The Week In Trans 12/6/20

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Indya Moore

Indya Moore has been introduced as the voice of Shep on Steven Universe: Future. The character is non-binary. LGBTQ Nation has more on the series. Thanks to reader Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

Representative Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, says that the ban on transgender people joining the military is one of the most pressing unresolved issues in the Defense Authorization Bill. He is discussing with House colleagues whether to bring the issue up again this year, knowing that Senate Armed Services chairman James Inhof will not take up the matter with his committee, and even if he did, President Trump would veto the measure. Military Times has this story.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture has taken up the case of Chelsea Manning, who has spent most of the last decade in jail. The Intercept reports that “It is the very definition of torture to submit a person to physical and mental suffering to force an action from them.” Ms. Manning has been held since May on a charge of “contempt” for not testifying before a grand jury, which is trying to gather evidence against Julian Assange.

LGBTQ Nation has a case from 1878 in which a husband tried to void his marriage on the grounds that his wife was “a hermaphrodite.” What makes this case unique is not so much the allegation of a transgender aspect itself, which was used occasionally at the time, but rather the fact that the judge ruled against the husband on the grounds that it had taken him so many years to file a complaint, which indicated to the court that he had accepted the situation.

Rivera in 2010.

An audio recording of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera from 1970, the earliest known recording of those two in conversation, has been included in a podcast. You can find a link at The Advocate.

Several new laws took effect on January 1, including a law in Colorado which makes it easier for transgender people to update their gender on legal documents. It is named “Jude’s Law,” after a 13-year-old transgender female who pushed for the law. On January 2, she and her mother went from their home in Boulder to Denver, where Jude became the first person to benefit from the new law. The Denver Post has this story.

New laws in California should benefit transgender youth, especially those in the Golden State’s foster care system. One law is first-of-its-kind legislation that requires transgender foster youth receive health care services consistent with their gender identity. Thanks to Ms. Bob Davis for pointing out the story in The Bay Area Reporter.

Insider has eight lovely stories about people coming out as transgender, some within the family and others coming out to the world.

Reuben Sharpe and his non-binary partner Jay recently welcomed a child, Jamie. Reuben did supply the egg for the child, and carried Jamie to term. The sperm was donated by a transgender woman, and even the doctor is transgender. You can read about this in The Mirror.

Teen Vogue has a story about what some transgender people wish they had learned during sex education.

Eva Echo writes in Metro that, when you hear that a transgender person is getting surgery, you should not respond with, “You’re fine just the way you are.”

Munroe Bergdorf

The new year has caused some people to reflect on where they were ten years or so ago. Munroe Bergdorf remembers what a bad place she was in in 2009, and how much better it is for her now. Pink News has this story.

Last week, Sharron Davies, a swimmer who represented the United Kingdom in the Olympics, compared drag to blackface. That brought some responses, some of which can be found in LGBTQ Nation.

Jamie Schupe is remembered for having been the first person to be recognized by a court as non-binary, with the gender designation “X.” However, Shupe was never a transgender rights activist, and has since drifted away from transgender people. It is not surprising to us who have followed the story to find that Jamie now goes by the name James again, and identifies as male. It is sad to see sites like The Epoch Times use this person and his words to condemn our community.

Yungblud relates the story of a transgender fan coming up to him last year and saying that his song Kill Somebody helped him get his parents to understand him as a trans man. That story so touched Yungblud that he wrote a new song, Mars, about a person who feels that no one understands what he’s going through. You can read about it in Pink News.

Dustin Parker, a transgender man, was shot to death inside his taxi cab in McAlester, Oklahoma. He is survived by a wife and four children, according to Tulsa World. Thanks to contributor Alyssa Washington for pointing us to this story.

A transgender woman was found shot to death in a vacant apartment building in Washington, D.C. Police had been to the building earlier that day, where there had been an exchange of gunfire, and they thought that the shooter had left, but the dead body was found later that day. WUSA reports that police believe that the dead person was the shooter, while The Washington Blade reports that the building is sometimes used for sex work, leading to the possibility that the deceased was shot by a sex work client.

Bail has been set at $750,000 for David Bogdanov, who is charged in the death of Nikki Kuhnhausen of Vancouver, Washington. He has been charged with a hate crime, as well as second-degree murder, according to The Columbian.

Jazz Jennings

Jazz Jennings recently posted a picture of herself in a one-piece swimsuit, with scars clearly visible on her upper thighs. The scars come from surgery, and she is not ashamed of them. You can see the picture at Pink News. Linda Jensen found another article in Yahoo Style.

Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, did a question-and-answer session at the New York Film Academy. A fan asked if there would be any LGBT, “specifically the T, trans characters” coming to the Marvel universe. Mr. Feige responded, “Yes, absolutely yes. And very soon. In a movie that we’re filming right now.” This led sites like BBC News, CNN, and NBC News to suggest that a transgender character is imminent. Comic Book Rant and Film School Rejects ran stories about Sera, a trans character associated with Thor, and noted that Thor: Love And Thunder begins filming in March. Meanwhile, several people on Twitter suggested it would be some minor character with insignificant screen time, whom audiences could easily miss and who could be cut out of the film for foreign distribution; Pink News has some of those tweets. Then, Variety reported that two sources within Marvel Studios tell them that Mr. Feige was not talking about a transgender character, but about a gay character who will appear in The Eternals, which is the only Marvel movie filming right now.

