This permanent post is an open forum for any input from members or the general public but please try to stay on topic.

It will be moderated by our Web Mistresses to insure good taste and conformance with the rules of the E-List.

Note:

The opinions expressed in this BLOG are those of the individual.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinions, procedures or policies of GF.

As such they are subject to approval, disapproval or editing at the discretion of our Web Mistresses.

You Must a provide a Valid e-mail address  ( it will be checked but not published ) or  your comment will be discarded.

Should your e-mail fail validation you will be placed on moderation and not permitted to add comments until you contact the administrators.

Misuse of this blog will result in permanent banishment from this web site!

Just add a comment !

Scouts Canada dealt with the issue of women and girls participating in the traditionally-male organization years ago. Since 1998, women and girls have been allowed to join and participate in Scouts Canada since 1998.

However, amid the many changes that Guiding has experienced over the past couple of decades, the issue of admitting men or boys to the Girl Guides of Canada has remained firmly and uniformly suppressed as unthinkable. Now, there is a new dimension to the ‘male membership’ question: how to deal with transgender people of all ages seeking membership, as Guides and Guide Leaders.

A thoughtful article on the is currently online (published January 26, 2012) at Yahoo’s Daily Brew national affairs blog (posted at least temporarily at: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/girl-guides-canada-tackles-transgender-membership-wake-u-204454200.html).

Against the day that Yahoo! inevitably delists the article from its system, I offer the text below with all due credit and respect to Yahoo! and the Author, so that visitors to this Web site will be able to read it in perpetuity.

***

It’s not an issue for Scouts Canada, which has admitted male and female youth since 1998. But Girl Guides of Canada now finds itself wrestling with whether to allow children who identify themselves as girls but are anatomically boys into the organization.

“Our board is seeking advice from medical and law professionals, and will deal with requests on a case-by-case basis,” Deborah Del Duca, chief executive of Girl Guides of Canada, told the Toronto Sun.

“Girl Guides of Canada strives to ensure environments where girls and women from all walks of life, identities and lived experiences feel a sense of belonging and can fully participate.”

The Guides, a volunteer organization whose stated mission is to enable “girls to be confident, resourceful and courageous, and to make a difference in the world,” said it was asked recently to consider allowing transgender kids to join.

It’s not clear whether that means a transgender child has applied to become a Girl Guide, but the issue has certainly been on the group’s radar since a controversy erupted in the United States over the admission of a seven-year-old Colorado child.

Bobby Montoya, whose mother said he has identified as a girl for some time, was initially rejected by the local troop leader of the Girl Scouts, as the organization is called in the U.S., because he had “boy parts,” according to the New York Daily News.

But the Girl Scouts’ Colorado chapter reviewed the troop leader’s decision and admitted Montoya under its policy to include transgendered children.

“If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout,” the chapter said in a statement.

Bobby Montoya never did enroll in the troop but the Colorado Girl Scouts’ decision created a backlash elsewhere.

Leaders of three troops, all affiliated with a Louisiana Christian school, quit the organization and disbanded their troops in protest, according to the Christian Post.

Guiding began in 1909 when a large number of girls showed up to a scouting rally hosted by the movement’s founder, Lord Baden-Powell, a Boer War hero. His sister Agnes, and later his wife Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, fostered the new organization, which reached Canada in 1910.

***

The foregoing Daily Brew column reflects the opinions of the author, Steve Merkl, but not necessarily those of Ottawa’s Gender Freedom.

Well…  After scoring this major victory, Kelly Anna felt on top of the world. However, nature was about to deal Kelly a major blow.

I don’t know if it was Karma, Fate, or overwork and worry, but she soon found her self in hospital with a heart attack.

I care about all of us and I tried to go see Kelly. After an hour and a half on the buses, I reached the hospital and found Kelly’s room, but she was not there. She was out on a day pass. Fate, perhaps? As it turned out, I suspect that she probably would not have enjoyed seeing me.

