The Week In Trans 4/25/22

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The Higgs mural.

Transgender activist Aurora Higgs is featured in a mural in Richmond. You can read about it in RVA magazine.

A federal judge in Montana has put a pause on the state’s new law requiring proof that a transgender person underwent a “surgical procedure” before the state will change the gender on a birth certificate. Judge Michael G. Moses issue a preliminary injunction, which means that he thinks the state has a good enough case to very likely win the trial, but the trial will have to take place. CNN has this story.

Judge Nancy Rosenstengel of the U.S. District Court for Southern Illinois issued an order to the Bureau of Prisons, instructing that Cristina Nichole Iglesias be given gender confirmation surgery. While judges have ordered states to provide gender confirmation surgery for prisoners, this is the first time a judge has ordered gender confirmation surgery for a prisoner in federal custody. This story comes from The Hill.

The San Francisco Redistricting Task Force has split the Transgender District in Tenderloin from the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District. Where the two districts have the same Supervisor on the city council, they will now be in different districts. This story comes from The Bay Area Reporter.

Pau Crego

San Francisco mayor London Breed has appointed Pau Crego to serve as the Executive Director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives. Mx. Crego has worked in the department since it was founded in 2017, and has been Acting Executive Director since Clair Farley left. The Office of the Mayor of San Francisco has the announcement on its web site.

The lawsuit seeking to overturn the Alabama prohibition on medically treating gender dysphoria in minors in Alabama was dropped briefly this week, and then refiled. The new suit has four parents of transgender children, a pediatrician, a clinical psychologist, and a pastor. The families are staying anonymous, for reasons of security. The Alabama Reporter has this story.

The new lawsuit is known as Rev. Eknes-Turner v. Ivey, which means that Reverend Paul Eknes-Turner of the United Pilgrim Church of Birmingham, Alabama, is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors in Alabama. This allows the parents and the doctors to stay anonymous, since they may be breaking the law if injunctions do not stop it taking effect. Rev. Paul Eknew-Turner is profiled by ABC 3340.

Missouri is considering a ban on the medical treatment of gender dysphoria in minors. Missouri’s bill would punish doctors for providing that treatment, much as Alabama’s law does. KDSK-TV has highlights from the debate at the capitol.

The Louisiana state Senate passed a bill to outlaw transgender females on girls’ sports teams. Changing America at The Hill takes a look at bans on transgender athletes in other states, to see how they are standing up to legal challenges.

Stel Kline

Stel Kline has been a reporter for South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Stel has been fired, and she thinks it is because they are transgender. The fact that a performance review said that Stel’s reporting was “not objective” and that Stel had “a problem with authority” could have been a reason for the firing, as could the fact that Stel felt that those items on the performance review were compliments. This story comes from The Advocate.

In Kansas, Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the state’s bill banning transgender athletes. She also vetoed similar legislation last year. Senate President Ty Masterson said that the Senate will try to override the veto next week, when they reconvene. Governor Kelly is the fourth governor to veto such legislation this year. Two state legislatures implemented their bans by overriding the governor’s veto. This story comes from them.

An impassioned speech by Missouri state Representative Ian Mackey, arguing against a ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports has gone viral. NBC News has this story.

The 19th tells us that Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law is not new, but rather, is a reboot of an old idea.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was interviewed on the News Not Noise podcast. When Jessica Yellin, the host of the podcast, asked for her thoughts on the motivation behind anti-LGBTQ legislation, she said, “This is a political wedge issue and an attempt to win a culture war. And they’re doing this is a way that is harsh and cruel to a community of kids.” She was heard crying as she continued. This story comes from the Advoccate.

Them points out that anti-transgender laws are not just symbolic, but are an attempt to erase transgender people from public life.

Transgender Floridians plead, “Just let me live.” Florida Politics has this story.

Mianne Bagger

Transgender golfer Mianne Bagger came out in support of testosterone limits on transgender athletes. The New York Post has this story.

