The Week In Trans 1/31/22

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Melanie Willingham-Jaggers

GLSEN has ended its search for a new executive director, giving the job to Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, who had been in the position on a temporary basis. Melanie Willingham-Jaggers is the first Black person assigned female at birth and the first non-binary person to hold the leadership position at the organization. GLSEN is dedicated to helping create safe and inclusive schools for LGBTQ+ students, something that seems to be quite a challenge these days. The Advocate has this story.

A record number of companies got a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index. 842 companies earned a perfect score. The Advocate has thi sstory.

One company which was omitted from the Corporate Equality Index caught some attention. Netflix was on the index for the last five years, but disappeared this year, because of its handling of the Dave Chappelle controversy. This story comes from Out.com has this story.

The Standard and Assessment Committee of the Utah Board or Education has created a “guidance document” for schools in the state, which covers many topics, including sexual orientation and gender identity of students. While the guidance is not legally binding, it is a strong suggestion, and the policy has been approved by the lawyers who advise the board. This story comes from KSL-TV.

Nikki Turietta

Nikki Turietta of Albuquerque was found dead of a gunshot wound on December 31. The Advocate says that her death, now confirmed, brings the total for the year to 53 transgender people murdered.

The bill to ban transgender females from participating in sports in Kentucky was suddenly removed from the agenda of the Senate Education Committee, hours before the bill was to receive a vote from the committee. This is not necessarily the end of the bill; the bill can be resubmitted in a revised form. (Specifically, it was advised that the bill define what the term “member of the male sex” means.) The Louisville Courier Journal has this story.

LGBTQ Nation reports that Republicans want Virginia to be the next state to regulate transgender participation in youth sports through legislation. However, that effort got a setback, when the bill failed to pss vote in Senate subcommittee. This story comes from The Washington Blade. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

In New England, one school district straddles the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. The district’s policy on transgender students was crafted to meet the law of Vermont, which accepts the gender identity of students. However, some parents from New Hampshire have hired a lawyer and are demanding that the district use New Hampshire’s less inclusive law in a school which only serves New Hampshire residents. Vermont Digger has this story.

Kris Irvin

Kris Irvin, a transgender member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a church which excommunicates transgender people) has passed away at the age of 35. A profile and obituary appears in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Hannah Tubbs, now 26, was sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention center for a sexual assault that she committed at the age of 17. The Los Angeles Times reports that this is consistent with District Attorney George Gascon’s desire to avoid treating juveniles as adults in such matters.

The Biden administration is still trying to undo women policies of the Trump administration, a year after President Biden took office. This seek, the Bureau of Prisons changed its policy on housing transgender people in federal prisons. The new policy looks a lot like the policy which had been put in place by the Obama administration. This story comes from The 19th. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that single-gender workout spaces in a gym are discriminatory. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

A poll by the Human Rights Campaign found that transgender women working full-time jobs have lower wages than typical workers. Indeed, it seems that transgender full-time employees get about 70 cents on the dollar that a typical full-time worker gets. This gap does not include wages of part-time workers, gig workers, or workers in non-typical jobs. This story comes from The 19th. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

More than 400 doctors in Texas signed a letter urging the University of Texas at Southwestern and Children’s Health to reconsider the decision to close the only gender clinic for children in the state. It is unlikely that the clinic will be reopened, now that it has been closed. The Dallas Morning News has this story, as well as another story explaining what the clinic was and what it did.

Eleanor Maloney

A transgender woman from Montana, Eleanor Maloney, won a $66,000 court settlement because her employer’s health care did not cover her transition-related medical expenses. This story comes from The Daily Montanan.

The Israeli Ministry of Health published a list of treatments for transgender people which would be covered by that nation’s health care system. Several experts complained about voice therapy being excluded from the list, and told the government and The Times of Israel why it should be included.

A new study by Johns Hopkins Medicine said that roughly one in five transgender women engaged in transactional sex. The study appears in The Journal of Adolescent Health, according to a story in News Medical.

Moderna’s HIV vaccine has started human trials. Them has this story.

An article in Science 20 reviews scientific papers on transgender athletes and finds that there is “no overwhelming advantage with timely extended hormone use.”

Dr. Dorian Rhea Debussy

Dr. Dorian Rhea Debussy resigned as the LGBTQ+ facilitator for the NCAA Division III schools. Her chief reason for leaving the job was the NCAA’s new policy on transgender athletes, saying, “As a nonbinary, transfeminine person, I can no longer in good conscience, maintain my affiliation with the NCAA.” This story comes from them.

State Representative John Ragan of Tennessee introduced a bill which would ban transgender women from playing sports in the state. Tennessee already has such a law to cover elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. WBIR-TV has this story.

Sports Illustrated wonders, if anti-transgender bills are about fairness in women’s sports, why do some of these bills also place restrictions on transgender males?

Lilly Wachowski’s series Work in Progress has been cancelled after two season on Showtime. Lilly took to Twitter to lament how television producers talk about “championing diversity” but do not put that into practice. This story comes from PinkNews.

