The Week In Transgenderism 5/7/12

Don’t mess with Texas. Or try to go to the lady’s room if you don’t pass perfectly. A TG in Dallas was at the hospital and used the facilities. After exiting the restroom, and hearing someone say “that’s a man,” she was stopped by a police officer who gave her a ticket for using the wrong restroom. Seems as if you’ve got to know when to hold it in Dallas. Get her story, along with a video, at MSNBC’s website.

Things turned out a bit better for a transwoman who has been fighting Aetna Insurance. When she went for a mammogram in 2010 Aetna refused to pay for it saying they wouldn’t pay since she was a transsexual. She has won her fight with the insurance company and the settlement says that they must offer mammogram coverage to TGs from now on. Read about it at ABCNews.com.

Victim: Brandy Martell

Why are there so many TG haters? A transwoman in Oakland, California was shot and killed last weekend and her friends say it was because she was TG. The victim was hanging out with her friends at 3:00 a.m. and was found dead in her car by the police at 5:00 a.m. Get the facts of the case at SFGate.com.

CeCe McDonald, the transgender woman who was taunted by racist jerks, felt threatened and stabbed one of them to death with a pair of scissors, has pled guilty to second degree manslaughter. That will get her 3 years and 5 months in the slammer. The trans community of Minneapolis has rallied to her support and claim that she is the real victim in this case. The dead man was white and had a swastika tattoo. He used racist and homo/transphobic language toward CeCe, then cut her face with a broken glass. So she was wrong to defend herself? Get the depressing details in The Huffington Post.

Kate Bornstein has been a lot of things in her life. She’s an author, performance artist, gender activist and writer. One thing you may not have heard about is her time in the late ‘70s as a Scientologist. Hook up your e-meter and prepare to get clear. Her devotion the church ended badly. Read about it in The Huffington Post.

In ABC show.

Does anyone remember Allen Funt and his Candid Camera show? Funt would hide a camera somewhere and unsuspecting people would react to a situation that Funt had set up. Candid Camera is the godmother of a show on ABC called What Would You Do? The producers, like Funt, hide a camera and then have actors do a scene to see what the general public around them will do. Last week they staged a scene in a diner with a transgendered waitress and a customer who was appalled that his favorite waiter was now a woman. Read about it and see a clip on ABCNews.com.

One of our loyal TWIT readers saw an article in her newspaper that dissed transgender beauty pageant contestant Jenna Talackova and TGs in general. Kudos to Annabelle Larousse for sending us a link to the article in The Irish paper the Sunday Independent.

Speaking of disrespect — A FtM student at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio was tossed out of a student teaching assignment at a local high school after only a day and a half on the job. Oops! Hillsboro High just may be in a whole lot of trouble with the feds. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and failure to conform to gender stereotypes. The school claims the student teacher was supposed to be teaching art but he spent time talking about his gender issues. The bounced student teacher says he needed to address the elephant in the room when he heard students talking about his gender identity. Get all the facts at WNEWSJ.com.

Dixie Longate

What is it about selling Tupperware and doing drag? Are queens attracted to the colorful plastic used in the venerable food storage containers? Whatever the reason we’ve had a couple of people in TWIT over the years who hold their Tupperware parties in drag. The latest queen to make waves in the food storage scene is Dixie Longate. Dixie actually uses Tupperware as part of her stage act — actually her stage act is a Tupperware party. She’s one of the biggest sellers in the U.S. and is doing her Tupperware show in England. Read about it in The Guardian.

Chef Soraya

Besides food storage queens are also getting into the cooking show arena. Jackson Heights New York’s Soraya Sobreidad calls herself the Drag Queen of Healthy Cooking and broadcasts her show on the Internet. She specializes in how to cook healthy versions of traditional Puerto Rican dishes. Check her out in the New York Daily News.

Another burgeoning venue for drag seems to be (some) high schools and colleges. Nikki Licious Halston, Miss Rhea Sunshyne and Mistress V are all teenage (or early 20s) drag queens at Fullerton High School or Cal State Fullerton in California. Read all about these young female illusionists in The Daily Titan.

You know that drag is now an accepted art form when it gets reviewed in The New Yorker. Of course this isn’t your run of the mill lip sync show they’re reviewing. This is Antigone Sr./Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (L).  Read the review and see if the show is as pretentious as the title. You’ll find it at The New Yorker website.

Jodie Harsh

What drag queen working today doesn’t count The Spice Girls as an influence? Now on of the Spice’s is working with a drag queen. Melanie Chisholm, the former Sporty Spice, is working on some new music and she has teamed up with Brit drag DJ Jodie Harsh to write and produce some of her latest album. Catch the beat at ContactMusic.com.

What city in the United States would you probably never associate with a vibrant drag scene? Sure, Bransom, Missouri, but what other city? Nashville, of course. It’s most often thought of linked to music. The name evokes visions of dudes driving around in pickup trucks, cowboy types carrying guitar cases and girls in Daisy Dukes. It seems that Nashville has had a drag show scene since the 1940s. Get schooled in Nashville’s drag history in Out  & About Newspaper.

A British author has won an award for her book, the tile of which is almost as long as that show reviewed in The New Yorker. (Maybe longer.) It’s called Recognising Transsexuals: Personal, Political and Medicolegal Embodiment. It has won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. The author, Dr. Zowie Davy (that’s right, Zowie) interviewed 24 transsexuals and focuses on how transpeople view their own body image and how others make judgements on trans bodies. Learn more at This is Lincolnshire.

Entertainment Weekly is stepping on the territory occupied by Out magazine. They’re alleging that John Irving, the writer who gave us The World According to Garp, is infatuated by transgender characters. Well, they may have a point. He’s done several books with trans characters. His latest book is called In One Person. Read the review in Entertainment Weekly and see how many TGs he included this time.

TWIT

Our TWIT Award goes to Gary Allen Guy. Mr. Guy is another one of those crossdressng criminals who make us cringe every time they get press for pulling a job in drag. Guy dressed up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and robbed someone on the street. He’s in the Tulsa County Jail. Please! Criminals, stop wearing women’s clothes when you rob people. You’re giving the general public the wrong idea. Check out Guy and his criminal past at NewsOn6.com.

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Category: Transgender Community News