Blog Facelift

Today we're happy to announce a long overdue change to our blog!

We've introduced a similar two-column template, with a completely overhauled color scheme, font styles, photo header, footer, and an all-new menu bar with links to our ongoing series releases.

If you would like to send us any feedback on this update, please post blog comments or send us email at: blog@vantag.org

- The VanTAG Team

Georgia Straight Article on Trans Rights in BC

VANCOUVER - July 31st, 2008: Carlito Pablo of The Georgia Straight wrote an article covering the current state of transgender rights in BC.

Read the article here.

The article discusses our lack of sanctioned protections in our Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, the subtle but direct impact this on trans individuals and the greater trans community, and offers a handful of perspectives and analysis of amending the Charter to include "gender identity and gender expression".

We would really appreciate your feedback on this article. Please don't hesitate to share your perspective on trans rights or comment on your experiences with trans discrimination in BC! Please post via blog comments or via email: blog@vantag.org

VanTAG Now a Member of TAS

We've officially become a member of the Trans Alliance Society, here in Vancouver.

TAS has many common goals with VanTAG; creating access to trans surgery, challenging our Provincial Human Rights to sanction and protect gender identity, and further the medical needs and human rights of trans (etc) people in BC. Our mutual alliance is a natural extension to these goals, and we've already established a very positive and productive relationship.

At the moment TAS is driving a petition to "amend the British Columbia Human Rights Code so as to include and to specify “gender identity and gender expression” as a prohibited ground of discrimination for all purposes of that legislation in British Columbia."

Read the Xtra West Article on the TAS petition here:
http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?STORY_ID=5094

Visit the TAS website and sign the Rights petition here:
http://www.transalliancesociety.org/

Look out for the TAS booth, and sign the Rights petition, at the Vancouver Pride Festival (immediately following the Pride Parade) at Sunset Beach in the West End of Downtown Vancouver, on Sunday August 3rd, 2008.

- The VanTAG Team

VanTAG's Back in Business!

After a 2 month hiatus, VanTAG is now back up and running.

Two of our primary team members have been out of commission due to their respective surgeries and recoveries. This has significantly hampered our efforts to develop blog content, push forward with the letter writing campaign, and the continue creation of the petition materials.

Now that our team is back together here in Vancouver, we're ready to jump back into a summer of productive advocacy!

We'd like to say a big "Thank You!" to our subscribers/readers for sticking with us!

- The VanTAG Team

Xtra West Article on our Trans Health Care Crisis

VANCOUVER – June 18th, 2008: Patty Comeau of Xtra! West (Vancouver) wrote an article covering the current trans health care crisis in BC.

Read the article here.

Dr. Bowman was interviewed and he highlighted the predicament of hundreds of trans people being approved for surgery by our Surgery Assessors (i.e. vaginoplasty) here in Vancouver, but because of our VCH crunch surrounding trans surgeries, they cannot be performed here. Instead, trans patients are still being told to shuttle themselves off to Montreal.

Two of our VanTAG team members, Lauren and Ashley, were also interviewed by telephone for the article.

The article also outlines how only vaginoplasty is covered, how top surgery is only being partially refunded, how breast augmentation is only covered in rare cases, and how trans patients are still missing coverage for other medically-necessary services and surgeries, such as facial feminization surgery and hair removal.

Thank you Patty, for drawing attention to our "silent crisis" within the greater GLBT community!

We would really appreciate your feedback on this article. Please don't hesitate to comment on your own experiences with accessing surgery and services here in BC! Please post via blog comments or via email: vantagblog@gmail.com

The New Petition Framework

We're currently developing our strategy for a community-wide petition to draw attention to the current trans health care crisis, and create a meaningful solution.

But how do we create a solution?

We believe it involves pooling the collective frustrations of the local (Vancouver) trans community and our immediate allies, and voicing those frustrations with our health care representatives, via a hybrid online+offline petition. Here's what we plan to do:

1. Create a short video presentation, posted on our YouTube account and our FaceBook Page, communicating the brief history and scale of the problem, and how to get involved in the petition. (We feel this will help to "standardize" the many aspects of the crisis for trans individuals' lack of access to care, and condense the concerns of our allies into action too. We're working on this right now.)

