The Week In Trans 12/17/18

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Angela Ponce in the swimsuit competition.

The Miss Universe pageant was underway over the weekend in Thailand and the first ever transgender contestant made waves in the media. Miss Spain, Angela Ponce, was praised for her “…bikini body, runway glamour and message of inclusion.” The winner of the contest will be revealed today. See more in the New York Post.

The Trump administration was again in court, trying to defend the ban on transgender people in the military. Lawyers from the Department of Justice said that it is not a ban on transgender people, since they can serve in the military as long as they do not transition. That did not go over well with at least one of the three judges of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who is hearing the case. Samantha Allen of the Daily Beast has more.

While the Justice Department was arguing before the Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., Solicitor General Noel Francisco appealed to the Supreme Court three times, asking the justices to overturn the three national stays on the ban on transgender people in the military. The complaint says that the number of courts issuing national orders is getting out of hand, and that these pre-trial decisions should be limited to the people who are involved in the lawsuit. You can read more at The Hill.

Representative Adam Smith, who will become the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee next month, tells Military Times that he will introduce a bill to promote “military equality,” so that anyone who can pass the physical tests can serve in the United States military. He adds that he is realistic enough to know that it will not become law as long as Donald Trump is president and as long as the Senate is backing up the president.

San Francisco has created the first cultural district based on transgender history. It includes the site of Compton’s Cafeteria. The Daily Beast has this story.

Jessica Sunderland

When Jessica Sunderland was incarcerated at the Riverside Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, New York, she was denied her HRT medications. At first, they gave her some excuses such as the paperwork, but eventually, she was told that it just was not going to happen. She sued. It took a while but she won her case. This story appeared in The Appeal.

Prisoners are not the only transgender people who are having trouble accessing health care. USA Today has a rather long story about how tough it can be to get insurance companies to pay for transgender health care.

Researcher Bethany Grace Howe writes in The Conversation that denying the validity of a transgender identity can result in serious mental health problems.

Pink News reports that, if Britain separates from the European Union without a specific deal, there could be a shortage of many prescription drugs, including HRT medications, and medications for dealing with HIV.

The HIV rate among transgender women is very high, compared to the rate among the general population. Miami New Times reports on a new initiative by the Centers for Disease Control to study the phenomenon. Called LITE, it will look at transgender women in Miami, Boston, New York, Baltimore/Washington, and Atlanta.

A guest editorial in The New York Times calls on the American Psychiatric Association to remove “gender dysphoria” as a mental health condition.

The Colorado Sun wrote about how transgender people kept applying to the legislature to rewrite the laws about changing gender until they finally wrote their own.

Gabrielle Claiborne

When Gabrielle Claiborne came out as a transgender woman in 2010 she worried that her gender would affect her successful construction company’s bottomline. She also wanted to make a difference in her community so she and another trans woman created Transformation Journeys Worldwide, an inclusion training and consulting firm that focuses on supporting organizations in creating fully inclusive cultures for trans and non-binary people. Learn more in Forbes.

Last year, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to create some sort of welcoming ceremony for transgender people as they came to worship in the gender with which they identify. The House of Bishops this week approved a pastoral guidance which gives some framework for creating such a ceremony while encouraging parish priests to “get creative.” The very fact that a Christian denomination is accepting of transgender people is in itself a story. You can read more at The Guardian.

Barbara Bollier, a member of the Kansas State Senate, has left the Republican Party and joined the Democrats, largely because the retired physician disagrees with the Trump administration’s policies on transgender people. She had refused to vote with the Republicans as they pushed a resolution which read in part, “We believe God created two genders, male and female.” LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Lately more and more young men, in their teen, have been taking advantage of the popularity of drag performers to create their own fierce diva personalities. The trend is explored in a short form documentary series titled Growing Up Is a Drag that premiers on the social media platform Snapchat this very day. Learn more from Variety.

Orrin Hatch, who is retiring next month, gave a farewell speech after forty years in Congress. In the speech, he urged the new Congress to “protect LGBTQ individuals.” He says, “Pluralism shows us a better way.” You can read more at Into. Meanwhile, LGBTQ Nation reminds us that Senator Hatch has not always been so understanding of LGBTQ people. He once compared gay people to Nazis.

Beauty influencer Alyssa Edwards.

