Health Systems gives KRXQ a healthy boot in the ass

From The Sacremento Bee

HEALTH SYSTEM SEVERS TIES WITH KRXQ

Due to recent comments made by announcers on KRXQ about transgender children, and the lack of a public response from KRXQ management about those comments, UC Davis Health System has canceled its advertising on the radio station and ended its partnership with the station for Children’s Miracle Network fundraising.

Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor of Human Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine, notified the station’s management of the decision in a letter dated June 8.

During the “Rob, Arnie and Dawn” show on May 28, the hosts described children who express transgender feelings as “freaks,” and said “I look forward to when they go out into society and society beats them down.” In the days that followed the show, the hosts defended their comments, and station management remained silent on the matter. As of June 8, at least a dozen companies have withdrawn their advertising from KRXQ. In her letter to station management, Pomeroy stated, “We affirm the right of freedom of expression, within the bounds of courtesy, sensitivity and respect. The statements made by Rob Williams and Arnie States were outside those bounds.” Pomeroy also stated that hosts’ comments and the station’s “lack of a publicly articulated response” to them “are inconsistent with UC Davis’ values and mission.” In fiscal year 2008-09, UC Davis Health System spent $3,400 in advertising with KRXQ, and the station raised $126,000 for UC Davis Children’s Hospital through its support of the Children’s Miracle Network.

Filed under: Letters from Parents of Non-Conforming Children

American Psychiatric Association posts story

The APA posted this story about the KRXQ show:

http://www.psycport.com/showArticle.cfm?xmlFile=apdigital_2009_06_05_ap.online.regional.us_D98KS3QG0_news_ap_org.anpa.xml&provider=

Filed under: Letters from Parents of Non-Conforming Children

From a Mom of a 28 year old in Kansas; about an end to anger and sadness

I loved my little charmer, my Boy Scout, my military veteran. But that child was prone to a sadness that could not be assuaged and to an anger that seemed to have no reason or end. After counseling, that sad, angry shell opened and out stepped a beautiful young woman with sparkling eyes and a happy smile. My little charmer is back – only the name and the packaging have changed. She is happy and productive. For what more can a parent ask?

I admit I don’t fully understand how this happened; even she says she does not, either. No one “chooses” to do this on a whim; it is an inner imperative that chooses this path for transgender children and adults.

My child is grown, yes, but I know, and support, a legion of parents whose own little charmers have vocalized their transgender states as young children. These parents are heroic – fighting, surviving, sometimes winning, battles that would turn your hair green. They are trying to educate society to accept differences. These victories don’t just help their own children. They help all children – even yours. Bullying and violence are blind, hitting anyone and impacting everyone. All children are at risk of being hurt by them.

You don’t understand these people, do you? You have stated that you would actually welcome violence against your own children if they did not fit some societal mold. Young girls and boys have been killed and hounded to suicide for not being feminine or masculine, whatever those terms mean. Would you really face a parent of one of those children and tell them you were happy about the violence that caused their child’s death?

Humans lash out with violence for two reasons – one is survival, the other is fear. Our transgender citizens, children and adult, do not threaten your survival in any possible way. Therefore, your diatribe against them must have come from fear. Of what are you afraid? Your own manhood, perhaps? After all, you only spoke of what you would do to a son that was transgender but nothing about a daughter that wanted to become a man. What petty, ignorant, sexist little men you both must be to be so fearful of difference.

Two old bits of advice would hold you in good stead – “Do unto others as you would have other do unto you,” and “Walk a mile in my shoes.”

Loving mom of new, grown daughter

Filed under: Letters from Parents of Non-Conforming Children , "grown transgender child" "KRXQ controversy" transgender child

From Sarah Hoffman: West Coast Mom of a Non-Conforming Kid

I am the mother of a seven-year-old boy who wears a dress—exactly the sort of boy demonized by the Rob, Arnie & Dawn radio show aired June 2^nd on KRXQ 98.5FM in Sacramento.

While discussing a recent story about a transgender child in Omaha, Nebraska, hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States went on a 30-minute tirade verbally attacking transgender children—explicitly promoting child abuse and making cruel, dehumanizing comments toward children like my son, Sam.

Williams said boys like Sam are freaks, abnormal, and mentally ill. States said he would hit his own son if he were like mine. He called boys like Sam dumbasses, saying he looks forward to society beating boys like my son down. The hosts equated the sort of different gender expression Sam has to having sex with animals and kleptomania. Yet being transgender, or simply gender-noncomforming like Sam, is not criminal behavior. It is a normal—if uncommon—aspect of being a human being.

The hosts believe that if parents like me simply said “no,” when our boys asked for dresses and Barbie dolls and sparkly nail polish, that our pink boys wouldn’t want those things anymore. Clearly they have never lived with a boy like Sam—a boy who persistently, insistently, and unrelentingly begs for the trappings of girlhood from his preschool years on.