Sean Penn, out of the blue, told the press that men who wear skirts are “cowardly”. Doesn’t it take more courage to go against gender norms than it does to just look like all the other guys? Get the details of Penn’s derision for men in skirts from Yahoo.

It’s time for the Sundance Film Festival again. One of the films is Framing Agnes, with transgender people on the screen and behind the cameras. It’s a documentary about a case from transgender history, and it ponders the matter of who gets to tell the stories of transgender lives. This story appears in them

Elliot Page released a new selfie, and fans love it. PinkNews has this story.

Orion Story

Orion Story is becoming a story herself on RuPaul’s Drag Race. She gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly.

Ally Sheedy has a 27-year-old transgender son. She talked him with ET Canada.

Charlize Theron shared a picture of her daughters, something that she rarely makes public. One of her daughters is transgender. PinkNews has this story.

Jonathan Van Ness has a new series called Getting Curious, and it is similar to his podcast which has the same title. He has an episode about the gender binary, and it caught the attention of PinkNews.

An update to The Sims 4 will allow you to specify your sim’s pronouns, and you will have the option of using some neopronouns. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Life has become much worse for LGBTQ Afghans since the Taliban returned to power, as LGBTQ Nation documents.

An appeals court in Hong Kong agreed that transgender people still need proof of surgery to amend their ID cards. The South China Morning Post has this story.

Transgender and nonbinary priests encouraged the Episcopal Church to “live fully into” LGBTQ inclusion. The Church is committed to inclusion on paper, but often fails to put it into practice, the priests say. This story comes from Episcopal News Service.

U.S. Seminaries are being urged to take certain steps to make certain that transgender males are not accepted to study for the priesthood. A few decades ago, there was a debate over whether cisgender women should be allowed to study for the priesthood when they could not be ordained according to canon law. That debate has swung. The National Catholic Register has this story.

Pope Francis told parents to accept their queer children and, “never condemn them.” However, there are limits to that acceptance, as many in the Church support conversion therapy and excommunication of the LGBTQ. This story comes from The Advocate.

Laith Ashley, trans man.

LGBTQ Nation has pictures of nine trans men who show how happy they are with their transitions.

A mother writes that, “I celebrate my transgender son, yet I grieve for his ‘dead name'”. The article in The Boston Globe shows both the joys of transition and the difficulties of acceptance.

The Daily Mail has a long article about a woman who de-transitioned after seven years of living as a male. The article seems to want to tell us how transgender people are not so sure of their gender, but in fact, the rarity of detransition sends exactly the opposite message.

Although an article in them is titled “Amy Schneider can’t stop winning,” another article in them two days later told of her defeat on Jeopardy!. Other outlets had similar articles praising her as she established the second-longest win streak in the show’s history on Monday’s show and announcing the end of her run on Wednesday’s show. PinkNews notes that she sent a gracious note to Matt Amodio after passing his streak, saying that “it will be an honor” to play against him in the upcoming Tournament of Champions. Amy has been sending notes on her Jeopardy! games on social media, and after her defeat, she wrote a sweet note to her girlfriend, as The Advocate reports.

Amy Schneider

When a local television station in Richmond, Virginia, was doing news segment on Amy Schneider becoming the winningest female contestant on Jeopardy!, a view wrote a rather nasty comment, challenging Amy’s claim to being a woman. The news reporter reminded the viewer that people very seldom verify the sex of cisgender people. LGBTQ Nation has this story. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

An article in The Washington Post said, “Amy Schneider’s gift to America was bringing her whole self to Jeopardy!.”

TWITs

A “women-only” social networking app called Giggle now uses facial recognition software in an effort to exclude males. When transgender women complained that this software excludes them, the app’s CEO said that there was not space for “men claiming to be women” on their social network. But, the artificial intelligence is not accurate, and some cisgender women will be excluded because of false readings. Indeed, there is another complaint that the app is excluding women of color. For attempting to define femininity on a “biological” basis that biologist say is incomplete, and for relying on unreliable technology to accomplish your discrimination, Sall Grover, the CEO of Giggle, gets a TWIT Award. The Daily Mail has this story.

A restaurant in Atlanta had to apologize to a transgender customer, after denying them service because the customer was wearing a skirt. While the apology is a good step, and it is nice to see that the restaurant gets some bad press for this, we still feel that the act of denying service is worthy of a TWIT. This story comes from WGCL-TV News.

A mother from Michigan went onto a tirade against the acceptance of transgender people because of a strange report that gender-neutral bathrooms are being used by “students who identify as cats.” The mother insists that there are litter boxes in gender-neutral bathrooms for these students who identify as cats. For taking bad information and turning it into comedic misinformation, and for continuing the rant after being informed that the problem does not exist, Lisa Hansen gets a TWIT Award, which she shares with various outlets that shared her story without corrections. This story comes from .

