Dear Editor:

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for such a fine article regarding what we as Transfolk have to go through in our daily lives. I have been an out trainwoman for some 25 years now and until last month lived in SanDiego. I am now living a somewhat stealth life in Houston Texas with my Girlfriend and another roommate.

I was very glad to see the resource listing accompanying the article and was pleased to see the TCC listed there, a group which I co-founded with another member of the T community and employees of North Park Family Health Center some four and a half years ago. I was very involved in the SanDiego trans community for several years and still continue to be involved in Neutral Corner from my home in Houston. Your publication has done our community a great service over the last several years, thank you.

I also wanted to take a moment to comment the cover of the same issue. I don’t find the cover to be in bad taste anymore then any mainstream publication. In fact the cover does a wonderful job of expressing the feelings of exposure some inexperienced Transfolk feel when they are out in public for the first few years of their new lives. I know I felt that way back in 1980 when I first emerged from my house in “girl mode”.

I think it is time for the few who are upset by that cover to get on with living their lives and stop being so hypersensitive to everything, which portrays us in not just the right politically correct light. There are more important things then to leave the impression we are incapable of being flexible about the way we are portrayed. Its sad when a community will look the other way when 2 of their own end up in hospital because of silicone poisoning caused by some butcher from across the boarder. Nobody lifted a finger to help bring that person in; and yet some of the same voices complain about a newspaper cover. The Trans community has a misplaced sense of priorities in my informed opinion.

Keep up the good work I always catch your paper online. The G&L Times is the best-looking GLBT publication on the net out there in SanDiego.

Susan A. Robins

Co-founder and Past board member Transgender Community Coalition

Member of the board and Past president of Neutral Corner

Dear Editor:

I was very pleased to hear that you called attention to our current plague of dog nappings that have occured here in the last several months in this weeks commentary. However, I was highly offended that the author singled out pitbulls implying them as the type of dog that just roams the streets looking to attack innocent tied up dogs at will like they are just pre-programmed killing machienes looking for their next victim. Furthermore, how many dogs do you see roaming loose around San Diego without their owners present?

“If the guardian leaves a dog outside the business, chained up, there’s a risk of a dog-napping, or that a stray pit bull will attack the defenseless dog.”

As the owner err “guardian” of one of these proposed “killing machienes” I find it is this type of narrow minded, pre-judgemental mentalities that is partly responsible for the reputation of this particular breed. It is not the fault of the breed what their guardians decide to train them to do, nor is it fair to lump every dog based upon breed into a category that lables them as dangerous. Studies have shown that standard poodles are responsible for the most number of dog bites in the U.S. but I don’t see them being labled as “dangerous.”

The behavior of a dog is molded by it’s guardian, and certain temperment characteristics can be changed with training. My apologies if I come across as one of those whiny individuals that protest at the drop of a hat, but I feel that if this breed’s reputation is going to improve someone needs to speak up for them and the injustice that is being imposed upon them simply because they are pittbulls. Hopefully my voice will not go unheard.

Matt Daughdrill

Dear Editor:

San Diego’s Transgender Community Coalition (TCC) board has concerns about the cover imagery of the Gay & Lesbian Times’ Issue 934, published Thursday, November 17, 2005. The cover imagery was highly sexual and sensational, and therefore not appropriate for the subject matter of anti-transgender hate crime murders. Using the photograph of a naked transwoman to sensationalize a story about the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is equivalent to using a photograph of a naked gay male to sensationalize an article about Matthew Sheppard’s murder—It is deleterious that American society largely associates male-to-female transsexual people with perverts or sex objects—your editorial decision to use that cover design strongly reinforced that deleterious association.

Speaking on behalf of the TCC, I would request that your organization begin networking closer with members of the local transgender community leadership, as any one of us could have told your organization that the cover art for your TDOR story would be considered offensive to almost all transgender people.

The article itself was a sensitive piece covering a sensitive issue that is of deep concern to members of the transgender community.

Brian Van De Mark really put the issues regarding anti-transgender violence in a clear and understandable way.

And even though the TCC didn’t like that the transgender person on the cover of Issue 934 was naked, we were actually happy to see an obviously transgender person on the front cover of GLT. It’s encouraging to see transgender people publicly included by the GLT as members of our greater gay and lesbian community.

Thank you for the conscientious coverage of anti-transgender hate violence, and thank you for putting a transgender woman on the cover of your publication.

Autumn Sandeen

Transgender Community Coalition Board Member