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Laura's Playground: What's NEW
Free ScreenSavers from Laura's Playground What's Happening Today on Laura Playground? June 2 , 2013 For some time now I have been Bedridden and am only up for two to three hours a day. While I try to keep up on my laptop in bed this has proved difficult. The site is run by an excellent all volunteer staff Including Our Chat, site, lists and forum directors. please contact them if you have questions or need help.
April 24th, 2011 The forums were turned off without warning by our host for using too many resources though we haven't added a thing. I am hoping to have them back up soon.
January 18th, 2010 There have been some changes to chat as evidenced by our Staff page. Stu, a Transman and Vice President of Communications is now our Chat director. He has already made many improvements to chat and added some rooms and additional staff. He, his assistants and trainers are also revamping our in-house suicide prevention training in order to make our staff the best trained possible and to better serve our members. October 29th, 2009 Our chat software has just been upgraded to a new feature rich version. These days Transgender children are treated early. What happens to untreated Transsexuals when they are 50 or 60 years old. The results can be devastating. Untreated Transsexuals: Life is Hell .
July 8th, 2009 We have just passed a milestone with our 10 millionth visitor in just over 5 years. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our users and staff. What makes this site special is it's people. Support here doesn't come from just one person it comes from each and everyone of you. Thanks for making this place special and a joy to run. Support here comes from Post-ops and pre-ops, FTM's and MTF's, and members of every group. In a community like ours sharing your personal stories has shown others that they are not alone and that success here is possible even after we've hit bottom. Best of all you've helped each other climb out of our ruts and have given each other a hand up. I couldn't be prouder of each and every person here. Thanks for making this a great Transgender community. I salute you all. You are an inspiration to me. May 29th, 2009 Monica_Jennifer our special Projects director has created two new pages this month. The first is a tribute to Angie Zapata a Transgender woman who was brutally murdered. This was added to the Articles page. The second is a New Transgender Endocrinologist List which was added to the Laura's Transgender Resources Page. While this list is in it's infancy our users can help us quickly fill it up by listing their Transgender Friendly Endocrinologist here. Our other lists like the Gender Therapist and Electrolysis lists filled quickly from user input. These are valuable resources for Transgender people and are shared across the community. Nice job Monica. May 1st, 2009 On April 3rd, 2009 Laura's playground passed a couple of milestones on our 5th birthday as well as going over the 8.8 million mark. If you've been following this page it appeared that not much was going on. Our research department has been working full out working with colleges and universities on several scientific surveys due out soon. There are many new additions to our Gender Therapist and Transgender friendly Electrologist lists. In addition our forums are fast becoming the busiest anywhere as it has replaced the front page as our gateway. Our greatest milestone is both amazing and sad as we have just passed 78,800 crisis's in our suicide prevention rooms in just 5 years. The good news is the amount of data we gathered that no one else has. We hope to use this data to improve the plight of those in our community to lower that rate. We've also added more articles: Transgender Suicide Report: Actual; Transgender Mortality Rate: Suicide, Medical, Violence and Common Sense Transgender Transition . Have a great summer.
