The Week In Trans 1/13/20

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Daniela Lourdes Falanga

When Daniela Lourdes Falanga was born she was believed to be the first male heir of the Camorra Mafia clan and was expected to take over the ‘family business.’ Daniela’s heart wasn’t in it. Being masculine was not natural for her. Her father abandoned her and ignored her. She was raised by her mother and grandmother who strictly enforced the idea that Daniela was a boy and would act masculine. Of course that didn’t work, One night, she saw the transgender actress and singer Eva Robin’s performing on TV. She told the Huffington Postit felt like an epiphany. In a flash, she saw “the life I had been denied until then.” She transitioned in her 20s and now at 42, she’s a regional president of the LGBT+ organization Arcigay. Learn more about her from Pink News.

A bill in Virginia would have the state Department of Education create a statewide policy for schools regarding how to deal with transgender students. This would override the policies that local school boards create. This story comes from The Virginia Mercury.

Washington, D.C. Council, member David Grosso wants to update the D.C. Code to be gender neutral, or at least more so. You can read about it in The DCist.

A 24-year-old trans woman was attacked by her mother and the mother’s boyfriend, who have been charged with assault since the attack was physical as well as verbal. However, the assailants were not charged with a hate crime, even though the things that they yelled insulted the daughter’s gender identity. Ohio’s hate crime laws do not cover gender identity. The woman who was attacked tells WSYX-TV News that the hate crime law needs to change.

Nitasha Biswas

In 2017 Nitasha Biswas won India’s first transgender beauty pageant. Today she does modeling and advocates for more transgender rights. Even though the legal status of trans people has improved there is still work to be done. View a video about Biswas on the BBC website.

An appeals court in Michigan ruled that that state’s intimidation law does not protect on the basis of gender identity. The law does protect on the basis of “race, color, religion, gender or national origin,” but the judges ruled that gender protection does not include gender identity. The Detroit News has this story.

The state of Michigan may get protections for LGBT people, despite the state legislature refusing to put this into law. A petition drive has begun to put the matter on the ballot, where the people of the state may vote on it directly. This story comes to us from M-Live.

In Indiana, a state Senator has proposed a bill which would stop the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles from issuing gender-neutral driver’s licenses. The Bureau announced last March that it would issue gender-neutral licenses and ID cards, but they have not yet done so, since the state’s Attorney General has refused to endorse the rule change. LGBTQ Nation reports that the same legislator is also behind a bill to limit students to participating in sports according to sex assigned at birth. Thanks to contributor Alyssa Washington for providing a link to this story.

Carmen Guerrero

In a California prison last year, Carmen Guerrero was killed less than nine hours after being moved to a cell with Miguel Crespo. While this incident is extreme, it points out how transgender people never feel safe in prison. While some Departments of Corrections are making some efforts to improve safety of prisoners, including transgender prisoners, there are questions of what would make prisoners safer, as well as questions about whether such measures would be going too far. There is a long story about this from KQED.

LGBTQ Nation found a case from twenty years ago where a prisoner charged a guard with sexual misconduct. In this case, the prison guard and the state which employed him tried to argue that the incident was not about gender but about the prisoner’s “gender dysphoria, a psychiatric illness.” The prisoner won, and in so doing, the decision said that gender identity was part of “gender” or “sex,” as defined by the law.

Following the shooting of Dustin Parker in McAlester, Oklahoma, there are concerns for the safety of transgender people. MSNBC weekend host Kendis Gibson talked with Monica Roberts about violence against transgender people.

In Brownsville, Texas, police have been looking for Kimberly Avila for two and a half years. They offered a $5,000 reward for information, and that has just been doubled, thanks to a pledge from the Valley AIDS Council, according to KURV-TV.

Lexis Avilez is a transgender teenager who has lived in the U.S. since she was a baby. She is not a U.S. citizen and does not have a green card. She was recently rounded up by ICE and on Christmas day she was transferred to a detention facility in Alvarado, Texas. She is separated from the lawyer who was handling her case in California. That lawyer says that, at the detention center in Texas, she is being treated as a male. The lawyer is still working on her case, according to KPIX-TV.

