The Week In Trans 6/1/20

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Marie Cau

Marie Cau was elected mayor of Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes, a town of about 600 people located in northeastern France, near the border with Belgium. She is the first transgender person to be elected mayor in France. The BBC has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to the story.

Transgender students have been finding that their deadnames are being used in online learning, despite agreements with schools to use the names they plan to use for the rest of their lives. Florida is attempting to make that right, as USA Today reports.

Tony McDade, a black trans man, was killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida. He was at the scene of a murder, and he made a move which the police officer interpreted as drawing a gun. Out.com has this story. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

Even before the story of Tony McDade broke, Ash Stephens, a black transgender man himself, wrote a piece about how black transgender men face the threat of violence from police. It appears in The Advocate.

Andrea Jenkins

This week saw George Floyd killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. At a press conference following the death of Floyd, Andrea Jenkins, a transgender woman who is the vice-president of the City Council of Minneapolis, sang Amazing Grace. You can read about it at The Advocate.

The Civil Rights Office of the U.S. Department of Education wrote a letter in which it says allowing transgender females to participate on school athletic teams violates the civil rights of cisgender girls under Title IX. This came in response to a lawsuit in Connecticut. The AP’s story can be found on ESPN.

Two cisgender runners for Idaho State University joined in the lawsuit against the new law in Idaho that forbids transgender women from participating in women’s athletics. They are with the state in defending the law, and say that the presence of a transgender runner for the University of Montana gives that school an unfair advantage. KTVB-TV has this story.

The Tennessee state legislature is back in session, and one of the first things that the state’s House of Representatives wants to take up is a bill to ban transgender females from school athletics. The state Senate is working on federal funding in response to COVID-19 only, according to WKRN-TV.

Michaela Beck

Michaela Beck is a transgender teenager and a dancer. She recently appeared on the television show The Move, where she did an acro-style dance while waving a transgender pride flag. She is profiled by CBC.

Gavin Grimm’s lawsuit against the Gloucester County School Board is back at the Circuit Court level. A federal court ruled last year in favor of Mr Grimm, but the board appealed. The AP’s story can be found on Yahoo News.

A lawsuit by Ashley Diamond established new rules for how transgender prisoners with gender dysphoria are treated in Georgia prisons. She is now back in custody, and says that she was denied hormone treatment and sexually assaulted. WABE radio has this story.

A transgender woman who is a prisoner in the state of New York has filed a lawsuit, saying that she was given only a paper mask and a thin handkerchief to defend against COVID-19. She says she has a diagnosis of AIDS, which puts her at high risk in this pandemic. You can read her story at The Appeal.

This week marked one year since the World Health Organization removed “gender identity disorder” from its list of mental health disorders, reclassifying it as “gender incongruence” and placing it in the chapter on sexual health. Both Forbes and Pink News look back at the year and find that, all too often, civil rights for transgender people have been sliding backwards.

Mj Rodriguez

Mj Rodriguez, star of Pose, was named one of The Advocate‘s Women Of The Year.

An article in the Minnesota Post entitled “Transgender rights: There is still no smooth path” tells of some of the problems some transgender people have had getting fair treatment.

Last August, three transgender women were physically removed from a bar, following a fight. The transgender women claim that other patrons, who attacked them verbally, started the altercation. Now, the transgender women are trying to get the bar’s license revoked. NBC Los Angeles has this story.

Trans Maryland announced a new program to fund the cost of a name change for transgender people in that state. The program covers the costs of filing the court petition, posting the required notice, getting a copy of the new birth certificate, getting a new ID, and printing and mailing charges. They helped over 20 people in the first week, according to LGBTQ Nation. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to this story.

Pink News has an article describing agender, with a quote from an agender person.

Meredith Talusan

In a new op-ed piece, Meredith Talusan says that, just as there is no one way to be a woman, there is no one way to be a transgender woman. Her piece appears in The New York Times.

Being Bucky is a new children’s book about a transgender chicken. It was written by a senior at College of the Atlantic, who was interviewed for an article in the student newspaper.

The University of Michigan’s health care system is still taking new patients into its gender care programs, and is continuing to train primary care physicians to prescribe hormones. They talk about the program in their healthblog.

HIV is more common in the transgender community than it is in the general population. A new PrEP injection is found to be even more effective at preventing transmission than the current treatment. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

A new study in the Journal of Adolescent Behavior shows that the number of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals who attempt suicide is quite high indeed. You can read about the study in Pink News.