Kelly recovered. To what extent, I do not know, as she will no longer even accept my e-mails.

Then, as her last-gasp effort – to help her feel better about what she had done before being tossed out of the presidency? – she revoked my Life Membership. This is a clear violation of the Gender Mosaic bylaws, as spelled out in Bylaw Article 19, proudly posted on the GM Web site.

Now…  If all this was not enough damage done, there was a falling out between the new Executive and the departing one.

Kelly felt hurt, and in a further act of retribution, she denied the group the use of the domain name ‘gendermosiac.ca’. However, the new regime had already registered .com, .net, and .org. This fit the needs and mandate of the new Amanda Ryan/Sophia Cassivi executive, as they do not want only a support group, but also a captive audience and power base for their profit-making Gal’s Spring Fling company.

This sort of illegal activity is not new to Amanda/Sophia they have been doing it for years!

“Spring Fling” is the Registered Trade Mark of “Rogers Stadium Limited Partnership”, You may remember them as the Toronto Sky Dome (Blue Jays) . 

I have, as a good Corporate citizen notified there trade mark lawyer and have  been informed, it will brought to the attention of the board of directors for action. 

With “Rogers” Good Luck you will need it, have you ever been late on your cable bill ?

It is my understanding the Amanda/Sophia regime is now planning to incorporate Gender Mosaic as the group gradually moves further and further from friends, help, and support for all involved toward being a commercial enterprise for the benefit of a select few.

I wonder how the GM membership feels about this apparently inevitable evolution?

Fortunately, there is still, and always will be, Gender Freedom as a preserve of sisterhood and support for trans people in the National Capital region.

(((Hugs)))

~ Judy Kearns

Webmistress
Genderfreedom.me

Founder
Gendermosaic
Genderfreedom

There has been a lot in the press recently about bulling and I will start this post by stealing a bit of background from a former post on this topic.

Although there is still a scientific debate on the nature and definition of bullying, most researchers understand this behavior as aggression characterized by:

1. causing intentional harm,
2. repetition, and
3. an imbalance of power between the bully and the victim.

Bullies appear to derive satisfaction from inflicting injury and suffering on others, seem to have little empathy for their victims, and often defend their actions by saying that their victims provoked them in some way.

Bullies often come from homes in which physical punishment is used, where striking out physically is seen as a way to handle problems and where friendships and warmth are frequently lacking. Sociologists agree that children who have been bullied tend to become bullies themselves. Researchers also agree that all bullies share two key personality characteristics: Low self esteem and profound insecurity.

Boys and girls bully differently but it is still about power and control.

Boys will beat you up and feel they have won because you’re the one with the black eye and bleeding nose. But they have won nothing. The victory is shallow and exists only in their minds.

Girls, on the other hand, tend to choose rumors, criticism and ostracism as methods of bulling. In its own way, this kind of ‘psychological warfare’ can be more damaging and harder to combat than the simple physical abuse traditionally preferred by boys.

Bystanders also play a role in bullying:

• The enforcers join in and assist the bully.
• The re-enforcers encourage the bully by observing and laughing.
• The outsiders avoid the bullying by staying away and not getting involved for fear of losing social status or being bullied as well.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of bullying is that it doesn’t end with childhood. Childhood bullies often become adult bullies. Their methods become more subtle but their basic behavior patterns remain the same.

We have recently been hearing a lot about adult bullying in newspaper and magazine articles addressing office bullying and, in particular, ‘the bully boss’. The bully boss’s leadership style is usually described as ‘my way or the highway’ and he or she almost always surrounds him/herself with multiple enforcers and re-enforcers.

The bully boss is also characterized by a top-down management style. She/he consults the employees under her/his authority only to inform them of decisions already made at the executive level; never to seek their guidance or opinions. If the employees choose to remain ‘outsiders’ and simply ‘go with the flow’, the bully boss is successful in maintaining his/her position of power and control. If, however, any employee dares to question the bully boss’s policies or actions, the employee can expect to face the boss’s retribution. Retribution may come in the form of reprimands, threats and (in extreme cases) material punishments such as demotions or suspensions.