While other states are pursuing legal punishments for families with transgender children, California is proposing a bill to make it a “trans refuge,” a safe haven from the culture war. You can read about this effort in them.

Shawnee State University in Ohio has agreed to pay a professor $400,000 after disciplining him for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns. In accepting the payout, the professor agrees to drop his lawsuit against the university over the matter. He will be allowed to use inappropriate pronouns, according to the agreement. CNN has this story.

Maine Public Radio has a story about how the obligation to place a want ad before a legal change of name can out transgender people.

Wisconsin Public Radio has a story about what happens when a transgender person loses health insurance.

In light of Alabama’s ban on medical care for transgender minors, the Florida Department of Health recommending against minors transitioning gender (see the TWIT section), and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services investigating parents of transgender children for “child abuse,” The Associated Press ran an explainer on what medical treatments transgender children actually receive.

Transgender women can get prostate cancer, says a story in PinkNews.

A 13-year-old who stopped swimming competitively a year ago is profiled in The Salt Lake Tribune. She is transgender, and felt self-conscious because of all the controversy about transgender athletes.

Danielle McLean plays women’s hockey, and she writes in CNN Opinion that the women’s hockey team is “right where I belong.”

A new poll by Monash University in Australia finds that only 24% of female athletes surveyed agree with the statement, “trans athletes have an unfair advantage when they play on a female sport team.” 46% of men agree with that same statement, according to PinkNews.

Janelle Monae

Janelle Monae came out as non-binary this week. She made the announcement while appearing on Red Table Talk with Jaida Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield Norris. You can read about it in The Advocate.

A new horror film entitled We’re All Going To The World’s Fair premiered in theaters and on streaming this week. Its central character is a teen who plays a lot of a certain video game, called World’s Fair Challenge. The game promises to transform players in a grotesque way. Well, if that set-up didn’t intrigue you, then you are not the audience for this movie. Jane Schoenbrun, the director, gave an interview to them.

The movie Heartstopper is based on the webcomic of the same name. It stars transgender teen Yasmin Finney as a transgender teen trying to fit in at an all-girls’ school. PinkNews has this story. The series is running on Netflix.

The 2022 GLAAD List of never produced scripts includes some transgender stories, including the first film highlighted in a story in them.

Hal Baddie of TikTok fame wants to do a fashion gala. She especially wants to attract trans women of color, a group which includes her. You can read about this, and some online responses, in them.

Zaya Wade

Zaya Wade seems to have a significant other. At least, that is what Out.com is making from a recent social media post.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore had the worst opening at the box office of any film in the series. Mind you, some people still are not comfortable going back to theaters, and many have just become accustomed to seeing movies at home via streaming services. Also, the Fantastic Beasts series is nowhere near to the box office force that the Harry Potter films were, and the second Fantastic Beasts movie was a huge disappointment for many fans. Add to that a long delay between films, and there are lots of reasons for the reduced box office receipts. However, according to them, J.K. Rowling’s new status as a TERF certainly did not help the film.

Just before the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the queens reflected on this season. NBC News has this story.

RuPaul will have a day in her honor in Las Vegas. You can see the moment she found out about it, thanks to Out.com.

Bob the Drag Queen was not invited to the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars. Out.com has this story.

Kornbread “The Snack” Jete says she is taking a break from drag. She says she will focus on other interests. This story comes from Out.com.

Ilona Varley

A bouncer punched Ilona Verley, one of the queens from Canada’s Drag Race, and told her “Transphobia isn’t real.” Oh, if only transphobia weren’t real! Unfortunately, his actions prove his own statement is false. PinkNews has this story.

Michaela Jae Rodriquez and several drag queens are among the cast announced for LA Pride In The Park. Out.com has a larger list of performers.

A transgender man in Ireland has come out with the story of an attack, which happened in the week after he first came out, and which left him unable to wear a binder. His only way of making his boobs disappear was surgery, which is costly, takes time to arrange, and is risky during a pandemic. PinkNews feels it encapsulates the trans experience in Ireland, but perhaps it is more a sign of the trans experience throughout the world.

