The Week In Transgenderism 9/14/15
Links will open in the same window. Use the Back button on your browser to return to this page.
Gigi Gorgeous
These days it seems all you have to do to become a star is start a YouTube channel, attract a few million followers and the next thing you know you’re being featured in People magazine. That’s the process that worked for Gigi Lazzarato, known as Gigi Gorgeous on YouTube. She started posting videos on YouTube in 2008 when she still identified as a male. After her mother passed away she decided she had to become Gigi. Read about her on the People website.
Fashion tips are always of interest to trans ladies who indulge in fashion and love to keep up with the latest trends in clothing and makeup. With the changing seasons now in the process of, well, changing, what is the best way to transition from summer fashions to fall fashions? You can’t just flip your closet one night and go from flouncy skirts and sleeveless tops to tweed jackets and tailored dresses. There are some hints on how to blur the lines between summer and fall on Philly.com.
Hasty Pudding with Jay Leno.
Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals troupe may be changing how it does show biz. The all-male troupe began back in 1884 when Harvard was a male-only university. That made it a necessity for men to play any female roles. Starting in the 1950s women were allowed to join as writers or stage crew but none were allowed to trod the boards in any productions. Now it seem that women at Harvard are intending to audition and demand inclusion. Some people think that including women is a no-no. A writer for Slate thinks it’s time to just shut it down.
Swayze in Too Wong Foo…
Long ago, in the early ‘90s when I was the executive director of Renaissance, I got a call from a researcher who was working for a film company. They were going to make a movie about three drag queens on a road trip across the country and they needed to find out if the names they were going to use had already been taken by real queens. I wasn’t able to help them that much since what witty, dirty, drag name hasn’t been used? That film was To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. The story of how To Wong Foo… got made can be found in the Movies section of Yahoo.
A trans woman has launched a campaign for the New York State Senate. Shauna O’Toole will be running as an independent candidate for New York’s 55th District seat. The main item of her campaign platform is passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act. Learn more about it at CNYCentral.com.
Russian trans woman.
Here’s a story from the “It ain’t so bad in the USA” file. We may have problems being accepted over here but in Russia trans people are labelled as pedophiles and sodomites and the general public feel justified in attacking them and other people who fit under the LGBT label. They even have a law over there making it illegal to spread “gay propaganda.” Learn what it’s like to be a trans person in Russia in an article in The Guardian.
The restroom/locker room controversy in the Hillsboro School District in Missouri has not gone away. The latest news about Lila Perry’s attempt to use the girl’s room says that several members of the local school board have resigned. Most of those stepping down gave no reason but one admitted that he felt Ms. Perry should not be allowed in a locker room with girls. Read the story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The new homecoming queen.
Other schools have a different reaction to a trans girl in their midst. Like Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Mo. where Landon Patterson transitioned and went from a boy on the cheerleading squad to a girl on the squad — and then was elected homecoming queen. For Patterson winning the crown was only a dream she had as a freshman and she thought it would never become reality. Read her story on the AOL News pages.
An Indonesian trans rights activist has graduated from law school. Mami Yulie enrolled in the Tama Jagakarsa University and graduated last week. The 54-year-old activist said that the law degree will mean she had a stronger position in society and she hopes her achievement will inspire other trans people. Read about her in The Jakarta Post.
Alexandra Glover
The latest state to tell a trans woman she can’t have her driver’s license photo taken cause she doesn’t look man enough is Louisiana. The Office of Motor Vehicles invoked the Louisiana law against applicants “misrepresenting” their gender when they denied Alexandra Glover a new license photo. Ms. Glover wasn’t even trying to have her gender marker changed, she just wanted to get a picture on her license that actually looked like her. So she wouldn’t be “misrepresenting.” Learn more about it in The Advocate.
Trans women at Missouri State University will be able to pledge the Xi Omicron Iota sorority under a new member policy. They changed the bylaws making them the first sorority at MSU to welcome anyone who identifies as a woman. No one has applied for membership yet but it’s nice to know the door is open. If you’re into that sort of thing. Learn more and view a video on the KY3 TV website.
Ashley Diamond
Ashley Diamond, the transgender woman who was released early from a Georgia prison has gone on television to talk about what happened to her when she was sent to prison for pawning a stolen saw for a friend. Watch her tell her story about her life and her treatment before she was sent to prison and after she was sent to prison in an interview with WXIA TV.
Here’s a “first” for Sioux City, Iowa. That town hosted it’s first ever Miss Gay Iowa United States pageant this past Saturday. Iowa has never had this competition before although the Miss Gay pageants have been happening all over the country for some time. The winner will go on to compete in the national pageant in San Francisco next April. Read all about it in the Sioux City Journal.
