The Week In Trans 1/21/19

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Tessa Ganserer

Marcus Ganserer is a member of the Bavarian Regional Parliament who has now come out as transgender. Henceforth, she will be known as Tessa Ganserer, although legal recognition of her new name is still awaiting a court decision. The Local.de has more on what appears to be the first out transgender politician in Germany. Pink News reports that she had been the subject of razzing by opposing members of the legislative body when she wore a wig last fall.

The new year brought with it some new political officeholders, and that led to some new laws.

• The state of New York passed a Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act. The legislation had been proposed for the last sixteen years, but had not gotten out of a committee in the state Senate in the last ten years. Because it was passed by the legislature, it cannot be overturned by an executive order. The Daily Beast has more.
• Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio signed an executive order granting state employees protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He joins Governor Gretchen Witmer of Michigan and Governor Tony Scott of Wisconsin in signing such executive orders. This story comes from the Washington Blade.
• Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas also signed an executive order that included protections for LGBT state employees. This is quite a contrast to previous governor Sam Brownback, who had removed protections for LGBT state employees from his nondiscrimination act. The Wichita Eagle has this story.
• Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida also did not include protections for LGBT state employees in his executive order outlawing discrimination. Former Florida Governor Rick Scott was asked to sign an executive order granting protections to LGBT state employees as a response to the Pulse nightclub attack, and Governor DeSantis knew about that request, which makes his exclusion of LGBT state employees deliberate, according to The Washington Blade.
• In Missouri, the House of Representatives was presented with an amendment which would have added employment protections for LGBT staff. The amendment was not approved by the house. KY3 News has this story.
• The South Dakota state Senate is debating a bill which would override the policy adopted by the South Dakota High School Athletic Association, and would force transgender students to compete in their “birth sex.” Sponsors claim that this is about “fairness,” despite the lack of any evidence that students are claiming a gender identity in order to get an advantage in athletics. This story comes from The Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
• The Sioux City Journal says that a lawsuit brought by a transgender state employee, who was trying to get transgender health care added to that state’s medical insurance package, was dropped, following the death of the plaintiff, Terri Bruce.

A trans woman in a photo from The Third Sex.

Thanks to Ms. Bob Davis who let us know about an article in The Paris Review that reveals what is likely the world’s first magazine devoted to trans issues, The Third Sex. It was published in Weimar Germany in 1930. 

CNN took notice of the fact that last year saw more murders of transgender people in the United States than any previous year. They included a bit about the victims.

17-year-old Tremon Hill was charged with the murder of Dejanay Stanton, a transgender woman who was found shot in the head last August. The Chicago Sun-Times has this story.

The Associated Press reports that plans are underway for a two-day event celebrating transgender visibility. Sunday, March 31 (International Day of Transgender Visibility), will see the Torch Awards, followed by the Trans Visibility Ball. Then, the next day, there will be a march in Washington, D.C., as well as marches in various major cities.

As part of a 50-piece retrospective of the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, The Atlantic posted an article looking back on the three tweets which proclaimed the ban on transgender people in the military.

Deja Lynn Alvarez

Deja Lynn Alvarez is Philadelphia’s first openly transgender candidate for City Council. Learn more about her and her reasons for running for office from Philly.com.

The city of Anchorage, Alaska, has a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. The Alliance Defending Freedom is suing the city on behalf of the Downtown Soup Kitchen, which wants to keep transgender people out of its homeless shelter. The city responded that the shelter might not be covered by the act, but that an investigation into the matter is going slowly because the shelter is not cooperating. This story comes from The Huffington Post.

Nicole Maines as Dreamer.

Nicole Maines has been featured on the first half of the season of Supergirl as Nia Nal, a new member of the Catco company’s staff. Her character is more than a cub reporter though. She has the ability to see into the future. Somehow that makes her a super hero named Dreamer and she gets a tight-fitting super hero suit. Will she do battle using her ability to see the future as an advantage? We’ll see about that in February when she first wears the suit. Find how what it looks like now by visiting Pink News.

