The Week In Trans 4/15/19

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Lilit Martirosyan

Transgender activist Lilit Martirosyan gave a moving address to the parliament of Armenia, in which she talked about issues the transgender community faces in that country, including huge amounts of discrimination. It is uncertain if anything will come from this talk. This report comes from Eurasianet.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos admitted to knowing that the stress of harassment and discrimination can lead transgender students to attend class less frequently, get worse grades, and suffer from depression, yet she rolled back protections that helped keep transgender students from harassment and discrimination. The Hill has this story.

A coroner for the state of New Mexico has submitted a new report on the death of Roxsanna Hernandez Rodriguez, who died while in ICE custody. The report says that she died of multi-centric Castleman disease, which was complicated by HIV. They note marks on her body, but say that those are consistent with “physically forceful CPR.” The Transgender Law Center is not pleased with the report, according to LGBTQ Nation.

Another transgender migrant, Alejandra Barrera, has become a cause célèbre  as she is in the same New Mexico detainment location where Roxsanna Hernandez was kept. The Advocate reports that she is one of 111 transgender people being held by ICE, whose requests for asylum are being denied.

As we reported last week, a group called DOJ Pride sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr, telling him that LGBTQ people were leaving the Department of Justice or not applying for jobs there. In response, the Attorney General issued an Equal Employment Opportunity statement which includes gender identity and sexual orientation. The new statement covers discrimination, retaliation, and harassment. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

A woman was caught on video defacing the Oklahoma Democratic Headquarters building as well as the Oklahoma City office of the Chickasaw Nation. She spray-painted racist and anti-transgender remarks, as well as swastikas and other pro-Nazi references. She has turned herself in to police, according to LGBTQ Nation.

Chelsea Manning

NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian kept referring to Chelsea Manning with masculine pronouns during MSNBC’s coverage of the arrest of Julian Assange. To give them credit, the Department of Justice did use feminine pronouns for Chelsea Manning in both the indictment of Julian Assange and in the press release about the event. Media Matters for America has this story.

When some female students at Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln High School in Iowa walked out of class to protest a transgender student who just began transitioning to female being allowed use of the ladies’ room, another group of students held a counter-protest not far away. WOWT-TV has this story.

The Fresno Bee reports that police are looking into an incident in which three truck drivers sprayed a group of transgender people with modified diesel fumes known as “black coal” on the Transgender Day of Visibility.

Judge Joe Kirby of the Warren County, Ohio, probate court finally granted two teens their name changes. The teens had won an appeal, after Judge Kirby refused to grant the name change of one of the teens, saying that he needed time to mature first. The Dayton Daily News has this story.

Ayako Fuchigami

Ayako Fuchigami is the first transgender woman elected as an assemblywoman in Japan. Pink News has this story.

Coraline Seksinsky is a transgender college student at Keene State. They wrote a paper for a philosophy class entitled “Hegel And The Trans Experience,” which they have been asked to present at the Academic Excellence Conference. A large part of the presentation will be about the ethics of responses to being misgendered. This caught the notice of the school’s student paper.

A new study in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcome concludes that transgender people have a higher risk of heart attacks and heart disease factors than their cisgender peers. Trans men are at particularly heightened risk. While they are not sure why this is so, they do suggest that “social stressors” may be a factor. You can read more about the study at Pink News.

If someone says to you that being transgender is unnatural, you can bring up these Ten “trans” gender-bending animals that can change sex.

A transgender teen in the U.K. was struck in the head and stomped on by a fellow student. A local cafe was so shocked and saddened that it held a fundraiser for the victim, Coron Kraatz. Pink News reports that the community showed up.

In its latest article on the matter of transgender athletes, Outsports examines the question of fairness.

Tifanny Abreu

Transgender volleyball player Tifanny Abreu was called “a man” by an opposing coach. While many people rushed to defend her, some defended the coach instead. Huffington Post Brazil has this story.

Taylor Swift made a donation of $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project. The money is to be used to fight Tennessee’s “Slate of Hate” legislation, according to LGBTQ Nation.

Transgender rapper Nate Ethan Watson was interviewed on the Victoria Derbyshire Show, and he tells her that his type of rap — grime— should embrace transgender people. The BBC has this story.

The Internet Movie Database, IMDB, includes among its information on performers includes their birth names. For example, they will tell you that Marilyn Monroe was given the name Norma Jean Baker at birth. However, this sort of information for a transgender performer is deadnaming, and it is looked down upon. Two transgender actors want to have their birth names removed, but IMDB has so far not granted their request, according to Indie Wire.

The government of the Netherlands has made some changes to their already rather good laws regarding transgender people. They no longer make transgender children wait until the age of 16 to change the gender on their passports, and they no longer require a doctor’s statement before allowing a transgender adult to change legal gender status. Pink News also reports that the Dutch will allow a neutral “X” marker for gender.

