The Week In Trans 10/16/17

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Hannah Mouncey

The Australian Women’s Football League is poised to make history. On Friday Hannah Mouncey, a trans woman who has played for another league, was nominated for the AWFL. If she makes the team she will be the first trans woman to play in the league. Get all the details from Pink News.

A bill to halt President Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military has been introduced in the House of Representatives this week. The bill is a companion to similar legislation already introduced in the Senate. Both bills maintain that anyone who can meet the standards to serve should he allowed to serve. It is uncertain if or when either bill will get a vote, even in the Armed Services Committee of either chamber. Metro Weekly has this story.

U.S. Representative A. Donald McEachin is leading an effort to obtain information on which members of the military advised President Trump on his ban of transgender people in the military. While the President did claim in the tweet announcing the ban that he had consulted with “my generals,” no members of the military have admitted to consulting on this matter. Representative McEachin sent a letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, requesting information on the matter. It was signed by 114 members of Congress. Lying in a tweet does not invalidate the policy being announced, nor does a lack of consultation with members of the military. This story is in the Los Angeles Blade.

Because the Stonewall Inn has become a part of the National Park Service, President Trump demanded that several steps be taken to avoid raising a rainbow flag on federal property on National Coming Out Day. (Technically, little of the land around the Stonewall Inn is federal property; the flagstaff is owned by New York City.) You can read about the various requirements to distance the government from the flag raising in the Villager.

Show host Trinity Taylor.

With all the attacks on LGBT people in local, state and the federal government it seems odd that a place like Wichita, Kansas would embrace drag. But that’s just what it has done. They’ve announced A Drag Queen Christmas show which will star queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Learn more in The Wichita Eagle.

The Boy Scouts have expanded the areas in which girls may join boys. There have long been some areas in which girls were permitted, but they are certainly expanded under the new guidelines, which will be brought out over the next few years. Girls may join the Cub Scouts, although dens will be either all-male or all-female, and packs are not required to accept all-female dens. Girls will also be allowed to enroll to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. The Girl Scouts are not happy about this. Edge Media has the AP’s story.

Murray Edwards College, one of the three all-women’s colleges at Cambridge University in Britain, has changed its admission policy. Where they previously required applicants to be legally recognized as female (which, at the time, required sterilization), they are now admitting transgender women who live their lives as female, regardless of legal status. (Changes to the requirements for legal recognition of a change of gender already affected the admissions policies of all three colleges.) Varsity, the news service for Cambridge University, has both a story and a comment on the new admissions policy.

Trixie Mattell

Just dying to get on stage and be a drag performer? Before you slip into that sexy dress you got from Ross and pile on that drug store makeup take the time to check out how much a drag performance career costs. Really hot dresses, lace front wigs and professional stage makeup cost a pretty penny. The Drag Race queens tell how many pennies in an article and video you can find on the Gay Star News website.

The latest development from the U. S. Justice Department has caused confusion about the true feelings of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. While Sessions has been busy rolling back protections for the transgender population on a general basis, on Friday the Justice Department, reportedly at the behest of the attorney general, file papers assigning a federal prosecutor to the case of a young trans woman who was murdered. Learn more about the enigma that is Jefferson B. Sessions in The New York Times.

Theresa May, the Prime Minister of the U.K., responded to criticisms of new laws recognizing the rights of transgender people by some members of her own party. She did correct David Davies when he said in a speech in Parliament that “children as young as 12 are being labeled transgender and prescribed potentially life-altering sex change drugs,” pointing out that the law permits only hormone blockers at age 12. However, after saying, “I recognize the concern that my honorable friend has raised,” she mentioned the case of one doctor who has gone outside the legal guidelines to help at least one particular patient. Pink News has the story.

Senator Michelle Suarez

Michelle Suarez is the first transgender person elected to the Senate of Uruguay. She has been an advocate for the transgender community, and feels that her new position will give her an opportunity to enhance that advocacy. She is profiled by ABC News.