Although an article on Bloomberg says, “No One Wants Your Used Clothes Anymore,” there are still thrift stores that will take used clothing. Then, there is Transform, a store specifically for the transgender community. The Cincinnati store gives away free clothes to transgender students who are transitioning. It is open by appointment only, but it can make a huge difference in the lives of its clients, as WCPO-TV News points out.

Myles and Precious Brady-Davis.

A transgender couple in Illinois, Myles and Precious Brady-Davis, welcomed an addition to their family in December. However, they found out that the state’s birth certificate law would automatically misgender both of them. A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Public Health said that the department has agreed to issue a birth certificate for baby Zayn which reflects the roles each parent wishes to assume, and added that the department wants to make this option available to all transgender parents. This story appears in The Chicago Sun-Times.

A pair of developers in Spokane, Washington, have created Solace, an app (for iOS or Android) which helps transgender people find information about medical procedures, lifestyle changes, and legal requirements. The Spokane Spokesman-Review has this story.

A 14-year-old transgender person was denied the opportunity to update his birth certificate to reflect the gender he lives as, because he is a minor, so he is suing the state of New York to force them to change his birth certificate. The Associated Press carried this story.

The state of Illinois has amended its Medicaid coverage so that it now includes payment for transgender therapy. The State Journal-Review has this story.

Proper treatment of transgender patients is important for all medical professionals. However some medical professionals do tend to overlook their trans patients needs, such as dental hygienists. Suzanne Hubbard, a Registered Dental Hygienist, wrote about her experiences with transgender patients in RDH magazine.

A group of nurses at the University of Virginia are taking a serious look at how older transgender patients fare in the health care system. They are focusing on transgender people age 55 and up. Cathy Campbell discussed their findings with UVA Today, the university’s student newspaper.

Mara Gomez

Mara Gomez, a 22-year-old transgender female who is also known as “Go-Go Gomez,” has joined a Primera Division A soccer team in Argentina. The Sun has this story.

Outsports reports that six states are considering bills which would restrict student athletes to competing in athletics according to the sex assigned at birth. The states are New Hampshire, Washington, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Alabama. Indiana also has such a bill proposed, as noted above.

One state which is avoiding the discussion on transgender student athletes is North Carolina. They seem to have learned something from their experience with HB2, according to The Charlotte Observer.

As the debate over transgender athletes presses on, WCIV-TV asked the Boston Athletic Association about the gender rules for participating in the Boston Marathon. The short answer is that there are no rules; the B.A.A. does not inquire into an athlete’s gender history.

Doctor Sherman Leis, a surgeon who does gender confirmation operations, tells Pink News that he hopes that transgender athletes will be able to compete in the Olympics later this year.

Sara Davis Buechner

Sara Davis Buechner is a concert pianist who will play Robert Schumann’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A minor with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She talked with The West Virginia Gazette Mail about what it is like to be a transgender concert pianist.

Margaret Court won the four tennis tournaments in the women’s grand slam in 1970. This year will mark the fiftieth anniversary of that achievement, and for that, each tournament is scheduled to recognize her. She has since become a Pentecostal minister, and recently in the news  for a very anti-transgender sermon she delivered. There has been a debate about whether recognizing her at tournaments might give additional credence to her views on gender. Martina Navratilova, who has had some unpleasant things of her own to say about transgender athletes, responded to the debate by pointing out that Ms. Court still has not modified her views opposing lesbian and gay people. Pink News has this story.

The debate over J.K. Rowling’s support of Maya Forsteter is dying down a bit, but Brynn Tannehill tells us in The Advocate why Maya Forsteter was so wrong on both scientific and equal employment grounds.

Oliver Cuthbert is 16 years old and appearing on The Voice. He is profiled in The Daily Mail.

Brendan O’Neill, the editor of Spiked magazine, had some nasty things to say about the acceptance of transgender people in society. He got quite a lot of blow-back from Amrou Al-Kadhi, a Muslim drag queen and author. Pink News has some of the highlights of the exchange.

