I know I will regret this..................
- Thread starter @}-}rebecca----
- Start date
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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Yes Ma'am exactly as you say.Ebonyfire said:
: nods smiles :
graceanne
iteroticalay urugay
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@}-}rebecca---- said:Ohh Miss Grace thank you that's brilliant. Camera's in mobiles are fun huh. I don't even own a digital camera ! Thank you for the link , I look forward to looking at your pictures
Also on a bright note, our Dommy who had been MIA turned up at home last night. Fretting time officially YAY . Ohhh and as Fu says 'damn pussies'.
I'd like to say it was my idea, but it wasn't. It was im_a_voyeur's. I was telling her about my new pics, and she asked if I was going to post them online. I was like, 'I'd like to, but I'm not sure how to do that so that lit's lurkers can't see them', and she told me about that site where I can password protect them!
She's so awesome.
Shankara20
Well, that is lovely
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Ebonyfire said:
Fernando, it is a thing for the memory of Fernando
*sigh*
*sob*
*shutter*
Shankara20
Well, that is lovely
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graceanne
iteroticalay urugay
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So today I had to go in for my bi monthly Humira injection. Normally I can get everything done at the hospital, but today my regular nurse was gone (on vacation). So I had to take the the tram.
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173450641157_0_1.jpg
FYI I'm really afraid of heights. I did ok, though. Mostly cause THIS time I didn't look down while getting on. Plus I entertained myself by taking pictures. Here's the inside of the tram.
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173450585989_0_1.jpg
Plus the driver took this picture for me:
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173450615429_0_1.jpg
I kept trying to take it without looking, and kept getting the wall. LOL
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173450641157_0_1.jpg
FYI I'm really afraid of heights. I did ok, though. Mostly cause THIS time I didn't look down while getting on. Plus I entertained myself by taking pictures. Here's the inside of the tram.http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173450585989_0_1.jpg
Plus the driver took this picture for me:
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173450615429_0_1.jpg
I kept trying to take it without looking, and kept getting the wall. LOL
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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graceanne said:
Ohh Miss Grace thank you for posting the pictures. You have so many trees in the City , that is wonderful . I really must make my way there next time I am doing some travel in the US. Sounds ambitious but let's face it when you have come as far as from Australia even the flight from LA to Florida seemed like trivia. I hope you are feeling okay
graceanne
iteroticalay urugay
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@}-}rebecca---- said:Ohh Miss Grace thank you for posting the pictures. You have so many trees in the City , that is wonderful . I really must make my way there next time I am doing some travel in the US. Sounds ambitious but let's face it when you have come as far as from Australia even the flight from LA to Florida seemed like trivia. I hope you are feeling okay
Yeah, Oregon has tons of trees. It's one of the great benefits about living in a state where it rains almost all the time, it's always green. And if you come to Oregon LEMME KNOW! I'd love to meet you. Here's a pic of behind my apartment. lol
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/173468664197_0_1.jpg
Quite frankly, the only 'rain forest' in the norther US is about a days drive from here - it rains a LOT. LOL Luckily I like rain. Here's a picture of our coast.
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h284/graceanne1978/43b5a05b.jpg
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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Grace I missed this post , thank you for the extra pictures they are always welcome. Camera phones are fun huh . My brother and I have a habit of sending pictures back and forth to each others phones as a kind of game. My brother is kind of disgusting in a really lovable way. You don't want to know , trust me.graceanne said:
I wouldn't hesitate to let you know if I get anywhere in proximity to Oregon, I also have a friend currently living in Portland so......... Plus I could meet your kidlets and that would be kind of cool.
The coast looks magnificent . Reminds me of the scenery in the movie the Sandpiper. More likely that it was made in California though.
Thank you again Grace
Shankara20
Well, that is lovely
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@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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Just sitting here smiling , minding my own sweet business and thank you FuShankara20 said:
Shankara20
Well, that is lovely
- Joined
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@}-}rebecca---- said:Just sitting here smiling , minding my own sweet business and thank you Fu
you are most welcome -
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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Thursday Jun 14, 2007
Lawmakers withdraw support for anti-gay proposal
by Ethan Jacobs
Bay Windows
A bill sponsored by the anti-gay group MassResistance to restrict discussion of LGBT issues in schools has lost the support of nearly half its co-sponsors after a campaign by the group KnowThyNeighbor.org and its supporters asking lawmakers to reject the bill. In an unexpected twist, some of the co-sponsors who withdrew told Bay Windows that their decision was not a change of heart; they claimed that they never agreed to co-sponsor the legislation in the first place, and they were uncertain how their name was added to the co-sponsor list to begin with.
Kevin Shea, chief of staff for Rep. Paul Donato (D-Medford), said Donato only learned his name was on the co-sponsor list for Senate Bill 321 after receiving a call from a constituent who opposed the bill.
"He discovered that when somebody said to him, what’s with S.321, and he looked at it and said, this isn’t what he discussed with anybody," said Shea. He said prior to the bill’s filing Donato had met with supporters of MassResistance in his district who urged him to support the bill, but he made no commitment to support it. And while Donato, a supporter of the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, does not have a strong pro-gay voting record, Shea said after reading S.321 Donato has come out in opposition to the bill.
"He does not support that bill. It’s a lot more than just a consent bill. It’s beyond the pale," said Shea.
Indeed, the MassResistance bill goes much farther than the current state law allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education classes. It requires schools to obtain written permission from parents to include their children in any discussions of "alternative sexual behavior," which is defined to include anything even remotely associated with LGBT issues.
"The term ’alternative sexual behavior’ means homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism, transsexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, pansexuality, promiscuity, sodomy, pederasty, prostitution, oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, polygamy, polyandry, sex re-assignment treatments, ’bondage and discipline,’ sado-masochism, bestiality, and similar behaviors," reads the legislation. "It also includes issues and relationships deriving from those behaviors, including but not limited to ’sexual orientation,’ and alternative family, parenting, and marriage constructs."
The bill received a hearing before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Education May 29.
Sen. Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield), the top-ranking Republican in the Senate and a staunch opponent of the marriage amendment, said he was also surprised to find his name on the co-sponsor list. He said he only discovered his name attached to the bill when Donato contacted him about the legislation. He immediately contacted the Senate clerk to remove his name.
"It’s not anything I would put my name on ... I think the bill obviously goes too far. It is anti-gay, and I don’t think it will see the light of day out of that committee," said Tisei.
He speculated that his name and the names of other co-sponsors who withdrew their support may have originally been added as a result of a clerical error.
"There are 8000 bills that are all filed on the same day, and all of those bills have primary sponsors, and all of those sponsors try to get co-sponsors. And in the rush of things it seems that some names were put on inadvertently ... I think as legislators have become aware of it they’ve asked to have their names taken off," said Tisei.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Hingham), rejected the suggestion that the co-sponsors’ names were added in error. He said his staff kept a tally sheet of all of the co-sponsors, and they were instructed to add to the list only lawmakers who either called his office directly or who had staff call from their State House offices. Hedlund said the State House caller ID system allows staff to verify that a call is coming from a specific lawmaker’s office.
Asked how lawmakers’ names got on the sponsor list seemingly without their knowledge, Hedlund said, "I’m not going to speculate about the internal workings of any other offices. I can only tell you our safeguards to make sure no names go on by mistake."
Hedlund said he asked his staff to be particularly careful recording co-sponsors for S.321 because it was a bill Hedlund filed on behalf of a constituent, Owen O’Malley of Cohasset. In Massachusetts, individual citizens have the right to introduce their own bills into the legislature, and as a courtesy Hedlund has a policy of filing any piece of legislation that a constituent asks him to file. He said bills filed on behalf of constituents contain language indicating that they are filed "by request," and Hedlund said as a matter of principle he files bills put forward by constituents regardless of his personal stance on the legislation.
As for whether he supports the MassResistance bill, Hedlund said he is unsure because he has not read the full text of the bill.
Not all co-sponsors of the bill who removed their names claim to have been placed on the list without their knowledge. Rep. Lewis Evangelidis (R-Holden) sent a statement to Bay Windows reading simply, "Upon a closer review of the bill, I believe it is inappropriate and I have asked to have my name removed."
Tom Lang, co-founder of KnowThyNeighbor, sent out an e-mail alert to supporters following the education committee hearing to urge them to contact the bill’s co-sponsors.
Lang said he urged supporters to draw attention to S.321 to send the message that the anti-gay bigotry that motivates supporters of the MassResistance bill is the same driving force behind the marriage amendment. During the education committee hearing, Evelyn Reilly, public policy director for the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is the lead sponsor of the marriage amendment, did not specifically endorse S.321, but she called for restrictions on discussions of LGBT issues that mirrored the language of the bill. She claimed that a discussion in the classroom of same-sex marriage without explicit parental permission would be a violation of parents’ rights.
But Lang described the bill as a "terrible statement" about antigay bigotry. "These groups like the Massachusetts Family Institute don’t just want to get rid of gay marriage, they want to get rid of any reference to gays in our society," he said.
Lawmakers withdraw support for anti-gay proposal
by Ethan Jacobs
Bay Windows
A bill sponsored by the anti-gay group MassResistance to restrict discussion of LGBT issues in schools has lost the support of nearly half its co-sponsors after a campaign by the group KnowThyNeighbor.org and its supporters asking lawmakers to reject the bill. In an unexpected twist, some of the co-sponsors who withdrew told Bay Windows that their decision was not a change of heart; they claimed that they never agreed to co-sponsor the legislation in the first place, and they were uncertain how their name was added to the co-sponsor list to begin with.
Kevin Shea, chief of staff for Rep. Paul Donato (D-Medford), said Donato only learned his name was on the co-sponsor list for Senate Bill 321 after receiving a call from a constituent who opposed the bill.
"He discovered that when somebody said to him, what’s with S.321, and he looked at it and said, this isn’t what he discussed with anybody," said Shea. He said prior to the bill’s filing Donato had met with supporters of MassResistance in his district who urged him to support the bill, but he made no commitment to support it. And while Donato, a supporter of the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, does not have a strong pro-gay voting record, Shea said after reading S.321 Donato has come out in opposition to the bill.
"He does not support that bill. It’s a lot more than just a consent bill. It’s beyond the pale," said Shea.