And Sam is not alone. I correspond daily online with over two hundred families across the country, parents of boys like Sam. We have all said no, over and over, with no success. Our sons have been harassed and bullied by kids at school, and shamed by adults like these radio hosts. And still, they want to look and act like girls. Why? We may never know. But it is not, as co-host Dawn Rossi said, to get attention. What boy would act out by acting like a girl? To get berated, beaten, or even killed? Being feminine is not a choice—it’s an unchangeable aspect of their identity that they withstand because they have no choice but to be who they are.

There are plenty of parents who have said “no” so completely that they have put their children in aversion therapy, an often-barbaric attempt to reprogram their brains to prefer masculine games and playmates and clothes. And, when that has failed, they have put their sons out of their homes. But research shows that kids whose families reject them for their gender expression experience far higher rates of depression, illegal drug use, unsafe sexual practices, and suicide attempts than children whose families accept them as they are. As a parent, I have a choice: accept my son, pink sparkles and all, or let him fall to prostitution and suicide. If these radio hosts had a son like mine, which choice would they make?

Last year, 15-year-old Lawrence King of Oxnard was killed by 14-year-old classmate because King came to school in lipstick and nail polish. Such stories, of boys who are different being killed for their differences, are disturbingly common—fueled by the sort of hatred and bigotry espoused on the Rob, Arnie & Dawn show. And there is brutality, too, in self-hatred: last month, two unrelated eleven-year-old boys hanged themselves because of anti-gay bullying in their schools.

So, here’s the rock, and there’s the hard place: on the one hand, protecting my son from suicide; on the other, from murder. This is not what I expected when I signed up for parenthood.

I cannot change my son and his quirky gender expression. But I will work to change the minds of the bigots who would have him live in shame and fear. Until we change the way adults talk about children who are different—boys who are feminine, whether gay, straight, or transgender—violence against them will continue.

Thank you to co-host Rossi for standing up to Williams and States, and apologizing for her colleagues’ defamatory remarks. But that was not nearly enough. On behalf of all those many parents like me, I demand a public apology from States, Williams, and KRXQ for promoting hatred against our sons. Allowing such vitriol to air condones violence against my child. And that’s something I will not stand for.

Sarah Hoffman

Filed under: Letters from Parents of Non-Conforming Children , "Gender variant" "gender non-conforming boys" "transgender children" "transgender" "KRXQ" "Sacremento" "Hate Speech"

From a Ph.D Mom in Mississippi

To Dawn, Rob, and Arnie of KRXQ Sacramento:

I am the mother of a 10-year old gender-variant boy.  I heard about the controversy on your show and did a heavy dose of listening.  I listened to both the original show and to one of the segments, dated 6/3/09, in which you reflected on the controversy.  I want first of all to thank Dawn for her thoughtful and courageous advocacy.  We need people like you, Dawn.  I want second to insist that anyone advocating violence against Rob and Arnie is wrong and out of line. Violence cannot be answered with violence.  Ever.

In the reflection dated 6/3/09, Rob made it clear that he was not going to apologize—that he felt there was nothing to apologize for, that comments made by Rob and Arnie were taken out of context, that criticism lacks perspective on or knowledge of the show’s general tenor and approach.  This is a show that does not attempt to change opinion but rather to reflect it, he said.  Over and over, in response to the criticism that he and Arne should not use words like “weirdos” or “freaks” to describe transgender or gender-nonconforming youth, Rob insisted that “no one advocated calling” such kids “freaks and weirdos,” that this is simply what the majority of society would label such children.  And he asked whether people like me, on the other side of this issue, are ready to have a conversation that admits that this is the way our children are perceived.

Believe me—we know.  And that’s precisely the problem.  Your show may not seek to change minds, but it has a reach and influence for which it needs to take responsibility.  Those of us who parent gender-variant and transgender children are well aware of the social stigma that attaches to our children, and to us as parents.  It doesn’t take more than a trip to the grocery store or a visit to a playground with a boy in pink crocs to understand this.  We fight against that stigma every day in our efforts to ward off suicidal tendencies, to cope with bullying, and to prevent our children from hating themselves, the way that most of society hates them.

I am not asking for retraction or apology.  I’m asking for the show to take responsibility for the possible effects of hateful labels, of jokes about hitting, or of comments like, “I look forward to when
they go out into society and society beats them down.”  Your audience—an audience that you yourself note is large, and loyal—listens to you, to ALL of you.  Rob and Arnie may not have said that people SHOULD go out and call such kids “freaks.” But nor did they tell them not to.  And, as Dawn seems to understand, that hurts the kids like mine who are struggling to survive, psychologically and physically intact, into adulthood.