One of James Charles’ draft dodger looks.

A makeup artist named James Charles tweeted a series of pictures of himself as a woman, with the caption, “Me when the government comes knocking on my door for the draft.” Many people take the tweets to be transphobic. It wouldn’t actually get him out of the draft, and worse, it just isn’t that funny. Still, he defended it, without apology. You can see the tweet and some replies in Pink News.

Rodrigo Alves has gained a certain amount of celebrity status as “the human Ken doll.” Like a few women who are known as “the human Barbie doll,” Alves had a lot of plastic surgery to achieve the look of the doll. This week, Alves said, “I’m known as Ken, but I’ve always felt like Barbie.” This came during an appearance on the British television program This Morning, an appearance in which Alves presented as a blonde female. This story can be found in Your Tango.

Pink News asked some transgender activists and celebrities in the U.K. what their hopes and wishes are for the transgender community in the new year. As well as the hopes for the near future, Pink News took a look back at transgender highs and lows of the last decade.

Non-binary activist, writer, public speaker, and model Jamie Windust made a TED talk in which they encouraged cisgender people to become more active allies of the transgender community. You can find the talk here, or read about it at Pink News.

Josie Totah

The mania for rebooting old television series has reached the point where there are plans to reboot Saved By The Bell. The reboot got a bit of publicity this week when it was announced that transgender actress Josie Totah would appear in a starring role. Totah was in a short-lived comedy called Champions, which was produced by Mindy Kaling. The Hollywood Reporter has this story.

More than 13,500 transgender and non-binary adults are on the waitlist for service from Britain’s NHS gender identity clinics. This does not count the transgender and non-binary children on the waitlist for the Tavistock and Portman clinic. Even BBC News has a story about this.

A nurse in the U.K. has launched a test case, saying that children cannot consent to the treatment that they get at gender clinics. She calls the treatments “experimental” and “invasive medical treatments,” and therefore feels that children cannot understand what they are giving consent for. The case is brought by Susan Evans, who was a psychiatric nurse at the Tavistock and Portman trust, so she is not some stranger to the practice. The Telegraph has this story. Pink News reports that many of the stories are inaccurate, that the case is not at the point of being heard this week, and indeed, the High Court tells Pink News that they have not received paperwork for the case.

A sad story from Britain tells of a transgender man who hanged himself in the garden after getting a double mastectomy as part of his transition. The Daily News has the story of Max Cresham.

A gynecology service in Birmingham, England, has shortened its name from “Cysters — Women’s Support and Awareness Group” to just “Cysters.” As expected, some people have criticized the move as “too much political correctness,” but others are glad to see the change. The Daily Mail has some of the Twitter feedback.

Dr. James Makokis

Openly News, a part of the Thomson Reuters Trust, has a story about Dr. James Makokis, the two-spirit doctor from Edmonton, Alberta.

The Diplomat finds some answers to the question, “What does India’s transgender community want?”

It’s hard to believe but another thing India’s transgender community wanted was a dating app, but there is one. It’s called Butterfly, and Quartz India has the story.

Kamila Kamaruddin was born in Malaysia and is now a doctor in Britain. She is the subject of a documentary movie. Malaysia Kini has this story.

South African transgender activist Nare Mphela was found murdered, and the investigation is hindered by the fact that her body was decomposing by the time it was found. This sad story can be found in The Times.

Someone started a thread on Twitter about items that are unnecessarily gendered, pink for girls and blue for boys. You can see some of the results on Pink News.

TWITs

Arizona state Representative John Fillmore has filed three bills which deal with transgender people. One bill would force teachers to address students by a pronoun “other than the sex or gender pronoun that corresponds to the sex listed on that student’s birth certificate.” Another insists that identification documents must list the person as “male” or “female,” and the third insists that birth certificates can only use “male” or “female” as sex descriptors. He claims to have nothing against transgender people, but also says, “For thousands of years we’ve had two biological sexes and we haven’t had any problems.” He obviously does not know about intersex people. Moreover, the native people of Arizona recognized more than two sexes until perhaps 200 years ago. For bad biology, and for ignoring the culture of the people who have lived in his state for centuries, John Fillmore gets a TWIT. The Arizona Mirror has this story.