July 25th, 2008 Transgender people are a spiritual people. Over 93% believe in a higher power. Unfortunately though many churchs and religions have turned their back on us. Some have even launched hate campaigns against us, calling us sinful and abominations. You would think this would shake our faith but it hasn't. Exodus and some evangelical based organizations have even tried to "Cure" us through outdated reparative therapy and have left many suicide victims in their wake. Many LGBT people have been told that we are "better off to commit suicide then to remain homosexual or transsexual". There are many that do accept us exactly as we are. They are based on love and acceptance rather than bigotry and hate. Because of the Interest shown by our members I am working on opening a Transgender Friendly Religion and spirituality menu section. For now it just contains links to Transgender friendly religions and churchs. I will also be starting a forum and creating a chat room for this. In addition I am inviting Spiritual leaders to write articles for Transgender people to address spiritual conflicts. This won't be preachy and no one will be trying to convert anyone. Hate groups won't be listed in this section. June14th, 2008 Sorry for the lack of news lately. As usual there was plenty going on but I haven't had time to write about it. Apparantly users emailing me at Laura AT lauras-playground.com were getting their email to me rejected. This was not at all intentional. I am not sure how long this has been going on. The problem is now fixed and was due to an overly aggressive antispam and anti-virus program on the site that let nothing through including normal mail. The old program was replaced with a new version now on site. If your email was rejected it wasn't personal. Please send it again. You may also use my backup email: lauraann.amato AT comcast.net if there are issues in the future. Please replace the AT with the @ symbol and remove any spaces. Transgender Forums; Registered Members Get Free Blogs and Photo Galleries
As we start this New Year of 2008 I started to think about what 2007 meant to the Transgender Community here. There are three incidents that stood out. In the beginning of the year the HBS yahoo group attacked our forums displaying Transphobic, hateful prejudice to the entire Transgender Community. During that time I received numerous death threats via the group. New forum security measures put a quick end to it. Just when everyone thought it was over a homophobic Michael Baily thrust into the spotlight to shore up lagging book sales by calling transgender people liars and homosexuals. Baily's faulty conclusions were based on interviews with a mere 6 Transgender people he met in a gay bar. He thought he was talking to transsexuals but his ignorance of transgender issues was his deep embarrasment. Worse, he still doesn't know, duh. While many GLBt organizations supported us in the fight for an inclusive ENDA There was HRC and Joe Solmonese who abandoned us after lieng to us at the "Southern Comfort" conference. His goal was to stop GLB people from getting fired. What he missed was that 70% of transgendered never get hired to be fired. 2007 saw huge growth for this site as we went over the 4 million mark. We realeased a survey with over 850 respondents. We hired a consultant psychologist and started our own research Department helped by Doctoral students and researchers. Our Transgender suicide prevention program saved thousands of transgender people and our all volunteer group increased to 50. 2008 will be known as "The Year of the Transgendered" as we recover from HRC's willfull slap in the face and start doing for ourselves on our own. Forget LGB dropping the "T". This year we drop the LGB. We will start doing our own planning for new institutions and start lobbying ourselves. This year we have finally arrived. There is no question that 2008 will be a kickstarter for our Community especially if we stand united. Building Transgender Infrastructure . November 5th , 2007 Laura's Playground has a new Resource, which is a Transgender Friendly Electrologist and Lasar Hair removal List. Every Specialist has been emailed to verify that they accept Transgender Clients. While I have had this planned for ages Monica has made it come to fruition. She is Vice President in charge of Special Projects and is in charge of updating our Resource lists and links. Users can help us by listing those who help you. List your therapist and electrologist so they can help others. If you see a helpful Transgender link let Monica know. Also be sure to check out Laura's Transgender Resource list. October 22nd , 2007 TRANSGENDERED ENDA; Inclusion Now or Never: Sometimes we get fed up with how we are treated. We quietly endure the slurs and nasty comments and the loss of friends and family members. Quite frankly we are much stronger than we think we are. Fact is though that no law is going to stop our pain or the nasty comments. One cannot change human nature One right that everyone should have though is the right to make a living. The right to put food on the table, shelter oursleves and obtain basic medical care should be for everyone not just a few. Unfortunately though if you are a gay effeminate man or Transgendered you have no such right and you won't under the new Gay only Enda either. Representave Barney Frank and HRC have betrayed and excluded these two groups who ironically have the hardest time gaining and keeping employment. In an informal survey here 68% of our users are not employed and have not been for 5 years or more. All cite their appearance and presentation as the sole reason. The question becomes is how do you become presentable if you are not working or for some even