Priscilla, Queen of the Ring

A professional wrestler in Britain has been in the business for 16 years but for the past 9 years he has been performing as Priscilla, Queen of the Ring. He’s thought to be England’s only drag queen wrestler. View a video about him on the BBC News website. 

Canada has proposed a ban on advertising or profiting from conversion therapy on minors. Huffington Post Canada reports that the bill was introduced in the Canadian Senate.

Hayden Patterson is a prisoner in Canada. Her request for recognition as transgender has been rejected, and now, she claims that she has been sexually assaulted and discriminated against. She also says that she has had restrictions placed on how she may express her gender identity, according to Pink News.

Over in Britain, Mumsnet has seen some very heated debate concerning transgender people. Recently, a court order asked Mumsnet to reveal the identity of one particular user. BBC News has this story.

Tasmania’s state legislature is about to enact the most transgender-friendly laws in Australia. (Both houses have passed the bill, and all that remains is to agree to some late amendments.) This stands in contrast to their previous reputation as the least LGBT-friendly place, according to The Guardian.

Christine Burns, MBE, recently took to Twitter to refute the myth that MTF gender confirmation surgery results in “a wound” which will close up if it is not cared for properly. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Some parents objected to a booklet about transgender people that was used in schools in Britain, because the booklet said that some transgender people use a binder every day and wash it out at night, and these parents feel that the booklet is giving bad advice about binders. Want to know what the kerfuffle is all about? This story in Pink News may answer some questions. Or not.

Maebe A. Girl

A drag queen has been elected to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles — making her the first drag performer to be voted into public office in California. Maebe A. Girl — who identifies as genderqueer and nonbinary uses she/her and they/them pronouns and ran on a pro-LGBTQ platform. Learn more from the Advocate website.

A court in Russia just ruled that a printing company must pay back wages and a fine for firing a transgender woman without cause. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that the court refused to accept the excuse that only a man could do her job.

Newshub reports that the New Zealand Herald apologized for running a transphobic comic. The editors thought that the strip was making fun of anti-transgender attitudes, while many readers saw it as endorsing those attitudes.

The Pentagon implemented its ban on transgender people in the military on Friday. This brought out several stories. The Hill reports that some transgender people in the military and some politicians rallied outside the Capitol, in support of transgender people in the military. Pink News reports that GLAAD made a new symbol (an ampersand in pink, white, and blue) which they gave away for people to use in place of a picture on Twitter. The Associated Press reports that the AMA and several former surgeons general have come out in opposition to the ban. Editorials against the ban appeared in Politico, The Advocate, and The Advocate again. The View had two transgender military members as guests. NBC News Out reports that the Navy policy allows transgender people to express their gender when not on duty. Samantha Allen of The Daily Beast wrote about SPART*A.

Casimir Pulaski

The Smithsonian Channel aired a documentary which claims that one of George Washington’s generals, Casmir Pulaski of Poland, was either a woman or intersex. The BBC has more on this.

A new documentary called A Most Dangerous Year looks at the attempt to put the transgender provisions of Washington state’s anti-discrimination law to a vote of the people. It also looks at how this affected some people who had a very personal stake in the matter. You can read about it in the Advocate.

TWITs

PJ Media has the story of a father who says that his “son” might lose his battle with cancer due to HRT. The father disputes the diagnosis of gender dysphoria–because this father knows his child’s feelings better than the child does. As for the intersectionality of these two diagnoses–if there is one, doctors should be smart enough to manage it. For practicing medicine without a license, this father gets a TWIT Award, and for publishing this story, PJ Media snags one, too.

Five employees of Britain’s National Health Service have quit the Tavistock & Portman GIDS. Given the backlog of patients who have been referred to the clinic, losing even five people is a big deal, but The National Review insists on blowing it out of proportion. They claim that these people were responsible for “deciding whether patients as young as three should be prescribed blockers to prevent the onset of puberty.” Puberty does not start at three years of age, and medical professionals do not prescribe hormone blockers that far in advance of puberty. It is true that the people who work for the clinic are made to diagnose patients quickly, but that has more to do with the tremendous number of patients they have to serve. For misleading their readers, The National Review gets a TWIT Award.

We reported last week how conservative politicians were objecting to the Equality Act largely on the basis of transgender females in sports being unfair. The Daily Caller picked up that poor argument and ran with it. For narrow-mindedness combined with screaming rhetoric, The Daily Caller gets a TWIT.

The National Review also had a piece in which Graham Hillard advices “Conservatives Shouldn’t Use Transgender Pronouns.” For advising bad manners and using selfish politics to defend it, Graham Hillard gets a TWIT Award.

Pink News reports that Piers Morgan, the host of Good Morning Britain, who has a problem with his weight, has declared himself to be “trans slender.” In his deluded mind, he cannot understand that just declaring yourself to have some label does not mean much, if you do not live that label. For bad logic, Piers Morgan 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.

Tags: featured, news, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News