On June 3, Rob spoke with passion about the show’s advocacy for children.  I would ask simply that you recognize that ALL children require your advocacy—even those who don’t fit the norm, even those who challenge our deepest sense of what men and women, boys and girls are.  These children need love and understanding.  If you can’t give them that, then please just leave them alone.

Thank you for your attention.

Filed under: Letters from Parents of Non-Conforming Children , “Gender variant” “gender non-conforming boys” “transgender children” “transgender” “KRXQ” “Sacremento” “Hate Speech”

From an Accepting Father of a Non-Conforming Ten Year Old Boy

TO: Rob Williams and Arnie States of KRXQ 98.5 FM Sacramento

I’m writing to tell you how angry, how sad, your broadcast concerning transgender and gender non-conforming children made me. To be honest, part of the reason it made me so angry is that I shared a lot of your worldview once. I ridiculed gay people and trans people and had my made-up theories about how they could be normal and avoid hatred and ostracism if they really wanted to.

I quoted studies I’d heard from somewhere, but never actually seen, which claimed that transgender people were no happier after transition, so transition was just a waste of money, pointless surgery on mentally ill people who needed some kind of therapy or something.

Then my first son was born. And he was, is, one of these kids. My kid was never abused. My kid has suffered no trauma. My kid has two normative parents. My kid has a normative brother. My kid has normative DNA.

At first I didn’t’ know what to do, so I took a half-step back; I shared my experiences with those parents who had tried to therapize this behavior out of their kids. They tried behavior modification. They saw specialists. Pretty much nobody gets to this place, of researching, understanding, tolerating and then accepting, this behavior, until they’re forced to.

Behavior modifcation, for the parents I spoke with, didn’t work. Their kids got worse. Hysterical, screaming, self-mulitating, seven-year-old-talking-about-suicide worse.

More and more therapists are giving up on trying to extinguish this behavior, not because they are intimidated by the GLTBQ agenda, but because the treatment simply doesn’t work. And procedures you perform over and over again that don’t work are called malpractice. Suppression seem to harm many of these children. They report higher incidences of stress, self destructive impulses. Suicides. Yes, there are studies. Even with the stress of living in a world which rejects them, as you do, they are happier fighting that battle than suppressing this part of what they are.

I’m not going to make scientific arguments about this. The science is clearly on the side of the trans people. But here’s the thing; my son isn’t transgender now, and may never be. He may one day identify as gay. He may identify straight or bi, and cross dress. He may identify straight and dress normally. We don’t know yet.

So I’m asking you to tolerate something far more subversive and sinister than transgender. Most transgenders seek to be normal; with early interventions, they can melt back into the general populace without a ripple. As you joke and sneer, keep on eye on your back. A burly, beefy man born a woman might be creeping up on with a broken beer bottle from behind.

No, my kid is making me tell you to tolerate all gender expression.

Women in crew cuts who are straight. Men in dresses and makeup who are straight and married to straight women. The same people, in terms of gender expression, who are gay. Everyone.

You don’t have to love them. You don’t have to wear a dress yourself. You don’t have to have a gay marriage, or marry a butch woman. None of this will be mandated in the world which I’m trying to make by talking with you.  You, a person I desperately want to ignore.

I loved my son, and  still love him. I loved him so much, it changed me. Did your love of your children change you? Do you have children? Do you understand what I”m talking about? Do you understand that we are all acting out of love? Even if you think we are misguided, why would you hate us for loving our children as they are? Why are you talking about something you admittedly know nothing about?

My son made me regret every nasty remark, every smirk, every act of unkindness in my past towards people who, I now see so clearly, are simply being who they have to be. I know that the core of that anger is an anger with myself for every having once snickered along with you.

It is politically incorrect to say this in this type of argument, but the most homophobic men, when hooked to a device which measures arousal, (the penile plethysmograph—your word for the day.) respond to gay porn. It makes them hard. Now, the rule is, we identify ourselves. Just because someone like you might desperately want to have sex with men or wear a dress, doesn’t’ make you gay or trans. What it might make you is sad, angry, violent, desperate, miserable, or suicidal.

And so, as I confront my feelings of anger and violence towards you, I see the face of my son. His smiling, beautiful face, which I love. As you were once loved, I hope, however imperfectly. You may be like him. You may have denied the most essential aspect of your personality and twisted inside into a mass of fear, pain and rage. That would explain a lot.

This is what I have refused to do to my son.

The science suggests that you may have these impulses. It wasn’t the case with me, though, and I’m the only person I have had the experience of being, so I’ll grant that you may well be hetero normative. I’ve never had a moments interest in putting on dresses. I’ve never had more than a fleeing instant of same sex attraction. I am rampantly and incurable hetero-normative. So I know, the hatred, or the toleration of it, may not be a sign that you are ‘queer’ inside.