eating? It is a "Catch 22". Who can afford facial operations, Gender assignment surgery or voice lessons without being employed? Their has been an outcry from LGBT organizations demanding that the Transgender Community be included in the new ENDA. We appreciate their support. A new amendment has been introduced to add back transgendered inclusion in ENDA called the "Baldwin Amendment". However having support is not enough unless we do something about it ourselves. Congress is not convinced that we are worthy of support. It's up to us to show them that we need protection in the employment market. After talking to several users these are the answers I received from some: "I'm post-op and working. I don't need protection". or "I pass very well and I work. I don't need protection". Notice the keyword is "I". We are a community and we need to pull ouselves up and support each other now G L B and T. Who knows when an opportunity like this will ever come up again. Please call your Congressperson today or forever hold your peace. This is not just about you. It is about all of us. July 8th , 2007 It's an exciting week at Laura's Playground as we enter into new territory. Our Research Department has just launched our first scientific survey backed by Psychologists, Laura's PLayground Transgender, Transsexual, HBS, Intersexed, Suicide Prevention Survey be sure to take it if you are in the above groups. Crossdressers are asked not to take it since they will have their own survey. Future surveys and results will be posted on our Transgender Scientific Survey Page . You may post this link on any Transgender site (transsexual_transgender_research.htm). Post this page rather then the survey itself because links only last a short while becuase they are time, date sensitive and cut off after a preset response rate is reached. If you have surveys you'd like to see let us know. We are today also launching our new Transgender, Transsexual, Crossdresser, Community Forums. Please bear with us as we figure out what all these new shiney buttons and knobs do. Petra Jane heads the forums, so click on her name and send her a message if you need to. We will have a forum to report problems shortly. The new forums are now on the main site and feature powerful Invision Power Board Software. One of the new features is the member blogs. You may make it private or public like any other blog. Therapists often suggest writing as a way to get in touch with yourself. It will take some time to change all the menus to reflect the new forums. So stop in, this is a place you'll want to visit often. July 1st , 2007 Just because there hasn't been much site news lately doesn't mean your web mistress has been sleeping. On the contrary I've been busier then I've ever been here. I always have more ideas than time so this site isn't done expanding yet. A research department has been added to create scientific studies and surveys here that will benefit our community. We do have some professional help in trying to study our issues and all will be revealed in time as results are published for all to see. Some are doctoral students from universities, others are professors and therapists. At long last our resources and research are starting to pay off. Maybe this time as Congress and other Government bodies debate Transgender issues they won't be able to dispute our figures any more like they have been doing. There are those who say there is no scientific proof that our risk of suicide and our death rate is higher or that hate crimes against us don't exist. From our experiences with hundreds of thousands of you we know that is just hogwash. Thousands of lives have been saved in our chat crisis rooms. The first scientific survey will be on the subject of suicide and will be launched in a day or two. Respondents will need to be Transgender, Transsexual, HBS or Intersex. Cd's will not be included in this survey as they will get their own later. I have bought new forum software that has some fabulous features. Members will for the first time be able to have their own blog page and url. It is very therapeutic in helping you find yourself. A limited photo gallery may also be included. The best news is it will be run from our own server instead of being run as a seperate site as it does now. This will give a more realistic count of our users. If all goes well it will be installed and operational by the next weekend. Along with our chat rooms the new forums will help complete our community and help us to grow in many ways. If you haven't visited the forums it really is a great way to communicate. Your post can help others and you will see your threads expand with the differnt opinions of people like yourself. It is a learning experience you really can't afford to miss. Best of all you can express yourself without being bashed. The moderators are excellent in keeping order. The old forums will be slowly phased out over several months. April 30th , 2007 I have opened a new section about Transgendered Children and Transsexual Children. While we've always had articles about them I decided to make a special page dedicated to it as Parents are suddenley asking about it. This is due to Barbarra Walters Wonderfull TV Special about Transgender Children. You can find links to her articles and clips from her special on our new page. I wish she did this 58 years ago. If they had, our "Suicide Prevention Crisis Chat Rooms" would be empty. The good news is that finally kids as young as 4 or 5 will get the help they need. As you all know from your own experiences this will save a great deal of pain and suffering for all the transgendered. Thank you "Barbarra Walters". Thank You, Thank You. Parents of "Transgendered Children" have support group online