The Week In Trans 3/11/19

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.

Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning is back in prison. She has been found in contempt of court after she refused to cooperate with an investigation into WikiLeaks. She made an appearance before a grand jury, but she objected to some of the questions being asked. This story was covered by CNN.

On Thursday, Judge George Russell III of the U.S. District Court for Maryland lifted his injunction against the ban on transgender troops in the military. The move refers to the Supreme Court’s decision in the matter, even though that decision mention this particular injunction. The matter is still before the District Court for the District of Columbia, but their stay has been overruled by the appeals court and the Supreme Court. The Department of Defense is awaiting “further guidance,” but expects to implement the ban in the “near future.” The Hill has details.

That ruling comes one day after the former secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force signed a letter accusing the Pentagon of misleading Congress in its testimony last week. The three secretaries from the Obama presidency say that the Department of Defense’s own data disagree with the scenario that witnesses told to a subcommittee of the House of Representatives last week. The amount of money spent and the non-deployment times cited by the pair were not in line with what was actually experienced. They also pointed out that transgender personnel were expected to meet the same standards as other personnel, despite the claims of “special accommodations” made by the Pentagon. Politico has this story.

Autumn Scardina

The Colorado Human Rights Commission and baker Jack Phillips have settled their lawsuits. The lawsuit filed by attorney Autumn Scardina, who had asked Jack Phillips to bake a cake to celebrate her gender transition, is not dropped by this settlement, but this does mean that she won’t get assistance from the Civil Rights Commission. You can read more at NBC News.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that next week the House of Representatives will take up the Equality Act. This legislation would prohibit discrimination against Americans on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The Washington Blade has this story.

Did you know that there were nine transgender people who ran for Congress last year? They either lost in the primary or were third-party candidates. Collectively, they raised $300,000 in campaign money. (The average winner of a seat in Congress spent roughly $1.5 million.) Transgender United Fund was supposed to raise money for transgender candidates, but it has had problems, as detailed in a report from The Center for Public Integrity.

In June of 2018 Ohio’s Warren County Probate Judge Joseph Kirby denied a name change for a 15-year-old trans girl. Both of the girl’s parents were supportive of the name change and appealed to the 12th District Court of Appeals. Last week the appeals court ruled that Judge Kirby’s ruling “was arbitrary, unreasonable, unconscionable and based solely upon the transgender status of the applicant’s child.” Learn more from cincinnati.com.

Danica Roem

Danica Roem received $5,000 from the Trans United Fund during her successful 2017 campaign for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. Recently, the Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to protest her presence at the Virginia capitol and at Virginia Commonwealth University on March 11, calling her a “proud abominable transgender rebel.” Danica replied with, “meh,” then added an appeal to donate to her re-election campaign as a counter-protest. In the following week, almost 700 people donated to her campaign, which received over $26,000. The Washington Blade gave us this story.

Dr. Christopher Salgado is no longer employed by the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, following complaints about inappropriate hashtags on Instagram. LGBTQ Nation has details, including an offer from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to handle transgender patients who had appointments with Dr. Salgado. There is no mention of how insurance companies will handle this change of venue.

Speaking of insurance, we have another case of a company saying that something should have been covered, but it wasn’t. In this case, it was short-term disability, which would have paid after gender confirmation surgery. Metlife said that the surgery was “elective,” and therefore not covered. This story appeared on WBUR, which says that the insurer agreed to cover this temporary disability after getting a letter from the doctor (and another letter from GLAD), and agreed to update their policy terms.

Drag queen Darienne Lake will be one of the pros on the river cruise.

If you’re into drag and like cruising down a European river then here’s a river cruise for you. It’s called U in Drag and it’s leaving the dock in Frankfurt, Germany on July 6. Learn more from the Travel Weekly website.

Many transgender patients want to preserve sperm or eggs, in case they decide to have children who carry their DNA sometime in the future. However, NBC News finds that some transgender people are not told of the possibility that hormone therapy could render them infertile, and some fertility clinics just don’t know how to deal with transgender clients.

