The Week In Trans 10/25/21

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Dr. Rachel Levine is a four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The BBC has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

A court in Virginia has agreed to hear a case in which the Alliance Defending Freedom requests that the Loudon County schools suspend their new policy regarding transgender students. The Loudon Times-Mirror.

Loudon County was the site of a sexual harassment incident by a transgender student. It happened before the current policy on transgender students went into effect, as Media Matters for America points out, and yet, the new policy would have done nothing to prevent it. Of course, opponents of the new policy are tying the incident to the policy.

An article in The New York Times reports that more parents are choosing to send their children to Christian schools because of public school policies regarding transgender students. That explanation is about as oversimplified as a one-sentence reason for why the stock market did what it did. Both explanations are true, but only scratch the surface of what is happening. A lot of public schools are having problems finding people to do various jobs, and have had to lower their employee requirements. There is a lot going on here.

Students at St. Mary’s College in Maryland held a sit-in to support transgender students. In an unusual move, the school actually listened to the students, at least to some extent. Southern Maryland News has this story.

A graduate student in the Psychology department at the University of Rochester, is running a survey about sex, dating, and relationships. Her research is focused specifically on the health and experiences of transgender adults. To participate in The Full Spectrum of Sex, Dating, and Romance Survey you must be at least 18. The survey takes 20-25 minutes to complete.

As Transgender Day of Remembrance approaches, we have yet another transgender murder to report. Zoey Rose Martinez, a 20-year-old transgender Latina woman was fatally shot on August 31, but only recently identified as transgender. She had taken care of her mother as her mother recovered from COVID. This story comes from them. Police have made an arrest in the case.

Schools in the Minneapolis Public Schools district are using a program called Gaggle, which monitors what the students are doing online at school. The software has a habit of labeling any LGBT material as “pornographic,” without nuance of context. It can be set to monitor everything on a student’s home computer, and can report what it finds to the parents as well as school authorities. It has been known to reveal sexual orientation or gender identity to parents, without the student’s consent, which concerns LGBTQ Nation.

A 78-year-old transgender woman is suing an assisted living facility in Jonesport, Maine, for denying her a room on the basis of her gender identity. The Bangor Daily News has this story, which highlights the problems older trans people face.

Although Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act forbids discrimination in health care on the basis of one’s gender identity, lawsuits are often filed regarding a health insurance policy’s transgender coverage. Bloomberg Law has this story.

Science News For Students has an article which summarizes the benefits of gender-affirming medical and mental health care.

Jin Xing, China’s most famous transgender celebrity, announced that The Jinxing Show was back. The show has not been on the air in the last four years. This story comes from Global Times.

Bullying and other anti-LGBTQ experiences can literally change your DNA on the epigenetic level, according to LGBTQ Nation.

Transhealth Northampton is a clinic run by transgender people for transgender people. It is in western Massachusetts, and The 19th has a story on it.

The Texas state Senate passed HB 25, the state’s transgender athletes bill. The bill now goes to the Governor for his approval. Governor Abbott has promised to sign it. The White House called the bill “hateful” and “just the latest example of Republican state lawmakers using legislation to target transgender kids–whom the president believes are some of the bravest Americans–in order to score political points.” This story comes from them. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

PinkNews has a profile of Sunny Bryant and her mom, Bekha, who have made the 160-mile trip from Houston to Austin to testify against anti-transgender legislation several times this year.

Natalie van Gogh, a 47-year-old transgender woman who just retired from cycling, is profiled in Cycling Tips.

Jamie Lee Curtis brought her transgender daughter, Ruby, to the premiere of Halloween Kills. People magazine has an interview with mother and daughter.

Netflix continues to be deep in the mess that is the fallout from the Dave Chappelle special The Closer. The Verge reports that the streaming service fired a Black transgender employee who helped organize the walkout in protest of the special. Netflix claims that the employee, who is also pregnant, was fired for sharing metrics about the special with the media. That employee, B Pagels-Minor, later wrote about it in The Washington Post.

Protestors demonstrating against the Dave Chappelle special were met by a counterprotest in support of free speech. This story comes from the Associated Press.

Several LGBTQ celebrities appear in a PSA urging people not to watch Dave Chappelle’s special. Joey Soloway and Alexandra Billings are among those who appear in the PSA. The Advocate has this story.

Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix, admits, “I screwed up,” when discussing the handling of the Dave Chappelle special in an interview with Variety.

Dave Chappelle says he is willing to listen to transgender employees of Netflix. However, organizers of the walkout say he was welcome to come talk with them during their protest. Out.com has this story.