help here. We hold meetings for them every Thurday at 8 PM EST. Monica is the moderator. Which reminds me. Monica is now a Vice President and a chat room crisis supervisor. Congratulations Monica. She is certified in youth suicide prevention as all of our moderators are. We just expanded the number of crisis rooms to 5. We are looking to increase our staff even more to handle the increased volume of users. April 18th , 2007 Our growth spurt continues unabated. To keep up with the demand I have added more storage space to our server. I no longer have to throw articles out unless the links no longer work. Our news archive section already has outgrown itself and our Articles page is overloaded. While we started with 5 pages 3 years ago we are now well over 600 pages now. I expect our site to double by the end of the year. I have added two new sections on the articles page: Transsexual Science and Medical Articles and The Hall of Shame, Transgender, Transsexual Discrimination, Hate Crime Aritcles. There are some new private sections as well in the works for Moderator Crisis Training, Transgender Reserachers, Therapists and Medical Areas for Professionals. In alliance with some Universities, Doctoral Students and Psychiatric professionals Laura's Playground will become a hub for the Transgender Community and Scientific study. We will also be involved in new survey's being launched. Most Transgender studies thus far have only involved small handfulls of subjects. Our main page alone has seen 452,000 visitors and the site has received over 2,500,000 hits and over 900,000 emails and 500,000 instant messages. Our moderators have talked to over 2 million people and solved nearly 100,000 suicidal crisises and saved thousands of lives. This translates into a wealth of experience unmatched anywhere. We are a researchers dream with 2 million anonymous true stories to tell. This can only help to improve future Transgender lives everywhere. If you think we've done great so far you haven't seen anything yet. Watch our dust and hang onto your hats. We're in for a heck of a ride. Yee ha! January 28th , 2006 I recently had a heart attack and am recovering at home. As a result the Transgendered News wasn't updated until today. I am feeling much better now. Thanks to all those who wrote. On Friday January 26th around 12 Am the profile database on chat was rendered useless over a licensing issue that is clearly CCProfilers fault. The results were that the chat rooms were down for over 12 hours. Since I could not get an immediate reply from the company I broke off the profiles and started a new database from a different company. If you were registered before January 26th, 2007 you will need to re-register as a new user in the chat room only. Guest access is no longer enabled so you must register. I apologize for the inconveinence. Old profiles still work but cannot be added to or changed. I hope to hear from Ccprofiler soon. November 19th , 2006 On November 20th is The Transgender Day of Remembrance for victims of violent crime. Many cities are holding ceremonies to mark the event. There is however another group of us that is even Many times larger and that is Transgender suicide. Laura's Playground is starting a different Memorial to take place on November 21st for victims of Transgender Transsexual Suicide. Please remember the victims of both lists and remember them in your prayers. November 5th , 2006 Over the last couple of weeks the Daily Transgendered News has been changing for the better. Our News feeds now include Blogs and commentary which are just now being included. You've probably noticed that unless a transsexual has broken the law we are largely out of the news. When they do report on us they often mix up Transgenderists, Crossdressers and Transsexuals and their ignorance of us shows. The explosion of Transgendered Blogs has given erveryone of us the chance for a voice as Transgendered Support sites are few in number. We have added a new page to our links for Transgender, Transsexual, Crossdresser, Intersex and Androgyne Blogs. It will be added to daily from our news feeds. One thing to consider is writing your own Transgender blog. You don't need a website to do so. The blog page lists some software you can use some of which is free. Writing out your thoughts is the best therapy. Many use our transgender news for subject matter. Just write your own editorial. There is much in our world to comment on. I have just been sent the new draft of the Harry Benjamin HBIGDA Standards of care version 8.3B. This is the Transsexual guide for Gender Therapists and surgeons who treat us. It Requires Adobe acrobat reader. This is a draft and as such can be changed. If you have new proposals Please send them to Candace Gillies-Wright at the Royal College of Psychiatrists (17 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PG; email: cgillies-wright@rcpsych.ac.uk who are the hosting medical college for the guidelines. This period for comment will close February 16th. 2007. The Standards are an excellent topic for discussion. Some in our community embrace them and others do not. Discuss how you feel in the forums or chat rooms. September 9th , 2006 The Main Community Center and Teen rooms are rated PG13. Please use the appropriate language in those rooms. All other rooms are "R" rated. For example you can discuss personal issues in the post-op room like dialation and Panty issues in the CD room. At No place on the site is cybersex or sexual language allowed. There are plenty of sites to go to for this kind of talk. We are not one of them. If you see inappropriate language or behavior please notify Laura. It will be confidential. I have written an article about Transsexual, Transgendered and Teen