Daily Dose of Queer reader Spinster posted the below update in the comments section of “NYC Community Board 2 Meets Tomorrow to Consider Christopher Street Pier’s Curfew.”

CB2 passed this resolution, a program with a trial period until 6/30:
Pier 45 to remain open til 1 AM.
Bathrooms and food vendors will be available until 1 AM.
FIERCE will create teams to patrol Christopher St. to discourage noise making and engage in ’self policing”
Hudson River Park Trust, CB2, local electeds, and FIERCE will work with service providers to build upon informal network of peer ed and outreach workers who already work at Pier 45. Various mobile social service and health providers for queer youth will be allowed to park and provide services near Pier 45.
Pier 45 Task Force will be created, and will include CB2, local elected officials, Boro Pres., 6th pct. of NYPD, and LGBT youth service providers to monitor the above program, make necessary modifications, and make a rec of whether and how this program (including 1 AM closing) should continue or be modified after 6/30

1 Am curfew is on a test run til 6/30. A community advisory panel (the Task Force mentioned above) which includes members of FIERCE get to review, monitor, and make decisions about whether to extend the curfew or make any changes after 6/30. This is a victory for FIERCE.

Thanks for the update, Spinster!

Jay Sennett is hosting the next edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions on April 10th. Submissions are due by 12:01AM on April 2nd.

Also, Jen, the host of the current edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions, will be hosting the Blawg Review, “the blog carnival for everyone interested in law,” on November 20, 2006, Transgender Day of Remembrance!

So get your submissions for the next edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions in soon, and don’t forget to submit to Jen’s Blawg Review in November!

Melissa Sklarz, a transgender activist, says in “Gay and Loud” in this week’s Village Voice that the battle over a curfew for the Christopher Street pier “has turned into a full-fledged culture war.” While FIERCE!, a gay-youth group, is pushing for a 4AM curfew for the Christopher Street pier, which many queer teens call their own, many Greenwich Village residents would like to see the pier shut down as early as 11:30PM, hoping the change from the current 1AM closing time would tone the neighborhood down some.

People seeking a resolution to this in-tractable turf war have found themselves caught in the middle, attacked by both sides. Supportive gestures have backfired. Arthur Schwartz, of Community Board 2’s waterfront committee, which has held the hearings, tried to encourage the neighborhood to confront the apparent racial dynamics. “It’s important for everyone to deal with the fact that the kids out there on the pier are largely black and Hispanic,” he says. That means they have a different relationship to the area’s white residents than white gay kids would, he notes, as well as a different need for safe queer space.

On March 6, Schwartz drafted a resolution calling for a midnight curfew. In the text, he noted that the “rowdyism” was coming from crowds of “mostly” gay youth of “African American and Hispanic origin.” FIERCE! immediately tagged him with the label of racist. Schwartz, a civil rights lawyer for 30 years, says he was only trying to help the kids.

Likewise, Sklarz, the activist who formerly headed the board’s gay committee, has defended the teens’ claim to gather on the Christopher Street pier. But when she pleaded with FIERCE! members to recognize that the West Village was gentrifying and becoming a haven for young families, too, she got booed. “It’s nasty, and feelings are hurt, and the effort to find a solution is rejected,” says Sklarz, who resigned from the board earlier this month.

Community board members thought they’d ironed out a compromise with the March 6 proposal. The plan included keeping the nearby Pier 54, in the meatpacking district, open until 2 a.m. Village residents would get their early curfew; gay teens, their safe space. But some 200 FIERCE! members at the meeting rejected the proposal, seeing it as a move to get them out of the West Village. Without buy-in from the kids, the waterfront subcommittee wouldn’t recommend the measure.

I don’t think Nathanael Blake is very happy about Oregon State University’s admission forms becoming more gender inclusive.

And how sad that he feels the director of the OSU student government’s Queer Affairs Task Force would have him hauled away if he told her he felt like an eggplant trapped in a man’s body. I would certainly call him Eggplant if he wanted me to.

I came across this 2002 SFGate.com article after I published my last post. Here’s a quote (emphasis mine) from Daisy Bernal, one of Gwen’s friends, which I’m sure is similar to many others out there that Lifetime may have based the title of their movie on:

“People just didn’t like him,” she said. “She gets mad when I used to call her Eddie. She would be like, ‘Shut Up. Don’t call me that.’ After I called her that, she just said, ‘I’m a girl, I’m just a girl trapped in a guy’s body. God made me like that.”‘

Just a Girl, a Lifetime movie in the works, is based on the story of Gwen Araujo, a trans teen murdered in 2002, and her mother, Sylvia Guerrero.