Transgender employees of Netflix delivered a series of steps that management could take to make things right. This story comes from them.

Out.com has a list of eleven transgender comedians whom you can listen to instead of Dave Chappelle.

RuPaul insisted that TS Madison be brought on to Drag Race. She tells that story and others as she appears on The LGBTQ&A.

Michaela Jae Rodriguez, Beanie Fedstein, and Jameela Jamil have signed on to star in the new anthology series Girls Can’t Shoot (& Other Lies). Out.com has this story.

Margaret Atwood created a firestorm when she asked, “Why can’t we say ‘women’ anymore?” Several people accused her of siding with TERFs, but remember, she is a writer, and she is arguing from a linguistic point of view, not a human rights or human recognition point of view. This story comes from PinkNews.

Grace Petrie tells her fellow lesbians, “Trans people are not the enemy.” She talked about her anti-TERF feelings in an interview with PinkNews.

A new comic titled Nubia & The Amazons focuses on Wonder Woman’s fellow Amazons in Themyscira. A Black transgender woman named Bia is one of five newcomers among the Amazons. Comics Rant has this story.

Kristen Stewart was asked if she would be willing to play The Joker opposite Robert Pattinson as Batman. Her response was, “I’m totally down to play a freaky, scary person,” but she feels that The Joker has been done quite well by others, and she’d rather do something new. She claims that her response is not a firm “no.” A lot of the responses from others focuses on the gender-bending aspect of the casting, as Out.com points out.

Eliza Clark, the showrunner for Y: The Last Man tweeted that the show is looking for a new home. In other words, it has been cancelled. Out.com has this story.

Burlington High School, South Burlington High School, and Winooski High School in Vermont put on a drag show for halftime of their homecoming football game, as The Advocate reports.

The BBC has been criticized in a new letter for failing transgender people, and the most prominent example in the letter is the fact that they bring the LGB Alliance into interviews. PinkNews has this story.

MTV will host its Euro Music Awards in Budapest on November 14. There have been calls to move the show, to show displeasure with the anti-LGBTQ laws of the nation. MTV has decided not to move the awards, but instead to stand with the LGBTQ community in Hungary by keeping the show there. The broadcast will mention the nation’s anti-LGBTQ laws, according to The Advocate.

An article in The Brussels Times looks at why transgender rights are such a polarizing issue in Europe, as well as the U.S. and the U.K.

The vice-chancellor at the University of Sussex has threatened that it will “take action” against students who “discriminate” against Kathleen Stock because of her anti-transgender views. PinkNews has this story.

A transgender woman who has been an activist and trailblazer, Cleopatra Kambugu, is the first Ugandan to receive a national ID card with her self-declared gender on it. This story comes from PinkNews.

We reported recently that Malaysian national and cosmetics millionaire Nur Sajat was threatened with extradition to Malaysia, where she is charged with offenses against Islam, for wearing a hijab to a mosque. The New York Times reports that she is safe in Australia, where she has been given asylum.

On Thursday, The Hill reported that South Korea’s Army would appeal the decision to posthumously reinstate its first transgender soldier. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that South Korea’s government blocked the military from appealing the decision.

Chris Elston has been traveling across Canada, protesting the use of puberty blockers to treat transgender youth. In Ottawa, Ontario, he was met by about 200 people who gathered to counter-protest. The school board had been warned of the protest, and notified parents. The CBC has this story.

Freddie McConnell, a trans man who has tried unsuccessfully to be listed as “father” or “parent” on his first child’s birth certificate, is pregnant again. He plans to give birth in Sweden, so as to avoid having a U.K. birth certificate. This story comes from PinkNews.

Tiesa Meskis is a member of the city council in Aberdeen, Washington. She did not set out to be a trailblazer, but she is the first transgender politician in the state, so she gets some credit. KNKX Public Radio has this story.

Lisa Middleton, the mayor pro tem of Palm Springs who is running for state Senate in California, is profiled by The Advocate.

President Biden has released a list of endorsements in the upcoming Virginia election, and Danica Roem is on the list. Before you get too excited, know that the President is endorsing all the Democratic in the race. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Last week, we mentioned Josh Mandel, a GOP candidate for Ohio governor, who was removed from a school board meeting for protesting the policy regarding transgender students. Well, it turns out, some people quickly found pictures of him in drag. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Senator Tammy Baldwin co-wrote a piece in LGBTQ Nation, tying certain extremely rich people who fund anti-LGBTQ policies to the erosion of worker rights.

