The Week In Trans 6/24/19

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Bob the Drag Queen and Trixie Mattel for Jet Blue.

Jet Blue just hired Bob the Drag Queen (winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race season eight) and Trixie Mattel (winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3) to show off their newest jet, named “Shantay Blue Stay.” They wear special sequined outfits in the ad, according to LGBTQ Nation.

Claude Cahun, whose photographs explored gender and sexuality in early 20th century France identified as nonbinary at a time when men were men and women were women. Cahun (ca-AH) made ambiguity a theme in a lifelong exploration of gender and sexual identity as a writer and photographer. The New York Times featured Cahun in the effort to show LGBT people who did not get attention during their lives.

On what would have been her twenty-fourth birthday, friends gathered for a memorial service in honor of Zoe Spears. She was shot in Prince George’s County, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.–and only blocks away from where Ashanti Carmon was found dead on March 27. Police are investigating the murders of both transgender women. WTOP-TV has this story.

Wall Street has a reputation for being a boy’s club, or perhaps a rowdy fraternity where women have problems trying to fit into the “work hard, play hard” life of the traders. Recently a new woman appeared at Goldman Sacks. In May Maeve DuVally was introducing herself to fellow employees who had known her as Michael. Read her story in The New York Times.

Kween Kee Kee

Pink News profiles a nine-year-old drag queen named Kween Kee Kee, who performed at the Austin International Drag Festival.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to a massive spending bill which forbids the Pentagon from using any of the money in this bill in order to enact the ban on transgender people in the military. This provision is likely to not be adopted by the Senate, but even if it is, there is little money needed to enact the ban. Roll Call has this story.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sent a decision on Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military back to District Court Judge Marsha Pechman, with an instruction to give more deference to the Department of Defense. The decision also said that the court should not use strict scrutiny, the highest standard for defending a decision, but rather use heightened scrutiny, a lower standard. The defendants asked to use rational basis, the lowest form of scrutiny, but the court held against that. You can read some analysis of this decision in Rewire.

Massachusetts may be the next state to allow transgender people to serve in the National Guard. Governor Charlie Baker says that he has talked with the Attorney General about what can be done on the matter, Mass Live reports.

Christine Hallquist

Last fall, Christine Hallquist ran for governor of Vermont. After losing that race, she has started a new company which is dedicated to fighting climate change by making better batteries. The Advocate caught up to her.

Mastercard announced their True Name card, which will allow transgender and non-binary people to use their preferred names on their credit and debit cards. Newsweek has this story.

The Washington Post has a profile of U.S. Representative Jennifer Wexton, in which they call her the “patron saint of the transgender community.”

This week, the U.S. Senate confirmed Matthew Kacsmaryk to be a U.S. Judge for the Northern District of Texas. Mr. Kacsmaryk has a history of controversial comments, including calling gender identity that does not match physical sex at birth a “mental disorder.” Despite his long and well-documented history of comments, only one Senate Republican (Susan Collins) was willing to vote against him. This story comes from Gay Star News.

In an act that shows what could happen in the U.S. soon, doctors in Pakistan refused to treat two transgender women after they had been shot. Gay Star News reports that many doctors in the Peshawar region refuse to treat transgender patients.

A transgender woman in Chicago says that she was forced to have sex with a police officer, in order to avoid arrest. Think Progress reports that incidents like this happen more often than they are reported.

Aimee Stephens

CNN has a feature on workplace discrimination against LGBT people, and the story they cover first is Aimee Stephens.

Dawn Ennis has a recap of Stonewall and a look at what has happened since then which you can find in The Daily Beast.

Dr. Vin Tangpricha has sent a letter to the government of Japan, asking them to update their policy for changing the legal gender status of a transgender person. Japan does currently require a person to be single, with no children under age 20, and sterilized in order to change gender status. Human Rights Watch has this story.

LGBTI advocates in Thailand have submitted a petition calling for the creation of a panel to administer gender justice. Thailand does not currently recognize transgender people in their chosen gender identity, Gay Star News reports.

Forbes has an article on feedback from the Vatican’s document, “Male And Female He Created Them.” Rev. James Martin tells us that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will come out with another document on the topic soon.