Indeed, the MassResistance bill goes much farther than the current state law allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education classes. It requires schools to obtain written permission from parents to include their children in any discussions of "alternative sexual behavior," which is defined to include anything even remotely associated with LGBT issues.
"The term ’alternative sexual behavior’ means homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism, transsexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, pansexuality, promiscuity, sodomy, pederasty, prostitution, oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, polygamy, polyandry, sex re-assignment treatments, ’bondage and discipline,’ sado-masochism, bestiality, and similar behaviors," reads the legislation. "It also includes issues and relationships deriving from those behaviors, including but not limited to ’sexual orientation,’ and alternative family, parenting, and marriage constructs."
The bill received a hearing before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Education May 29.
Sen. Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield), the top-ranking Republican in the Senate and a staunch opponent of the marriage amendment, said he was also surprised to find his name on the co-sponsor list. He said he only discovered his name attached to the bill when Donato contacted him about the legislation. He immediately contacted the Senate clerk to remove his name.
"It’s not anything I would put my name on ... I think the bill obviously goes too far. It is anti-gay, and I don’t think it will see the light of day out of that committee," said Tisei.
He speculated that his name and the names of other co-sponsors who withdrew their support may have originally been added as a result of a clerical error.
"There are 8000 bills that are all filed on the same day, and all of those bills have primary sponsors, and all of those sponsors try to get co-sponsors. And in the rush of things it seems that some names were put on inadvertently ... I think as legislators have become aware of it they’ve asked to have their names taken off," said Tisei.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Hingham), rejected the suggestion that the co-sponsors’ names were added in error. He said his staff kept a tally sheet of all of the co-sponsors, and they were instructed to add to the list only lawmakers who either called his office directly or who had staff call from their State House offices. Hedlund said the State House caller ID system allows staff to verify that a call is coming from a specific lawmaker’s office.
Asked how lawmakers’ names got on the sponsor list seemingly without their knowledge, Hedlund said, "I’m not going to speculate about the internal workings of any other offices. I can only tell you our safeguards to make sure no names go on by mistake."
Hedlund said he asked his staff to be particularly careful recording co-sponsors for S.321 because it was a bill Hedlund filed on behalf of a constituent, Owen O’Malley of Cohasset. In Massachusetts, individual citizens have the right to introduce their own bills into the legislature, and as a courtesy Hedlund has a policy of filing any piece of legislation that a constituent asks him to file. He said bills filed on behalf of constituents contain language indicating that they are filed "by request," and Hedlund said as a matter of principle he files bills put forward by constituents regardless of his personal stance on the legislation.
As for whether he supports the MassResistance bill, Hedlund said he is unsure because he has not read the full text of the bill.
Not all co-sponsors of the bill who removed their names claim to have been placed on the list without their knowledge. Rep. Lewis Evangelidis (R-Holden) sent a statement to Bay Windows reading simply, "Upon a closer review of the bill, I believe it is inappropriate and I have asked to have my name removed."
Tom Lang, co-founder of KnowThyNeighbor, sent out an e-mail alert to supporters following the education committee hearing to urge them to contact the bill’s co-sponsors.
Lang said he urged supporters to draw attention to S.321 to send the message that the anti-gay bigotry that motivates supporters of the MassResistance bill is the same driving force behind the marriage amendment. During the education committee hearing, Evelyn Reilly, public policy director for the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is the lead sponsor of the marriage amendment, did not specifically endorse S.321, but she called for restrictions on discussions of LGBT issues that mirrored the language of the bill. She claimed that a discussion in the classroom of same-sex marriage without explicit parental permission would be a violation of parents’ rights.
But Lang described the bill as a "terrible statement" about antigay bigotry. "These groups like the Massachusetts Family Institute don’t just want to get rid of gay marriage, they want to get rid of any reference to gays in our society," he said.
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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Bay Area Reporter ~ 21st June
A time for celebration
by Mister Marcus
HatchetQ@aol.com
The time is upon us for a celebration of all that has taken place in our world since last year's Pride Parade. I gave up trying to keep up with the alphabet soup designation of one of the world's biggest pride parades. It seems everyone wants a "piece of the action," but know all subcultures are included in the Pride Parade.
The LGBT Pride Celebration Committee has everything in place. The gay Pride flags are up on the lamp posts all along Market Street from the Embarcadero up to Castro; parade volunteers are being trained and floats are being constructed in warehouses around town and on the piers. The leather community, always one of the biggest contingents in the parade, will be very visible again. Jay Hemphill is in charge of this group again this year and the contingent has its own grand marshals – Mark Paladini and Ms. Pilar. Various leather dignitaries will be marching and that includes our own Mr. SF Leather Travis Creston and it is strongly rumored that International Mr. Leather Mikel Gerle will be in the contingent as well.
Needless to say, hundreds of volunteers will be on hand to make sure all goes well. These volunteers spend many hours preparing for the event and spend the entire day making sure there are no glitches. The SF Civic Center will be awash with food, drink, commercial and nonprofit booths, and tons of entertainment. Local and tourist cameras will be snapping away because as you know, no such spectacle of diversity exists in Kansas or West Virginia!
I find it incomprehensible that people would bring their dogs/pets into such a quagmire of humanity. Admitted, pet lovers are sure to bestow hugs and petting to these pets, but it seems so unfair to them to have to endure the heat, the crowds, and the massive crush of humans.
For leather people, the Leather Alley will be expanded this year and you can mingle with your leather brothers and sisters in this venue that always garners big crowds of the seasoned, the curious, and those thinking of plunging into this lifestyle.
There are hundreds of gay-related events taking place all this weekend and it all started almost two weeks ago. Big cha-cha parties, the LGBT Film Festival, hundreds of individuals with houseguests from all over the country and foreigners as well. Too bad the parade will not be live on broadcast TV, but you can't have it all. [As reported in last week's Bay Area Reporter, a two-hour live program will air on Comcast digital cable. See the news article here.
The main leather event is the Uniform & Leather Ball put on by the Phoenix Uniform Club in the Green Room of the War Memorial Building (Van Ness at McAllister) on Friday night, June 22. Tickets are on sale now for $65 in advance or $70 at the door. The next day is the Pride Brunch honoring the parade's grand marshals at the Hotel Whitcomb (formerly the Ramada) at 8th and Market streets. Prices are steep for almost every party/dance coming your way. But what the heck, it's only once a year. (oooh, did I say that?)
Around the country, some cities have already had their Pride parades; events have taken place in Los Angeles; Asbury Park, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and other cities just last weekend. Hordes of Angelenos will be in town for our parade and a lot of them will be of the leather persuasion. And it doesn't end here – other cities across the nation have yet to stage their Pride parades. It will be a rainbow banner stretched from East to West and North to South of Pride parades in coming weeks and months.
We have had national, state, and local legislation that benefits our people. Yet, a lot needs to be accomplished before we can proudly say we are "accepted." Polls of various sorts seem to indicate that the general public is relaxing its former hard stand against the gay/lesbian population. Of course, the quest for legal marriage status predominates; there is a lot of anxiety among gays and lesbians over the immigration policies still in place. There also is a big increase in people moving to Canada, where gay marriage is legal. Gay/lesbian adoptions are on the increase and in some places, including the Bay Area, there are actual public ad campaigns for gays and lesbians to adopt foster children.
The recent spate of muggings, robberies and other ugly incidents in the Castro area has generated a patrol of dedicated volunteers who keep a watchful eye on the citizenry and protecting them from marauding bands that prey on unsuspecting individuals.
Funds are being raised for worthy charitable causes and volunteers to deliver meals to the homebound and seniors. Progress seems to be going well for the senior citizen housing project and turf squabbles in the SOMA area seem to have been settled. Still, rumors persist that are totally inaccurate and untrue and hopefully it will subside soon.
Yes, San Francisco's Pride will take on a rainbow plethora display this coming Sunday when thousands will watch and thousands will march proudly to assert our presence in a city that has always been known as tolerant to all individuals and lifestyles. You couldn't ask for a more beautiful setting and a more beautiful family. Enjoy the day. Be helpful and kind to the many tourists who will be here and celebrate your diversity.
And coming soon
The Dore Alley Street Fair is just around the corner on the last Sunday of July; a new Leather Daddy (XXV) will be chosen and the Northern California Leather Sir/boy contests will take place. Hopefully, there will be some great contestants for these positions. With as many leather/BDSM people who live in the area, you'd think there would be more than one or two men and boys competing. Snatch will be the featured entertainer and the MC will be Ultra Domme, the one who has never had a title. Be prepared for a few other events to make the weekend a leathery bonanza.
Eventures in Leather, June 21 – July 8, 2007
Thursday, June 21
Bears in Boxers Party at the Lone Star Saloon with drink specials, raffles and specials for shirtless and men in boxers. To benefit SF Chapter of Veterans for Peace. No time given for this event.
Friday, June 23
Mr. Muscle Bear Cub Contest at the Lone Star Saloon at 2300, seeking husky, hairy, horny men (a porn star/model search) hosted by Tom Orr. For info: www.cubsconnect.com
Phoenix Uniform Club's 16th annual Leather Uniform Ball in the Green Room of the War Memorial Bldg. (McAllister at Van Ness Ave.). Tix are $60 advance, $70 at door if available. For more info, go to www.sfphx.org; get tickets at www.frantix.net
Saturday, June 23
10th Anniversary Play Party for the Exiles of SF at the Women's Bldg. from 2000 to 0100 next day. Food, music, loads of party music and great entertainment.
Sunday, June 24
SF Annual Pride Parade headed by Dykes on Bikes and marching units, floats, music, madness and fun at the Civic Center afterward.
Wednesday, June 27
Leather Buddies gather at 933 Harrison for the monthly leather-a-thon with surprises galore. You know the rules: no cologne, no white sneakers. Pay attention!
Thursday, June 28
Underwear Party at the Powerhouse tonight from 2100 to closing. This one has a reputation for being the best in San Francisco. Check it out.
Saturday, July 7
8th Annual Bay Area Cub Contest from 1500 to 1900 at the Lone Star Saloon. No details at my deadline. Stay tuned.
In San Diego, 10th annual Butch Revue at the Hole at 1900 tonight. All of the area's best talent on display for this fundraiser by former Ms. World Annie Romano.