Support for anti-transgender laws, especially bathroom bills and athletic limitations, seems to be growing, according to polls. However, an opinion piece in LGBTQ Nation says that coming out publicly as transgender helps counter that by letting people know that they know a transgender person.

EDM has a playlist of songs by transgender musicians for LGBTQ History Month.

Spirit Day was last week. The Advocate has a story about the history and significance of Spirit Day, while LGBTQ Nation has a list of who was celebrating Spirit Day this year.

The Advocate encourages people to fight for civil rights of all kinds on Spirit Day.

This past week also featured Pronoun Day. A new study showed the importance of using proper pronouns in creating self-respect in others. The study appears in The Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

TWITs

The Federalist found out about the story of two doctors who treat transgender youth wondering if some of the current practices are indeed best practices, and as expected, they used this as an excuse to condemn all gender-affirming medical care for young people with gender dysphoria. Once again, they bring up the same tired and debunked studies, which they continue to misinterpret as supporting their prejudices. The studies that they cite claim lots of regret, which is not connected to the concerns of the practitioners, but that doesn’t seem to matter to them. For never listening to good science, The Federalist gets yet another TWIT.

A piece in The National Review cites one legal decision in Australia which tied specific parents refusing to acknowledge their child’s gender identity with emotional abuse. Of course, they cite the same studies that seem to indicate a high degree of regret that we don’t find in practice. They also insist that parents know their children better than the children know their own feelings. For an insistence on following outdated studies that do not predict reality, and for siding with emotional distress and other mental health problems (and against the libertarian streak of their founder), The National Review gets a TWIT Award.

A group of students not only bullied a transgender classmate, they shared video of it. The matter is now the subject of a lawsuit. For belligerent behavior, and for bragging about yjeir bullying, the bullies get a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Magnolia School District in the Houston area has a new dress code policy. Under it, any student identified as a boy is forced to have short hair. The policy considers many nonbinary students as boys, and one nonbinary student has run afoul of the new dress code. For a too-strict insistence on the gender binary, and for presuming gender identity from sex, the Magnolia School District gets a TWIT Award. Out.com has this story.

A bill in the U.K. would make it difficult if not impossible for people who enter the country illegally to request asylum. This would be a problem for Afghan refugees, who fled so quickly that they were often unable to wait for paperwork that would make their entry legal. Transgender people often have to leave quickly to get away from problems which suddenly emerge, which makes them very likely to be left out of the asylum process should such a law pass. For failing to consider current conditions, and for a lack of compassion to go with that, the sponsors of this bill get a TWIT Award. This story comes from them.

Vladimir Putin decried the idea of respect for transgender people, which he described as children being “taught that a boy can become a girl and vice versa” as “on the verge of a crime against humanity.” For denying the humanity of transgender people, and for denying medical best practices as derived from lived experience, Vladimir Putin gets a TWIT. The Washington Blade has this story.

Lauren Boebert went on Twitter to attack Admiral Rachel Levine. LGBTQ Nation has her very basic personal attack. Tucker Carlson was much more detailed in his attack, though equally wrongheaded, as The Advocate reports. Neither got into the actual qualifications of Dr. Levine for her job as Assistant Secretary of Health, nor did either mention that the title of admiral is typically granted to someone with her current job title. For missing the essence of the story in order to make a personal attack Representative Lauren Boebert and television loud mouth Tucker Carlson get a TWIT. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

Dr. Lisa Littman is attempting to get data to support her concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which the medical community does not accept. She is attempting to get some transgender people to answer a questionnaire which she created. However, she seems to be rigging both the questions and the pool of people getting the questionnaire. She is specifically aiming her questionnaire at some people whose stories are already familiar to her, and she has leading questions in her survey. Admittedly, when trying to get data, it is helpful to advertise where people hang out, but that needs to be balanced, or at least flagged for the possibility of data integrity problems. For creating a situation where she gets biased data, Dr. Lisa Littman gets a TWIT Award. Health Liberation Now has this story.

A group of Ohio Republicans are taking a cue from the new Texas abortion law, and are attempting to apply it to transgender medicine. They have introduced a bill which, if passed, would allow citizens to sue any doctor who treats transgender minors for gender dysphoria. For ignoring medical best practices as defined by professional associations and as found in so many studies, and for insisting on a policy which promotes anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, as well as for insisting that the policy would “save lives” when in fact it demonstrates a total disrespect for transgender lives (and puts them in serious danger) the proponents of this bill get a TWIT Award. This story comes from them.

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