The Week In Trans 5/18/20

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Emma Shinn

National Public Radio and the American Homefront Project combined on a story about transgender people in the military. The story includes a profile of Emma Shinn, the president of SPART*A, a support group for transgender service members. You can find a transcript at CPR. org.

The United States Navy has issued a waiver which will allow a current Navy enlistee to serve “in their preferred gender.” This marks the first time that any branch of the U.S. military has issued such a waiver since President Trump tweeted his ban on transgender people in the military. This waiver comes in response to the fifth lawsuit against the ban, from one specific member of the military. That litigant is the person who got this waiver. CNN has this story. Thanks to contributor Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

An appeals court has ordered the State Department to reconsider its decision to refuse to issue a passport with a gender marking of “X” for an intersex individual, Dana Zzyym. This case has been ongoing for six years already, and may still have a ways to go. You can read about it in The Advocate.

The move to online learning in the wake of COVID-19 has created a few problems. One is that in some cases, Google Classroom gets its information from official records of students, which can include the deadnames of transgender students. Workarounds that schools had for individual students did not always make it online. The Philadelphia School Board has told transgender students it is moving ahead with a new policy which will assure the use of names and pronouns chosen by the students. The Philadelphia Inquirer has this story.

Aimee Stephens

Aimee Stephens, the transgender funeral director and embalmer whose firing was the subject of a case which was heard by the Supreme Court earlier this year, has died of renal failure. This story can be found at NPR. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

In another court case in Connecticut, the federal judge who was asked to decide if transgender girls can compete as female athletes issued a ruling on a preliminary motion. For the sake of clarity, when arguing this case, lawyers will refer to male-to-female transgender people as “transgender women,” the term that is used in medical literature to refer to them. This has upset the plaintiffs’ attorneys so much that they have asked to have the judge removed, saying this decision showed a prejudice against their legal argument. The AP’s story can be found in The Mercury News. Thanks to reader Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

We reported recently that two men were arrested in connection with the murder of two transgender women who were incinerated in a car in Puerto Rico. This week, those men were indicted. The Washington Blade has this story.

Joe Biden related the story of a phone call he was supposed to make to Aimee Stephens on the day she passed away. He mentioned this at a virtual fundraiser, during which he also said he would push for passage of the Equality Act and for an end to conversion therapy. Pink News has this story.

Helle Jae O’Regan has been identified as the murder victim at a barber shop in San Antonio. She was killed by a potential customer who said that “God told him” to do this. The San Antonio Current has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to the story.

Roxanna Hernandez

The family of Roxsana Hernandez, who died while in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, has filed a lawsuit, claiming that the practices of ICE contributed to her death. You can find this story in The Washington Blade.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has an article about the conditions in an immigrant detention center. From cots that are less than six feet apart to guards who do not wear masks or gloves to the difficulty in getting to be seen by medical personnel, it is full of potential problems.

A survey of 3,500 gay, bisexual, and transgender men showed that almost one in three respondents feels uncomfortable in lockdown. This was especially so among respondents living in Brazil. While the survey may overreport mental health problems (people were not contacted randomly), the full scale of the mental health issues will not be known until after the lockdown has ended, according to Reuters.

Mizz June had a terrible experience with going to the hospital. She had COVID-19, and is very concerned about how other transgender women of color are being treated by health care workers. Pink News has her remarks.

Leslie MxMurray writes about the problems that LGBTQ, and especially transgender, people have in finding healthcare. She wrote an op-ed for The Dallas Voice.

Hunter Hunt-Hendrix

Hunter Hunt-Hendrix of the black metal group Liturgy came out as a transgender woman this week. Pitchfork has this story.

Insider has a list of seven influential transgender musicians. (They forgot Wendy Carlos, but that’s okay.)

Since there won’t be many Pride festivals this year, LGBTQ Nation is looking back at moments from Pride festivals in years past. In the first installment, they remember four years ago in New York City, when Monet X Change got ready for her show in the middle of Times Square.

Denali Winter is a non-binary hairdresser who also is a dominatrix. Since precautions about the virus make it impossible to meet with clients in person, Denali Winter does virtual domination through Animal Crossing. This is one of the stories in an article about the game found at The Guardian.

Fran Dunaway and Naomi Gonzalez created Tomboy X in 2013, with the intention of creating shirts for women that looked like men’s shirts. When they created non-binary underwear, they had a hit on their hands. The Advocate has a profile.

Rina

Haaretz has the story of Rina, a nine-year-old who was assigned male but insisted, at age five, that she is a girl. Her parents help to share her story.

As a child actress, Mara Wilson was the star of the movie Matilda. At about that same time, she diagnosed herself with obsessive compulsive disorder, and got medical help for the problem. She talked about that, and about the importance of listening to transgender and non-binary youth in a recent interview. Pink News has this story.

Cynthia Nixon mentioned having a transgender son in an interview on the Homo Sapiens podcast. You can read about it in The Daily Mail.