Sunday, July 8
Castro Lions 20th annual Leather & Whatever Auction at the Eagle Tavern. Hundreds of bargains. Some $37,000 will be distributed to worthy charities. If you've got leather to give, contact Tom Rodgers (415) 861-0516 or email him at tomfister@aol.com Do it before July 5.
06/21/2007
A time for celebration
by Mister Marcus
HatchetQ@aol.com
The time is upon us for a celebration of all that has taken place in our world since last year's Pride Parade. I gave up trying to keep up with the alphabet soup designation of one of the world's biggest pride parades. It seems everyone wants a "piece of the action," but know all subcultures are included in the Pride Parade.
The LGBT Pride Celebration Committee has everything in place. The gay Pride flags are up on the lamp posts all along Market Street from the Embarcadero up to Castro; parade volunteers are being trained and floats are being constructed in warehouses around town and on the piers. The leather community, always one of the biggest contingents in the parade, will be very visible again. Jay Hemphill is in charge of this group again this year and the contingent has its own grand marshals – Mark Paladini and Ms. Pilar. Various leather dignitaries will be marching and that includes our own Mr. SF Leather Travis Creston and it is strongly rumored that International Mr. Leather Mikel Gerle will be in the contingent as well.
Needless to say, hundreds of volunteers will be on hand to make sure all goes well. These volunteers spend many hours preparing for the event and spend the entire day making sure there are no glitches. The SF Civic Center will be awash with food, drink, commercial and nonprofit booths, and tons of entertainment. Local and tourist cameras will be snapping away because as you know, no such spectacle of diversity exists in Kansas or West Virginia!
I find it incomprehensible that people would bring their dogs/pets into such a quagmire of humanity. Admitted, pet lovers are sure to bestow hugs and petting to these pets, but it seems so unfair to them to have to endure the heat, the crowds, and the massive crush of humans.
For leather people, the Leather Alley will be expanded this year and you can mingle with your leather brothers and sisters in this venue that always garners big crowds of the seasoned, the curious, and those thinking of plunging into this lifestyle.
There are hundreds of gay-related events taking place all this weekend and it all started almost two weeks ago. Big cha-cha parties, the LGBT Film Festival, hundreds of individuals with houseguests from all over the country and foreigners as well. Too bad the parade will not be live on broadcast TV, but you can't have it all. [As reported in last week's Bay Area Reporter, a two-hour live program will air on Comcast digital cable. See the news article here.
The main leather event is the Uniform & Leather Ball put on by the Phoenix Uniform Club in the Green Room of the War Memorial Building (Van Ness at McAllister) on Friday night, June 22. Tickets are on sale now for $65 in advance or $70 at the door. The next day is the Pride Brunch honoring the parade's grand marshals at the Hotel Whitcomb (formerly the Ramada) at 8th and Market streets. Prices are steep for almost every party/dance coming your way. But what the heck, it's only once a year. (oooh, did I say that?)
Around the country, some cities have already had their Pride parades; events have taken place in Los Angeles; Asbury Park, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and other cities just last weekend. Hordes of Angelenos will be in town for our parade and a lot of them will be of the leather persuasion. And it doesn't end here – other cities across the nation have yet to stage their Pride parades. It will be a rainbow banner stretched from East to West and North to South of Pride parades in coming weeks and months.
We have had national, state, and local legislation that benefits our people. Yet, a lot needs to be accomplished before we can proudly say we are "accepted." Polls of various sorts seem to indicate that the general public is relaxing its former hard stand against the gay/lesbian population. Of course, the quest for legal marriage status predominates; there is a lot of anxiety among gays and lesbians over the immigration policies still in place. There also is a big increase in people moving to Canada, where gay marriage is legal. Gay/lesbian adoptions are on the increase and in some places, including the Bay Area, there are actual public ad campaigns for gays and lesbians to adopt foster children.
The recent spate of muggings, robberies and other ugly incidents in the Castro area has generated a patrol of dedicated volunteers who keep a watchful eye on the citizenry and protecting them from marauding bands that prey on unsuspecting individuals.
Funds are being raised for worthy charitable causes and volunteers to deliver meals to the homebound and seniors. Progress seems to be going well for the senior citizen housing project and turf squabbles in the SOMA area seem to have been settled. Still, rumors persist that are totally inaccurate and untrue and hopefully it will subside soon.
Yes, San Francisco's Pride will take on a rainbow plethora display this coming Sunday when thousands will watch and thousands will march proudly to assert our presence in a city that has always been known as tolerant to all individuals and lifestyles. You couldn't ask for a more beautiful setting and a more beautiful family. Enjoy the day. Be helpful and kind to the many tourists who will be here and celebrate your diversity.
And coming soon
The Dore Alley Street Fair is just around the corner on the last Sunday of July; a new Leather Daddy (XXV) will be chosen and the Northern California Leather Sir/boy contests will take place. Hopefully, there will be some great contestants for these positions. With as many leather/BDSM people who live in the area, you'd think there would be more than one or two men and boys competing. Snatch will be the featured entertainer and the MC will be Ultra Domme, the one who has never had a title. Be prepared for a few other events to make the weekend a leathery bonanza.
Eventures in Leather, June 21 – July 8, 2007
Thursday, June 21
Bears in Boxers Party at the Lone Star Saloon with drink specials, raffles and specials for shirtless and men in boxers. To benefit SF Chapter of Veterans for Peace. No time given for this event.
Friday, June 23
Mr. Muscle Bear Cub Contest at the Lone Star Saloon at 2300, seeking husky, hairy, horny men (a porn star/model search) hosted by Tom Orr. For info: www.cubsconnect.com
Phoenix Uniform Club's 16th annual Leather Uniform Ball in the Green Room of the War Memorial Bldg. (McAllister at Van Ness Ave.). Tix are $60 advance, $70 at door if available. For more info, go to www.sfphx.org; get tickets at www.frantix.net
Saturday, June 23
10th Anniversary Play Party for the Exiles of SF at the Women's Bldg. from 2000 to 0100 next day. Food, music, loads of party music and great entertainment.
Sunday, June 24
SF Annual Pride Parade headed by Dykes on Bikes and marching units, floats, music, madness and fun at the Civic Center afterward.
Wednesday, June 27
Leather Buddies gather at 933 Harrison for the monthly leather-a-thon with surprises galore. You know the rules: no cologne, no white sneakers. Pay attention!
Thursday, June 28
Underwear Party at the Powerhouse tonight from 2100 to closing. This one has a reputation for being the best in San Francisco. Check it out.
Saturday, July 7
8th Annual Bay Area Cub Contest from 1500 to 1900 at the Lone Star Saloon. No details at my deadline. Stay tuned.
In San Diego, 10th annual Butch Revue at the Hole at 1900 tonight. All of the area's best talent on display for this fundraiser by former Ms. World Annie Romano.
Sunday, July 8
Castro Lions 20th annual Leather & Whatever Auction at the Eagle Tavern. Hundreds of bargains. Some $37,000 will be distributed to worthy charities. If you've got leather to give, contact Tom Rodgers (415) 861-0516 or email him at tomfister@aol.com Do it before July 5.
06/21/2007
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
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- Oct 31, 2005
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- 13,063
The Stranger ~ June 21st
Control Tower & Kink Calendar
America's Next Top Dominatrix!
By Mistress Matisse
Based on the sheer number of e-mails I get asking for career advice, I've decided I should create a new reality television show called America's Next Top Dominatrix.
(Yes, you and I know the phrase "top dominatrix" is redundant. But Mr. and Mrs. Middle America don't, so work with me.)
On ANTD, a group of women will be trained by me to become high-caliber dominatrices. Naturally, there will be the usual difficult/gross/uncomfortable competitions, followed by people being eliminated. I'm imagining something like this...
Week One: All the contestants are gathered in the castle—because it's got to be a castle, right, something extremely gothic? Either that or a warehouse in the Meatpacking District.
I'll make a dramatic entrance, preceded by thong-wearing slave boys throwing down rose petals for me to walk on. I'll introduce myself to the wannabes and then look them over with a sneer. Some of them will clearly be vanilla sex workers looking to expand their repertoire. At least one of them will have breast implants bigger than her head, which will make the flogging competition a struggle. Others will be "lifestyle" mistresses who want to start making a buck with their talents. They'll be less hot than the sex workers, but they'll obviously feel morally superior to them—we'll see right away that there are going to be some catfights between the two camps.
I'll explain to the contestants that while apparently every girl with black boots, a bitchy streak, and a yen for disposable income thinks she's got what it takes to be a good pro domme, I'm there to disabuse them of that notion. They are raw recruits; I am a drill sergeant, charged with making sure only the strong survive.
For the first challenge, we'll assemble the mistresses-in-training in a huge dungeon with a bewildering array of BDSM toys displayed on the walls, along with a dozen pieces of specialized bondage furniture. At my signal, one of the hunky slave boys would approach an MIT and say, "Mistress, I like soft thuddy impact on the sweet spot. But no marks." The MIT would then have to immediately select an appropriate toy—a suede flogger, in this case. She'd then have to position him on the right piece of equipment, which would be a spanking bench, with him bent over at the waist. And then she'd have to attack the right area, which is right where the inner curve of the ass meets the top of the thigh. She'd have to demonstrate the correct form and level of intensity, naturally. One whack on the kidneys and you're sunk.
Each MIT would be given a similar request—something fairly entry-level, but still requiring a modicum of skill and familiarity with BDSM terminology, because apparently a lot of people think that's optional.
I still have to think of a great tagline for the elimination scene. "You are the weakest kink—goodbye!" is cute, but it's been done. Or maybe a ceremony where I pass out riding crops to the week's winners? Yeah, that'll work. Now pardon me while I go call the network.
matisse@thestranger.com
Kink Calendar
Control Tower & Kink Calendar
America's Next Top Dominatrix!
By Mistress Matisse
Based on the sheer number of e-mails I get asking for career advice, I've decided I should create a new reality television show called America's Next Top Dominatrix.
(Yes, you and I know the phrase "top dominatrix" is redundant. But Mr. and Mrs. Middle America don't, so work with me.)