But I have to wonder if those that ring lead the hate, those that go out of their way to spew this poison, aren’t suffering in this way. Again, it would explain a lot. They’ve fought to suppress these impulses and hate those that ‘give in.’ to them.

Normative people are able to understand that they don’t choose who they are sexually attracted to, they don’t choose what kind clothes they feel comfortable wearing; they don’t learn it, isn’t taught by schools or parents. It comes from inside. Lots of old psychological theories fooled around with the idea that gender was socially constructed; just a rule book enforced by society. These theories are out of the window now. Gender is built in. Cultures tell us what to do with the gender born in our bodies, but gender itself is hard-wired.

I know your discomfort. I know the twisting feeling in your stomach. I’ve felt it. This is the same feeling southern whites had when forced to use drinking fountains used by blacks. This is a feeling which it is time to examine, to stare at in public and let go of. The boogey man can’t hurt you. He lives in your imagination.

Let me reassure you. We will never cut your dick off. We will never give you hormones and force you to have breasts. We will never cross dress you. We will never make you have sex with a man. As you imagine these things, you feel sick inside–because you picture it happening to you. Let it go. You don’t have to do it. You decide who you are. You decide what people call you, who you love, who you allow to exist in your family. You can even drive your child into committing suicide if you want to.

But you won’t do that to my child without a fight.

I know you reserve the right to hate anyone you want, but I’m making an effort now, not to hate you, and I want you to return that favor when you talk about my child. Who I love. I know my child may be killed for being who he is, who he can’t help but be. I am so afraid of that I wake up in cold sweats about it. And then I read about your radioshow.

Slapping a hair cut on my boy and jamming him into a football jersy, or a cop uniform, or a soldier’s fatigues, won’t change him. You can talk to the adult transgenders who did that, the over compensators. They’re out there.

And you should also consider, being a man, how brave my son is to exist in a world with you and not to hide who he is. An adult transgender on an email list I’m on was asked by a young person about the dangers of hormone therapy.

“I hit an IED in Iraq, it took them a year to put me back together. I’m not worried about hormones.”

Is it so wrong, so crazy, so absurd, so liberal moonbat, to ask you to know something about what you are talking about. To ask you to live an let live?

To ask you to treat someone else the way you would like to be treated?

And even if you must see this as sin, to ask that the one without sin be the one to cast the first stone?

I was like you. You may be like my son inside. You are someone who loves and who has been loved. When you say you’d hit your kid with his high-heeled shoe, as angry as I am now, I don’t fully believe you. You’re only human, and you’re scared.

You’re scared of a world that is changing so fast that it terrifies everyone. You’re scared of outsourced jobs and a bankrupt country and drugs and crime and child molesters and genetically engineered viruses and terrorists and all the things that the TV tells you to be scared of. Some of which is actually real.

You lash out at the weakest, the most defenseless, icon of that change. The little boy in the dress.

You think, if you can just beat it out of him, you can make the world the way it was in the 50s. You can bring back the golden age. (that never existed for anyone but a few white men.) Your people have been afraid of every change since the invention of the written word, which would destroy our ability memorize epic poems and turn our brains to mush. You feared anesthesia 100 years ago, you feared fertility medicine a generation ago (test tube babies!) you feared interactial marrige, you feared the gays who stopped cowering in shame at Stonewall and started fighting back, and now you are terrified, shaking in your hob nailed boots at the sight of a smiling child in a dress.

What will the world be like that tolerates him?

I can’t protect you from terrorists or save your job from going overseas or bring back the post-war boom, but I can tell you, my kid isn’t going to hurt you or your family. You are going to get through this. In twenty years you’ll shrug, or cringe, or be a bitter twisted old man ranting about, well, everything. The choice is yours.

But for now, I’m asking you to think about what you say and the people who might be hurt by it. I’m asking you think of the mother of a 10 year old cutting her boy down from where he hung himself. A boy she dressed in boy’s clothes, who she enrolled in Boy Scouts, a boy she made play football, a boy she dragged to chuch every Sunday. But his peers knew him anyway, they knew what he was. And they tortured him. As you suggest.

And he didn’t change. He died. This happened a few months back. This is real. She is real. Her son was real.

I’m asking you to think of that image before you make these kind of statements again. I’m putting aside my hate, my fear, my violence, to ask as politely as I can, for you to put aside yours.

Let my family be.

Concerned father
of a ten year old boy

Filed under: Letters from Parents of Non-Conforming Children , “Gender variant” “gender non-conforming boys” “transgender children” “transgender” “KRXQ” “Sacremento” “Hate Speech”