Gay dudes in metal bands are no longer unheard of. Rob Halford from Judas Priest, Gaahl from black-metal legends Gorgoroth. It’s whatever. Some metal fans throw tantrums over the news, but most take it in stride. They just want the music to shred their ears.
But for a metal rocker to come out as trans? That’s sort of new. So cheers to Brooklyn-based Life of Agony singer Keith Caputo, who’s taken to Twitter to announce her official status as an MtF transperson. Caputo is coming out swinging at anybody who doesn’t like it, and sharing the fact that she’ll be keeping her penis, thank you very much, in spite of some news reports to the contrary. Best quote: “The press should do proper research before talkin jizz!”
Very metal of her.
Video via jesus_lizard
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Ian
So Caputo doesn’t intend to transition? She’s not transsexual then. Maybe transgender, but I really don’t see the point of calling yourself that when nothing has changed.
chrissie riot
@Ian: Genitalia doesn’t define gender identity.
Ian
@chrissie riot: I know a lot about trans issues since I looked into it and considered it for a few years, but I didn’t read Caputo’s twitter before commenting. It seems she’s transitioning (hormones, presenting, etc.) but won’t get vaginoplasty.
Dieks
Oh!!! How edgy and queer… a “lesbian” w/a dick that spits.
ROCK AND ROLL KEITH!!!
Jezzuz. Why can’t “rockers” just do drugs anymore?
Cecilot
I completely understand why she might forego a vaginoplasty. Surgery comes with so many risks and complications, plus the idea of being put under and being paralyzed but not completely out is frightening.
Ian, there are many transsexuals who choose not to go forth with bottom surgery, and regardless of whether or not we do, we are still transsexual. Sometimes we decide that we would rather live and grab onto whatever changes we can have in lieu of going under the knife and risking our lives even more than we already are just by being out.
Ian
@Cecilot: I don’t know, there are many, many ftm transsexuals who yearn for bottom surgery to even be a possibility. It’s only possible right now for mtf’s. I think mtf’s who don’t get it give transsexuals a bad name… you know, they provide fodder for bigots who say they’re perverts.
Jeffree
@Ian: Not everyone can affôrd* surgeries (facial, top, bottom); and some people aren’t good candidates due to other health issues.
Judging a person solely based on their surgical status is forgetting those realities.
*they’re very rarely covered under insurançe, as you probably aware.
beerwad
@Ian: It IS a possibility for FTM’s (a crappy possibility, but a possibility nonetheless), and yet still many choose not to have bottom surgery for various reasons. It’s everybody’s individual choice whether to have surgery or not, and it doesn’t give transsexuals a “bad name” if someone chooses not to (or can’t afford) surgery. If someone is ignorant enough to think they’re perverts, they’re gonna think that no matter what.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
Uh I beg to differ ! HBS Transsexuals suffering from GID absolutely want GRS in fact they are driven like a run away train towards it. And while it’s true that some can’t have surgery because of medical conditions they should still desire it and anyone who doesn’t ISN’T a transsexual but is transgender. Thats according to the Dr Harry Benjamin the doctor who discovered GID and developed the SOC, his scale One of the determining factors for who is a transsexual or not is ones desire for surgery. I’m sick of the Transgender Machine trying to put forth mis-information and they’re continually co-oping of the Transsexual Identity. According to Dr Benjamin you aren’t a transsexual if you have NO desire for surgery according to his scale you’re a Transvestite.
Jaime Renee
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: You have a walk in closet converted over to a shrine to him, don’t you? Hate to tell you this, but one man is not the ultimate authority on transsexualism. He laid some groundwork, but I doubt even he would have said that it was THE quide to diagnosis and treatment. You, my dear, are simply a special kind of crazy.
chrissie riot
I just got confused. I thought transvestites are cross dressers? Also what in the world is the Transgender Machine?
Ian
@chrissie riot: Indeed, transvestites are cross dressers. They don’t a gender identity conflict, even though some people who do end up cross dressing.
Jaime Renee
@chrissie riot: To her, if you either aren’t feeling the need for bottom surgery or aren’t willing to kill your mother for the money to afford it, then you’re just a crossdresser or “tranny” as she often calls transgender people.
Jeffree
@Jaime Renée: It’s not a walk in closet she has, it’s a whole trailer so she can take it on the road with her, to spread the HBS true believer gôspel to the unwashed, unloved, uncoverted heathens!!
