The Week In Transgenderism 4/8/13

Fox

Fallon Fox will be in the ring kicking and punching her way to to the top in mixed martial arts bouts without the shadow of a fraud investigation. Florida officials have found that there was no evidence of illegality surrounding Fox’s fight license application. The fraud didn’t have anything to do with her TG status. Find out why she was being investigated on MMAJunkie.com.

It’s spring and TG teen’s thoughts turn to — Prom! For one TG girl in Houston, Texas  her school’s prom really will be her special day. The ACLU pointed out to her school’s principle that she had the Constitution backing her wish to wear a prom dress for the event. She’ll be there in her “at least mid-thigh” dress and pumps. Get the story from The Houston Chronicle.

Keep your eyes open for a television spot for Facebook’s new “Home” starring a drag queen. The spot was unveiled at the social networking site’s launch party for its takeover of the Android operating system. They call it Facebook Home. Great. More settings to figure out. But back to the drag queen television spot. It stars Drag Race superstar Shangela cavorting on an airplane. Get the story at Venture Beat.

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Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly (who we have always thought resembles drag star Willam Belli so closely they could be sisters) recently spent some time on Fox mocking transgendered prisoner’s plight regarding denial of treatment for their gender identity disorder. Why is that woman so mean? Get the story from Media Matters.

The drag on campus trend continues. This week we found a report on the appearance of  RuPaul’s Drag Race first season winner BeBe Zahara Benet on the campus of Texas State. Benet appeared on a panel with students from the school discussing diversity and the need to be yourself without regard to societal pressures to deny your true nature and conform. The story is in the campus newspaper, The University Star.

Billy Porter as Lola

The musical Kinky Boots has opened on Broadway to good reviews. Cyndi Lauper, the girl who just wants to have fun, wrote the music and Harvey Fierstein did the book, as they say on the Great White Way. Speaking of which; in all the hub bub over the musical we totally missed a very important “first” that occurred when it opened. It’s the first Broadway show with a lead character who is a black, gay  drag queen. Meet the man who who plays Lola in the production on NewNowNext.com.

On March 30 a group of transgendered people and allies held a rally in Washinton, D.C to demonstrate support for equal treatment in health care for TGs. The District of Columbia has the D.C. Human Rights Act which makes it illegal to discriminate against people based on their gender identity and other steps have been taken to make sure TGs get the care they need but the rally emphasized the impact of economic conditions on the availability of health care and the need to educate providers and the general public about issues around TG health care. The story is in Metro Weekly.

What’s up with people who go through the pain, suffering and social stress caused by changing gender only to decide somewhere down the road they want to go back? Were they just playing with gender when they felt they should be the opposite sex? Or in the case of some MtFs was the glamorous life just too compelling when they were young but the glam is going away and it’s not so much fun? Whatever the reason MTV featured a TG woman who decided to go back to a male presentation after spending years as a woman. The story is in the Huffington Post along with video from MTV.

Andrej

There’s a yearly event called Fashion Cares run by a fashion designer named Jeffrey that started in Atlanta and moved to New York City in the first decade of this century. It’s a fashion show and all the most fabulous people attend. The event benefits LGBT charities and the latest one went off flawlessly on April 2. We use that as an excuse to publish another picture of our favorite fella who models lady’s attire, who was in attendance, Andrej Pejic. The lowdown on the event is at NewNowNext.com.

Good news from Malta. No, that’s not a beverage from Puerto Rico. Malta is a country in the Mediterranean — a small island country — located between Sicily and Tunisia. For several years we’ve told you about the struggle of one transgendered woman from Malta who has been seeking the right to marry a man. Finally the government of Malta has agreed to amend their Marriage Act to let transsexuals marry male partners. The information is available at Malta Today’s website.

Sheena

A Montreal drag legend hung up her wig and retired to the quiet life after 15 years of ripping it up on the club scene. Then in 2012 she was asked to perform at a club reunion. Of course she was there. And she has been seen at other DJ events in Montreal since then. In the new documentary film about her rise to the top and retreat to the quiet life she says Sheena Hershey never refuses an invitation to perform. Read about her and the film in the Montreal Gazette.

Concordia University in Canada recently hosted an event that sought the expose the roots of transphobia. Author, spoken word performer, biologist and “bisexual-femme-tomboy-transwoman” Julia Serano was the featured speaker at the event and she declared that sexism and gender stereotyping where transphobia starts. She attacked several of the gender binary myths in her presentation and stated that while the world has made progress in acceptance of trans people there is still a lot of road to travel. Read her theories and perceptions in The Link.

Mystery actress

A recent episode of the television show Elementary, which features a modern Sherlock Holmes and a female Watson (played by Lucy Liu), featured a transsexual character. The episode was reviewed by Blast Magazine and the reviewer applauded the fact that the show hired a real transsexual actress to play the transsexual role. I say Holmes, jolly good, as Watson might said when he was played by a bumbling but lovable Nigel Bruce in the old Holmes films from the ‘40s. But, if we take a close look at the clues in the case we note that the reviewer did not once provide the name of the TS actress. We can only conclude that the reviewer was, in fact, Professor Moriarty . . . Sorry. Got a bit carried away. The actress playing “Ms. Hudson” was Candace Cayne. Read the whole review and see what you think.

TWITs

Sweden has has a law in place for many years requiring transsexuals to be sterilized before they could undergo gender reassignment surgery. While most often the genitalia are removed and re-done making sterilization a side effect of the surgery there were some people in Sweden who (like American Thomas Beatty) who chose to keep their reproductive organs in working condition. The sterilization law was on it’s way to the trash heap of history when two members of Parliament raised the specter of the possibility of a “third gender” rising from un-sterilized transsexuals. These guys get very large TWIT Awards. And we’re not afraid to label them morons. Get the story in The Raw Story.

There are TWITs in this one. A mother contends that her TG daughter was denied treatment by EMS personnel when they discovered that she had been born a man. Her daughter died of diabetic shock and the mom is suing the EMS. But the TG woman was self medicating with hormones she bought on the Web. She was not getting medical supervision and had been taking the hormones since 2010 with at least one previous medical emergency most likely brought on by the hormones. EMS personnel contend that she was dead when they arrived. There are other TWIT worthy actors in this story and we give the whole bunch a large TWIT Award to share. Sort out which is the worst TWIT while you  read the story in Sheepshead Bites.

Tags: featured, news, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News