The bully boss can also – and all too often does – appear in the leadership of service clubs, volunteer-based groups and other non-commercial organizations. Almost invariably, the bully boss, as President of the club, surrounds him/herself with enforcers and re-enforcers and alienates any non-outsiders – anyone who disagrees with their top-down policies and poses a threat to their power and control.

So it was with Gender Mosaic.

After getting rid of the Secretary and Media Relations Officer, who threatened her power and control, Kelly Ann felt invincible and set her sights higher – on removing the Webmistress and Founder.

I wonder there the idea come from to phony a mail breach, and release it to the private e-mail list and implicate the Founder in this event.

No proof was ever forthcoming that there had been any mail system breach in the Gender Mosaic online system, as alleged by Kelly Ann and her regime – the pretext on which the Webmistress/Founder was fired.

This brings us to the 1st vice president, Rachael. She holds a very special place in my life as she is only the fourth person that I have ever disliked on sight in my life – even before I had talked to her.

My assessment of the previous three proved to be right on the money, and my Spidey sense on the fourth one quickly proved accurate, as well.

She was, I believe the instigator of the insidious plot to remove the group’s Founder and shares the discommodation of the former executive.

More to come.

(((Hugs)))

~ Judy Kearns

Webmistress
Genderfreedom.me

Founder
Gendermosaic
Genderfreedom

To fully understand what’s going on here, we are going to have to go back to where the rot started in the oldest trans support group in Canada. So, we will turn the clock back a bit, to 2008.

At that time, I was approached by the then 2nd Vice President, Kelly Ann. She came to my home and asked me if I would be the 1st Key Note Speaker at Gender Mosaic’s 20th anniversary.

After some discussion I agreed and a short time later I found my self on stage in front of 100 members and friends at the Ottawa City Hall.

There on stage with the 2nd Key Note Speaker the then retired Deputy Chief of Police Larry Hill and, finally, Dr. Norman Barwin, I was pleased to have returned to the group I started so long ago, and in such good company.

A short time latter, 2nd Vice President Kelly Ann came to see me again. This time, she had a rather unusual request. She wanted me to help her overthrow the current Executive and help her take over the group.

Kelly told me she didn’t like transsexuals and the fact that the current executive was a mostly transsexual she wanted to crush it.

She had with her a 4-page letter, berating and badgering the current executive signed only: “Anonymous”.

She asked if I would publish it to the group’s private e-mail list as any other member would be severely sanctioned for such an open post, and there was little they could do to me, as the founder. (Note this for further reference).

I struggled with this for a number of days. What had the group mutated into?

It was, when I started it a support group of friends. But now, it seemed to be more like the gangsters of the 1950 making “hits”.

After a few days, pushing back from Kelly Ann and engaging in some deep thought, I agreed, and published it.

The results where immediate

The members all raised their voices, and the then-president Beth had her hands full with questions.

She even took a verbal swat at me on the Christmas party issue.

The results where as predicted: The President, 1st Vice President , 2nd and Webmisstress stepped down.

This propelled Kelly Ann to President with carte blanche to put in her own 1st and 2nd Vice Presidents, and Secretary.

She made me Webmistress and things ran well for a while. But but that soon changed.

Kelly Ann begin badgering her hand-picked secretary, and pressed her to step down. She left the group.

Next she went after the group’s Media Relations Officer, and, with the help of her enforcers and re-enforcers, drove her off as well, despite my protests.

By this time, it had become clear that the position had gone to Kelly Ann’s head, and no one could dare question the executive.

This is getting long for a single post, so I will end it here, for now, but there will be more, as all the dark truths about the GM Executive become apparent.

~ Judy Kearns

Webmistress
Genderfreedom.me

Founder
Gendermosaic
Genderfreedom