Australia is close to passing a bill that would allow sporting associations and clubs to exclude trans women from single-sex sports. PinkNews has this story.

Pauline Hanson, the leader of the far-right One Nation party in Australia, said in a discussion of transgender rights that transgender people ‘choose” to be on hormones. By framing it as a “choice,” she implies that the state has a right to limit the choice, or at least to treat it as something optional. has this story.

Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow is mighty upset at a colleague who accused LGBTQ people of “grooming.” The accusation is getting to be popular among far-right Republicans, who hear it and repeat it. It’s still quite demonstrably false, as she said. Truthout has this story.

PinkNews reports that some people on Twitter are writing letters of support to transgender children. Some are even telling their own stories, to show these children that they are not alone. (Unfortunately, this hashtag is likely to get used by others, to write letters to discourage transgender children–if it hasn’t been so used yet.)

Allyssa Connor

A Mormon husband came out as transgender, and says that it strengthened her marriage. The Daily Mail Allyssa Connor’s story.

Many of the anti-transgender laws being introduced across the country are based on misconceptions about transgender people and transgender medicine. LGBTQ Nation has an excerpt from the updated version of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, which addresses some of these myths.

The Daily podcast from The New York Times tells of what happened “When Texas Came After Transgender Care.”

TWITs

The Florida Department of Health released a guidance for doctors, telling them not to help children with gender transitions. The guidance claims a “lack of conclusive evidence, and the potential for long term, irreversible harm.” Apparently, they feel that a 40% rate of suicide attempts is acceptable, but sterility is not. Doctors are told not to advise a social transition, which bears none of the alleged “irreversible effects” of hormone therapy. As for the “long-term” effects of living in the wrong gender, they are psychological, but can indeed be extremely difficult if not impossible to reverse. Mind you, the Florida Department of Health recently said that face masks were a political statement with no medical benefit. For denying the good evidence that convinced formerly skeptical medical organizations such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, etc., and for associating adverse effects with something that could not possibly cause them, the Florida Department of Health gets a TWIT Award. This story comes from them.

Speaking of being out of step with reality, The New York Post has a column by Betsy McCaughey entitled, “Science shows transgender education doesn’t belong in schools.” The alleged science starts with: “99%-plus of the population does not have the physical traits that cause someone to become transgender.” Do you know more than 200 people? If so, then one of your acquaintances is “only 0.6%” of that group. Yet, you think that that person matters. For a bad understanding of science, and for a lack of concern about others, Betsy McCaughey and the New York Post get a TWIT Award.

Brandi Szeker wrote a novel entitled The Pawn And The Puppet, which Red Oak Publishing has released. It is described as an “adult dystopian romance set in an asylum.” The book has multiple warnings, due to violence, depression, suicide, and torture, among other things. However, a group of people found that it also contained a problematic representation of a transgender character, as well as racism and incest, which were not listed among the warnings. The author has agreed to revise the book to remove the worst parts of the representation of the transgender character, although we will see if that happens. However, the mere fact that someone complained about the representation of a transgender character, and the fact that the author agreed that it is a problem and agreed to address it, upset The Daily Mail. For pretending that a novel which contained a warning label for twenty different things is not problematic, and for feeling that someone who takes offense at the content of such a novel is overreacting, The Daily Mail gets a TWIT Award.

John Carlo, who is running for Clark County School Board in Nevada, called LGBTQ people “unconstitutional” since they cannot procreate. As you might guess, he is opposed to mentioning the existence of LGBTQ people in the classroom. He mentioned “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as a part of the constitution, when in fact they are in the Declaration of Independence. For confusion about what is in the Constitution, and for extreme prejudice against others, John Carlo gets a TWIT. The Advocate has this story.

