The Week In Trans 3/15/21

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KTRK-TV News profiles Tommie Ross, a transgender woman who is fighting for the rights of all women, including transgender women.

During a press briefing, Jen Psaki said, “The president believes that trans rights are human rights and that no one should be discriminated on the basis of sex. Not only is this the law of the land, it’s also his own deeply held view.” This was in response to a question about the many state bills aimed at curtailing the rights of transgender people, including participating in school athletics and medical treatments for transgender minors. LGBTQ Nation has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this and several other stories.

On Tuesday, President Biden observed International Women’s Day by signing an executive order aimed at preventing gender discrimination in education. The executive order specifically includes LGBTQ people, according to LGBTQ Nation.

A day before President Biden signed his executive order on gender discrimination in education, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction announced that student records would include a data field for “preferred name” as well as “legal name.” So, John Doe III, whose family calls him “Trey,” can have that name as part of his official record, and the record will show whether Elizabeth Susan Gates is called “Betty Sue” or “Lisa” aor some other name. As for transgender students, it won’t mean that the deadname is no longer a part of the record (since there is a “legal name” on the form), but it will mean that teachers will have access to the preferred name even before the student shows up for class. The Raleigh News and Observer has this story.

A story on NPR suggests that, while Americans have grown more supportive of the rights of transgender people in general, there are some specific areas where the polling shows that people are less certain of the rights of transgender people, such as participation in school sports.

The Guardian and The Hill have talked to Black transgender Minneapolis City Councilwoman Andrea Jenkins about the death of George Floyd, which happened near where she lives, as well as other matters.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed the bill to ban transgender females from participating in girls’ sports. He tried to put blame on President Biden, ignoring the fact that his own prejudice was on display here. The Associated Press has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

A bill to ban transgender females from participating in girls’ sports has passed both houses of the South Dakota legislature. Governor Kristi Noem tweeted, “In South Dakota, we’re celebrating #InternationalWomens Day by defending women’s sports! I’m excited to sign this bill very soon.” So, she’s excited to sign a bill which all but guarantees that her state will spend a lot of money defending a law which is already blocked by a court in Idaho. This bit of TERF thinking comes from LGBTQ Nation. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

While South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has not yet signed the bill on transgender females in athletics, she has signed into law a bill which claims to address matters of religions freedom. Many people feel that this law will infringe on the rights of LGBTQ+ people. The Advocate has this story.

In an attempt to sink the COVID relief bill, Republicans in the U.S. Senate attempted to attach an amendment which would ban transgender females from participating in girls’ sports. The amendment failed, 49-50. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

More than 500 college athletes have signed a letter asking the NCAA to not hold events in states which pass bills prohibiting transgender females from participating in girls’ sports. ESPN has the AP’s story.

Reuters notes that the bills aiming at transgender athletes are a part of the culture war.

The Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee of the Arkansas House of Representatives has approved a bill that would ban doctors from medically treating gender dysphoria in minors. The bill goes to the full House. This story comes from KATV-TV News.

ABC News describes the number of state bills aimed at transgender people as “catastrophic.”

Proponents of bills which try to limit the rights of transgender people are attempting to create a wedge issue, according to a report on Out.com.

Opposition to transgender rights is an issue Republicans hope will bring more Black voters to vote for them. LGBTQ Nation makes this observation.

PinkNews and The Advocate note that there have been more bills aimed at transgender people this year than in any previous year. PinkNews points out that it is only March, but part of this is that many conservative states have part-time legislatures.

Alex Santiago of the I Am Human Foundation has been placing billboards around Atlanta proclaiming, “Black Trans Lives Matter.” He felt that this issue won’t get enough attention, according to LGBTQ Nation.

One area of discrimination that people might not think of is discrimination in the issuing of credit. President Biden signed a bill to protect LGBTQ people against that sort of discrimination, as LGBTQ Nation reports.

Click2Houston profiles Mia Poarter, a transgender woman who has suffered a lot of problems during the pandemic.

A transgender woman named Luis Cruz says that when she called the police to stop a transphobic attack on her, she said they instead falsely detained her and let the attacker go. PinkNews has this story.

New Jersey just passed a law banning discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It’s being billed as the “LGBTQI+ Senior Bill of Rights,” according to LGBTQ Nation.

A new bill in California would ban large department stores (over 500 employees) from separating children’s products into one section for boys and another section for girls. The Advocate has this story.

WTVD-TV News reports that some hospitals are delaying gender-affirming surgeries. While that is happening in some hospitals, others are going ahead with such surgeries.

Teenagers who are transgender or gender non-conforming most appreciate the little things that their parents do to affirm their gender (or lack thereof). Such acts as using the correct name or pronoun meant a lot to these teenagers. Stanford School of Medicine has this article.

