The Week In Transgenderism 4/16/12

Talackova

It’s not often that you will hear Donald Trump praised in TGF but today we must give him a high five for putting Jenna Talackova back into the Miss Canadian Universe pageant. Last week The Donald’s organization went even further and announced that transgender women will be allowed to compete at all levels in the Miss Universe contest starting in 2013. Now transwomen can be objectified and held to an unrealistic standard of beauty just like any other woman on the pageant circuit. Get the details in The New York Times. Get the feminist perspective on beauty pageants from a blogger at The Washington Post.

A transgendered woman in Virginia is working on a bill to change the Department of Motor Vehicles rules on how TGs get licenses to drive. Is she a legislator? No, just a concerned citizen who thinks TGs shouldn’t have to prove they’ve had surgery before they can get a license in their new name. She’s hoping to find a legislator who will sponsor the bill. Watch a video and sign her petition to the legislature at WSET.com. You can also read some of the comments left by bigots who poo poo the whole gender reassignment idea.

TG teen Sarah Graves.

Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois has 4000 students and at least three of them are transgendered. They got the courage to come out and be themselves through participation in the school’s Gay Straight Alliance group. Meet the TG students in The Windy City Times.

Sticking with education but taking it higher we move on to Michigan State University where their annual Official MSU Drag Show happened last weekend. It drew so many fans that over a hundred people had to be turned away. Like we’ve said before, drag on campus is the happenin’ thing of the early 21st century. Get the event details in The State News.

Meanwhile in San Diego a drag show at the Catholic University of San Diego has one of the alumni upset. School officials are all for the show as it will “foster students’ understanding of and empathy for the complexities of gender non-conformity.” Pretty progressive for a Catholic school. The alum, who is an attorney, seems to have the wrong idea about what a drag show is. Read about his objections at onesnewsnow.com.

Dragonfly 2011

Even Oklahoma universities are not immune to the charms of a good drag show and unlike the MSU event’s bland name they know how to name a drag show at OSU.(And draw a crowd of about 1000.) The show was last Thursday and had not just students in competition but a featured celebrity queen. Oh, the name of the show? They call it Dragonfly. Check it out in The Daily O’Collegian.

Could Alex Rodriquez be stepping off the baseball field and into a Halston gown? As strange as it may seem the Yankees player may appear in a film about Salvador Dali — playing a drag queen. He has been offered the role by the film’s director. No word yet on whether he has jumped at the chance to leave the baseball diamond to wear diamond earrings on the silver screen. Read the speculation in The New York Post.

Rodriquez has been offered his chance at drag stardom. The rest of us will have to be content signing up for RuPaul’s Drag Race and hoping for the best. The fifth Season of Drag Race is now accepting video auditions but only till the 18th. The video has to be uploaded to the Drag Race Facebook page by then and fans will commence voting on who will make it to the show. Get the details in The Sacramento Bee.

Kelly and Andrej

Fashion Policestar and daughter of rocker Ozzie Osbourne, Kelly Osbourne, has won an award but she can’t keep it all for herself. She has to share it with our favorite fashion model Andrej Pejic. The two got the Beyond Style Award at the Logo channel’s NewNowNext Awards ceremony. Check it out at toofab.com.

In Angola homosexuality is illegal and while that has nothing to do with transsexuality if they’re ignorant enough to sentence gay people to hard labor then they probably don’t understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. Or they’ll just decide there’s no such thing as a transsexual and the person in question must be a gay man so it’s off to breaking rocks for you. But one transsexual in Angola has not only come out, she has created a career as a techno rap artist. Soon she will be leaving Angola to go on tour around the world. Will they let her back in? Meet kuduro sensation Titica at bbc.co.uk.

Shades of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. A town in Queensland, Australia is nowhere near Alice Springs but they are in need of at least one drag queen for a big upcoming LGBT celebration. Get the girls together, climb into the bus with the giant high heel on top and get yourself to Roma to do a show. The town’s plea is at qnews.com.au.

Uma Gawd

Speaking of world tours. A drag performer from London, England was noticed by a professor from India who was in that city as a guest lecturer. After seeing her show, and being impressed by her stage name — Uma Gawd — he invited her to come to India to perform which has lead to her Dragged Around The World show in Delhi. What was so fascinating to the professor about her name? Learn the secret in The Indian Express.

The South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, under fire from the transgender community in the Philadelphia area for requiring gender identification stickers on rider’s transit passes, has agreed to stop the practice. Stickers were used so that transit passes couldn’t be shared by straight married couples. But that caused trouble for TGs, and apparently gay couples could get away with using the same pass. Is this really a win for TGs? Seems like they were going to change the fare system anyway. Read the story on philly.com.

Bornstein

Author, playwright, and performer Kate Bornstein is on the lecture circuit and recently spoke at Elon University in North Carolina. She told her audience that she found no satisfaction or firm identity in her gender reassignment and has settled into contented ambiguity. (We know for a fact that she enjoyed dressing like Madonna around 25 years ago.) Read abut her talk and liquid gender in The Elon Pendulum.

Transgender people in Los Angeles can breath easier the next time they’re stopped by the police. The police department has directed its officers to respect the “espressed gender” of anyone they stop. Read all about it in The Sacramento Bee.

And, if they “take you downtown” in L.A. you will now be housed in a special module at the Metropolitan Detention Center that is just for TGs. No more transwomen being tossed in with the male detainees. Check out the changes in detention policy in The L.A. Times.

A reporter and photographer for the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York have won an award from the nationwide journalism fraternity Sigma Delta Chi. They won for their series on transgender people in their region. This isn’t the first award the series has garnered, and the photographer says she learned some things about TGs in the process of getting the story. Learn what they learned and more about the series in The Time Union.

Cassandro

If you don’t have the talent it takes to do drag shows but you still want to perform there’s a place for you as an exotico luchador. If you can handle pain with your glamour. That’s right, be a crossdressing wrestler in Mexico. Meet the queen of the luchadors, and she’s from El Paso, Texas, Cassandro. You’ll find her story in The El Paso Times.

TWITs

“I’m gonna have to see some ID.” That’s the sentence that many people in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and several other states will hear when the general election rolls around this fall. Estimates are that 25,000 transgender people whose ID still has their birth gender will be told to leave the polling place without casting a vote. This effort to “stop voter fraud” will not stop that much fraud but it will make it harder for TGs, the poor, and racial minorities to participate in our democracy. That is definitely TWIT-worthy. Read the sad facts in The Miami Herald blogs.

A TWIT Award is waiting for the Chair of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan. No, he hasn’t come out and said transgender women are evil or they shouldn’t be allowed in beauty pageants. He’s done nothing anti-TG, as such. But his proposed budget which the House Republicans passed last week would make life for GLBT familes a lot harder if it were adopted. Read about why the Ryan budget is rotten for transgendered people at americanprogress.org.

Tags: featured, news, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News