It’s the 21st century and somehow in just a decade or so beauty influencers are no longer female celebrities but glamorous drag queens. Most of the trends in feminine beauty have come from the drag queens who gained notoriety on RuPaul’s Drag Race, along with others.  Learn more about why women across the land are sporting block eyebrows and extreme false eyelashes on the Elle magazine website.

Government Executive has obtained an audio recording in which a government official involved in diversity in hiring has said that it was felt to be “best to afford agencies more discretion in responding to the needs of their workforce,” and that is why certain portions of the Office of Personnel Management website were changed. The changes dealt with how a transitioning government employee should be treated.

Pink News tells us that Regina Denise Brown, who died when her house was burnt in an arson attack in October, was transgender, and should be added to the list of murdered transgender people.

Kelly Strough

We reported last week on the death of a transgender woman in Detroit. She has now been officially identified as Kelly Strough, and the Detroit Police have arrested Albert Weathers, a pastor, in connection with her murder. ABC News reports.

In the same week when Detroit Police arrested a pastor for the murder of a transgender woman, another pastor, Jonathan Williams, has published a book entitled She’s My Dad, about coming to accept his father’s gender transition. This story comes from The New York Post.

In a follow-up to another story, Patricio Manuel won his fight, beating Hugo Aguilar by a unanimous TKO. Patricio Manuel is the first transgender man to box professionally. NBC News has the story from Reuters.

Tasmania, an island state of Australia, has passed a new law dealing with transgender people. The law makes it easier for those at least sixteen years of age to change their legal gender designation, allows for birth certificates to not contain a gender if the parents so wish, and penalizes the deliberate misgendering of an individual. More on this can be found at The Evening Standard.

Robyn Chauvin

Dating is hard enough but adding transgender into the mix makes it a lot harder. Jamie Roberts found the story of one trans woman, Robyn Chauvin, in The Washington Post.

Jamie also told us about an editorial by a local paper in Virginia that defends the firing of the French teacher who showed a bias against a transgender student by not using their preferred pronouns. You can find it in the Daily Press.

Germany also passed a law allowing a new gender designation on official documents. The new designation is “divers,” meaning “diverse” or “various.” The Local Germany has this story.

KUNM radio has a story on what life is like for transgender people who have been released after being detained by ICE.

The violent murder of a transgender woman in Malaysia has caused a lot of outrage, according to The Star.

Can a trans woman from Malaysia find happiness in a Metal band? Apparently. Read the story of transgender musician and artist Shika Corona in The Star Online.

For almost a decade, a Scottish playwright and actress has performed her one-woman show, The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven. She has received death threats, but she also has found some in the audience who were deeply moved in a positive direction. She talked about her experience with the play to BBC Scotland.

Mia Yamamoto

Mia Yamamoto is the latest in a series of interviews with transgender legends featured in Broadly. She was defending transgender people in court for years before she finally came out herself.

A new program called Queer Science attempts to interest LGBTQ students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. EOS has this story.

In the 1960s Felicia Elizondo was a regular at San Francisco’s Compton’s Cafeteria, the site of a historic 1966 riot for trans rights. She grew up as a Mexican-American “sissy” in the 1950s and was a a “hair fairy” in San Francisco. She found her identity in the 1970s as a transgender woman. Read her story on the Broadly website.

TWITs

D.L. Hugley defends his friend Kevin Hart, after Hart lost the job of hosting the Academy Awards over some old jokes about gay people. He does not seem to care if he hurts other people’s feelings while he defends his friend. One person whom he lashed out at is Indya Moore, from the show Pose. After she accused him of being blind to the hurt that the jokes cause, he called her a “p***y.” For proving her point about a lack of sensitivity, D.L. Hugley gets a TWIT Award. The Grio has this story.

Trans candidate Morgane Oger ran as the New Democrat Party (NDP) candidate for the Vancouver-False Creek riding in the province’s May 2017 elections. Her opponent, Bill Whatcott, described as a “Christian activist,” distributed two flyers during the campaign that were discriminatory and exposed Ms. Oger to “hatred and contempt” under Section 7 of British Columbia’s Human Rights Code. The trial is underway and Whatcott is relentlessly insisting that Ms. Oger is a male and calls her by her deadname any chance he gets. Whatcott gets a TWIT Award and the website Life Site News gets one for calling Ms. Oger a “businessman” and using her deadname in their report.

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Tags: Angela Ponce, featured, news, teen queens, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News