A new docu-series The Lady And The Dale tells the story of Liz Carmichael and a three-wheeled car she tried to manufacture. The way she was treated in the 1970s is quite similar to how many transgender people are treated today, according to co-director Zackary Drucker in Out magazine.

Zackery Drucker also tells Out magazine that they made a connection between the story of Liz Carmichael and Tucker Carlson.

Patti Harrison is one of the voice actors in the new Disney movie Raya and the Last Dragon. She isn’t in the movie for long, but it is the first time a transgender performer has been a part of the voice cast of a Disney film. Out.com has this story.

Pop star Halsey, who is pregnant, has quietly announced their pronouns are “she/they”. Halsey says that pregnancy helped them to get a handle on their true gender identity. Get more from Scary Mommy.

Rurangi is a drama about transgender people in rural New Zealand. It was written by transgender people, and it stars transgender people. The film will be seen in the U.S. on Hulu, according to PinkNews.

Torrey Peters’s book Detransition, Baby appears on the long list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The nomination adds fuel to a controversy which began last October, when the prize announced that it was open to “all women.” The Daily Mail has this story.

Theatre Battery has created a ten-part series entitled Lego Harry Potter and the Transgender Witch. The series features many of the most loved characters from the books and movies, but they aren’t that accepting of a transgender witch, according to a story in The Seattle Times. (One has to wonder how long it will be before lawyers remove the episodes from YouTube.)

Demi Lovato says that she is “too queer” to date a cisgender man. Out.com has this story.

Alt Press has a list of ten transgender women in punk rock.

Sade’s transgender son, Izaak Theo Adu, has announced he is getting married. This caught the attention of PinkNews.

K-Pop singer Harisu hit back at someone who told her to die because she is trans. PinkNews has this story.

Simona Castricum, a transgender musician and DJ from Australia, gained notoriety when a security guard told her to use the men’s restroom. This story comes from The Age.

Tell Me Why is a video game that has a supernatural thriller as its storyline. One of the characters is a trans man. It is available free, according to PinkNews.

DC Comics is releasing a new series of DC Pride comics, which will include the first comic book appearance of Dreamer, the character Nicole Maines played on Supergirl. Several other LGBT characters will appear. Out has this story.

There are only seven clinics in Britain’s NHS system that deal with gender identity, and one of them, The Laurels, only assessed two new patients last year. One user has been waiting six years to be seen by the service. This story comes from PinkNews.

Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP whose positions on transgender matters are not shared by the party, appeared on the BBC show Politics Live, saying that she is not guilty of “transphobia,” and that she has been silenced for her views on the matter. Her appearance on a national TV show casts doubt on the claims of being silenced. PinkNews has this story.

The U.K. Parliament is debating the merits of a ban on conversion therapy. Many members are arguing that the ban must include transgender people. PinkNews has this story. PinkNews also reports that Equalities Minister Liz Truss has said that a ban on conversion therapy will be put in place, after several members resigned from the government’s LGBT+ Advisory Panel.

The U.K. still does not have a transgender Member of Parliament, but Eddie Izzard has said she will be the first, no matter how many times she has to stand for office. This story can be found in LGBTQ Nation.

PinkNews reports that Hungary’s top court has rejected Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s attempt to retroactively deny changes of gender on government documents.

Clement Beaune, France’s Minister for European Affairs, was denied permission to visit a self-proclaimed LGBT-free zone in Poland. The government of Krasnick said that the request was rejected because of COVID-19. Out.com has this story.

Petra De Sutter, one of Belgium’s deputy prime ministers and a trans woman, this week said that Belgium will legally recognize non-binary people. The country is reforming gender laws in general, according to PinkNews.

Seventy people who are demanding reform of transgender rights laws in Spain have gone on a hunger strike. Their demands include the right to get a change of legal gender without a medical diagnosis. PinkNews has this story.

This week marked the on-camera debut of Tashnuva Anan Shishir as the first transgender TV news anchor in Bangladesh. The Associated Press has this story.

A new hashtag “Super Straight” started appearing on social media this week. People using this hashtag declare that they will not date or have sex with transgender people. This trend was first reported by PinkNews. PinkNews also reports that this has spread to terms such as “Supergay,” “Superlesbian,” and “Superbisexual,” all of which are aimed at specifically excluding transgender people. LGBTQ Nation has some additional examples of pushback against the terms. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

A social experiment replaced the traditional signs on restrooms with signs for “cisgender” and “transgender” people. The video of this, which is in French, shows people who were confused as to which restroom to use. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Last week, several GOP senators complained that Amazon would not sell Ryan Anderson’s anti-transgender book. This week, Amazon explained that it is not just the one book; they will not sell any book which claims that being transgender is a form of mental illness. Since psychiatry and psychology professional groups do not believe that transgender people are mentally ill, it is felt to be inappropriate for lay people to make that diagnosis themselves. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Transgender Day of Visibility is coming up, and The Denver Channel tells of a local support group accepting art to help promote the event.