On ANTD, a group of women will be trained by me to become high-caliber dominatrices. Naturally, there will be the usual difficult/gross/uncomfortable competitions, followed by people being eliminated. I'm imagining something like this...
Week One: All the contestants are gathered in the castle—because it's got to be a castle, right, something extremely gothic? Either that or a warehouse in the Meatpacking District.
I'll make a dramatic entrance, preceded by thong-wearing slave boys throwing down rose petals for me to walk on. I'll introduce myself to the wannabes and then look them over with a sneer. Some of them will clearly be vanilla sex workers looking to expand their repertoire. At least one of them will have breast implants bigger than her head, which will make the flogging competition a struggle. Others will be "lifestyle" mistresses who want to start making a buck with their talents. They'll be less hot than the sex workers, but they'll obviously feel morally superior to them—we'll see right away that there are going to be some catfights between the two camps.
I'll explain to the contestants that while apparently every girl with black boots, a bitchy streak, and a yen for disposable income thinks she's got what it takes to be a good pro domme, I'm there to disabuse them of that notion. They are raw recruits; I am a drill sergeant, charged with making sure only the strong survive.
For the first challenge, we'll assemble the mistresses-in-training in a huge dungeon with a bewildering array of BDSM toys displayed on the walls, along with a dozen pieces of specialized bondage furniture. At my signal, one of the hunky slave boys would approach an MIT and say, "Mistress, I like soft thuddy impact on the sweet spot. But no marks." The MIT would then have to immediately select an appropriate toy—a suede flogger, in this case. She'd then have to position him on the right piece of equipment, which would be a spanking bench, with him bent over at the waist. And then she'd have to attack the right area, which is right where the inner curve of the ass meets the top of the thigh. She'd have to demonstrate the correct form and level of intensity, naturally. One whack on the kidneys and you're sunk.
Each MIT would be given a similar request—something fairly entry-level, but still requiring a modicum of skill and familiarity with BDSM terminology, because apparently a lot of people think that's optional.
I still have to think of a great tagline for the elimination scene. "You are the weakest kink—goodbye!" is cute, but it's been done. Or maybe a ceremony where I pass out riding crops to the week's winners? Yeah, that'll work. Now pardon me while I go call the network.
matisse@thestranger.com
Kink Calendar
neonflux
Out and about...
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Grateful, grateful, grateful, that even right-wing folks see the utter fanatacism of this.@}-}rebecca---- said:
Pretty interesting that the bill links LGBT rights, parenting/marriage and even tolerance for same with promiscuity, sodomy, pederasty, bestiality, and similar behaviors. (Won't include bdsm here, just because of my own sensibilities, LOL.) Ridiculous! 
Neon
neonflux
Out and about...
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2005
- Posts
- 4,233
Hrmmph! He didn't mention last night's smaller play party - Queer Playground - it's more of the poly/Fakir/radical fairies' bdsm offshoot/tranny/bi/queer crowd. Lots more laughter, too, I'd wager.@}-}rebecca---- said:
BTW, I "bagged" one of only 200 tickets to the Exiles Play Party tonight (which he does mention). Maybe I will "bag me" a sub, too.
Neon
@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Battle of the Sexless ~
He could've filled three Pepsi cans. Maybe three and a half.
That's how much blood Talula estimates he lost the first time he tried to castrate himself.
Life had hit an all-time low. Depression hung around his shoulders like a lead suit. His libido had spiraled out of control, and he was masturbating as many as five times a day.
So in June 1994, at 37 years of age, Talula made a decision. He'd had enough. They had to go. He stripped naked and sat in his tub, Betadine solution in one hand, an Xacto knife in the other. He doused his genitals with the antiseptic until they glowed amber, then slowly, carefully, slit open his scrotum.
No anesthesia. No alcohol. Nothing.
His fingers searched the bloody pulp for the olive-size testes that had caused him so much torment, but he was starting to feel faint.
In that moment, everything made sense: The times he and his best friend would curl one another's hair and put on makeup. The way he used to tuck his penis between his legs and admire his profile. How he would tie string around his testicles until they changed from red to purple to blue. The countless nights he prayed himself to sleep: "Please, God, please let me wake up a girl."
As the drain swirled with blood, he considered folding up his insides, taking a bath and climbing into bed. Instead, he gritted his teeth and sawed straight through his left testicle.
"I just wanted to see what they looked like," he recalls quietly. "But I'd dug too deep. I'd gone overboard."
With that realization, he wrapped the gory mess in a washcloth, bound it with duct tape and drove 18 miles to the nearest hospital. The medics in the emergency room treated Talula as an unknown—neither male nor female—but patched him up anyway and sent him for a psych evaluation.
After three years obsessing over the remaining testicle, Talula did it again.
This time he had help from a "certain friend" he had always hoped would finish the job. Talula handed the friend a syringe full of Xylocaine and a Burdizzo, a 19-inch tool used to castrate bulls. As its mighty jaws clamped around his scarred scrotum, the pain throbbed like poison darts pricking his every nerve.
And then … relief.
The certain friend, honored to have helped, bowed on his way out the front door of Talula's mobile home, located somewhere along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border.
And Talula, well, he was the happiest person alive.
"It was grand," he says, in between long, audible draws on a cigarette. "I felt like Atlas, not having to carry the world."
Every year, some 40,000 men are castrated in this country for oncological reasons. But in a culture where it takes balls to be a man, an emasculated male—even one doing it to save his own life—is viewed with pity and shame. Freud believed that castration was man's greatest fear; the cringing reaction most men have to the very word seems illustrative of that. The vast majority of the medical community (and the community at large) still operates within the XX-XY gender binary; it regards voluntarily castrated males, or eunuchs, as little more than quaint cultural anachronisms.
For Talula to cut off his own testicles throws a wrench in society's idea of what it means to be male—or more profoundly, what it means to be human. Yet whenever voluntary castration enters the public dialogue, it's usually in the form of hypersensational headlines on the 11 o'clock news: Sex-Crazed Pedophiliac Would-Be Rapist Cuts Off Testicles!!!
The reality is far more complex.
Only one out of seven people who fantasizes about castration ever acts on the desire, and those who do have myriad reasons: some dislike the way testosterone affects their mind and body; some feel powerless in the face of their sexual urges or long for the "eunuch calm," a meditation-like state unimpeded by carnal desire; some do it for ascetic or cosmetic reasons; some are in the process of transitioning from male to female and view it as a cost-effective step on the road to full sex reassignment surgery; and some submissives consider castration the ultimate sacrifice in a sadomasochistic relationship.
"We are real people with real reasons," says Talula. "We live next door, we're down the street, at your work. We have mortgages, credit cards, cars and grandmothers. We're just people that prefer no sex."
And people who, given the choice, would rather not take matters into their own hands.
Talula didn't want to self-castrate, but he felt he had no other option. He was afraid if he told physicians or family members, they'd lock him away forever. He could either do it himself, or not do it.
What Talula didn't realize at the time was that he had a third option awaiting, scalpel in hand, in Philadelphia—the castration capital of the United States.
TABLESIDE MANNER: Philadelphia osteopath Felix Spector has performed "thousands" of elective castrations in his half-century career.
TABLESIDE MANNER: Philadelphia osteopath Felix Spector has performed "thousands" of elective castrations in his half-century career. "People pushed me for help and it worked out quite well," he says.
For nearly 40 years, thousands of people have traveled here to have their testicles removed by Dr. Felix Spector, a retired osteopath who had offices in North and South Philly, and around the corner from the Pain Center in the Gayborhood.
Unlike most trans-health professionals, Spector didn't follow the guidelines set forth by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, the regulatory body dedicated to the treatment of gender identity disorders. He never required that patients—transitioning or otherwise—undergo psychiatric counseling, take hormones or live outwardly as women.
The way he saw it, the Harry Benjamin guidelines created too many unnecessary hoops. By the time a person saved up enough cash to pay him a visit, they knew what they wanted. Spector believed his responsibility was to give it to them, "safely, correctly and with sympathy."
No questions asked, credit cards accepted.
Spector's Web site claimed he was "a founder of the field" and possessed "arguably more experience than almost any other doctor" in the treatment of trans people and men with overactive libidos. He even wrote a handbook on it—the $25 cost of which could be deducted from the price of surgery.
When I first interviewed the 89-year-old doctor, he spoke slowly and repeatedly jumbled names and dates. It was a struggle to hear him over the all-Mozart radio program he was blasting in the background.
Spector was born in Philadelphia in 1917 and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1943. After practicing general medicine in Texas, California and West Virginia, he moved back to Philly in 1954. Three years later, under dubious circumstances, he performed his first castration on a transsexual in Casablanca.
Word spread quickly about the good doctor who would lop off a person's testicles at their discretion. Patients described Spector as polite and grandfatherly, with a timid smile and a sly sense of humor—the kind of old man who flirts with pretty waitresses and cracks eunuch jokes to guys about to be castrated.
He was known for loading patients into his red Taurus and taking them on a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia, pointing out historic sites like Independence Hall and capping off with a cheesesteak at Pat's or Jim's. After surgery, he would snap their picture with a Polaroid camera.
"Proof you lived through it," he'd tease and write their name in the white border.
Business boomed with the advent of the Internet; at the height of his practice, Spector was doing 10 castrations a month at $1,600 a pop. For an additional $1,200, he'd also remove the scrotum.
"I saw the need for it," Spector says matter-of-factly. "People pushed me for help and it worked out quite well. Never had any kind of problems."
Chris, a 51-year-old medical courier and former patient of Spector's, tells a different story. From the onset of puberty, Chris remembers feeling distinctly uncomfortable with his body. After years of garroting his testicles with rubber bands, he attempted castration with a Burdizzo. The failed effort left him mangled and more determined than ever. By June 2000, Chris had booked an appointment with Spector.
The night before surgery, Chris checked into a Center City bed and breakfast and shaved his entire scrotal region, just as Spector had instructed. In the morning, a chatty, well-fed nurse in her mid-40s greeted him upon arrival at Spector's Rodman Street home office.
"I walked in and thought, 'Oh my fucking God, what have I done?'" he remembers. "It was somebody's grimy front room with an exam table and a couple of stirrups. Papers and junk all over the place. There was nothing sterile about it."
Chris' first impulse was to turn around and go home, but he hadn't traveled this far to return with testicular baggage in tow.