A trans man from Texas was surprised to learn that he was pregnant. Wyley Simpson transitioned at the age of 21 and was told by doctors that after he was on testosterone he would never carry a child. Apparently his son Rowan very much wanted to be born. Thanks to Jan Brown for the story tip. You can read it on the McGill Media website.

Amber Norris

The BBC has a profile of Amber Norris, a nine-year-old who is transgender.

Jamie Roberts passed along the line up of speakers who will be at The Keystone Conference March 20-24.

Hematology Advisor ran an article looking at the risks of thrombotic events in transgender women on HRT. The types of estrogen used today are safer than types used in the past. You can find more in Medical Bag.

A nonbinary individual in San Diego was refused as a blood donor because they felt uncomfortable filling out the form. Not only did the form only have boxes for “male” and “female,” but the question about sex partners is different for males and females. This story appeared on KGTV in San Diego.

Martina Navratilova has apologized for her comments about transgender people, sort of. She apologized for “suggesting that transgender athletes in general are cheats,” and said that there was no “perfect solution” to the matter. CNN has more.

A co-founder and public face of an Australian neobank called Up has made it clear that he, too, thinks that transgender athletes are cheats. This has led one trans woman to wonder if she can still in good conscience use his product. Her writing appears in Smart Company.

Malak al-Kashef

A 19-year-old transgender activist in Egypt was taken into custody by the Egyptian national security service on March 6 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Malak al-Kashef had recently gotten her gender confirmation surgery. She was picked up for “disruption of public order.” Learn more from the Morocco World News.

More that 160 women of various professions have signed on to a letter to the Scottish National Parliament, telling them that the noisy anti-transgender feminists do not speak for all feminists. The women who signed the letter say that they have no problem sharing space with transgender women. The National has this story, along with the full text of the letter.

Professor Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, has called for a larger study of the effects of medicines given to transgender children. He says, “the quality of evidence in this area is terrible.” This was the subject of Panorama on BBC.

Another Oxford professor, Dr. Michael Biggs from the Department of Sociology, claims that the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundational Trust is covering up serious problems with its puberty blockers. The Telegraph published his claim that the puberty blockers exacerbated gender dysphoria.

The first prison especially for transgender prisoners is set to open. It is actually just a wing of HMP Downview, and will have only three prisoners to start. The transgender women who are held there will have no access to the other women in the prison, according to the BBC.

The Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia have asked Julie Mencher, an American sociologist with an expertise on transgender people, to tell their students how to best support their transgender peers. She will be conducting workshops starting this week. The Daily Mail Australia has this story.

Akwaeke Emezi

A book by a non-binary trans woman was included on the long-list for the Women’s Prize for fiction. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi is among sixteen books on the long-list. While The Guardian talks of Freshwater first, they do also mention the other books on the list. In The Independent, Victoria Parsons points out that the rules still say that the prize is for a woman author, and that at least one judge confused “non-binary” with “gender-fluid.”

Friday was International Women’s Day. Women’s Health ran an article entitled, “I’m A Trans Woman, And I’m Celebrating International Women’s Day, Too.”

The trial of the men in Washington, D.C. who were arrested for a crime spree targeting trans women that included a murder was declared a mistrial. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for passing along the story in The Washington Post.

There now is an emoji of the transgender pride flag, but not everyone can get it. You can find out about it at Out magazine.

TWITs

February 28 was Jazz And Friends National Day of School and Community Readings. To observe this, Representatives Jackie Speier and Angie Craig read the book I Am Jazz on the floor of the U.S. Congress. They did this after the House had concluded its business for the day. Christian News Service ran a story about this, but they included the line, “To date, there is no scientific evidence proving that transgender people are, as Lady Gaga sings, ‘born this way.'” While it is not proven, science does show that is probably the case. For bias, the Christian News Service gets a TWIT.

Some people feel that you have to fight fire with fire. That only works on wild fires when fire fighters start smaller fires to control the bigger blaze. A trans woman in New York City started fighting back at those she perceived as her enemies by attacking around 7 people at random with pepper spray. The report on the Fox News website gives her name as Thomas J. Heard. We give Fox News a TWIT Award for using her legal name and we give Ms. Heard a TWIT Award for giving in to anger and hate to commit violence.

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