One trans woman who came out in her native Briton found the harassment she received at her workplace to be so debilitating that she left the country. She made her way to New Zealand and has lived there with no problems from transphobes since 2009. Last week an immigration and protection tribunal granted her official asylum. New Zealand has done the same for over 40 LGBT asylum seekers. Get the story from The Guardian.

In a tweet, the Associated Press announced some revisions to its stylebook regarding references to transgender people. The most overarching change is a note that a story should only mention that someone is transgender if it is important to the story. They also say that it is wrong to say that someone was “born a male” or “born a girl,” and that the terms “transgendered” and “transsexual” are incorrect. Their term for certain surgical procedures are “sex reassignment” or “gender conformation.” This story appears in the Washington Times.

I.T. patient James Scott.

Intercom Trust, which cares for the LGBT community in southwest England, says that they have seen a sixfold increase in people with gender identity issues over the last six years. They are especially seeing more children, and the percentage of FtM patients has been rising to almost on par with the FtM. While this story from the BBC is not a surprise, it does remind us of the trends, including the fact that more families are accepting their transgender children.

It seems that the U.S. is not the only nation which will not accept transgender people in the military. The Navy of India has fired Manish Giri, a sailor who had gender conformation surgery last year. The fact that the Navy seems to have only learnt of this after she had the surgery was not a wise move on her part. While the sailor, now known as Sabi, has initiated a lawsuit, the Navy says that he violated the terms of his recruitment, and they almost certainly have a point. The Times of India has this story.

A Swedish court has ruled that having changed legal recognition of gender once does not bar one from changing legal recognition of gender again. The case involves a person who was assigned male at birth, transitioned to female and was legally recognized as female (at a time when sterilization was necessary to attain that recognition), then returned to living as male. The law requires that legal recognition of a new gender only be allowed when “the person can be presumed to continue living in accordance with a male gender identity in the future,” and the fact that the litigant had changed genders caused some to doubt that this litigant would continue to live as a male. Twice the application to change to male was denied for this reason, but on the third try, the legal status of male was granted. The Law Library of Congress has a review of the case.

Danica Roem

Things are getting nasty in the race between Delegate Bob Marshall and challenger Danica Roem. The American Principles Project initiated calls on behalf of Bob Marshall, claiming, “Danica Roem supports policy that requires schools to allow boys to play on girls’ sports teams and compete in girls’ leagues.” This calls into question whether the principles of the American Principles Project are really very American. This story is in the Washington Post. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for the tip.

We reported last week about Annamarie Kontor, a doctor to students at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York state who was fired for administering HRT for students at the university. An internal review has supported her position that there is no written rule prohibiting her from such treatments and that she should not have been fired. Oddly, the committee reviewing the case put the blame on the supervisor who left the day before Dr. Kontor was fired, rather than on the person who actually fired her. The committee did recommend that Dr. Kontor be rehired. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle has this story.

The Frederick County Maryland schools have adopted a new progressive policy on treatment of trans students. “The policy spells out that bathrooms and locker rooms should be used according to gender identity and provides alternatives for students uncomfortable for any reason. It also covers privacy, preferred names, dress codes for major events and participation in sports teams.” For more info on the policy read the story in The Washington Post. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for the tip.

The Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, New York hosted a guest physician series last week to educate its resident doctors and medical students on treating transgender patients. Dr. Marci Bowers was one of the guest physicians. Learn more about the event and the medical center on The Daily Star website.

Stiles Zuschlag

Also last week, we reported on Stiles Zuschlag, who was kicked out of a high school where he was top of his class, because the administrators of the school would not allow a transgender student to attend. He is now a student at Noble High School in North Berwick, Maine, and the students at his new school just elected him Homecoming King. You can read about it on WTVQ-TV’s web site.

A band in Providence, Rhode Island, stopped their show when they found that the owner of the pub where they were playing had asked a transgender woman to leave because she was wearing a skirt. It appears that the patron, Amber Lynne, is early in a transition, and according to the owner, Tommy Cummings, some others felt “uncomfortable.” The Providence Journal reports on this story.