He signed a consent form, paid the balance due and nodded when Spector asked him, "Do you know what you're doing? Are you ready to go? Let's do it."
The operation was done under local anesthesia, and ended quickly enough. Though Chris felt uneasy about the bandaging job, he walked the three blocks back to his hotel, rested and ate lunch. By the afternoon, he was being rushed into the E.R. at Jefferson Hospital on a blood-soaked gurney. Spector had improperly sutured a major artery and Chris was hemorrhaging internally.
The botched castration left him hospitalized for a week and required two corrective surgeries to remove blood clots and necrotic tissue.
"I was a real mess," admits Chris, who says he slipped into a "borderline psychotic" depression after the castration. "I would never want to put anybody through it. I tell the story of someone who thinks they were prepared, but wasn't. All I wanted was that aesthetic thing. I had no concept of the side effects."
Spector castrate George Mayo, an androgynous pet groomer from Maryland, also felt unprepared for the aftershock. But despite years of surprise hot flashes, he says he's never regretted his decision and doesn't believe Spector led him astray.
"Those who go to Spector already know they want it. I did my research," he says, then pauses. "Maybe I could have done more."
Still, Spector was better than the alternative.
OPEN MIND: Dr. Robert Winn, medical director at Philadelphia's Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing, says although he has never treated a eunuch patient before, he wouldn't turn one away either.
OPEN MIND: Dr. Robert Winn, medical director at Philadelphia's Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing, says although he has never treated a eunuch patient before, he wouldn't turn one away either.
When wannabe castrates could not afford Spector, they would often turn to the very place they found him: the Internet, where there exists a subculture of underground cutters willing to perform guerrilla surgeries in motel rooms, at medical fetish clubs and just over the Mexican border. Scissors, wire cutters and livestock elastrators are the main tools in a trade that sometimes uses Listerine as antiseptic and Tylenol for pain. Horror stories of desperate men blowing off their own balls with shotguns are endemic in eunuch culture, which partly explains why health professionals question their sanity. And why, in classic chicken-and-egg fashion, castrates resort to such drastic measures in the first place.
As head of the Eunuch Archive (www.eunuch.org), the Internet's largest support site for the castration-curious, Talula and other active participants try to act as a safety valve, educating visitors on the everyday realities of castration and cautioning them against street cutters.
Madison Abercrombie, a 31-year-old trans woman from rural Missouri, discovered the site too late.
Four years ago, Madison was named Michael and was newly married, working at his family's salvage yard and living the American dream. But one thing haunted him: He hated his genitals.
He tried confiding in doctors and church counselors, but they kept using words like "sick" and "perverse." And while he had heard of Spector's work, he couldn't afford the trip to Philadelphia. Random posts in a eunuch chat room eventually led him to underground cutter Jack Wayne Rogers, a Presbyterian minister and Boy Scout leader from a neighboring town.
Rogers' e-mails were short and impersonal, but Abercrombie was impressed by how well he knew the Bible. Rogers agreed to meet him at a motel room in Columbus, where, for $750, he would remove both his penis and testicles.
The surgery took seven hours and 20 minutes. Abercrombie says there were moments of pain so intense, she could feel the life bleeding out of her.
When Rogers realized the life actually was bleeding out of her, he told Abercrombie, "You can go to the hospital—just leave me out of it."
And with good reason—Abercrombie later learned that Rogers had been convicted on charges of obscenity and child pornography, and was suspected in the torture and killing of a 20-year-old man. The substandard operation left Abercrombie so grossly deformed, it took multiple surgeries to undo the damage. Three weeks ago, Abercrombie took the final step in her transition when a California doctor built her a new vagina.
"If I had not been turned away, if I'd just had some medical help setting goals of getting where I needed to be, it never would've happened," Abercrombie says shakily. "It's a cryin' shame."
After interviewing dozens of people in both the trans and eunuch communities, the consensus is clear: In his heyday, Spector was a godsend to people seeking elective castration; in his latter years, he was a danger. Because the medical community doesn't recognize castration as a legitimate treatment option for non-trans men or trans women unwilling or unable to comply with the Harry Benjamin guidelines, voluntary castrates must tolerate indiscretions.
But o
n Jan. 18, 2002, the Pennsylvania State Board of Osteopathic Medicine declared Spector an "immediate danger to the public health and safety" and suspended his license to practice medicine.
It wasn't the first time Spector had received troubling news.
In the 1940s and again in the 1960s, he was found guilty of performing then-illegal abortions. Also in the '60s, a Philadelphia judge sentenced Spector to two years' missionary work in Africa. Then in 1997, The Philadelphia Inquirer indexed his numerous problems with the law, which included falsifying pharmacy records, billing irregularities and performing a castration of "grossly inferior quality." Spector was recently named in a malpractice suit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas; he denies culpability.
Patients with postsurgical complications have come back to haunt him on several occassions, as has another familiar name: Dr. Terrence Malloy. Chief of Urology at Pennsylvania Hospital and Spector's personal urologist, Malloy provided the expert testimony that led to Spector's 2002 suspension.
During regular checkups, Malloy says Spector would ply him for surgical techniques and treatment advice.
"He had the brass ones to say one time, 'Can I come and watch you do an orchiectomy?'" recalls Malloy, who denied Spector's requests for what he calls a "totally repugnant" surgery. "It's just common sense—a 35-year-old guy does not want his testicles taken off. That's the height of an abnormal psyche."
Spector says he's only under attack because he provided a "nontraditional service" in a profession whose values "were engendered during the Victorian era."
Malloy calls Spector a "quack" and a "butcher," and likens his methodology to assisted suicide: "This was not done for any lofty goal—it was done for money. It's the worst type of victimization [that] preys on the most vulnerable people in the American public."
Beyond ethical queries, the State Board suspension cited two lapses in Spector's malpractice coverage and stated that he was untrained, unqualified and unequipped to be castrating anyone. As an osteopath, Spector was licensed to perform surgery, but he was also obligated to explain its risks and alternatives to the patient. And while he admits to having no formal urological training, Spector says the standards of the American Board of Urology and the American College of Surgeons didn't exist when he first began his practice.
A State Board attorney who asked to remain anonymous offered this hypothetical situation: "Say you were having chest pains and you go to a surgeon. If he says, 'Let's cut you open and do a bypass,' and doesn't check for angina or try medication first, it's not that he did a bypass—it's that he didn't do all the things he's supposed to do to make sure you were a candidate for it."
Spector never had patients professionally screened for psychological disturbances or suggested they explore a short-term course of chemical castration, which is at least reversible. Sometimes he would tell them to think the operation over and call him back later. Sometimes he wouldn't.
STREET LIFE: Madison Abercrombie's genitals were butchered by an underground cutter four years ago.
STREET LIFE: Madison Abercrombie's genitals were butchered by an underground cutter four years ago. "If I'd just had some medical help setting goals of where I needed to be, it never would've happened," she says.
Can a physician be expected to follow standard protocol for a taboo surgery when there are no clear precedents, reliable data, peer-reviewed medical literature, textbooks or medical experts willing to discuss it?
"Look, all I can say is you can't treat a patient if what they want is crazy," says the attorney. "Accepted practice means knowing when to tell your patient that what they want is wrong."
Dr. Sherman Leis, founder of the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery and one of the country's leading plastic surgeons for trans health care, echoes the attorney's sentiment. Leis follows the Harry Benjamin guidelines on a case-by-case basis, but says he'd never do a surgery that wasn't medically indicated. In fact, he finds the idea abominable.
"There are a lot of sick, psychotic people out there," says Leis of non-trans men seeking castration. "A legitimate doctor doesn't operate on somebody who is psychotic. That's incompetent medicine."
Chico State University anthropologist Tom Johnson and Dalhousie University anatomist and neurobiologist Dr. Richard Wassersug disagree that all voluntary castrates are necessarily psychotic. They've spent years studying and surveying members of the Eunuch Archive and researching the realities of androgen deprivation. Together, they're pioneering the sort of research that will ultimately be reviewed by peers, printed in medical journals, taught in classrooms and discussed openly between doctors and patients.
That's their hope, anyway.
"You still have doctors recycling prejudices from the Roman Empire, without looking at the very real eunuchs around them," says Johnson. "It's a human propensity to try to put everything into pigeonholes—this or that, either/or—without any consideration of the gradations between. There are not two sexes; there are probably 50."
Gary Taylor, Shakespearean scholar and author of Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood, concurs; he says eunuchs provide a blueprint for the first post-human. "We're entering a time when the possibilities of genetic engineering mean the potential for changing what it means to be human," says Taylor. "But not everybody is going to accept the implications of our capacity to alter human beings. That's the great philosophical and political problem of our future."
Until that day comes, people eke through the system whatever way they can.
Social workers at Philadelphia's Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing have taken a harm-reduction approach, providing patients with nonjudgmental counseling and informational resources.
"We should be able to recognize the need and push for better treatments. Eunuch, gay, trans—doesn't matter," says Mazzoni medical director Dr. Robert Winn. "There should be no backroom abortions."
Sue Collins, Mazzoni's trans patient coordinator, started presenting as a woman three months ago and empathizes with the eunuchs' struggle.
"Everybody says this is the act of a freak, a demon," she says. "So all my life I tried to fight this demon inside me. Then I realized the real demon was society trying to tell me who I am."
When Collins came out as a woman, all but one of her old friends turned their backs. Her ex-wife cut off communication, as have two of their three children. "It's such a tragedy," she says. "Nobody wants this. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, 'Yeah, when I grow up, I want to cut my balls off.' We just want our bodies to fit with our minds and our souls. That's all we want."
Whether it is abortion, alternative cancer treatments, euthanasia or castration, society must decide where a patient's right to demand an elective procedure ends and where a physician's right to provide ethically acceptable treatment begins. Although many doctors refuse to remove healthy tissue because they view it as a violation of the Hippocratic imperative to do no harm, proponents of elective castration say it's no different than removing extra nose cartilage, unbecoming cellulite or excess skin on a baby's penis.
Furthermore, they say, physicians have a responsibility to prevent imminent or foreseeable harm. Could it not be argued that rendering a patient's concerns crazy or invalid does the patient greater harm in the end?