We noted above the case of Hannah Tubbs, who was sentenced to juvenile detention for a sexual assault even though she is now 26 years old. Fox News, The Daily Mail, and other right-leaning media have been making a great deal of this, screaming how unfair the sentence is, when in fact, it is part of the larger pattern, and a harsher sentence than others receive would have been unfair. Moreover, they say that this shows the inherent lack of safety in allowing transgender women into the ladies’ room, when, like the detransitioning story, the fact that it is such news points out how seldom this sort of thing actually occurs. For failing to notice the rarity of the things which they say should happen a lot, these outlets get a TWIT Award.

M&Ms announced that they would make some changes to their cartoon spokes candies, in order to update the characters. For example, the green candy will now wear sneakers, rather than high heels. Several conservative commentators decried the candies departing from their previously-defined gender expressions. Tucker Carlson in particular said that the new characters are “miserable, non-binary” candy that “we all deserve,” and described them as “deeply unappealing and totally androgynous.” So, we should have highly-sexualized candy that a real man like Tucker Carlson wants to take out for drinks, and maybe dinner. Do we usually date our snacks? For obsessing on gender presentation, to the point of demanding that candy has clearly-defined gender, and for failing to see how silly their ranting makes them look, Tucker Carlson and others who jumped on this story get a TWIT. LGBTQ Nation has this story. (Oh, and we should remind everyone that both the green and the brown M&Ms were male when the series of ads first came out, so they are both transgender.)

Joe Rogan had Jordan Peterson on his show. Peterson compared being transgender to a “contagion,” and to “satanic ritual abuse.” For hyperbole, and for a shocking lack of research on either being transgender or satanism, Jordan Peterson gets a TWIT Award, which he shares with Joe Rogan, who supported his wild accusations. This story comes from PinkNews.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is a group within the British government which is supposedly charged with protecting human rights. Lately, though it has been doing the opposite of that. First, the EHRC told the Scottish government to pause its reforms of the Gender Recognition Act. That alone caught the attention of The Guardian. On the same day, the EHRC suggested that the government should slow down, if not pause indefinitely, its plan to forbid conversion therapy so that more research can be done. That part of the story comes from PinkNews. It’s hard to imagine what area needs more research, or who would do that research. For siding with bullies who abuse others in the name of religion, and for siding with bureaucracy, the Equality and Human Rights Commission gets a TWIT Award.

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas is running for re-election. As a part of his campaign, he is pushing a “Parental Bill of Rights.” He wants an amendment to the state constitution which would declare that parents are “the primary decision makers in all maters involving their children.” That sounds good in theory, but it is vague, and it could allow parents to overrule courts and schools regarding punishment for their children (or lack thereof). The bill also includes punishment for teachers who provide students “pornographic material,” though defining “pornography” legally is notoriously tricky. (Justice Potter Stewart once said of pornography, “I shall not today attempt to further define this sort of material, but I know it when I see it.”) In an era when too many parents are “too busy” to attend meetings with their children’s teachers, Governor Abbott is determined to undermine the authority of those teachers by giving parents more authority over the classrooms that they know so little about. For government overreach in awarding additional power to the biggest bullies, Governor Greg Abbott gets a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

Republicans in the Florida legislature are pushing a bill that would forbid teachers to discuss LGBTQ matters. No LGBTQ history, no LGBTQ health concerns, and so forth. For government overreach and interference, and for violating the freedom of speech for teachers, the Florida Republicans get a TWIT Award. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

In an example of where these parental rights are leading, school administrators took down a student’s artwork which had a rainbow and the words, “Gay is OK,” after one parent complained. That was bad enough, but the administrator compared the art work to the Nazi flag, according to the report. For hyperbole a child cannot understand, and for invoking the Nazis as you are stamping out something the actual Nazis tried to stamp out, the school administrator in Clarke County, Georgia, gets a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

In Arizona, a bill would force teachers to inform parents if their child confides that they are LGBTQ+. Students who feel their parents might not approve of their gender identity or sexual orientation sometimes confide in a teacher, but this bill would make teachers violate that confidence. For elevating mental health concerns, as well as for government overreach, backers of this bill get a TWIT. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Republicans took over the Borough Council in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. One of the first things they want to do is to repeal the town’s LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections. For siding with bigotry, the Republicans on the Chambersburg Borough Council get a TWIT Award. The Advocate has this story. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

A mother in California is suing her child’s school, claiming the school “planted the seed” of her child’s gender identity. It seems that this 11-year-old joined a club for LGBTQ students, and there the child learned how gender identity and expression are not limited to what was assigned at birth by examining the child’s genitals. For believing that ignorance makes a problem disappear, and for rushing to blame others, Jessica Konen, the mother in question, gets a TWIT Award. This story comes from LGHTQ Nation. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to this story.

Mark Miller, the chief of staff and legal council to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, opined that being a transgender student is akin to being “a terrorist.” Yes, requesting that others respect your gender identity and expression is so like blowing people up. For hyperbole, for attempting to outdo others in hyperbole, and for not caring how much he hurts others with his wild and inaccurate accusations, Mark Miller gets a TWIT. The Mitchell Report has this story. Alyssa Washington sent a link to this story.

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, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News