Barry Neufeld is a trustee of the Chilliwack School District in British Columbia. He has been in trouble because of comments he made in the past in which he accused parents who allow a child to transition genders of “child abuse,” and said that “gender confusion” is a “sexual addiction.” He recently said that Dr. Theresa Tam, one of Canada’s most famous doctors, may be transgender, and that if so, she is deceiving people and is not trustworthy. Of course, he has no proof for this, but that did not stop him from making the statement. He has now given an apology for the comment, with a promise of a larger apology to come. Global News has this story.

Sofia Talouni has also apologized. She was famous recently for encouraging people to make fake accounts on gay dating sites and out gay men in Morocco, where homosexuality is illegal. She says that she wanted to bring the gay men out into the mainstream, according to Edge Media.

Pabllo Vittar in her Calvins.

Calvin Klein has launched a new campaign for Pride 2020, and it includes transgender and non-binary performers. Brazilian drag star Pabllo Vittar, non-binary actor Tommy Dorfman, and model Jari Jones are scheduled to appear. You can read about it in LGBTQ Nation.

We told you last week about Ferdian Paleka, who gave away what looked to be boxes of take-out food, but were actually rotting vegetables and stones painted to look like food. He thought this was a brilliant practical joke to post on YouTube, but it seems the joke is on him. He has been arrested in Indonesia. Pink News has the story.

A 19-year-old transgender male was beaten and raped in a savage attack in Ukraine. Local media report that the victim is a “transgender female” who uses he/him pronouns. The attacker arranged to meet the victim on a dating site, according to Pink News.

We have told you about the gender-based lockdowns in some Latin American countries. They haven’t been very effective, and transgender people have had issues. Bogota, Colombia, will be getting rid of those guidelines, The Guardian reports.

Some of the creativity coming out of Seattle.

Like much of the rest of human activity since the arrival of the pandemic drag queens have gone online in a big way. Not just streaming video of them lip syncing either but some pretty creative stuff, including gaming, much of it coming from the drag culture of Seattle, Washington. Learn more from The Stranger website.

A senior housing complex in San Francisco proudly displayed the rainbow, bi, and trans Pride flags outside their facility. On May 11 someone came by the facility and stole the flags. Learn more from The Bay Area Reporter. Thanks to Ms. Bob Davis for the story.

TWITs

Puerto Rico’s legislature approved sweeping changes to the territory’s civil rights code. The changes are over 600 pages in length, yet they were approved with little debate and less time to read the changes. The civil rights of transgender and non-binary people, as well as gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, are among those that have been changed. Even now, after both houses have approved the bill and it has gone to the Governor, the contents of the bill have not been made public in their entirety. For using the cover of a medical emergency to pass sweeping changes to civil rights law, the legislators of Puerto Rico get a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

In their obituary of Aimee Stephens, The New York Times included her birth name. While it is true that she did use that name for most of her life, it is also true that she was not such a public figure at that time. For deadnaming a transgender person, The New York Times gets a TWIT Award. Chase Strangio writes against the practice for NBC News Think.

Dr. Levine

Pittsburgh radio personality Marty Griffin had an on-air phone call with Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine. During this phone call, he misgendered the secretary at least three times. He did apologize, both on air and in a tweet. However, his tweeted apology explains that he was “doing six things at once,” which seems a feeble excuse. While we are willing to grant him that this was not intentional, we’ll give him a TWIT for his feeble excuse. The Pennsylvania Capital-Star has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for providing a link to this story.

As mentioned above, a judge made a decision this week to prefer the use of the medical term “transgender females” rather than “males” to describe certain student athletes in Connecticut. As expected, some media outlets jumped to criticize the decision, and in doing so, they showed their own prejudices. An example of this was The New York Post, whose headline reads, “Judge sides with trans athletes against girls who just want fairness.” For siding against proper medical terms, and for one-sided journalism, the New York Post and others get a TWIT Award.

When Joe Biden this week tweeted the need to step up efforts to stop the violence against transgender people, an almost-expected refrain was “What violence?” These people again cite statistics which allege that transgender people experience fewer instances of violence than are common in big cities. If that is true–and we’re not saying it is true–then that shows that more people are in great danger than we realize. For misuse of statistics, those who deny that transgender people are in danger get a TWIT Award. Those who accept that danger as no big deal also get a TWIT. You can read about them in LGBTQ Nation.

The above story alluded to one particular Twitter user, who included a link to his new “rap.” The alleged rap is really a listing of grievances against society, a call to return to the way that things never really were. The “rap” is entitled Trans Women Are Men, and that title alone shows the ignorance and arrogance on display here. For promoting himself as better than others, the writer of this “rap” gets a TWIT Award. Pink News has this story.

Arielle Scarcella, who has previously released a video entitled, I Won’t Apologize For Being Transphobic, has a new video in which she asks, “Have you ever seen a non-binary Republican? Queer Conservative? Gender fluid Trump supporter? It’s almost as if these “identities” are purely political.” Respondents have pointed out that the Trump administration has pushed policies which do not support non-binary and gender-fluid people, and people often are not attracted to a political movement that does not support them. For unapologetically rejecting people, Arielle Scarcella gets a TWIT Award. Pink News has this story.

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