Monday, June 20, 2016: MAJOR, the film

Kate Raphael speaks with well know trans activist Miss Major Griffin Gracy and StormMiguel Florez about the new film, MAJOR. This film which is premiering tonight in Piedmont, documents Miss Major's life and work to dismantle the prison industrial complex and support trans women in and out of prison.

Click here to listen now. 59:50 min

Also on today's show:
Reproductive Health and Trans/Feminist Conflict
Events for Bay Area Feminists for the week of June 20th

September 9, 2013: Transgender Incarceration and the Need for Critical Trans Politics

The recent coming out of Chelsea Manning has sparked the first national discussion about how transpeople, are criminalized and brutalized by the prison industrial complex. On today's show, we talk to Sasha Buchert from the Transgender Law Center about the high rate of sexual assault and incarceration of trans people of color and the laws governing medical help for transpeople in prisons.

Then we talk to Miss Major, executive director of the Transgender Variant and Intersex Justice Project, about the struggles of trans people to survive sexual assault and imprisonment.  Janetta Johnson, Program Coordinator at TGI, shares her own experiences being locked up in federal prison for 3 years and forced to live in a men's prison and face harassment and threats.

In the second half of the show, we talk to  attorney and trans activist Dean Spade about his new book "Normal Life: Administrative Justice, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law."  Spade argues that both the left and the mainstream gay movement have focused too much on legal changes that fail to promote real structural change, and elaborates on what a critical trans politics would look like.


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August 26: Max Dashu on the Secret History of Witches; Dorothy Height, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates and the women at the March on Washington

Chelsea Manning

Women's Magazine speaks to Sara Lazar of Commondreams.org about Chelsea Manning's plans to transition and the military's response: "we don't do that..."

Protestors in Dublin, Ireland support Manning (http://www.breakingnews.ie)

The Women at the March on Washington

It's long been said that there were no women invited to speak at the March on Washington.  One woman was invited, however: Myrlie Evers, widow of Medger Evers.  When Ms. Evers could not attend, Daisy Bates, a leader in the Arkansas NAACP and of the Little Rock school desegregation, was asked to speak instead.  Ms. Bates spoke briefly during a "Tribute to Women," as part of which A. Philip Randolph read a poem while women leaders sat on the podium.

Ella Baker

Dorothy Height and other prominent women in the civil rights movement wanted a woman among the nine main speakers at the event, and this is what the male leadership refused.

We listen to interviews with Ms. Height, part of Ms. Bates' speech, and an interview with Barbara Ransby, author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical  Democratic Vision.

The Secret History of Witches

Woman Shaman: the Ancients: dvd by Max Dashu

Then we speak with Max Dashu, founder of the Suppressed Histories Archive, about her forthcoming book and online class, The Secret History of Witches: Women, Goddesses, Patriarchy, and Christianity. This online course starts September 1.

Hunger Strike

California prisoners have been on hunger strike for seven weeks to end solitary confinement. To find out how to pressure Governor Brown check out www.prisonhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

Click here to listen to August 26 KPFA Women's Magazine.

58 min.

October 15th: Writers Nayomi Munaweera and Leslie Feinberg.

KPFA Women's Magazine takes a look at the social issues that inspired Nayomi Munaweera to write a novel about the Sri Lankan Civil War and Leslie Feinberg about Trans Liberation.

Nayomi Munaweera

Nayomi Munaweera, author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, speaks to Tara Dorabji and Nono Girl from Apex Express about her book and the incidents that inspired it. 35:20 min.

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Leslie Feinberg

Next we hear a speech given by Leslie Feinberg on the complex relationship between the Trans and Women's Liberation Movements. 18:33 min.
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Click to hear entire show as it aired on KPFA. 59:00 min.