Articles by Joan Blagg
Joan Blagg is a Bent Alaska contributor. Joan has been employed in news media and journalism, engineering, industrial design, research and development, project management, and systems analysis and architecture. She is a single, middle-aged transgender person currently residing in a small, diverse, close-knit suburb in the west side of Anchorage, Alaska. She donates and volunteers to a number of professional, artistic, and social causes. She also works as a political activist. Her voting record is primarily Democratic, with a strong Libertarian focus. You might call her a cliff-hanging liberal.
Who writes Alaska’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)?
Alaska DMV based its refusal to put the correct gender marker on a transgender woman’s driver’s license on Alaska’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) D-24. Just who wrote SOP D-24, and what kind of review did it get before being used to make decisions affecting people’s lives?
Right now you may be crazy for wearing a dress or pants. You can help change that.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the last word defining “mental illness” to mental health, medical, and legal professionals — despite its many flaws and biases. It has a long record of being used to label gays and lesbians as “deviant.” It’s still being used that way against trans people