"That is the ultimate question," says Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Sexuality and Gender in Society. "For some people, the standard of doing no harm requires that the surgeon actually perform the surgery. If they don't, ultimately the patient will undergo greater harm. But that has to be the absolute last step in a long treatment."
Wolpe calls this the "Kevorkian problem": Both Jack Kevorkian and Timothy Quill were advocates of doctor-assisted suicide, but Quill probed his patients in-depth and advocated a strong psychosocial relationship before he'd ever consider lethal measures. Kevorkian helped some patients die within 24 hours of meeting them.
"The idea of rampant autonomy ethics, where if you say you want it then what right do I have to ask you questions, is both therapeutically irresponsible and medically spurious," says Wolpe, adding that the moment a patient enlists a physician's help, that physician's moral standing becomes part of the equation. "Any doctor has a right not to perform an act they find unethical. And you don't have a right to compel them simply because you find it ethical. When you have a whole profession that finds [elective castration] problematic, you really need to examine why."
Jim, a 57-year-old eunuch castrated on a friend's kitchen table eight years ago, believes it is a gross double standard. "If a woman went in and said she wanted her ovaries removed, the doctor would say, 'We can set you up on this date and it'll cost you X amount of dollars,'" says Jim. "Male goes in and says 'I want 'em removed,' it ain't gonna happen. We're left out in no-man's-land."
Speaking as someone who performs sex reassignment surgery but has also been through the process herself, Dr. Marci Bowers of Trinidad, Colo., says most doctors lack perspective of what it's like to be on both sides of the gender divide: "Their self-esteem is so wrapped up in what goes on with their penis every day, they can't see the forest from the trees."
While Bowers has yet to castrate a non-trans male, she says she would consider it after proper psychiatric counseling. "It's very lonely to hold one of the only flags," she sighs. "But it's God's will. We have the high moral ground in what we're doing."
After the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania officially revoked his license on Feb. 22, Spector gave up his flag. He took down the Web site that had given so many disenfranchised men a glimmer of hope, mailed in his wall hangings and wallet certificate, and changed the spelling of his first and last names.
He has taken up residency in a 29-room Dickensian mansion—rumored to be one of the most haunted properties in Ohio—and spends most of his time cooking, reading medical journals and renting out rooms to thrill-seeking ghost hunters. He still hears from grateful patients now and again, but says he would just as soon put his past behind him.
During our final conversation (Spector's attorney advised him to cut off contact with City Paper after three phone interviews), he tells me he regrets nothing in his controversial career.
"I have no feeling of dread or having done any harm or any wrong," he says in a trembling, world-weary croak. "Philadelphia is full of people ready to tear you apart … [Malloy] has achieved his goal—he put me out of business."
In one sense, he's right. But what's more significant was the hearing examiner's conclusion that castrating patients with no physical or pathological condition added "insult to injury" by exacerbating pre-existing psychological problems.
Beyond the courts,
Spector's case wasn't helped by Italian filmmakers Gian Claudio Guiducci and Franco Sacchi's 2003 documentary American Eunuchs, which provided a damning look at his practice. The eunuch community was outraged by the film, and Spector refuses to discuss it.
He's sick of fighting.
Spector was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. His words are garbled in violent coughing fits; it's hard for him to get a word in edgewise. The prognosis is grim, and the doctors at the "big hospital" in Pittsburgh have thrown their hands up.
"There's not a lot of justice in this world," he laughs bitterly. "Not a lot of justice."
What is the future of elective castration with Spector out of commission?
City Paper anonymously called a dozen urology practices in the Philadelphia area to see which, if any, were willing to castrate on an elective basis. Some receptionists reacted with shock and confusion, others as if they'd fielded the question before. One nurse expressed concern that we were taking "a step in the wrong direction."
One phone call, however, garnered very different results.
It was a call placed to Dr. Murray Kimmel, a board-certified urologist with offices located at 2301 Pennsylvania Ave.
"I've made over 12,000 people happy," Kimmel told us. (Formal calls to Kimmel's office went unreturned.) "People come to me from all over the country, all over the world. I must be doing something right, right?"
According to court documentation and Spector's now-defunct Web site, Kimmel was named an "associate" shortly after Spector's license was suspended in 2002; since then, Spector has assumed the role of middleman, making referrals, answering questions and collecting down payments.
Like his predecessor, Kimmel performs the surgeries on an outpatient basis and demands no psychiatric evaluation, therapists' letters or waiting period—just $2,000 in cash or money orders. He does, however, explain the procedure in great detail, stressing its irreversibility and discussing its aftereffects.
During our phone consultation, he grills us about our personal life (Are we married or single? How old are we? Do we masturbate at work? How many times a day?) and tells us a little about his. (He once received a hand-signed thank you note from President Eisenhower for teaching sailors how to be urology techs.)
He rambles tangentially, but there is one point he doesn't want us to miss: It's not his job to decide what's best for us. If we take the final cut, it's of our own volition.
We tell him we're sold and ask how soon he might be able to squeeze us in. As it happens, someone just cancelled their appointment on Monday.
How does 10 a.m. sound?
Talula is angry. He has just read an article in the March issue of Details magazine with the following headline: "Why Would a Healthy, Normal Man Want to Slice Off His Testicles?" It wasn't the melodramatic wording or thinly veiled sarcasm that irked him so much as the opening anecdote: Would-be child molester lusts after little boys, seeks castration to end urges.
"This man is an exception rather than a rule," stresses Talula. "I do not know of one man on the Archive that would want to hurt a flea."
It's publicity like this, he says, that hurts the cause. "We need, as a eunuch community, a medical way to say 'Yes! I want to lose my testicles!' without getting sexual reassignment surgery," says Talula.
But until the medical establishment and society at large are willing to recognize another state of being—the gray area between male and female—Talula and people like him can do little more than boot up, log on and share their own horror stories. That, and hand out Kimmel's direct phone number.
"People will do it themselves if there's not an alternative," he says. "I know. I know because I did it."
The plight of modern-day eunuchs, and why they come to Philadelphia
by Ashlea Halpern
by Ashlea Halpern
He could've filled three Pepsi cans. Maybe three and a half.
That's how much blood Talula estimates he lost the first time he tried to castrate himself.
Life had hit an all-time low. Depression hung around his shoulders like a lead suit. His libido had spiraled out of control, and he was masturbating as many as five times a day.
So in June 1994, at 37 years of age, Talula made a decision. He'd had enough. They had to go. He stripped naked and sat in his tub, Betadine solution in one hand, an Xacto knife in the other. He doused his genitals with the antiseptic until they glowed amber, then slowly, carefully, slit open his scrotum.
No anesthesia. No alcohol. Nothing.
His fingers searched the bloody pulp for the olive-size testes that had caused him so much torment, but he was starting to feel faint.
In that moment, everything made sense: The times he and his best friend would curl one another's hair and put on makeup. The way he used to tuck his penis between his legs and admire his profile. How he would tie string around his testicles until they changed from red to purple to blue. The countless nights he prayed himself to sleep: "Please, God, please let me wake up a girl."
As the drain swirled with blood, he considered folding up his insides, taking a bath and climbing into bed. Instead, he gritted his teeth and sawed straight through his left testicle.
"I just wanted to see what they looked like," he recalls quietly. "But I'd dug too deep. I'd gone overboard."
With that realization, he wrapped the gory mess in a washcloth, bound it with duct tape and drove 18 miles to the nearest hospital. The medics in the emergency room treated Talula as an unknown—neither male nor female—but patched him up anyway and sent him for a psych evaluation.
After three years obsessing over the remaining testicle, Talula did it again.
This time he had help from a "certain friend" he had always hoped would finish the job. Talula handed the friend a syringe full of Xylocaine and a Burdizzo, a 19-inch tool used to castrate bulls. As its mighty jaws clamped around his scarred scrotum, the pain throbbed like poison darts pricking his every nerve.
And then … relief.
The certain friend, honored to have helped, bowed on his way out the front door of Talula's mobile home, located somewhere along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border.
And Talula, well, he was the happiest person alive.
"It was grand," he says, in between long, audible draws on a cigarette. "I felt like Atlas, not having to carry the world."
Every year, some 40,000 men are castrated in this country for oncological reasons. But in a culture where it takes balls to be a man, an emasculated male—even one doing it to save his own life—is viewed with pity and shame. Freud believed that castration was man's greatest fear; the cringing reaction most men have to the very word seems illustrative of that. The vast majority of the medical community (and the community at large) still operates within the XX-XY gender binary; it regards voluntarily castrated males, or eunuchs, as little more than quaint cultural anachronisms.
For Talula to cut off his own testicles throws a wrench in society's idea of what it means to be male—or more profoundly, what it means to be human. Yet whenever voluntary castration enters the public dialogue, it's usually in the form of hypersensational headlines on the 11 o'clock news: Sex-Crazed Pedophiliac Would-Be Rapist Cuts Off Testicles!!!
The reality is far more complex.
Only one out of seven people who fantasizes about castration ever acts on the desire, and those who do have myriad reasons: some dislike the way testosterone affects their mind and body; some feel powerless in the face of their sexual urges or long for the "eunuch calm," a meditation-like state unimpeded by carnal desire; some do it for ascetic or cosmetic reasons; some are in the process of transitioning from male to female and view it as a cost-effective step on the road to full sex reassignment surgery; and some submissives consider castration the ultimate sacrifice in a sadomasochistic relationship.
"We are real people with real reasons," says Talula. "We live next door, we're down the street, at your work. We have mortgages, credit cards, cars and grandmothers. We're just people that prefer no sex."
And people who, given the choice, would rather not take matters into their own hands.
Talula didn't want to self-castrate, but he felt he had no other option. He was afraid if he told physicians or family members, they'd lock him away forever. He could either do it himself, or not do it.
What Talula didn't realize at the time was that he had a third option awaiting, scalpel in hand, in Philadelphia—the castration capital of the United States.
TABLESIDE MANNER: Philadelphia osteopath Felix Spector has performed "thousands" of elective castrations in his half-century career.
TABLESIDE MANNER: Philadelphia osteopath Felix Spector has performed "thousands" of elective castrations in his half-century career. "People pushed me for help and it worked out quite well," he says.