The Atlantic has an article focused on Dr. Kristina Olsen’s long-term study of transgender children. The take-away is that children know their gender. Also, the evidence seems to show that those who do not transition as children are as strong in their gender identities as those who do transition.

One thing which is known to help transgender children is a supportive family. Mashable profiles the work of Roz Keith, who created Ally Moms. Her organization can put transgender youth in touch with a stranger who will support them if their own parents don’t.

Owl and Fox Fisher have published a book entitled Trans Teen Survival Guide. The book contains much material that they got from their late friend, Christina L. Bentley. The book was featured in an article on Into More, a site which unfortunately has experienced some deep cuts recently.

Julisa Abad

WJBK-TV in Detroit did a profile of Julisa Abad, a trans woman who has started a workshop for transgender women which includes support for trauma recovery as well as empowerment.

Amelia Abraham took to the TEDx stage in London to explain why feminists should support transgender people, and it caught the attention of The Independent.

The Trans Disaster Relief Fund will is accepting applications for financial assistance from LGBTQI federal employees who are not being paid during the shutdown. LGBTQ Nation has more.

The lower house of the Indian Parliament has passed a transgender rights bill which puts into law the marginalization of those who have not undergone a surgical transition. The bill is caught in a general logjam of legislation in the upper house, but could come to the floor in a couple of weeks. This legislation is the subject of a story by Samantha Allen in The Daily Beast.

Thanks to Jamie Roberts for pointing us to a story about a restaurant in Washington, D.C. that tried to stop a trans woman from using the ladies room. They asked her for ID before she could pee. The law in D.C. says, no. No I.D. needed. Get the story from The Washington Post.

Do Nhat Na

Do Nhat Ha, a 23-year-old university student, has won the Miss Tiffany pageant, the first pageant for transgender women held in Vietnam. She will represent Vietnam in the Miss International Queen competition in Bangkok later this year. Vietnam Net has this story.

Harrison Browne, who retired this year from the National Women’s Hockey League, was invited to drop the puck in a ceremonial first face-off during the New York Rangers’ Pride Night game against the Carolina Panthers. You can read about it at NHL.com.

Kai Isaiah-Jamal writes in Broadly about the life-lessons he learned from his first experience with a binder.

Miami Public Radio reports that some researchers are tracking the behavior of HIV-negative transgender women, to try to figure out what distinguishes them from HIV-positive transgender women.

There are dating apps for LGBTQ people, and there are dating apps for Christians. Now, a new app is coming, which is specifically aimed at LGBTQ Christians. It is for those who feel that they are “too queer for Christians and too Christian for LGBTQ+ spaces.” LGBTQ Nation has more.

Hashtag Trashly as Pokemon’s Mimikyu.

You hear about the misogyny of the video game world but it turns out that world is also a place to explore identities and in an article from The Guardian four drag queens explain how video games have influenced their drag. one of the is a game developer.

Twitter and Facebook recently had a run of people posting pictures of themselves in the past and present. Pink News reports that some pictures ten years apart showed a gender change.

The next Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Far From Home, has cast a trans actor to play one of Peter Parker’s classmates who are on a trip to Europe. Learn more from Yahoo.

TWITs

The Daily Mail and The Mail Online ran an apology for an error that they made in an article which ran on November 30, 2018. The article claimed that Mermaids felt that HRT drugs “can subject a young person to distressing bodily changes that can lead to an increased risk of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal ideas.” In fact, they said that those symptoms can be caused by the long waiting times involved in obtaining HRT medications. Well, that’s certainly different. For taking a quote and making it seem like it says the exact opposite of what it says, The Daily Mail gets a TWIT. Pink News has this story.

A more recent story in The Daily Telegraph complains that “hospitals [in Britain] routinely allow male patients to share female wards if they self-identify as women.” This phrasing implies that any male patient can get placed on a ward for females if he simply tells staff he feels like a woman. That’s not how this works. For slant so great it leaves an impression that is not true, The Daily Telegraph gets 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.

Tags: featured, news, Nicole Maines, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News