Kenneth Gibson, a member of the Scottish National Parliament, said that the word “cisgender” is “politicized” and “contested.” He also said that the word was a new word, even though there are documented instances of the word being used as far back as 1994. As for it being a negative term, that is the result of conscience telling you that you shouldn’t behave like this. For making a fuss from ignorance, Kenneth Gibson gets a TWIT Award. Pink News has this story.

Boy George told people to “leave your pronouns at the door.” In a reply, he called pronoun usage “a modern form of attention-seeking?” He himself has been accused of attention-seeking for his use of makeup. For a bad case of projection, as well as a lack of common courtesy, Boy George gets a TWIT Award. You can find this story in The Advocate. By the way, this comes in the same week when the American Dialectic Society proclaimed the word of the year to be “(my) pronouns” and the word of the decade to be the singular “they.” You can find their press release here.

It’s getting to be rather tiresome to see some people claim that they are oppressed because they aren’t allowed to oppress others. Professor Kathleen Stock of the University of Sussex tells Times Higher Education that she felt her colleagues at the university “make it clear that they loathe” her. I sincerely doubt that they loathe her, but it’s easy to believe that they loathe her views on gender. She teaches in the philosophy department, but her gender-critical views make one wonder how well she thinks out the topics she teaches. She felt personally attacked when people put up transgender flags, even though those flags were part of a protest against Donald Trump, and had nothing to do with her. For taking things much too personally and for bad thinking in general, Professor Kathleen Stock gets a TWIT Award. (By the way, did you ever notice that these “gender-critical” professors come from the humanities, not the sciences, and certainly not a science that deals with genetics?)

A person identified only as “Jamie” called the Up Front In The Prophetic radio show and said a prayer. In the prayer, he thanked God for revealing how corrupt some left-wing book deals are, and called Michelle Obama “Michael.” For claiming revelation of something that has no evidence for it and all evidence against it, “Jamie” gets a TWIT. Right Wing Watch has this story.

The American Thinker has an article entitled, “Shoving Transgender Regret Back Into The Closet.” The article brings up the allegations from Susan Evans, the nurse who says that transgender children cannot consent to gender treatments, even though this same person would gladly let transgender children consent to conversion therapy. (Psychiatric professionals, studying data, conclude that transgender medical therapy produces far better results than does conversion therapy.) The article also claims great costs to the taxpayers from gender treatments, even though the cost is tiny compared to even a day’s interest on the Department of Defense budget. For hypocrisy squared, The American Thinker gets a TWIT.

Walt Heyer never seems to go away. He has a new piece, originally at the Daily Signal, which is repeated at CSN News. The piece is entitled “Transgender Clinics Are Ruining Young Lives.” He writes, “Three teens who transitioned at age 18 0r 19 and who regretted it soon after contacted me for help going back. They are living proof of that cavalier attitude prevalent among gender clinics.” In the same week that we hear of thousands of adults on a waiting list for gender clinic appointments, he claims that these three prove the whole system is rotten. For amazing overreach, Walt Heyer gets another TWIT Award.

From the echo chamber, The Daily Caller has an article which agrees with Tucker Carlson’s claim that transgender people are safer than the average American. The statistic about the number of transgender people murdered is certainly lower than the actual number, as in many cases the victim was never identified as transgender. Also unknown is the precise size of the transgender population of the United States. So, he’s taking a lowball number, dividing by a guess, and somehow coming up with an accurate statistic. For bad math, Tucker Carlson and The Daily Caller get a TWIT Award.

TWIT is assembled by Cecilia Barzyk with additional content and editing by Angela Gardner. Care to make a comment on this post? Login here and use the comment area below.

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Category: Transgender Community News