Samantha Allen

This week, the LGBTQ&A podcast on The Advocate talks to Samantha Allen, whose new book is about LGBTQ people who live in conservative states of the U.S.

The documentary film No Box For Me: An Intersex Story got its premiere at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City. You can read about the film on the Human Rights Watch website.

A study reported in Psychology Today shows that 87.5% of people surveyed would not include transgender or non-binary people in their hypothetical dating pool. The possibly good news is that the percentage of respondents who would include transgender or non-binary people in their dating pool appears to be greater than the percentage of transgender or non-binary people in the dating pool. (One response to this poll earned its writer a TWIT.)

The Advocate has a photo feature from Pride in Portland, Oregon.

Refinery 29 has a photo essay of transgender people in the U.S.

Janet Mock

Janet Mock has just signed a deal to create shows for Netflix. Gay Star News reports she calls it the first such deal for a transgender woman of color.

Three cisgender females have filed a lawsuit in federal court, saying that the state of Connecticut’s policy allowing transgender women to compete in women’s high school athletics cost them high finishes in races and might have cost them scholarships. CBS News has this report.

A woman who was denied rental of an apartment anywhere near “people and children” because she is transgender won a $25,000 judgment against the landlord and realty company who discriminated against her. This story appeared in The New York Daily News.

Pose received high ratings in its season premiere, and FX wasted no time in picking up an option for a third season, The Advocate reports.

Hunter Schafer

Hunter Schafer has been a model and trans activist, and now featured in a recurring role on the HBO series Euphoria, where she plays Jules. It is another case of a transgender actor playing a transgender character. Newsweek ran a profile of her.

Quince Martin, a trans man who works as a dog musher and who once appeared on the television show Naked And Afraid, is blazing a trail for transgender people to be outdoors people, according to The Reno Gazette Journal.

A Toronto drag queen named Jade Elektra remade Nat King Cole’s song Unforgettable as Undetectable, and the audience loved it. LGBTQ Nation has the video.

Taylor Swift just performed a surprise set at the Stonewall Inn, LGBTQ Nation reports.

Tarlac State University in the Philippines has reversed its own decision and will allow Ivern Doroteo Archache and three other transgender students to wear dresses to their graduation ceremony. It’s not all good news, however, as they are not allowed to march in the ceremony if they wear dresses. Gay Star News has this story.

Geena Rocero

Geena Rocero is the Playboy Playmate Of The Month for August, the first time a transgender Pacific Islander has been Playmate. Gay Star News has this story.

A transgender escort in Britain talks about her surgery and her post-surgical regimen of dilation in an article for The Mirror. She is quite pleased with the surgery.

There was a data breach at the British charity for transgender children, Mermaids. Private emails were made publicly available, including names of people who contacted the agency and whatever details they may have shared. ZD Net reports on the matter.

In an article for Gay Star News, Dr. Jan Birley asks why the British media seem to be badmouthing Mermaids, and the vital work that they do with transgender children.

A new Gallup poll indicates that 71% of Americans support allowing transgender people to serve openly in the U.S. military. The breakdown shows 43% of Republicans agree with allowing openly transgender people to serve in the military, while 51% disagree; among independents, the split is 78% for and 20% against, while among Democrats, it is 88% yes, and only 11% no. Among military veterans, 56% are in favor of openly transgender people serving, while 43% oppose. You can find the results and some analysis at Gallup’s web site.

A lesbian mother in Brazil is said to have castrated her child, then beheaded the child, because the child came out as transgender. The graphic and horrible story can be found in LGBTQ Nation. (Language warning: the story says that the child “wanted to be a girl.” This is a poor choice of words for describing someone’s gender identity.)

Anna Lytical

A Google engineer is using his drag persona to teach novices how to code on YouTube. As Anna Lytical the engineer teaches the fundamentals of coding for computer engineering. Anna’s goal is to create an inclusive space online for coders to-be, which in turn will make technology more representative of all folks who use it. Learn more from Business Insider.