For nearly 40 years, thousands of people have traveled here to have their testicles removed by Dr. Felix Spector, a retired osteopath who had offices in North and South Philly, and around the corner from the Pain Center in the Gayborhood.
Unlike most trans-health professionals, Spector didn't follow the guidelines set forth by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, the regulatory body dedicated to the treatment of gender identity disorders. He never required that patients—transitioning or otherwise—undergo psychiatric counseling, take hormones or live outwardly as women.
The way he saw it, the Harry Benjamin guidelines created too many unnecessary hoops. By the time a person saved up enough cash to pay him a visit, they knew what they wanted. Spector believed his responsibility was to give it to them, "safely, correctly and with sympathy."
No questions asked, credit cards accepted.
Spector's Web site claimed he was "a founder of the field" and possessed "arguably more experience than almost any other doctor" in the treatment of trans people and men with overactive libidos. He even wrote a handbook on it—the $25 cost of which could be deducted from the price of surgery.
When I first interviewed the 89-year-old doctor, he spoke slowly and repeatedly jumbled names and dates. It was a struggle to hear him over the all-Mozart radio program he was blasting in the background.
Spector was born in Philadelphia in 1917 and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1943. After practicing general medicine in Texas, California and West Virginia, he moved back to Philly in 1954. Three years later, under dubious circumstances, he performed his first castration on a transsexual in Casablanca.
Word spread quickly about the good doctor who would lop off a person's testicles at their discretion. Patients described Spector as polite and grandfatherly, with a timid smile and a sly sense of humor—the kind of old man who flirts with pretty waitresses and cracks eunuch jokes to guys about to be castrated.
He was known for loading patients into his red Taurus and taking them on a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia, pointing out historic sites like Independence Hall and capping off with a cheesesteak at Pat's or Jim's. After surgery, he would snap their picture with a Polaroid camera.
"Proof you lived through it," he'd tease and write their name in the white border.
Business boomed with the advent of the Internet; at the height of his practice, Spector was doing 10 castrations a month at $1,600 a pop. For an additional $1,200, he'd also remove the scrotum.
"I saw the need for it," Spector says matter-of-factly. "People pushed me for help and it worked out quite well. Never had any kind of problems."
Chris, a 51-year-old medical courier and former patient of Spector's, tells a different story. From the onset of puberty, Chris remembers feeling distinctly uncomfortable with his body. After years of garroting his testicles with rubber bands, he attempted castration with a Burdizzo. The failed effort left him mangled and more determined than ever. By June 2000, Chris had booked an appointment with Spector.
The night before surgery, Chris checked into a Center City bed and breakfast and shaved his entire scrotal region, just as Spector had instructed. In the morning, a chatty, well-fed nurse in her mid-40s greeted him upon arrival at Spector's Rodman Street home office.
"I walked in and thought, 'Oh my fucking God, what have I done?'" he remembers. "It was somebody's grimy front room with an exam table and a couple of stirrups. Papers and junk all over the place. There was nothing sterile about it."
Chris' first impulse was to turn around and go home, but he hadn't traveled this far to return with testicular baggage in tow.
He signed a consent form, paid the balance due and nodded when Spector asked him, "Do you know what you're doing? Are you ready to go? Let's do it."
The operation was done under local anesthesia, and ended quickly enough. Though Chris felt uneasy about the bandaging job, he walked the three blocks back to his hotel, rested and ate lunch. By the afternoon, he was being rushed into the E.R. at Jefferson Hospital on a blood-soaked gurney. Spector had improperly sutured a major artery and Chris was hemorrhaging internally.
The botched castration left him hospitalized for a week and required two corrective surgeries to remove blood clots and necrotic tissue.
"I was a real mess," admits Chris, who says he slipped into a "borderline psychotic" depression after the castration. "I would never want to put anybody through it. I tell the story of someone who thinks they were prepared, but wasn't. All I wanted was that aesthetic thing. I had no concept of the side effects."
Spector castrate George Mayo, an androgynous pet groomer from Maryland, also felt unprepared for the aftershock. But despite years of surprise hot flashes, he says he's never regretted his decision and doesn't believe Spector led him astray.
"Those who go to Spector already know they want it. I did my research," he says, then pauses. "Maybe I could have done more."
Still, Spector was better than the alternative.
OPEN MIND: Dr. Robert Winn, medical director at Philadelphia's Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing, says although he has never treated a eunuch patient before, he wouldn't turn one away either.
OPEN MIND: Dr. Robert Winn, medical director at Philadelphia's Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing, says although he has never treated a eunuch patient before, he wouldn't turn one away either.
When wannabe castrates could not afford Spector, they would often turn to the very place they found him: the Internet, where there exists a subculture of underground cutters willing to perform guerrilla surgeries in motel rooms, at medical fetish clubs and just over the Mexican border. Scissors, wire cutters and livestock elastrators are the main tools in a trade that sometimes uses Listerine as antiseptic and Tylenol for pain. Horror stories of desperate men blowing off their own balls with shotguns are endemic in eunuch culture, which partly explains why health professionals question their sanity. And why, in classic chicken-and-egg fashion, castrates resort to such drastic measures in the first place.
As head of the Eunuch Archive (www.eunuch.org), the Internet's largest support site for the castration-curious, Talula and other active participants try to act as a safety valve, educating visitors on the everyday realities of castration and cautioning them against street cutters.
Madison Abercrombie, a 31-year-old trans woman from rural Missouri, discovered the site too late.
Four years ago, Madison was named Michael and was newly married, working at his family's salvage yard and living the American dream. But one thing haunted him: He hated his genitals.
He tried confiding in doctors and church counselors, but they kept using words like "sick" and "perverse." And while he had heard of Spector's work, he couldn't afford the trip to Philadelphia. Random posts in a eunuch chat room eventually led him to underground cutter Jack Wayne Rogers, a Presbyterian minister and Boy Scout leader from a neighboring town.
Rogers' e-mails were short and impersonal, but Abercrombie was impressed by how well he knew the Bible. Rogers agreed to meet him at a motel room in Columbus, where, for $750, he would remove both his penis and testicles.
The surgery took seven hours and 20 minutes. Abercrombie says there were moments of pain so intense, she could feel the life bleeding out of her.
When Rogers realized the life actually was bleeding out of her, he told Abercrombie, "You can go to the hospital—just leave me out of it."
And with good reason—Abercrombie later learned that Rogers had been convicted on charges of obscenity and child pornography, and was suspected in the torture and killing of a 20-year-old man. The substandard operation left Abercrombie so grossly deformed, it took multiple surgeries to undo the damage. Three weeks ago, Abercrombie took the final step in her transition when a California doctor built her a new vagina.
"If I had not been turned away, if I'd just had some medical help setting goals of getting where I needed to be, it never would've happened," Abercrombie says shakily. "It's a cryin' shame."
After interviewing dozens of people in both the trans and eunuch communities, the consensus is clear: In his heyday, Spector was a godsend to people seeking elective castration; in his latter years, he was a danger. Because the medical community doesn't recognize castration as a legitimate treatment option for non-trans men or trans women unwilling or unable to comply with the Harry Benjamin guidelines, voluntary castrates must tolerate indiscretions.
But o
n Jan. 18, 2002, the Pennsylvania State Board of Osteopathic Medicine declared Spector an "immediate danger to the public health and safety" and suspended his license to practice medicine.
It wasn't the first time Spector had received troubling news.
In the 1940s and again in the 1960s, he was found guilty of performing then-illegal abortions. Also in the '60s, a Philadelphia judge sentenced Spector to two years' missionary work in Africa. Then in 1997, The Philadelphia Inquirer indexed his numerous problems with the law, which included falsifying pharmacy records, billing irregularities and performing a castration of "grossly inferior quality." Spector was recently named in a malpractice suit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas; he denies culpability.
Patients with postsurgical complications have come back to haunt him on several occassions, as has another familiar name: Dr. Terrence Malloy. Chief of Urology at Pennsylvania Hospital and Spector's personal urologist, Malloy provided the expert testimony that led to Spector's 2002 suspension.
During regular checkups, Malloy says Spector would ply him for surgical techniques and treatment advice.
"He had the brass ones to say one time, 'Can I come and watch you do an orchiectomy?'" recalls Malloy, who denied Spector's requests for what he calls a "totally repugnant" surgery. "It's just common sense—a 35-year-old guy does not want his testicles taken off. That's the height of an abnormal psyche."
Spector says he's only under attack because he provided a "nontraditional service" in a profession whose values "were engendered during the Victorian era."
Malloy calls Spector a "quack" and a "butcher," and likens his methodology to assisted suicide: "This was not done for any lofty goal—it was done for money. It's the worst type of victimization [that] preys on the most vulnerable people in the American public."
Beyond ethical queries, the State Board suspension cited two lapses in Spector's malpractice coverage and stated that he was untrained, unqualified and unequipped to be castrating anyone. As an osteopath, Spector was licensed to perform surgery, but he was also obligated to explain its risks and alternatives to the patient. And while he admits to having no formal urological training, Spector says the standards of the American Board of Urology and the American College of Surgeons didn't exist when he first began his practice.
A State Board attorney who asked to remain anonymous offered this hypothetical situation: "Say you were having chest pains and you go to a surgeon. If he says, 'Let's cut you open and do a bypass,' and doesn't check for angina or try medication first, it's not that he did a bypass—it's that he didn't do all the things he's supposed to do to make sure you were a candidate for it."
Spector never had patients professionally screened for psychological disturbances or suggested they explore a short-term course of chemical castration, which is at least reversible. Sometimes he would tell them to think the operation over and call him back later. Sometimes he wouldn't.
STREET LIFE: Madison Abercrombie's genitals were butchered by an underground cutter four years ago.
STREET LIFE: Madison Abercrombie's genitals were butchered by an underground cutter four years ago. "If I'd just had some medical help setting goals of where I needed to be, it never would've happened," she says.
Can a physician be expected to follow standard protocol for a taboo surgery when there are no clear precedents, reliable data, peer-reviewed medical literature, textbooks or medical experts willing to discuss it?
"Look, all I can say is you can't treat a patient if what they want is crazy," says the attorney. "Accepted practice means knowing when to tell your patient that what they want is wrong."
