The Week In Trans 2/17/20

Links in TWIT will open in this window. To return to this page use the Back button on your browser. If the link opens in a new tab, close the tab to return to this page.

Honoree Earline Budd.

Some of the many advocates for the transgender community in Washington, D.C., were honored at the “Unsung Heroes and Sheroes” dinner last Saturday. There was a preview of the event in Metro Weekly.

In the category of news that surprises no one, a new study confirms that transgender people are more likely to be poor and unemployed than are cisgender people. The Conversation has some statistics to back up that claim.

The South Dakota Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee voted to move consideration of HB1057, the bill which would prohibit doctors from providing minors with surgery or medicine to treat gender dysphoria, to “day 41” of this year’s legislative session. Since the legislative session has 40 days, that move announces that they will not consider that bill in that committee. While there are procedures by which the full Senate could force the committee to consider the bill, they are quite unlikely to happen, and would require a supermajority. CNN has this story.

Two state Representatives in Ohio have now joined the parade of legislators to introduce a bill that would forbid doctors from providing surgery or medicine to deal with gender dysphoria in minors. The AP story on this legislation can be found at The Cincinnati Enquirer.

The Nation has an editorial which says, “Transgender kids don’t need to be saved from affirming themselves, and intersex kids should not be ‘repaired’ without consent.” The editorial comes from the president of the GLMA, a group of LGBTQ health care professionals.

Although the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency moved transgender immigrants out of a facility in New Mexico,  those immigrants have been moved to other facilities, including the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Colorado. Boulder Weekly has a story about this.

Megan Youngren

Megan Youngren has qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials in the women’s marathon. If she wins a place, she will be the first transgender person to qualify as an Olympic athlete after transitioning. Her story can be found in Sports Illustrated.

Cycling has released new rules for race participants regarding gender. The new rules cut the allowed testosterone for female cyclists in half, and there is a clarification on the paperwork involved. CyclingNews has this story.

Mara Gómez is waiting for word on whether she can play professional women’s soccer in Argentina. She has signed a contract, but is waiting for the league to decide if she qualifies, according to ABC News.

Last year, some high school athletes in Connecticut said that they would file a lawsuit to prevent transgender women from participating in high school sports as women. The suit was finally filed this week, and it spawned a lot of stories, especially among elements of the media which are opposed to transgender people. The Associated Press filed this story.

Undermining the need for that lawsuit filed last Wednesday one of the girls involved in the lawsuit, in a track meet on Friday, beat out one of her transgender opponents who was targeted by the lawsuit. Get the story from NBC CT.

Nyla Rose

Transgender wrestler Nyla Rose won an AEW title match. The Sun has this story.

A federal judge in Ohio has dismissed a case brought by a philosophy instructor who claimed that the college’s rules of respecting a transgender student’s gender imposed upon his freedom of speech. The professor has a month to decide if he wishes to appeal, according to the local ABC station.

A transgender woman in North Carolina has filed a lawsuit, claiming that she was forced to show her ID in order to vote. North Carolina law does not require voters to show ID, but the local poll worker did ask to see hers. You can read about this at WBTV-TV.

A lawsuit which claimed that a school board’s policy that allowed transgender students access to the restroom and locker room that matches the student’s gender identity was dismissed this week. The federal court found that allowing transgender students access did not violate cisgender students’ rights. KATU-TV has this story.

Representative Mark Takano is one of seven gay members of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is vocal in his support of transgender military veterans, and it taking on other LGBTQ causes–with an emphasis on transgender causes, simply because they keep coming up. He sat for an interview with LGBTQ Nation.

Transgender Veterans from all backgrounds are needed for an online study of their health and life experiences. Participants will be helping advance LGBT research. If you are a transgender vet click here to learn more.

Jacob Lemay with his pug and hedgehog.

Jacob Lemay, now in fourth grade, socially transitioned from female to male at age five. He talked with Kate Snow of NBC News about being transgender, especially as a student.