If you get in trouble with the law in San Francisco (like when you’re there for Miss Gay USA) and they lock you up in the city jail you will be sent to the section of the jail that matches your gender identity. Not right now, though. Try to stay out of trouble for a few months. This month the Sheriff’s Department will begin training jail staff. Learn more about San Francisco’s proactive attempt to keep trans women from being victimized in jail in The New York Times.
Fired for being trans. Jessi Dye
A trans woman in Alabama quit her fast food job to take a position at a nursing home. After just four hours on the job her manager called her to his office, asked “what she was,” and fired her for being trans. This story is not in the TWIT Awards section because the Southern Poverty Law Center took the nursing home to court on her behalf and got her a financial settlement and LGBT training for the nursing home staff. Read about the case on Think Progress.
The trustees of Edmonton, Canada’s Catholic schools voted last week on a policy that would allow trans students to use the restroom and locker room facility that matched their gender identity. The policy was created in consultation with gender experts, parents and the trans community. It was developed after a trans elementary school student was kept from using the restroom of her choice. Learn more about the story in the Edmonton Journal.
Pat Manuel
The daughter of a white woman and a black man jokes today that he was “raised to be a white woman, and obviously that didn’t happen.” Today he is a male boxer who formerly competed in women’s boxing, becoming a five-time women’s national champion. Now, after his transition, he is planning a return to amateur boxing as a male. Learn more about Pat Manuel in L.A. Weekly.
Here’s an interesting fact: The same woman who did the wardrobe for Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, and has run a drag boutique for New York’s queens has also outfitted Caitlyn Jenner and appeared in I Am Cait. Who is she? She’s Patricia Field and at 74 she is still going strong. Read all about it in The Independent.
Listeners of Ottawa, Ontario radio station The New Hot 89.9 can participate in a contest to win $40,000 (Canadian) to be used for gender transition. Even though Canada’s universal healthcare will cover transition it can take up to two years to get through the system. The station hopes they can help someone out, and of course jump on the trans publicity wagon. Read more about the contest and their motivation in the New York Daily News.
Promo pic from Broken Heel.
With it being the 21st anniversary year of the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert there is a town in Australia where a lot of the film was shot that celebrated with the Broken Heel Festival, a three day gathering of drag kings and queens from all over Australia that took place this past weekend. The creator of …Priscilla… was on hand for the whole event and the dress code was “fabulous.” Learn more on the Broken Heel Festival website. A review of the event can be found on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website.
TWITs
In the early hours of 2014 Shagasyia Diamond and her husband were having a loud argument. NYPD officers came to their door and cuffed her and took her to the local precinct. Despite a 2012 amendment to the New York Police Department patrol guide which instructed all officers to treat trans people with respect, Ms. Diamond was strip searched by a male office and placed in a cell full of men. It seems her story is not unique. The NYPD officers have been flouting the new rules for the past three year. A TWIT Award goes to the NYPD for not honoring the promise of the amended rules. Read about it in The New York Times.
A TWIT Award goes to the idiots in Tennessee who got all riled up believing that The University of Tennessee at Knoxville had banned the use of traditional pronouns on their campus. What they actually did was publish a guide to the many new pronouns that trans and gender fluid students might prefer. “He” and “she” could still be used on campus without fear of arrest by the “PC police.” To the enraged legislators and their uncomprehending constituents the pronoun guide seemed like “political correct” tyranny. Their outcries caused the University to take the guide off of their website. Thanks to TGF reader Jamie Roberts for pointing us to the story in Inside Higher Ed.
Malaysia is one of those places where Muslim Sharia Law is bleeding into the civil law and that can cause problems for trans people. Two weeks ago an award-winning trans activist was assaulted on the street by two men. Nisha Ayub sustained injuries to her leg and ankle. A TWIT Award to the attackers and to the government officials who keep legal protections for trans people from being enacted. Read the story on the Maylaysiakini website.
A trans woman from Boulder, Colorado was searching for a church that would accept her after her transition ten years ago. After years of being rejected by several churches, in 2012 she was accepted as a member of the congregation at the Flatiron Community Church in Lafayette, Colorado. The pastor there hugged her and welcomed her as a woman. He asked her to be patient about integrating her into the women’s activities at the church. Then in 2013 he, with her permission, shared her story with the whole congregation. Then, a week or so ago, she received a letter from the pastor that compared her to a eunuch and said she should be the “man that you are and always have been.” A TWIT Award goes to pastor Jim Burgen for giving this woman hope that she had found a place to worship and then snatching it out from under her. Read more about the pastor and his church in the Daily Camera.
Category: Transgender Community News
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