Dr. Sherman Leis, founder of the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery and one of the country's leading plastic surgeons for trans health care, echoes the attorney's sentiment. Leis follows the Harry Benjamin guidelines on a case-by-case basis, but says he'd never do a surgery that wasn't medically indicated. In fact, he finds the idea abominable.
"There are a lot of sick, psychotic people out there," says Leis of non-trans men seeking castration. "A legitimate doctor doesn't operate on somebody who is psychotic. That's incompetent medicine."
Chico State University anthropologist Tom Johnson and Dalhousie University anatomist and neurobiologist Dr. Richard Wassersug disagree that all voluntary castrates are necessarily psychotic. They've spent years studying and surveying members of the Eunuch Archive and researching the realities of androgen deprivation. Together, they're pioneering the sort of research that will ultimately be reviewed by peers, printed in medical journals, taught in classrooms and discussed openly between doctors and patients.
That's their hope, anyway.
"You still have doctors recycling prejudices from the Roman Empire, without looking at the very real eunuchs around them," says Johnson. "It's a human propensity to try to put everything into pigeonholes—this or that, either/or—without any consideration of the gradations between. There are not two sexes; there are probably 50."
Gary Taylor, Shakespearean scholar and author of Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood, concurs; he says eunuchs provide a blueprint for the first post-human. "We're entering a time when the possibilities of genetic engineering mean the potential for changing what it means to be human," says Taylor. "But not everybody is going to accept the implications of our capacity to alter human beings. That's the great philosophical and political problem of our future."
Until that day comes, people eke through the system whatever way they can.
Social workers at Philadelphia's Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing have taken a harm-reduction approach, providing patients with nonjudgmental counseling and informational resources.
"We should be able to recognize the need and push for better treatments. Eunuch, gay, trans—doesn't matter," says Mazzoni medical director Dr. Robert Winn. "There should be no backroom abortions."
Sue Collins, Mazzoni's trans patient coordinator, started presenting as a woman three months ago and empathizes with the eunuchs' struggle.
"Everybody says this is the act of a freak, a demon," she says. "So all my life I tried to fight this demon inside me. Then I realized the real demon was society trying to tell me who I am."
When Collins came out as a woman, all but one of her old friends turned their backs. Her ex-wife cut off communication, as have two of their three children. "It's such a tragedy," she says. "Nobody wants this. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, 'Yeah, when I grow up, I want to cut my balls off.' We just want our bodies to fit with our minds and our souls. That's all we want."
Whether it is abortion, alternative cancer treatments, euthanasia or castration, society must decide where a patient's right to demand an elective procedure ends and where a physician's right to provide ethically acceptable treatment begins. Although many doctors refuse to remove healthy tissue because they view it as a violation of the Hippocratic imperative to do no harm, proponents of elective castration say it's no different than removing extra nose cartilage, unbecoming cellulite or excess skin on a baby's penis.
Furthermore, they say, physicians have a responsibility to prevent imminent or foreseeable harm. Could it not be argued that rendering a patient's concerns crazy or invalid does the patient greater harm in the end?
"That is the ultimate question," says Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Sexuality and Gender in Society. "For some people, the standard of doing no harm requires that the surgeon actually perform the surgery. If they don't, ultimately the patient will undergo greater harm. But that has to be the absolute last step in a long treatment."
Wolpe calls this the "Kevorkian problem": Both Jack Kevorkian and Timothy Quill were advocates of doctor-assisted suicide, but Quill probed his patients in-depth and advocated a strong psychosocial relationship before he'd ever consider lethal measures. Kevorkian helped some patients die within 24 hours of meeting them.
"The idea of rampant autonomy ethics, where if you say you want it then what right do I have to ask you questions, is both therapeutically irresponsible and medically spurious," says Wolpe, adding that the moment a patient enlists a physician's help, that physician's moral standing becomes part of the equation. "Any doctor has a right not to perform an act they find unethical. And you don't have a right to compel them simply because you find it ethical. When you have a whole profession that finds [elective castration] problematic, you really need to examine why."
Jim, a 57-year-old eunuch castrated on a friend's kitchen table eight years ago, believes it is a gross double standard. "If a woman went in and said she wanted her ovaries removed, the doctor would say, 'We can set you up on this date and it'll cost you X amount of dollars,'" says Jim. "Male goes in and says 'I want 'em removed,' it ain't gonna happen. We're left out in no-man's-land."
Speaking as someone who performs sex reassignment surgery but has also been through the process herself, Dr. Marci Bowers of Trinidad, Colo., says most doctors lack perspective of what it's like to be on both sides of the gender divide: "Their self-esteem is so wrapped up in what goes on with their penis every day, they can't see the forest from the trees."
While Bowers has yet to castrate a non-trans male, she says she would consider it after proper psychiatric counseling. "It's very lonely to hold one of the only flags," she sighs. "But it's God's will. We have the high moral ground in what we're doing."
After the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania officially revoked his license on Feb. 22, Spector gave up his flag. He took down the Web site that had given so many disenfranchised men a glimmer of hope, mailed in his wall hangings and wallet certificate, and changed the spelling of his first and last names.
He has taken up residency in a 29-room Dickensian mansion—rumored to be one of the most haunted properties in Ohio—and spends most of his time cooking, reading medical journals and renting out rooms to thrill-seeking ghost hunters. He still hears from grateful patients now and again, but says he would just as soon put his past behind him.
During our final conversation (Spector's attorney advised him to cut off contact with City Paper after three phone interviews), he tells me he regrets nothing in his controversial career.
"I have no feeling of dread or having done any harm or any wrong," he says in a trembling, world-weary croak. "Philadelphia is full of people ready to tear you apart … [Malloy] has achieved his goal—he put me out of business."
In one sense, he's right. But what's more significant was the hearing examiner's conclusion that castrating patients with no physical or pathological condition added "insult to injury" by exacerbating pre-existing psychological problems.
Beyond the courts,
Spector's case wasn't helped by Italian filmmakers Gian Claudio Guiducci and Franco Sacchi's 2003 documentary American Eunuchs, which provided a damning look at his practice. The eunuch community was outraged by the film, and Spector refuses to discuss it.
He's sick of fighting.
Spector was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. His words are garbled in violent coughing fits; it's hard for him to get a word in edgewise. The prognosis is grim, and the doctors at the "big hospital" in Pittsburgh have thrown their hands up.
"There's not a lot of justice in this world," he laughs bitterly. "Not a lot of justice."
What is the future of elective castration with Spector out of commission?
City Paper anonymously called a dozen urology practices in the Philadelphia area to see which, if any, were willing to castrate on an elective basis. Some receptionists reacted with shock and confusion, others as if they'd fielded the question before. One nurse expressed concern that we were taking "a step in the wrong direction."
One phone call, however, garnered very different results.
It was a call placed to Dr. Murray Kimmel, a board-certified urologist with offices located at 2301 Pennsylvania Ave.
"I've made over 12,000 people happy," Kimmel told us. (Formal calls to Kimmel's office went unreturned.) "People come to me from all over the country, all over the world. I must be doing something right, right?"
According to court documentation and Spector's now-defunct Web site, Kimmel was named an "associate" shortly after Spector's license was suspended in 2002; since then, Spector has assumed the role of middleman, making referrals, answering questions and collecting down payments.
Like his predecessor, Kimmel performs the surgeries on an outpatient basis and demands no psychiatric evaluation, therapists' letters or waiting period—just $2,000 in cash or money orders. He does, however, explain the procedure in great detail, stressing its irreversibility and discussing its aftereffects.
During our phone consultation, he grills us about our personal life (Are we married or single? How old are we? Do we masturbate at work? How many times a day?) and tells us a little about his. (He once received a hand-signed thank you note from President Eisenhower for teaching sailors how to be urology techs.)
He rambles tangentially, but there is one point he doesn't want us to miss: It's not his job to decide what's best for us. If we take the final cut, it's of our own volition.
We tell him we're sold and ask how soon he might be able to squeeze us in. As it happens, someone just cancelled their appointment on Monday.
How does 10 a.m. sound?
Talula is angry. He has just read an article in the March issue of Details magazine with the following headline: "Why Would a Healthy, Normal Man Want to Slice Off His Testicles?" It wasn't the melodramatic wording or thinly veiled sarcasm that irked him so much as the opening anecdote: Would-be child molester lusts after little boys, seeks castration to end urges.
"This man is an exception rather than a rule," stresses Talula. "I do not know of one man on the Archive that would want to hurt a flea."
It's publicity like this, he says, that hurts the cause. "We need, as a eunuch community, a medical way to say 'Yes! I want to lose my testicles!' without getting sexual reassignment surgery," says Talula.
But until the medical establishment and society at large are willing to recognize another state of being—the gray area between male and female—Talula and people like him can do little more than boot up, log on and share their own horror stories. That, and hand out Kimmel's direct phone number.
"People will do it themselves if there's not an alternative," he says. "I know. I know because I did it."
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@}-}rebecca----
not enough discipline ...
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Posts
- 13,063
Thank you for your comments Eb Ma'am , they're appreciated . Not that I ever expect to have either that kind of influence or responsibility , I might have to imagine with little doubt my response would be in same. I personally could not entertain asking anyone to make a permanent modification to their body as a tribute or otherwise.Ebonyfire said:
I might add that the article reminded me of the potential horrors of backyard abortions . I have no desire to get into ethical or moral debates on either topic but I do endorse safer medical options for when people find themselves faced with such significant dilemma.
neonflux
Out and about...
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- Nov 15, 2005
- Posts
- 4,233
I once stumbled into the castration section of BME Zine (I don't have a membership so am not sure how I managed to access that portion of the site). It also included photos of men who had, for instance, split their penises in two. I will not judge another's desires, and the first person in the article seems to have been transgendered. That said, it took me a very long time to put those photos to the back of my mind. I also shuddered to think of long term hard (for instance with urination) that some of those folks might have done themselves. In addition, I cannot imagine the number of people who later regret such a decision after performing such an operation on themselves. ~ Neon
Shankara20
Well, that is lovely
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2005
- Posts
- 58,546
The river of testosterone can be a like a class V rapids for some of us at times.
There was a time many years ago I stood in my kitchen looking at my knives wondering "would it help if I ......."
There was a time many years ago I stood in my kitchen looking at my knives wondering "would it help if I ......."
