Home » The Week In Trans 12/20/21

The Week In Trans 12/20/21

ceciliab | Dec 20, 2021

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Mj Rodriguez from Pose.

Out.com has a list of 11 LGBTQ television shows that ended this year, and several of them had transgender characters.

Out.com also has a list of upcoming LGBTQ films, and yes, some of them have transgender characters.

A jury in Missouri awarded a transgender student $4,000,000 for sex discrimination. The student, a transgender male, was denied the use of the boys’ restroom, by order of the school district. KSHB-TV has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to the story.

A new law in California requires public colleges to update their student records and issue new diplomas in response to a request from a transgender student or alumnus. Some transgender students explain the problems associated with deadnaming in an article at Cal Matters.

A transgender woman named Saray Atenea was tortured and killed in Mexico, and her body was thrown into a canal. The canal is known to be used by organized crime. Her death brings the number of transgender people murdered in Mexico this year to 65. The Advocate has this story.

A transgender woman in Pakistan was tortured and raped in an attempt to get information about a demonstration against climate change. She is quite active in the climate change movement. This story comes from PinkNews. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

Billy Porter

Golden Globe nominations were announced this week, and Mj Rodriguez and Billy Porter are nominated for their roles in Pose. Out.com has this story.

A judge in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, granted name changes to two transgender women who have prior felony convictions. The state of Pennsylvania has been very reluctant to grant name changes to people with felony convictions. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has this story.

A new study shows that transgender people are three times as likely as cisgender people to suffer from food insufficiency. This report from Household Pulse Survey can be found in The Hill.

Digimonics has a look at how two large companies, Fujitsu and Salesforce, have handled transgender employees.

Benefits Canada has a look at how transgender people are doing in Canada, economically. Short answer: the situation is improving, but transgender people are still more likely to be unemployed or underemployed.

A new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health finds that transgender youth receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy (puberty blockers and/or hormone replacement therapy) have significantly lower percentages of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. You can read about the study at The Hill.

A recent survey showed that breast radiologists tend not to have LGBTQ competency. This is especially problematic for transgender patients, according to LGBTQ Nation.

Lia Thomas

A group of parents of University of Pennsylvania swimmers are asking the NCAA to change its rules about transgender athletes, in response to the success of Lia Thomas. The Daily Mail has this story.

Some Catholic hospitals and some nuns are challenging the transgender care mandate in the Affordable Care Act. They feel that they should have a right to refuse to treat transgender people, and to reduce their healthcare to avoid paying for transgender patients. They specifically claim that they should not provide “harmful” procedures such as gender confirmation surgery to minors. (Hint: almost no hospitals provide gender confirmation surgery, and even fewer provide such care for minors.) This story comes from The Washington Examiner.

A story about the since-broken-up GENECIS clinic, which provided care to transgender patients, talks of how such care produced changes in the behaviors and personalities of children. D Magazine will have this story.

Health care for transgender men is an emerging field. The lack of known transgender men has made it hard to get good statistics for determining what works best. This is the subject of an article in NewsWire, the news service of the University of Texas.

Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota has asked the state legislature to pass a ban on transgender athletes. The state has such a ban, thanks to the governor’s executive order, but she wants the legislature to pass a ban into law. This story comes from The Advocate. Alyssa Washington sent us a link to the story.

In a recent podcast, James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli said that she is not fond of the idea of gender-flipping Bond, but she is open to a non-binary Bond. This story comes from The Advocate.

Vaani Kapoor plays the trans role.

Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is a Hindi-language film that depicts a transgender person in a romance. Unfortunately, the transgender character is not played by a transgender performer. That has become a regret among the cast, according to Deadline.

In the new series Sort Of, Bilal Baig plays a non-binary Canadian who was born in Pakistan. One of the themes of the show is how we are striving to see others and be seen by others in a more authentic sense. Them has an interview with Bilal Baig.

Neil Gaiman defended the use of the singular “they,” including an example of it being used in a tweet that was deploring the use of the singular “they.” This story is in PinkNews.

A transgender woman remembers how the late writer Anne Rice helped her to decide to come out. PinkNews has this story.

In Britain, the Conservative Party is pushing a bill that would require people to show photo ID in order to vote. PinkNews has this story.