A new study in JAMA Pediatrics finds that being bullied and suicide are related for LGBTQ youth. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Zaya Wade

Zaya Wade has also been named one of The Advocate‘s Women Of The Year.

A new picture on social media showed Dwayne Wade with bright red hair, in support of his transgender daughter Zaya. Out.com has this story.

Demi Lovato talked about the importance of transgender rights in an interview with Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender fluid artist who is a friend of Demi’s. You can read about it at Pink News.

LGBTQ Nation‘s look at pride events past continues with the time a group of drag queens used the sound of their fans to drown out some protesters who were attempting to defend hate speech.

On the anniversary of the passage of Section 28, a part of British law which forbade the teaching of sex education in an LGBTQ-inclusive way, Pink News looks back at the infamous law and sees parallels to it in the current government’s proposals for reforming the Gender Recognition Act.

Terry Reintke, a Member of the European Parliament from Germany who happens to be a lesbian, said in an interview with Mermaids that she worries about hateful speech crossing national borders. Pink News has this story.

Vietnam has its first transgender father, in the sense that a transgender man gave birth to a child. This story comes from Pink News.

Georgina Beyer

More than a decade on, the world’s first transgender mayor and MP, Georgina Beyer, can add Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit recipient to her extensive list of labels — labels she’s worn with pride. Everything from actress to activist and performer to sex worker, drag queen, wahine, and kidney transplant recipient. Beyer has a very long resume to add this honor to. Get the details from Stuff New Zealand.

Albania’s Order of Psychologists banned the practice of attempting to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Since all therapists have to belong to the organization in order to be certified, this amounts to a ban on conversion therapy. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

As the political conventions in the United States draw nearer to happening, attention is being drawn to party platforms. Jared Kushner wants to replace the Republican Party’s platform with a simple statement of principles which could be fit on a pocket-sized card. The last national platform for the Republican Party was 58 pages long. Among the things he would get rid of are the party’s “culture wars” planks, including its opposition to a ban on conversion therapy. Presumably, this would also include getting rid of specifics that spell out how the party, and the administration, would deal with the rights of transgender people. In this situation, removing things from the party’s platform does not indicate that the party is no longer interested in those things, and does not indicate a change in their planned actions. Axios has this story.

After careful consideration and evaluating guidance from national, state and local authorities, organizers have made the difficult decision to postpone the 2020 Philadelphia Transgender Wellness Conference (PTWC), currently scheduled to occur July 23-25, 2020, until August 19-21, 2021.

A woman asked BuzzFeed‘s advice columnist for some help with this how to tell her conservative family that her boyfriend is beginning a medical transition of genders.

Sultana and her husband Esteban.

Donna Sultana, a trans woman model from Columbia, has gone viral with one of her recent social media photos. She is expecting her first child with her husband, Esteban Landrau. Her partner also happens to be transgender; though Esteban was born female, he now identifies as male. Sultana posted a photo to social media of her kissing Esteban’s baby bump. Learn more about the couple and see the photo on the Baby Gaga website.

A new survey from GLAAD shows that featuring LGBTQ+ people in ads tends to make people more accepting of LGBTQ+ people in their own lives. You can read about this survey in The Advocate.

A mother went on social media to tell the world about the gender reveal party she had for her six-year-old transgender daughter. Out.com calls Zoe Lynn their “Mother of the year”.

TWITs

A father sent J.K. Rowling a picture his nine-year-old drew of the Ickabog, a character from a new children’s book she has written and is promoting. The author reposted the drawing for the world to see, but in describing what she likes about it, she included the phrase, “f** up some TERFs.” That phrase came from an anti TERF individual. Rowling later removed that post and replaced it with one that contained an apology for the previous response. Even so, it is hard to let the incident go without issuing a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story. [Editor Note: TERF is an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.”]

We reported above that the Department of Education sent a letter stating that allowing transgender females to compete in school athletics was a violation of Title IX. The Department of Education went on to threaten to take away funds from any school which allows transgender females to participate in school athletics as girls, apparently even if it is only a policy on paper. For putting their prejudice into action with no basis in science, the U.S. Department of Education gets a TWIT Award. You can read about this in LGBTQ Nation. Thanks to Alyssa Washington for a link to 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.

Tags: featured, news, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News