A teacher in Louisiana wants to teach school children that being transgender is wrong because God created their gender. This interpretation is read into the line, “Male and female created he they,” which really is a poetic way of saying that the same God created both males and females. (Other religious creation myths credited one god with creating males and a different god with creating females.) But, from this one poetic line in a story which science tells us is not accurate, self-identified Christians create a story of gender being given by God, who then gets offended if we try to change it. And she wants to teach that, without teaching the science that contradicts it. For not recognizing the difference between myth and science, and for not caring that she causes harm to the mental wellbeing of others with her insistence on myth, the creator of this TikTok video gets a TWIT. This story appears in LGBTQ Nation.

A group of parents is suing a school district for allowing their child to change genders without telling them of this. The reason why school districts do this is to protect a child whose parents react badly to learning that their child is transgender. For showing exactly the behavior which made this sort of protection necessary, the parents behind this lawsuit get a TWIT Award. Them has this story.

Britain’s Minister of Education, Nadhim Zahawi, also suggested that teachers should reveal to parents that their child has changed genders in school. Many parents already know of their child’s gender change, and when parents don’t know, it is typically because of a fear of the parents’ reaction. So, he thinks that transgender children need to be not only punished with unsupportive parents but punished by their unsupportive parents. For piling parental punishment on top of the other problems that transgender children in an unsupportive family (and with an unsupportive government) have, and for mental cruelty, Minister of Education Nadhim Zahawi gets a TWIT. PinkNews has this story.

LGBTQ Nation has a story on Neil Kumar, a candidate in Arkansas who is so far to the right, even the Republican party has denounced him. He said, “Education has been replaced by the promotion of the depraved LGBT agenda, a Satanic attack on God and Nature. I call it LGBTP–the P is for pedophilia.” Actually, there are more charges of pedophilia among religious professionals than among LGBTQ people, and the immediate past president, who is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, was frequently seen with the late Jeffrey Epstein, who was known for having underage girls around for sex. For projection, and for an embarrassing amount of hyperbole, Neil Kumar gets a TWIT.

An ad for Jarrin Jackson, a candidate for Oklahoma state Senate, claims that transgender women are “Islamicizing” their bodies when they have gender confirmation surgery. He recently accused parents who support their transgender children of “manipulating and grooming” their children. He has also said, “It’s not ‘bottom surgery,’ it’s mutilation. You’ve Islamicized your genitals. You’ve Islamicized yourself. Muslims do genital mutilation for women that have sex or commit adultry.” That is quite untrue. It is true that so-called “female circumcision” happens among Islamic people of certain countries, but that goes back to a practice prominent before that culture embraced Islam. The punishment for adultery is stoning to death, not genital mutilation. For wildly inaccurate accusations, and for not caring about accuracy (not to mention white nationalism, misuse of the Bible, etc.), Jarrin Jackson gets a TWIT. He is profiled in LGBTQ Nation.

Michigan state Senator Tom Barrett sent out a fundraising letter with a fake confirmation of a child’s “Gender Reassignment Surgery.” People should be suspicious of the message, as it reads, “Thomas, your child’s gender reassignment surgery has been booked.” Why would the message to parents not mention the child’s name? It continues, “If you have any issues with this operation, please view the objectives of Biden’s National Transgender Strategy here,” and gives a URL which starts with “rep-gop.com,” obviously not a government URL but a URL aligned to the Republican party. In his lack of courtesy, he could not even include the correct title for President Biden. For lying about the current situation, and for giving away his lie with his lack of courtesy, State Senator Tom Barrett gets a TWIT. The Advocate has this story.

A Reddit topic has grown up around a supposed message from a parent, asking for help when a child will not take the cross-sex hormones that the parent is forcing on the child. The fact that the source of the original request for help is never identified is a dead giveaway that it is fake, yet so many people fell for it, Politifact had to esamine it and show that it is not true. In fact, Politifact’s debunking refers to a previous debunking by Reuters, which means that people still believed it after one major news organization looked into it and found it to be false. For gullibility, for missing obvious red flags, and for continuing to believe even when shown the falsehood of the claim, the people who believe this story and spread it get 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