A 22-year-old man named Ruben Alvarado has been arrested by Dallas Police and charged with the murder of Chynal Lindsay. Ms. Lindsay’s body was discovered on June 1. This is the second time in as many weeks that the Dallas Police made an arrest in a the death of a transgender woman. CBS News has this story.

The Scottish National Parliament has put its plan to revise the Gender Recognition Act on hold. The plan was not particularly clear, and because of that, it got to be more controversial. The BBC says that the ruling Scottish National Party wants to address concerns and raise a greater consensus.

Andrea James

Andrea James reports in Boing Boing that a new data visualization method shows more bias against transgender people in news reports as well as in film and television.

Adian Key is an author and speaker who has worked with school districts on policies for dealing with transgender students. As such, he has seen several transgender students and their families, and he has found that acceptance really does make things much better. He is profiled in The Juneau Empire.

Police records in the Colorado STEM school shooting reveal that Alec McKinney admitted that the motive for the shooting was revenge against those who made fun of him, called him names, and otherwise did not support his gender transition. This story comes from The Hill.

TWITs

Munroe Bergdorf

Last week, we mentioned that Munroe Bergdorf claimed to have an agreement with the charity Childline, then suddenly didn’t have such an agreement. This week, National Review has an opinion piece on why Munroe Bergdorf should not be allowed to work with children. The author has concerns about a transgender “ideologue” working with children, but she has no concerns about working with children herself, despite being an anti-transgender ideologue. (In a piece that ran last week, she says that Desmond Is Amazing needs saving, in large part because she confuses drag with transgender, which in turn she insists is all about sex.) For insisting that young people only be given the right message (perhaps only the far-right message), Madeleine Kearns gets a TWIT Award.

Job Berendsen argues in Mercatornet that the number of transgender people who have anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide are scary, and show that transgender people are all mentally ill, and therefore it is a good idea to make them all cisgender. But, transgender people who have been subject to the sorts of programs that are supposed to make them cisgender end up with greater anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide. Meanwhile, those who are accepted in the gender with which they identify have levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts which are close to those of the general public. From a mental health standpoint, these programs do not improve the conditions of the subjects, nor do they achieve the goal of making the subject cisgender. For advising something which does not work, Job Berendsen gets a TWIT Award.

Paul Bois writes in his blog at The Daily Wire in praise of heterosexual, cisgender people who were willing to tell the poll (cited above from Psychology Today) that they are uninterested in dating transgender or non-binary individuals. Now, the poll did ask respondents what their own sexual orientation was, but it never asked what sexual orientation(s) the respondent would consider dating. Further, the study never asked why someone would include or exclude dating someone in a particular category. (The findings did show that especially few lesbians were open to dating a transgender woman.) For reading information into responses that was not part of the study, Paul Bois gets a TWIT.

The Daily Caller has an article which claims to show that the “most cited study on transgender athletes” is based on bad science. Perhaps, but we can’t tell, because although they take pride in promoting this article, they hide it behind a paywall. You have to pay them in order to see if they (for once) have good science themselves. For hiding their article, but revealing its title, The Daily Caller gets a TWIT. (In case anyone wants to pay them, you can find the article here.)

As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, we are not sure who was and who wasn’t there that night (as Dawn Ennis’ piece cited above points out), but we know that transgender women were there and were fighting against a police department that wanted to arrest them. The New York Police Department has acknowledged that their members overreacted at the time, and they have apologized for it. But, apparently, Diane Gramley, the head of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Family Association, has a different take. She says that the whole thing started when the police tried to rescue a young transgender boy from being sexually abused. The fact that she cites no evidence to support this claim does not seem to bother her in the least. (To be clear, since she feels that gender cannot be changed, it follows the “young transgender boy” would actually be someone assigned male at birth, who identified as female.) She never explains why such an underage person was in the bar, and the fact that she assumes that the patrons of the bar were engaged in sex acts on the premises says quite a bit about her. Also of note is that this story would exonerate police, if it were true. For sheer fabrication, based on no evidence, Diane Gramley gets a TWIT. You can hear the statement on a recent episode of the podcast Stand In The Gap, or read about it in 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