Jaime Renee
@Ian: I imagine most all cross dressers end up cross dressing at some point, lol. Or do you mean transitioning? And I’ve met mildly dysphoric cross dressers before that found some relief in just dressing, they didn’t even care to engage in fetishistic behaviors, so I wouldn’t call all cross dressers transvestites.
Ian
@Jeffree: I think we’re being a little flippant about this. I mean, Caputo hasn’t even finished transitioning and she’s talking about her discrimination. She also seems to expect a punishment for whoever trans-bashed her (on her twitter) I think she’s unrealistic.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@chrissie riot: Transvestites are cross dressers they just a different kind of cross dresser in that they get sexually excitement from dressing in women’s clothes. A transgender is a cross dresser who’s become so engulfed in their own fantasy that they convince themselves that they are really meant to be a women or at least part female in that they can’t bear to part with their manhood,so they won’t have gender reassignment surgery. They start all on their own and without the care of a therapist or counselor nor Doctor taking internet hormones and getting a variety of plastic surgeries to mold themselves into the fantasy image in they’re heads. Then they demand society accept them and give them equal rights just the same as any other true female has. I say their all mentally disturbed and in need of serious help. The Transgender Machine is the collection of these individuals that are unity in their meme like the borg they all speak the same meme and and violently attack anyone including media that dare say anything outside their given mantra.
Ian
@Jaime Renee: huh? No, that’s my point, transvestite is a term for people who cross dress WITHOUT GID. Some people with GID still cross dress but for different reasons.
Jaime Renee
@Ian: I think its just the way I read your wording. Basically, you said that tranvestites are cross dressers and then you went on to say that some of them even cross dress. Just seemed odd to me. But I’m old and going back and forth between this, my facebook, bugging my puppy on the front porch with a stuffed bunny show through the storm door and sort of watching Hellboy. I’m stretched thin, lol.
Jaime Renee
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: I was officially diagnosed and approved for hormones and surgery, by a therapist that was a member of your precious association even, but I still feel like I am part of the transgender community. Does that make me a cross dresser too? But then I don’t post pics of myself in skimpy outfits like those silly cross dressers are often apt to do. Do you?
Heck, most Christians I know aren’t as narrow minded and hateful as you are.
chrissie riot
@Ian: i got what you meant, thanks for clarifying.
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: Hmmm… I’m just going to say what I said at the beginning of this… Genitalia doesn’t define gender identity. If Caputo defines herself as a woman then I’m happy to call her one even if she never has bottom surgery.
Ginasf
*don’t love* how this entire thread about her life has turned into a discussion about her genitals and whether she’s a transsexual or not. Shame on all of you. Best of luck to Mina both in her life and music career.
Ginasf
@Jaime Renee: Actually, Brandi does post pictures of herself in skimpy outfits just as some crossdressers do. But that’s a total derail of a thread about someone else’s life and this thread is about Mina, not Bandi.
Jaime Renee
@Ginasf: You are right, I shouldn’t have added to the derail, but the whole true transsexual thing annoys me. It makes me think of the “real” woman or man crap I’ve heard so much of throughout my life.
Michelle P Backes
To the moron who says u cant be trans without the surgury. Please speak little of that which you know nothing. Trans women come with induvidual personalities, therefore all trans persons are unique (as are we all in our own ways) and desisions made are also therefore varied. There are transgender persons who are NON-op (like caputo), pre-op(like myself) and post op. Some who decide that whats down there is what makes them unique, decide not to change. Its not needed for those persons to feel complete as it is with many transsexuals. Transsexualism is about your brain/mind/heart gender. Some feel surgury is neccesary to bring the body in line, others do not. – Michelle-Paulette Texas TS
Michelle P Backes
Then why do brain scans of MTF TS and genetic females show up as identical in areas of the brain where gender is determined. Perhaps you should put the religious bigotry away on the back burner for a min, do a little research and read a medical journal that was printed recently. Not back in the 50’s.
Here are some actual medical theories backed up with IMPARTIAL 3RD PARTY RESEARCH to offer proof as to what I say. Where is your proof? where are your facts (or lies as the case may be)? You say all these things about people you know nothing about like you know something. what do you really know? nothing. You know what you have beeen told cause you’re not the one dealing with it from within. – Michelle
Michelle P Backes
http://www.tgctr.org/tg-101/causes-of-transsexualism/
Anouther transgirl
When I started my transition I said I was going to keep my male parts. I said I was only going to transition partialy.