Ashton Mota, a transgender teenager from Massachusetts who will serve is a youth ambassador for the Human Rights Campaign, was profiled by his local newspaper, The Lowell Sun.

LGBTQ Nation has the heartwarming story of a transgender student whose friends gave him money to legally change his name as a birthday present.

Dwayne Wade posted a video about his love and support for his child Zaya, whom he now identifies as his transgender daughter. USA Today and The Hill are among the many sites with stories on this topic.

In addition to Dwayne Wade, his wife, Gabrielle Union, and his older son Zaire also posted their messages of support for Zaya. You can find this story in LGBTQ Nation.

TikTok, the social media site that specializes in short, homemade videos, has been accused of taking down videos made by transgender users. In some cases, the Chinese site said, the videos in question violated their rules against nudity and smoking. In other cases, they had no explanation for why a particular video was removed. You can read about this controversy on the BBC website.

Nikkie de Jager

Nikkie De Jager, known on YouTube as NikkiTutorials, dropped another video this week, but she said that she’s finding it hard to make new videos, because being in the studio reminds her of the coming-out video. Pink News has this story.

A new app called Giggle claims that it uses technology to verify that users are females, before granting them an account. They admit the technology does not work for transgender women, and say that trans women can join by getting in touch with them. Presumably, cisgender women who do not pass the face-scanning technology can also get in touch with them. You can read abut it at LGBTQ Nation.

RuPaul hosted Saturday Night Live last week, and did the opening monologue in a pink men’s suit. After that tease, RuPaul appeared in high-glam drag, quick drag, and boy drag. Out.com has the story.

Although RuPaul became famous for doing drag, the star says that the drag act ceased to be fun when he became famous for it. He cleaned up the act to be safe for a wider audience, and that took the fun out of it. You can read about this in Out.com.

While RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants (past and present) did not put in an appearance on Saturday Night Live, one was in the audience, and one even helped SNL cast member Pete Davidson to do a turn in drag. Out magazine has this story.

Contestant Alexa Rei Walk.

The Worldwide Transgender Model Search was held on Saturday, to be televised later. Out.com has a list of the contestants.

While Marvel Studios is making efforts to bring more diversity to its movies, Mj Rodriguez would like them to add a black transgender superhero, played by a black transgender woman. She says that we don’t see enough strong transgender women of color, and this would be a way to show another one of those on screen. These comments were noticed by Yahoo Lifestyle.

Billy Porter delivered the “LGBTQ State of the Union,” an eight-minute speech on Logo TV. In it, he mentions that black transgender women are victims of violence at an epidemic rate. You can read about the speech at LGBTQ Nation.

Owl and Fox Fisher have created a short film about how illogical the anti-trans sentiments are. Pink News has more about the film, Get Off My Turf!, and its all-transgender cast and crew.

For the first time ever, a transgender woman was a part of a U.N. delegation from Pakistan. The woman is Aisa Mughal, a transgender rights expert. This caught the attention of Global Village Space.

Darcelle

There will be a book signing and meet-and-greet at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 8 at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland, Oregon for two new books on Portland’s star drag queen Darcelle, aka Walter Cole. Learn more about Darcelle from the Oregon Live website.

In Britain, the Labour Party launched a new program this week aimed at eliminating anti-transgender statements by their own MPs. The party is asking its MPs to sign a ten-point pledge. Pink News has this story. Meanwhile, Sky News reports that some “women’s groups” (read: “gender-critical feminists,” otherwise known as TERFs) are complaining about Labour’s support of transgender rights. (Sky News is a part of Rupert Murdock’s media empire.)

Baroness Ruth Hunt, the former CEO of Stonewall, had a lot to say about the need for reforming the Gender Recognition Act, among other things, including some other transgender rights things, in an interview with The House magazine.