2. Create the actual petition form, and a personal letter-writing template; publish on VanTAG, circulate both online and offline with community contacts / groups.

3. Purchase a pre-paid year of a VOIP-like fax-to-email service; drawing donations from VanTAG founders, team members, close supporters, etc.

4. Ask our viewers to download the petition PDF, print it, sign it, and fax or scan+email it in to VanTAG.

5. Circulate the presentation and petition among community networks, involve the media via interviews and press releases, encourage discussion and blogging/vlogging.

6. Pool the results of the petition here on VanTAG, and report back to the community.

7. Utilize the petition and personal letters as the focal points for pressuring health care representatives to; fully recognize, insure, fund all surgeries/services, deliver wherever necessary -- competent, individualized, holistic, community-based trans health care.

8. If necessary, reassert the results of the petition as the foundation for our campaign media releases and physical protests in both Vancouver and Victoria.

If we [at VanTAG] hypothetically receive 1000 petition signatures, and we've made every effort to facilitate relief from the current crisis with the Ministry of Health, MSP, VCH et al. by talking with respective health care representatives, but we [the community] don't receive an adequate reply in the form of full funding and delivery, we [the community] will be fully legitimized in our physical protests.

While we appreciate that faxes are rapidly becoming endangered, the rationale behind our old-tech approach is relatively straightforward: we believe physical signatures will enable the petition to speak on behalf of the collective community and legitimize our protests. Signatures are as powerful as appearing in person (which can't be said for email addresses) and they bring significantly more weight to the proverbial bargaining table when communicating with health care representatives. We're essentially trying to avoid the pitfalls typically associated with internet petition slacktivism.

We're struggling to create the seed cash for the fax-to email service. If you happen to be interested in helping us with this aspect of the petition, please contact us via email at vantagblog@gmail.com and share your ideas with us! (Please note, this is not a solicitation for donations.)

If you have any questions about or new strategy, please post your Q&A via the askablogr widget on the sidebar of this blog. If you have any general feedback, please don't hesitate to comment! Thanks.

- The VanTAG Team

VanTAG Now On Facebook

In an effort to expand our network and reach throughout the local trans community, we have setup a Page on Facebook. We plan to utilize Facebook as a means of releasing campaign- and ally-oriented media, and also for future event coordination.

Visit our Facebook Page here.

If you are actively involved in -- and "out" on -- Facebook, please support VanTAG and our campaign efforts by becoming a Fan of the Page, joining our Facebook Group, or posting supportive comments on our Wall. We'd really appreciate the exposure! Thanks.

- The VanTAG Team

A New Direction for VanTAG

Since launching this campaign and releasing the contact details for our government representatives, our team feels the response from the community has indicated major challenges which have prevented our message from connecting with the right people, or from ramping up the collective actions of the community, as we set out to accomplish.

We feel it makes sense to shift the tone and content of VanTAG posts into alignment with the tone of our original Manifesto. In essence, we feel our blog posts have become too 'dry' since this original outline. We're about to make a dramatic move towards a personal(ized) style of writing, to accurately reflect the sheer frustrations of the community, voice the concerns of our local trans population, and enable us to release posts on a far more frequent basis. We're currently exploring working with new writers and editors. Meanwhile, our team will still coordinate the neutral, 'diplomatic' content.

We've had concerns and reservations about making personally-accountable content and opinions available through our channel, however our provincial trans health care situation has reached such an extreme point of crisis that we cannot be timid any longer. Now is the best time to take advantage of the opportunity being presented to us: significantly under addressed primary health care for thousands of British Columbians. We must be prepared to embarrass the provincial government to the point that they actually make the changes the community so desperately needs; fully funded and insured trans health care.

We're actively networking with our community peers, and local LGBT organizations to direct (otherwise squandered) attention and participation to the campaign. We're also about to make a major announcement about the direction, logistics, and semantics of the campaign, so stay tuned!

If you are interested in writing or editing for this campaign, please drop us an email at: vantagblog@gmail.com

- The VanTAG Team