Just a Girl will star Mercedes Ruehl as a single mother whose teenage son decides to live as a girl and is then murdered. Gloria Allred, the well known civil-rights attorney, will co-executive produce.

The movie is based on the true story of Sylvia Guerrero and her son, Eddie, who begins dressing as a girl named “Gwen,” (he chooses the name because he idolizes the singer Gwen Stefani). After a group of boys murdered Gwen at a party, Guerrero crusaded for equal rights for transgender people. Allred represented Guerrero at the murder trial.

Lifetime will develop a public-service announcement with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to run with the movie.

ETA: J.D. Pardo will play Gwen in Just a Girl, which is scheduled to air on June 19.

Homo A Go Go takes place August 1-6, 2006 in Olympia, WA.

Homo A Go Go is one of the programs of the 501(c)3 non-profit organization, Queer Arts in Action. Homo A Go Go is a biennial queer music, art, film, spoken word and radical activism festival. The festival was founded in 2002 by Ed Varga, an FTM, musician, and community organizer. Homo a Go Go seeks to continue the tradition of other independent Olympia arts festivals including Ladyfest, Yoyo a Go Go and the International Pop Underground Convention by providing a venue for underground, DIY and independent artists.

Every two years artists, musicians, writers, activists and festival goers come to Olympia from all over the world to create our own cultural landscape and community. The community we hope to create overlaps with, yet exists outside of the mainstream queer community and the independent music/arts community. We hope to encourage anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist and anti-ableist ideals while providing a venue for non-mainstream queer culture.

Proceeds from Homo a Go Go benefit the Olympia based Gender Variant Health Project (GVHP). The GVHP is an Olympia based non-profit organization devoted to health issues and healthcare needs of those of us whose gender identity differs from the gender assigned to us based on our biological sex. The GVHP offers educational programs and forums for healthcare professionals, as well as, referral services for gender variant individuals.

Go here for more information.

I previously posted about Lesley Stahl’s 60 Minutes report “The Science of Sexual Orientation” here, and posted contact info for the show here.

Yesterday Southern Voice published “‘60 Minutes’ and the ‘Queen Gene’” by Wayne Besen, the author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals & Lies Behind the ‘Ex-Gay’ Myth.”

GAY MEN ARE limp-wristed and may have a “Queen Gene,” according to a controversial segment on last week’s “60 Minutes” called, “The Science of Sexual Orientation.”

The legendary CBS newsmagazine suggested in the report by Leslie Stahl that gay men are prissy and prance and wear lavender pants while they lisp and dance. Which can certainly be true, in some cases, but is this just crass stereotyping masquerading as science?

Bay Area Reporter:

San Francisco Transgender Empowerment, Advocacy, and Mentorship will hold its second annual transgender job fair Wednesday, March 22 at the LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street, from 1 to 4 p.m. The event, co-sponsored by the center, will allow transgender job seekers to meet with prospective employers.

Last year’s inaugural event drew approximately 200 job seekers, said Maya Moore, economic development associate for the center. This year, a number of employers are expected to participate, including the California State Automobile Association, Walden House, Good Vibrations, Bank of America, American Express, and several city departments, including the Police Department.

There is no cost for job seekers and employer booth registration is free. Businesses interested in having a booth should contact Moore at (415) 865-5530 or visit www.sfcenter.org for more information.

Rosa, a trans woman who has been living in men’s prisons for the past eight years, tells us, in Tali Woodward’s “Life in hell” in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, “At one time I was raped by five individuals.”

The way the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) sees it, Rosa has a penis, and that makes her a man. Never mind that she hasn’t seen herself as male for decades, or that she’s been taking feminizing hormones since her 16th birthday. Rosa, who is serving 15-to-life for stabbing a man she says was trying to kill her, was never able to afford sex-reassignment surgery. The one time she came close to saving enough money, she spent it helping her sister set up a fruit stand in Mexico. So the prison system put her in with the men.

Rosa, 37, isn’t just out of place: In the hierarchical and hypermasculine world of a men’s prison, she’s the ultimate target. She’s been insulted, degraded, and smacked around countless times. If another inmate is feeling feisty, he’s likely to take it out on her. And if it’s sex someone is craving, there are more than a few reasons he’d look to Rosa to satisfy his desires.

Read more of “Life in hell” here. And check out Denise’s post on this article at Life, Law, Gender.