A former British police officer who was investigated last year after some of his tweets were thought to be transphobic has received a court ruling that the police probe into his tweets was unlawful. Sadly, the court failed to define just where the line between lawful and unlawful is, so others may well try to see what they can get away with. BBC News has this story.

In another court news, Kate Scottow, who called a transgender woman “a pig in a wig” on Twitter, has lost her case. She was charged with persistently using a public communications network to cause annoyance/inconvenience and anxiety to the transgender woman, Stephanie Hayden. You can read about the trial in Pink News.

A bookshop in London called The Second Shelf has announced they will donate to Mermaids for every J.K. Rowling book that they sell. Several people compared the move to carbon offsets, according to Pink News.

Hailie Sahar

The career of Hailie Sahar who is best known for her role as House of Ferocity co-founder Lulu on the FX series Pose is on the rise. Besides here role on Pose she is one of the LGBTQ people featured in a television spot about medication that can help people avoid HIV infection, and she is booking other roles like Gael Martinez’s sister Jazmin on Freeform’s Good Trouble. Learn more about her from Distractify.

Last year, a Canadian father lost a case in which his child was granted permission to receive medical treatment for a gender change without dad’s permission. The father lost that case, but won a following among anti-transgender conservative media. The judge’s ruling requires the father to stop the interviews, and yet, he has given several more. This week, the judge informed him specifically that any additional interviews could lead to him being found in contempt of court. The Vancouver Sun has this story.

TWITs

Wendy Williams stepped into a controversy this week, when she said that “gay men” shouldn’t wear skirts and heels, that those should only be for those who get periods. Does this mean that post-menopausal females should no longer wear skirts and heels? And what of those with androgen insensitivity, who are assigned female at birth but who never menstruate? She apologized for the remark, after the controversy erupted. For “gender-critical” comments, Wendy Williams gets a TWIT Award. You can read about this in Pink News.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki, the Catholic Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, once held an exorcism in response to a ruling allowing same-sex marriage. He now has likened gender dysphoria to anorexia. He now uses this bad logic of his as a reason to refuse to recognize a transgender identity. For making up his own science, Bishop Paprocki gets a TWIT. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Bill Donahue is the head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It is a far-right group, and is heavily involved in politics. Jesus warned that no one can serve two masters, but Bill thinks he can serve both the Catholic Church and the Republican party–because they are the same. When the leaders of the Catholic Church disagree with the Republican Party, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights argues that the leaders of the Catholic Church are wrong. (Apparently, those leaders aren’t always Catholic enough for the Catholic League.) This week, Bill came up with a story about how the Pope has said that “transgender theory is evil.” Bill is paraphrasing rather wildly throughout the piece, adding in condemnations that go beyond what the Pope said, but look closer to what far-right media sites say. For mixing things, Bill Donahue gets a TWIT Award.

The Australian is a newspaper that is a part of Rupert Murdock’s media empire. It has had an anti-transgender bias, but lately, it’s been going out of its way with the bias. It even compared gender dysphoria to the coronavirus. For obvious lies, The Australian gets a TWIT Award. You can read about it in Pink News.

Meanwhile The Australian has given a platform to a Christian Senator named Amanda Stoker who thinks being gay is a choice. No surprise that she is also transphobic. She picks up a TWIT Award. Read the false things she believes about the treatment of trans kids in Pink News. Thanks for Alyssa Washington for the story tip. 

We are getting sick of Graham Linehan, and want to stop talking about him. However, he keeps making over-the-top statements that we just can’t ignore. This week, he compared doctors who treat transgender children to Nazi medical experimenters. Graham, the results of the experiment are in. The doctors who tried to tell transgender people that it’s just a phase, or it’s not real, got worse results than the ones who tried to treat the dysphoria with medicine and surgery. For using hyperbole when he did not like the results of the experiment, Graham Linehan gets another TWIT. You can find this story in Pink News.

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.

Tags: featured, news, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News