That all turned out to be wrong.
Give her time. She just may find sitting in the gender no mans land of partial transition to be as deplorable as I did.
Ginasf
There have actually been two trans women that I know of who’ve played in metal bands… Annah Moore, who’s played lead guitar in a bunch of moderately successful metal bands in Texas and Christine Beatty played in a two-woman metal band in San Francisco during the 1990s. But it’s true there hasn’t been anyone before Mina in a really label-signed band.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@Anouther transgirl: Hun you got that right. One MUST conform to Gender binaries in our society or be outcast forever…thats just how it is and no amount of bitching or griping is going to change that.
@ Ginasf I known both of them and they’re both diagnosis post-op transsexuals.
Emma(MTF)
Ugh. The people claiming transsexuality means getting surgery is the exact reason why I want no part in the community. You’re not superior, and you’re not right. Get over yourself.
Thomas L.
Wow Brandigirl, how’s the whole judgment thing going for you, your attitude reminds me of the official position of the Iranian Islamic Regime: live as a woman without surgery you’re an abomination, undergo surgery and live as a woman, fine. It’s stupid as hell to be judgmental on an issue like this, you just give a bad name to your community.
missanthrope
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: @Sweetbrandigirl2004:
It’s a conspiracy!!!!!
Do you worship the UFO god alongside the Temple of the True 100% Transsexual also?
Laughriotgirl
“Trans Woman Cures Cancer: Gay people can’t stop wondering about her genitals…”
In case you all can’t really wrap your collective minds around this, there is more to a person (even a trans woman) than what may or may not be under their clothes. Given the number of, frankly, mediocre artists who get silly amounts of praise from the LGB simply because they decided to be truthful and come out – I’m a tad surprised that a person who has actual talent and is taking specific actions to realize their truth is treated to such disrespect… Perhaps not “surprised”… more like “confirmed”.
I think next time some quasi-celebrity lesbian comes out I’ll limit my commentary on her breasts, bottom, and muse openly on the shape of her vagina. Some child actor comes out as gay after a 15 year absence from any acting role.. and they become a Grand Marshal for gay prides the rest of their lives. Guess this means it’s open season to ponder if they are a top or bottom… or if it curves – and if so, to the left or right? Do they wax their rectum? anal bleaching? Nice to know the LGB sets the bar so very low.
Zoe Brain
Maybe this will help. First, the abstract from Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35
That’s the simplified version. It would be more correct to say that the brain is a complex of parts, rach of which can be more or less masculinised or feminised. Moreover “masculinised” just means “found more often in men than in women”, there’s nothing inherently “male” about them.
So Gay men are men – but the parts of the brain affecting sexual attraction are closer anatomically to a “female” stereotype than a male one, even if the rest of the brain is 100% masculine. Nothing particularly unusual, there’s a degree of overlap, and many str8 men have “feminine” brain parts, just not those to do with sexual orientation. Few people of either sex would be 100% F or 100% M.
Regarding Trans people – the parts of the brain affecting gender identity, and we think that’s mainly in emotional response, instincts etc are cross-sexed. Often many or all other parts are cross-sexed too – sense of smell being an obvious one.
See for example Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids. by Berglund et al Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908;
BUT… not all need be. If the part of the brain that affects the “body map” – the superior parietal lobule or SPL – is feminised, then the person has the instincts etc for female genitalia. Usually that’s what they’re equipped with – unless they’re Trans. Some who have male bodies, male gender identities (ie are not Trans) also have a feminised SPL. Hence the few men who have or desire “Manginas”.
Not every Transsexual woman has a strongly feminised SPL. They can live with having male genitalia, and indeed, some prefer it, their SPL is masculinised rather than feminised, even if they’re otherwise 100% female. Others look at the costs and risks and don’t see why they should submit to an un-necessary surgical procedure just to conform to societal expectations.
My SPL was strongly feminised. But that’s me. Other women differ. Look at the number of strap-ons sold to Str8 and Lesbian women.
M.B. Birney
Zoe Brain is such a fake and bull-artist. He HATES gays too, says that homosexuality should be “discouraged”.
http://kallmannssyndrome.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/outting-zoe-brain-as-an-intersex-fake/
Zoe Brain
The whole quote:
That was in 2003. My views, as they say, have evolved since.