PinkNews notes that non-binary people are being erased by the decision to allow only two gender markers on U.K. passports.

RuPaul

RuPaul let out a bit more than she should have about the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, but stopped before giving away any more. Out.com has this story.

At a Christmas dinner recently, a group of students at Durham University an unannounced guest speaker delivered a speech which the students found to be transphobic, sexist, and racist. When a group of students protested this speech, they were described as “woke,” which was assumed to be a bad thing. The entire incident paints a nasty picture of the state of transgender rights in the U.K., according to PinkNews.

France just outlawed conversion therapy, a week after Canada did. The Advocate has this story.

South Africa is experiencing a shortage of injectable testosterone, according to PinkNews.

Transgender women in Pakistan are demanding legal protection, according to a story in The Express Tribune.

Human Rights Watch decries the lack of legal recognition of transgender people in Thailand.

LGBTQ Nation has a list of improvements in LGBTQ rights that happened this year. The first on their chronological list is the overturning of President Trump’s ban on transgender people in the U.S. military. Some of the other improvements help transgender and non-binary people as well.

Sometimes, something as simple as a haircut that affirms our inner gender is enough to spark transgender joy. This story appears in PinkNews.

Jennifer Williams

Jennifer Williams, a transgender woman who has run for office as a Republican, wrote an opinion piece for CNN saying that, as a transgender person, she “should not have to live in fear.” She argues for federal law to specifically protect transgender rights.

An article in LGBTQ Nation says that a case before the Supreme Court, Carson v. Makin, could open the door to requiring states to pay for education at religious schools, some of which are quite anti-LGBTQ. (Typically, accepting money from the government is a gateway to imposing certain restrictions from the government on the entity, but the courts determine which restrictions can be enforced.)

Professor Edward Schiappa has written a new book on transgender rights, called The Transgender Exigency. MIT Review has more on this.

Feminist theorist bell hooks has passed away. Much of her writing touched on gender identity and gender expression. You can read about a discussion she had with Laverne Cox in an article for them.

TWITs

J.K. Rowling is at it again. An article in which Scottish police said they will use a suspect’s preferred pronouns even when referring to an alleged rapist became for her an excuse to again complain about giving transgender people any respect. Mind you, this did not come up in respect to a particular case, though you would think there was such a real-world case from the urgency she seems to feel. For overreacting to any respecting of transgender people’s identities, even just in a theoretical statement, J.K. Rowling gets another TWIT. Out.com has this statement. Alyssa Washington submitted a link to this story.

Rosie Kay, one of the most respected choreographers in Britain, has been accused of asking transgender and non-binary dancers to “confirm their genitalia.” While it is true that male dance students do not learn certain moves from their instructors, that does not preclude the possibility of them picking up these moves on their own. For using genitalia rather than ability in casting, and, if accurate, for comments against transgender and non-binary people, Rosie Kay gets a TWIT Award. This story comes from PinkNews.

A self-identified Christian mother wrote an article for The Daily Signal titled “What I’ve Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy.” The mother has convinced herself that the “science” of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is more accurate than the statistics better researchers have accumulated, and from that “science,” she has concluded she did the best thing she could have done for her child. For putting faith in bad science, and for bragging about it, this mother gets a TWIT Award.

An editorial in The Christian Post starts with the claim that transgender people are not discriminated against because none have been murdered in Britain in over three years (a questionable claim, which, even if true is taken out of context). The authors then go on to say that Christians need to be willing to confront transgender people on their gender claims. Unfortunately, we have seen this before, in the field of astronomy. People who relied on the Bible claimed a certain truth, but science showed those claims were wrong. It took time, but science prevailed. Again in evolution, science has prevailed, although some of these same self-identified Christians continue to deny evolution. For demanding that fellow believers act on bad science in order to confront and demean people, the authors of this piece get a TWIT Award.

Katee Churchill is a mother in Clare County, Michigan. When one of her two children started exploring gender, she went to medical professionals for an evaluation of how best to support that child. She followed that advice, only to find an anonymous tip led Child Protective Services to investigate her. But, it did not end there–her children were removed from her custody as a result of the investigation which began because she followed the advice of experts and allowed her child to explore his gender. For ignoring those experts, and for overreaction, Child Protective Services of Michigan gets a TWIT Award. New York Magazine has 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.