The Week In Transgenderism 12/3/12

Stu

An item from the You’ve Come a Long Way Baby file hit our desktop this week. Who in 1990 could have envisioned an open crossdresser/transgenderist being elected mayor of any town in the United States. Stuff like that only happened in Transsexual, Transylvania. But it did happen and was reported on TGF in the 2000s. Stu Rasmussen, who had been mayor of Silverton, Oregon in the ‘90s when no one knew about his preference for feminine garb, was elected again as an openly transgendered candidate. Now, as if that wasn’t enough, Stu’s story comes to the thearter next year in Los Angeles. Find out about the production in The Los Angeles Times.

It seems that Carnival Cruise line had a failure to grasp what the concept of a RuPaul’s Drag Race themed cruise meant. The drag cruise was arranged months ago and 40 veterans of Drag Race were set to be on the ship when it set sail. Just a week before the departure date the Carnival sent out and urgent email notifying people who had signed up and paid for a drag cruise that there would be no drag in public areas of the ship during the drag cruise. Say what? Find out why Carnival put themselves in the running for a giant TWIT Award at Gawker.com.

Loughton

In politics if it’s not one thing it’s another. We were all excited after the election when we learned that a transgender woman was elected to the New Hampshire legislature. Apparently she’s made Republican legislators uneasy. They have forced her to resign from the legislature by digging into her past and finding that she did time in prison in 2008 for credit card fraud. Rather than face expulsion Stacie Marie Laughton is resigning. Get the bad news at UnionLeader.com.

We reported last week that GLAAD said that transgender characters had been portrayed  on television more negatively than positively during the past decade. Now we have more information on their study and just which shows, besides Family Guy and The Cleveland Show, are the worst when dealing with transgender issues. Check out the story in the San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Many people love the police procedural crime shows. For many it may provide a feeling that there are people in law enforcement who know how to do their job and ferret out the most elusive clue. That’s the kind of thing they do on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation but while they may be experts in evidence gathering the show is clueless about transgender people. Take their show last week as an example. Get the clues about how they treated a transgendered character in The Advocate.

Brittany Lynn to parade.

An interesting cultural phenomenon in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is an annual New Year’s Day event called the Mummer’s Parade. The parade started decades and decades ago and is a competition between groups of mummers who spend the whole year constructing elaborate costumes and sets and practicing Broadway dance routines. (They hire choreographers!) They take this all out to the main street and parade for most of the day. For many years only men were allowed to be members of the the mummer brigades which meant that if a theme called for showgirls the men had to doll up and be showgirls. Sometime back in the ‘70s the clubs opened their doors to women so the number of guys who would drag up for New Year’s diminished. Now we learn that the queens are coming back. This year there will be a Drag Brigade made up of local professional queens leading segments of the parade. Get the details in The Philadelphia Daily News.

Olga B. Aaron models.

An old, old fortress in India is the subject of a photo exhibition that just ran in that country. Bidar Fort was built sometime during the 15th century and was so impressive that even the Romans, who were no slouchs when it came to warfare and forts and stuff like that, were impressed. Now the Fort is in ruins and nobody seems to care about its historical significance. That’s why a photo-journalist named K Venkatesh decided to do an exhibition of photographs to spread awareness of the Fort’s sad state. He chose a transgendered model to appear in the photos, which is why this story is included in TWIT. Find out why he used the TG model in Daily News & Analysis.

India was also in the news last week for an historic rather than historical reason. For the first time in that country members of the transgender community are being invited to participate in the drafting of one Indian state’s policy on women. Also included in the drafting will be commercial sex workers. Seems like a good step forward for both communities. Get the details in the Times of India.

So you think you can write funny? Here’s your chance to prove it. The BBC is starting a contest for the comedy writers who can come up with the best script that “promotes a positive portrayal of transgendered characters.” The prize of up to £5,000 (about $8000) won’t make your rich since you’re supposed to use it to produce a pilot episode of your show idea. But if the Beeb buys it then the pounds will start to add up in your bank account. So get busy with those fake boob jokes, one liners about standing to pee in drag and other hilarious TG-centric humour. (British spelling, ya know.) Get the details on how you can get on board the TG comedy train in Chortle.

It’s a sad day for drag queens in the City by the Bay. San Francisco’s longtime “mom and pop” (or just “mom” in this case) boutique that catered to one and all and became a go to spot for the S.F. drag community has closed its doors. And we missed the big sale! Janine Dominsli decided to shut down due to her advanced years and impending surgery. Read about the final days of Foxy Lady in Mission Local.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the guidebook to mental disorders, currently lists transgendered people as suffering from a disorder — Gender Identity Disorder. That’s what they say we have in the DSM-IV. There has been a push from the TG community to dump the “disorder” designation as many feel it stigmatizes TGs. Good news! The forthcoming DSM-V will change our condition to Gender Dysphoria.That takes TGs out of the mentally ill category and gives us a treatable condition. Oh boy, we could get better! Get the story in The Advocate.

Dolly or drag?

Dolly Parton, an inspiration to many drag queens, made a startling revelation on a recent interview with ABC television. She said that one time she entered a drag queen look-alike contest impersonating a man dressed as Dolly Parton. Could the real Dolly win the best Dolly Parton impersonator contest? If she couldn’t it’s because those things are always popularity contests. The most popular queen always wins. Find out how Dolly did at ABC News.

TWITs

We understand that it’s hard for the straight world to keep track of who’s what and what pronouns to use but you’d think newspapers would develop a standard to follow when dealing with transgender individuals in the news. An Australian transsexual who fathered three children before getting divorced and transitioning from from male husband to female pole dancer had to go to court to get shared custody of the kids. The judge was cool with it and the former couple now have shared responsibility for the kids. The paper reporting the story uses male pronouns throughout the story. For that we must hand The Australian a minor TWIT Award.

Somebody in this tale is a TWIT. A British man who was put on medication for his Parkinson’s Disease sued GlaxoSmithKline and was awarded over two hundred thousand dollars. He claims that the medication made him into a gambling addict and sex mad, homosexual crossdresser. We suggest that he may have had inclinations toward this kind of thing before the meds kicked in. He claims his nuerologist kept upping the dose and that’s when things got out of control. Who gets the TWIT? Does it go to the man who sued for saying the drug made him do it, and for not complaining that he was suffering from the small print side effects, or does it go to the neurologist for not paying attention? Is GlaxoSmithKline the final recipient? The story in The Sun.

(That’s the real Dolly Parton in the photo.)

Tags: featured, news, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News