There is a new film titled Markie in Milwaukee. It follows Markie Wenzel, a trans woman who is seven feet tall. Matt Kliegman has been working on the film for a decade, according to The Cap Times.

Construction has come to a halt on the Marsha P. Johnson Park in Brooklyn. Black transgender activists and members of Marsha P. Johnson’s family complained about the rushed nature of the project. Plans for the park included little green space, but a giant concrete slab featuring a rainbow-striped mural. This story comes from Out.com.

TWITs

For over 200 years, the British census has asked people whether they are male or female. This year’s census form retains only the two choices, but proposed to add this guidance: “If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on your legal documents such as birth certificate, gender recognition certificate, or passport.” PinkNews reports that the group Fair Play for Women has raised over £100,000 to fight this guidance, and got the High Court to rewrite it, to remove the suggestion that the gender listed on a person’s passport could be used on the census form. As if someone who went to the trouble of getting their gender changed on their passport would even think of not using that gender in answering the census. For bigotry that borders on stupidity, Fair Play for women gets a TWIT Award.

Two former employees of the Houston bakery Dessert Gallery say that they were fired because they stood up for a transgender co-worker. One of the two fired employees is gay, and the other is lesbian. For firing good employees just because they were not prejudiced against a transgender woman, Dessert Gallery COO Nicole Morris gets a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Nicole Russell of The Daily Signal wrote a column titled, “3 Examples of How Pervasive Transgender Ideology Has Become.” Her column actually tells how pervasive anti-transgender ideology has become. Her first example is the Keira Bell case in the U.K., which was decided with a complete disregard for the science. Her second example is the “Connecticut Track Case,” where medical science admits that it really doesn’t have a complete picture of what is going on, but she thinks that she knows better than those who are conducting the studies. Her third example is the idea that faith-based hospitals cannot object to performing certain surgeries for transgender people. Here, she has a poor knowledge of the law, and of the specifics of the one particular case that is grinding through the courts. For picking bad examples and not doing good research, Nicole Russell gets a TWIT.

An article in The National Catholic Register talks of pushback on President Biden’s support for transgender people. They support Senator Rand Paul’s position that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, when psychiatric groups say it is not. They also lied about the drugs given as puberty blockers, and gave the long-since-debunked claim that most transgender children “grow out of it.” For relying on bad science and people who push false information, The National Catholic Register gets a TWIT Award.

Senator Susan Collins is demanding bigger religious exemptions in the Equality Act before she will support it. Mind you, we cannot be sure that she will support the act even if religious exemptions are expanded. You know who else reads bigotry into the Bible? The Ku Klux Klan. For arguing that we need more of the sort of thing the Klan does, Senator Susan Collins gets a TWIT. LGBTQ Nation has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

Republicans in South Carolina have removed protections for sexual orientation and gender identity from their hate crimes bill, because such protections “threaten religious liberty.” For suggesting that people should be allowed to aggressively (and perhaps violently) confront people over their sexual orientation or gender identity because God wants you to hate this person that much, South Carolina Republicans get a TWIT Award. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Tennessee state Representative Jason Zachary has filed a bathroom bill, which would allow students to request a “reasonable accommodation” if they don’t accept sharing a restroom with a transgender person. Tennessee used to have separate restroom accommodations for white people and “colored” people. Now, this bill wants to do the same on the basis of gender identity. For proposing a solution that is straight out of the worst days of his state’s bigoted past, in order to solve a problem that is all in the mind of the person whom the bill tries to protect, state Representative Jason Zachary gets a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

A group of Trump supporters who claim to be Christians went to a meeting of the Brevard Public School Board, to protest new guidelines about how to treat LGBT students. When they got together at the meeting, group mentality took over, and they shouted hateful things at the defenders of the policy, often accusing them of being LGBTQ themselves even if the people they were shouting at were allies who oppose discrimination. For engaging in the sort of holier-than-thou behavior that Jesus condemned in the Pharisees, the people who shouted at supporters of the LGBTQ policy get a TWIT. LGBTQ Nation reports that the opposition came from adults, not from students.

Alabama state Senator Tom Whatley is a Republican legislator who voted to deny transgender minors medical care for their gender dysphoria. He also liked a tweet from a user who describes themselves as an “enbi trans girls faerie princess.” (Am I the only one who suspects this is likely a fake person? Especially with the Twitter name “Bambi Hardcore TG 18+”) The state Senator liked a tweet which said, “I love my new, fat, G-cup tiddies,” and included a NSFW picture which is supposedly of those mammaries. The bill he voted for would ban transgender minors from even talking to a therapist about gender dysphoria, but he can like this tweet in which an alleged transgender (and non-binary) person loves their giant new (apparently fake) breasts. For amazing hypocrisy, state Senator Tom Whatley gets a TWIT. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

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