A teen in Scotland has been charged with a hate crime for a physical and verbal attack on a transgender teen. The accused denied that the incident happened as described. The Scottish Sun has this story.

Organizers of ChillOut, a country music festival in Australia, will attempt to establish two world records at the March 5-9 event. They hope to establish is the record for the largest human rainbow and will need 30,366 people to establish that record. They also hope to have the longest line of dancing drag queens. 145 drag queens are necessary to get that record. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Veronica Pejril

Indiana’s first transgender elected official has taken her seat on the Greencastle, Indiana City Council, representing Ward 3. Many thought Greencastle was too small to be progressive enough to elect a transgender city councilor. Veronica Pejril says she has lived there for 15 years and was accepted by the community she will now work for. Learn more from WISH tv.

Twenty-five years ago, the German government demanded that transgender people be sterilized before they could change their legal gender status. At that time, Tsepo Bollwinkel was willing, even eager, to undergo the procedure, as long as it led to him being recognized as male. Germany has since rescinded the demand for sterilization, and Mr. Bollwinkel is suing for the government having demanded sterilization back then. Reuters has this story.

There is a movement to make the Spanish language gender-neutral, or at least more gender-neutral. It involves, among other things, replacing masculine “-o” and “-os” endings and feminine “-a” and “-as” endings with gender-neutral “-e” and “-es” endings. So, for example, instead of “Latino” or “Latina,” it would use “Latine.” You can read about this South American trend in The Washington Post.

In Colombia, a transgender sex worker was killed by a stab to the head inflicted by another sex worker. Pink News has this story.

The government of Pakistan has just announced that transgender people will get health care in that country, including transgender medical care. This story can be found in Pink News.

Pakistan is a Muslin-majority country. The BBC has the story of a transgender woman who appears to have been the victim of an “honor killing.”

We have told you in the past of the negative reaction that many transgender people in India have to the newly-passed legislation on their community. Yahoo News reports that changes to citizenship laws, and to what documents constitute citizenship, could leave transgender people without a state.

Some transgender people are asexual, while others are not. As in many other things, there is a wide variety to human beings in terms of how sexually active they are. LGBTQ Nation has a rather long story on this.

Maebe A. Girl

Maebe A. Girl, a self identified drag queen who was elected to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, is lobbying for the creation of a Los Angeles LGTBQIA Alliance under the Dept. of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), the city agency that assists Los Angeles’ 99 neighborhood councils. Learn more from The Los Feliz Ledger.

At least one person noticed that the amount of estrogen in an Impossible Burger at Burger King is greater than the amount of estrogen in a daily dose of hormone replacement therapy given to a transgender female. Of course, this is plant-based estrogen, and is not processed by the human body in the same way that human estrogen supplements (pills or injectable) are processed. Pink News has this story, but it is hard to tell if the original poster was misinformed or merely joking. Alyssa Washington supplied us with a link to this story.

A clothing exchange event, organized by the advocacy groups DC Area Transmasculine Society (DCATS) and Casa Ruby, invited members of the trans and non-binary communities to donate clothing and acquire other items, free of charge, in a comfortable setting. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for pointing out the story in The Washington Post.

TWITs

Following the British election on December 12, Boris Johnson’s government is hiring. However, his top advisor, Dominic Cummings, said that he wants no applications from people who “babble” about gender identity. For discrimination and for closed-mindedness on a topic on which the world is passing your position by, Dominic Cummings gets a TWIT Award. Pink News has this story.

Anti-trans crusader Walt Heyer writes in The Daily Signal that transgender clinics are ruining young lives. The American Medical Association found exactly the opposite–transgender clinics are saving young lives. The difference is, the AMA feels that the happiness of the patient is the important thing, while Walt feels that his own happiness is what is important. For projection, Walt Heyer gets another TWIT Award.

If you thought the KKK was just about racism be aware they hate other things, too. The Ku Klux Klan gets a TWIT Award for harassing a Washington, D.C. Latine restaurant that hosts a monthly drag brunch. Phone calls, up to 20 a day, have been tying up the restaurant’s phone line with threats to burn the place down. The callers used homophobic and transphobic language. Learn more from The Washington Post. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for the story.

National Justice claims that transgender people are 58% more likely to be murderers than to be murder victims. You have to read the fourth paragraph of the body of the story before you find out that they are referring to Britain, not North America, and certainly not Brazil. Worldwide, there is a huge disparity between murders of transgender people and murders by transgender people, but they chose one outlier to focus on in their story. They go on to say that the police give transgender people better treatment than they give others, dismissing claims otherwise as the results of a “controlled press.” For misrepresentation, as well as blatant bias within the story, National Justice gets a TWIT.

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