayed her passport application for two years, scorning her as a "queer". Soldiers threatened to kill her. One night, police hauled her from a hotel bar and beat her to a pulp. As she languished in prison, her father died. They released her the day after his burial.
Now she dresses as a man when she is in the capital, Kigali. "You don't play with the Rwandans," she says. "For them, you are nothing." In contrast, the folk across the border in war-torn Burundi are more tolerant, she adds. White men make the best boyfriends, because they are more "civilised". For a time, Tamara lived with a French aid worker in Uganda. But Africans are bad news. "They are hypocrites," she says. "They can make love to you at night but the next day they won't look at you." A few times men have chatted her up, believing she was a woman. On discovering the truth, some have accepted her identity calmly, others with violence. "Usually I tell them the truth at first. But not always," she says coyly.
Tamara feels complete only when dressed as a woman. Every day she softens her skin with creams and almond oil. She shaves carefully, masking the shadow with foundation. The appearance of breasts comes from a special bra filled with water. She makes money from trading clothes and makeup, and from the men she dates. Wealthy businessmen pay for beach holidays, rent and food. An elderly Englishman living in an upmarket Nairobi suburb is a current boyfriend. There are others, too. But more often than not, it is a lonely existence. A circle of friends offers support, but Tamara's happiest moments are alone. "I often feel closed in, not at peace in my heart. I love being on my own, with music. That's how I feel alive."
She wants to flee to Europe, where she feels she will find acceptance and perhaps that elusive sex-change operation. "I want to be a girl. I dream of it in my sleep," she says. A friend is helping her apply for a visa, but there are many complications. Yet Tamara is hopeful. "If I leave I'm never coming back here," she says. "I want to live in another world!"

NEWS ITEM - Mother of slain transsexual performer files federal lawsuit.....

USA - The mother of a slain transsexual performer filed a civil rights lawsuit this week lawsuit claiming that police, emergency medical technicians and a downtown bar are responsible for her murder.
The suit, filed by Roslyn Wilkins in U.S. District Court, seeks undisclosed compensatory and punitive damages for the December death of 47-year-old Nizah Morris, a popular drag show performer who was born a man but had breast implants and preferred to live as a woman.
Named in the suit are Police Officer Elizabeth Skala and other unnamed police officers, city EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians) Teresa Height and Stephen McCarthy, and the owners of the Key West Bar and Grille. A message left for a police department spokesman was not immediately returned, and a call to Key West went unanswered.

The lawsuit alleges that Morris left Key West at about 2 a.m. on Dec. 22 "in an extremely intoxicated state" and walked several blocks before passing out on a sidewalk. Her blood alcohol level was determined to be 44 times the legal driving limit, the lawsuit states.
Onlookers dialed 911 and Skala "waved off" the responding ambulance then drove Morris a few blocks before letting her out, the suit contends. Investigators, however, have said that Morris asked to get out of the car. Only a few minutes later, Morris was comatose and badly bleeding from the head when a passing motorist found her, police said. She died Christmas Eve.

Her death was ruled a homicide, but it was not determined whether she was killed by being struck in the head with a fist, a weapon, or a passing car. "The contention that she left (the police cruiser) of her own volition is highly suspect," Sobel said. "The question is whether she was treated differently because of her gender identity."
Born as Robert Morris, she later took the name Nizah and got breast implants after realizing she wanted to live as a woman. Morris moved to Philadelphia with her family in the 1970s and was arrested dozens of times on prostitution charges in the 1970s and '80s, but friends said in recent years she had become a Buddhist and largely stayed out of trouble.

She performed in a drag show at Bob and Barbara's, a South Street lounge, where she lip-synched tunes by singers including Eartha Kitt and Peggy Lee.

Email Dreamygirl: Gina-Ashley@freezone.co.uk

If you like what you see here the vote for Dreamygirl in The t-zone top sites

Top of Page

Click above to return to Contents Page