Being diagnosed in 2005 as a “severely androgenised non-pregnant woman” rather than, as previously thought, with “undervirilised male syndrome” might have had something to do with that. That and the female puberty I had that caused the re-diagnosis.
M.B. Birney
Zoe Brain: http://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/10/14/alien-abductions-and-claims-of-improbable/#comment-2138
Anouther transgirl
Let us entrtain the idea that Zoe is a liar about her personal situation……Ok does that discredit what she has said in regards to this article?
No not one wit.
I do not know if Zoe Brain is lieing or not. I tend to believe her but even if she is lieing that does not take away from the work she has put in for the TS/IS comunities.
Let Zoe be on this. If she is telling the truth she has some serious medical issues that are likely to kill her. If she is lieing then she has a mental illness that we should respect. *We do not punish the mentaly ill for being that way. That is just plain mean.*
Zoe is a scientist and worthy of her last name. Brain. We need her on our side. She has done a butt load of digging and searching and many times I have been able to go to her blog and look up some obscure referances to studies that would have wallowed in obscurity if she hadn’t brought attention to them.
Now can we get back on topic?
Zoe Brain
Nicky – as you know, there were eyewitnesses –
http://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/10/14/alien-abductions-and-claims-of-improbable/#comment-2169
Something like this happening doesn’t exactly pass un-noticed, you know? Not exactly easy to miss. Of course there were eye-witnesses. Co-workers for one thing. Plus the photos taken by third parties and on their official sites. How come this obsessive stalking?
lee gardner
God makes mistakes for sure! Here is a perfect example , one of many actually. Putting a female brain, soul, feelings etc. etc. inside a male body and vise versa! What a mess!!! NUFF SAID!!!
Zoe Brain
lee gardner – for a real mess, look at those born looking like one sex, who naturally change to look like the other. Rare, but it happens. And not as rare as you might think – in some parts of the world, one or the other of the mutations that cause this is more common than the CCR1 mutation that causes red hair.
See for example the Guevedoces of the Dominican Republic. That’s 5-alpha-reductase-2 deficiency syndrome.
This can either cure Transsexuality – or cause it, as here, unless there’s medical intervention.
17-beta-hydroxysteroid-dehydrogenase-3 deficiency has similar (but not quite identical) effects. That’s common in the town of Jubayah in Gaza.
There’s a number of other conditions that can cause this in unusual circumstances – 45X/46XY mixed gonadal dysgenesis, 3-beta-hydroxysteroid-dehydrogenase deficiency etc. There the changes go the other way, MtoF. None are complete changes, but close enough. Unlike 17BHDD and 5ARD, none of these have been studied well.
Ginasf
Discussing Zoe brain’s history is such a disrespectful derail of this thread. This is about Mina and her story and history, not Zoe’s.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@chrissie riot: So I guess then if he decides to define himself as a chicken you’ll call him one….You and everyone of your Non binary third gender living in a fantasy transgender Inc can do whatever you want but it won’t make society accept you or buy into your fantasy.
Siberia
I think it’s very brave of her, I can only admire the strength of her spirit and wish her good luck. And I’m really glad to see that most people react adequate to things like this. I wish it was like that in my country…
The Bony Man
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: Clearly there is something you have failed to understand about this concept… Transgendered people are not “cross-dressers”. I know several trans-persons who have felt like they were the wrong gender from a very early age, but continued to dress as their “proper” (ie. biological) gender for a very long time before they simply decided that they would be much happier as a different gender. SOme get surgery, some do not. You really need to speak to an actual transgendered individual before forming these opinions you have.
Inter|m|ent
Something else people fail to understand: there are 3 sexes and many genders. Why is there the assumption that people would only want to transition to male or female? Yes life will be hard if you don’t choose one or the other and that is yet another reason why many fail to transition, or why intersex people transition, and are forced into surgery and vile practices through their childhood and lives.
I’m not implying transexuals need to have all surgeries prescribed by some medical panel abiding by some shit in the DSM-manual. Why the fuck do we give the DSM-board any kind of authority, THROUGHOUT the world? The shrinks neither take into account people’s well-being, nor do they have any scientific method. But trannys have no alternatives since we’re a minority, and even our taxes are paying for someone’s 5th or 15th child.
I don’t know Mina’s situation, or Life of Agony, this is the first I’ve heard of them, in spite of being trans and I just hope I can believe in the title.
d
@Ginasf:
*cough* .. Cretin .. *cough*