Two California representatives joined four other member of Congress to introduce a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting transgender military service members from discharge based solely on their gender identity. The bill is H.R. 4041 and is similar to a bill introduced last month in the Senate by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Learn more on the Pride Source website.

Pippa Bunce

Financial News has a profile of Pips Bunce, a member of the Board of Directors of Credite Suisse, who is gender-fluid and identifies as Phillip and as Pippa. Indeed, Pips wrote the profile. You can find it in the Financial Times.

The Moving Trans History Forward 2018 conference has issued a call for papers. If you are interested in presenting a paper at the March 22-25, 2018 event at the University of Victoria in Canada you can get information on how to submit your paper for consideration on the conference website.

TWITs

Dr. Michelle Cretella, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, appeared as one of three doctors on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. The panel was put together to criticize the idea of children transitioning genders, and they certainly did oppose the idea. However, all of the alleged experts seem to have difficulty figuring out what goes on in a gender transition. While the Heritage Foundation hyped their video of the event with the line, “Watch this pediatrician shut down leftists on giving children puberty blockers,” in reality she gave the false impression that puberty blockers by themselves caused sterility. She also criticized research whose conclusions are not her own by saying that the sample size is too small and did not last long enough. Yet, she gladly cites older research which has a smaller sample size and which was certainly not longer in time — but whose conclusions she feels she can twist to support her own preconceived views. Dr. Cretella wins a TWIT Award for spreading her fringe science and the Heritage Foundation collects one as well. The entire event was covered by Think Progress.

Delyth Imara French was laughed at by staff at a Shell station in Britain. News of the incident got out, and publicity was bad enough that the staff wrote a letter of apology. Unfortunately, the letter was addressed to Mr. Delyth Imara French. Even when apologizing, the staff managed to insult this customer. For bungling matters so much, the staff of this Shell station gets a TWIT Award. The story is in the Daily Post.

The Federalist seems to be asking for a TWIT every week. They found a pair of transgender people who, for some reason, decided to de-transition. Such people do exist, and finding them is not too difficult if you try. However, when The Federalist refers to people who transitioned from male to female as “transgender men,” it is hard to believe much of anything else that they write about these people. The article does not use full names, which makes it hard to verify the information presented. You can find this latest TWIT Award winner here.

Channel 4 in Britain has a show called First Dates. On it, a man joked about going on a date with a transgender person (the man used a slur which begins with “t”) and laughed that she was better endowed than he was. (That joke was slightly cleaned up.) Many have criticized the network for airing the comment, and for putting it online uncensored. The network responded by defending their decision to air the joke. For insensitivity, Channel 4 gets a TWIT Award. Pink News has this story.

A trans woman in the U.K. went to a local printer’s shop to have business cards made for her diversity consulting business and was, as the Brits put it, “gobsmacked” when the print shop owner refused to accept her order and attributed his refusal to his Christian faith. In his view a “diversity” organization was only going to promote the marginalization of Christians in the workplace. A bit defensive? Read more of the printer’s TWIT Award winning reasons in the Independent.

Last week we told you about the British transgender children’s charity Mermaids finding itself in the middle of a messy situation due to an incident that is a year old. A judge had ordered Mermaids to not contact a child whose parents had divorced and could not agree on the child’s gender. The incident got written up again last week in the Sunday Times in a most unflattering piece. This bit of alleged journalism gets the Times a TWIT Award. It also may get them a lawsuit; Mermaids has said that they are in “active discussion with a lawyer,” according to Civil Society. Oh, and according to Gay Star News, Susie Green, the CEO of Mermaids, was at a royal reception for charities; when she told Prince Harry of their work, he said, “That’s amazing.”

TWIT is assembled by Cecilia Barzyk with additional material and editing by Angela Gardner.

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Tags: Annamarie Kontor, Boy Scouts, Danica Roem, featured, Hannah Mouncey, Jeff Sessions, Michelle Suarez, news, Pips Bunce, Stiles Zuschlag, Stonewall Inn, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News