Predators. On this site you can be assured that we are doing everything we can to keep predtators at bay and off the site. We do need your help though. Moderators cannot see Private messages to you. I review transcripts everyday but it usually after the event has occurred. Please notify your moderator immediatly if someone is being inappropriate to you. Often Predators are not just PMing you but others as well at the same time including teens. You are not tatteling, you are protecting others. These are dangerous people. Help us keep everyone safe. August 17th , 2006 Suicide Prevention is serious business. Your moderators are certified in Youth Suicide Prevention. During a recent crisis a non supportive user made a nasty comment that the user in distress was "faking". What it did was cause considerable damage and chaos in the room and to the suicidal person. Lives are at stake here. I have met with the staff and have instituted some changes for our users saftey. This is a support site. Anyone interfering when the moderator is working by making unsupportive comments will be banned. Most users are very supportive and try to help. If you can't do that then be quiet or leave while the intervention is going on. Many people are in distress and need our understanding. They are not here for a "pity party as this user mentioned, they are here for help. There are other sites to go to if you feel that way. Suicide interventions will now be private after a few minutes of group support. The moderator will talk to the person in private or in the crisis room. Once the mod asks you to stop PMing the person so they can work please stop PMing the user. The crisis room is for the user in distress and moderators only. Don't enter unless invited to so so. Moderators need to work one on one the same as other suicide hot line operators. Too many cooks in this case could have disasterous results. Suicide is very serious. Its important that everyone remeber that and let the moderator so their jobs. Its tough enough as it is. Working from waking to sleeping has finally caught up with me. So the doctor has urged me to cut back on my time for a while. The problem is I am way behind on email responses and columns. Please be patient if you've written me. I do priortize my mail so the most serious will be answered first. I hope to get to all the mail eventually. Please be patient. The site is still being updated daily and of course if your problem is life threatening or an emergency page my messengers. Just realize that I get over 70 IM's a day. With yahoo IM you can leave a message if I'm not on or email me. August 3rd , 2006 Most of us have our own personal wish list. For me other then having a hadicapped accessable house that I can turn my wheelchair in (without hitting the walls) is the only thing that I need. I do have wishes for the Community and Laura's Playground though. So I wrote an article about them Transgendered Wish List for Laura's Playground . I only listed the ones I think are the most important to me. If you have more community wishes you can write about them in the Forums. While personal wishes are great they only help a few. A fulfilled Community wish though can help thousands or more.
December 3rd , 2005
The COAGIATI Online Gender test on the fun page has changed. It stands for COMBINED GENDER IDENTITY AND TRANSSEXUALITY INVENTORY and was developed by Jennifer Diane Reitz. Here on Laura's Playground we have the Offline Printer version of The COAGIATI Gender Test. Remember that this is only a guide and may give you some direction. It does not replace a competent Gender therapist. The test will give you and idea if you are a Transsexual, Crossdresser or Androgynous and is Meant for MTF Male to females only. November 25th , 2005
Most of our our volunteer moderators are continuing their youth suicide prevention training. A few have completed the course and now have their certificates. All new moderators are required to complete the course. This will help us serve you better in your hours of need. The transgendered suicide has been estimated between 31% to 50%. September 26th , 2005
In keeping with Laura's Playgrounds Transgendered Support Sites interactive policies we are proud to present an exciting new feature called Personal Story Pages. I discovered some time ago that telling my personal story in my Biography was very therapeutic for me. We've offered space to other Transgendered Folks in our Transgendered Poetry pages and Holly's Transgendered Thoughts of the Day. We are opening this up to include personal Bios and real life story accounts from you. Guidlines will be on that page. You will soon discover that you are not alone. The new members pages will appear in the menu on the left. This project is open to all Transgendered, Transsexuals, Crossdressers, Parents of TG's, Wives and Partners of TG's, GenderBenders, Androgynous and Intersexxed Folks. Tell us your story in the appropriate section of the forums and we'll publish it here. We are all in this together and solve a common bond. Please be patient and bear with us through this enormous project. February 26th , 2005 I am proud to announce that Laura's Playground is the proud recipient of the prestigous TGNI Award for Transgendered Excellence. We're not resting on our laurels though. There's still a lot more to come.
April 3rd,2004 Welcome to Laura's Playground. Launch Day!! A Web Site is Born. Poof!!! I hope you enjoy the site. There's lots to come including articles of interest, photo's and lots more. This site with the exception of the Bio is meant to be a little lighter than most. Humor is always welcome by me. Nothing I say on this site is meant to offend anyone intentionally.
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