The Week In Trans 8/12/19

Links in TWIT will open in this window. To return to this page use the Back button on your browser. If the link opens in a new tab, close the tab to return to this page.

Roem

Danica Roem who became the first ever out transgender state legislator, when she was elected to represent the 13th District in the Virginia House of Delegates has begun her campaign to be re-elected this Nov. 5 and she is facing another anti-LGBTQ Republican who, The Daily Beast reveals, is being supported by anti-LGBTQ organizations and their members.

Leaked emails seem to show that the Department of Education is rushing to investigate a complaint filed on behalf of three cisgender girls to stop trans girl student athletes from competing. The complaint was made by the hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. This unsurprising story appears in LGBTQ Nation.

Think Progress has a piece on HUD’s new regulation regarding transgender people. Since one in three transgender people say that they have dealt with homelessness at some point, this regulation will have a dreadful effect on the community.

A new study in Transgender Health found that young transgender women of color reach certain milestones at a younger age than white transgender women. These milestones include the first expression of their gender identity, the first consensual sexual experience, and the start of hormone use. You can read a press release about the study here.

Endocrinology Advisor talks about when to measure transgender patients for changes in Bone Mineral Density, which tests to use, and what the results should be.

WCBE public radio did a segment on the results of the study by Natasha Quadlin of The Ohio State University, which found that many people perceive transgender people in the gender assigned at birth, unless they pass well.

A video story by BBC News looks at three transgender teenagers and the varying ways in which their GPs have treated them.

As we come to the end of the public comment period prior to implementation of the new guideline which would allow healthcare professionals to refuse to treat a transgender person, Vice has collected some of the public comments which show problems with the system.

Alexis Atauri

Ms. Bob Davis let us know about the drag performers in San Francisco who are organizing to get a minimum pay scale from the clubs they perform in. It’s not like the girls are asking for a lot. In June San Francisco-based drag queen Alexis Atauri posted a petition to the website www.coworker.org calling on the region’s bars, clubs, and other employers of drag entertainment to pay performers “at least” $40 per show with a maximum of two numbers. Check out the story in The Bay Area Reporter.

Pebbles LaDime Doe was found murdered in a car in Allendale County, South Carolina. She is the fourteenth black transgender woman to be murdered in the United States since January 1, and the second black transgender woman found dead in the state of South Carolina in less than a month. Denali Berries Stuckey was found dead on July 20. WJBF-TV has this story.

Marquis “Kiki” Fantroy, the thirteenth transgender woman to be murdered this year, was remembered at a vigil in Miami-Dade, according to WPLG-TV. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reports that the police do not think that this was a hate crime, and WPLG reports that police have arrested a suspect in the case. Breaking News: Police have the suspect in custody. That story is on Local 10 News.

A report by Splinter tells us that the first victim of the mass shooter in Dayton, Ohio, was the transgender sibling of the shooter, who went by the name of Jordan Cofer. It is not known if the deceased had come out as transgender to his brother, and it is thought that the victim’s gender identity was not a reason for the shooting.

Alicia Wood

A transgender woman named Alicia Wood was attacked and beaten by seven men at a gas station in Washington, D.C. Witnesses say that the attendant did not phone police or otherwise help the woman being attacked. Police have the station’s security video, but have not made any arrests. The good news is that the victim survived to give an interview to WUSA-TV.

In light of Mario Lopez’s comments about transgender people, Bravo had some comments from former Real Housewives of New York City cast member Cindy Barstop, who is the mother of a transgender child, and comments from a therapist.

The Society of Women Engineers has made it clear that they will accept transgender women as members.

Last week a federal judge in Virginia ruled that a school board’s transgender bathroom ban discriminated against a former student, Gavin Grimm, the latest in a string of decisions nationwide that favor transgender students who faced similar policies. Get the details on the ruling from Associated Press.

A report published in Pediatrics, found that one young transgender woman was able to produce viable sperm after a few months of discontinuing her puberty-halting medication, whereas a different patient on hormone therapy could not produce sperm during the time she could psychologically tolerate being off her medication. Learn more from News Wise.

Officials for the Tournament of Roses say that they are open to having a transgender woman in the parade’s court, and that they have been open to the idea, although there has never been a transgender woman in the court. This led The Pasadena Star-News to wonder what the odds are that next year’s court will feature a transgender woman.

Cricket Australia has created guidelines which will allow transgender people to play the sport in the gender with which they identify. The guidelines do specify a testosterone level for playing at the highest level of women’s cricket, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Valentina Sampaio

Valentina Sampaio was selected as the first openly transgender woman to model for Victoria’s Secret. The New York Times spends much of its article talking about what this means for the company, while Women’s Wear Daily talks more about the model herself. The hiring comes at the same time as the announcement that Ed Razek, who last year said that a transgender model would be unable to create the fantasy the brand wanted to sell, is retiring.

LGBTQ Nation has a list of ten classic books by and about transgender people, which it recommends for cisgender people wishing to learn more.

While President Trump and his administration keep trying to defend their ban on transgender people in the military, the Israeli Defense Force is making moves to more fully incorporate transgender people in their army. Ynetnews has this story.

When Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski used the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to speak out against a “rainbow plague” of tolerance, Robert Biedron, a gay politician, responded, “We already had such people, politicians who used similar words and that led to huge slaughters, genocide. This is an incitement to crime, to hatred.” Many others have responded with their own messages of tolerance. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

A postoperative transgender man and a postoperative transgender woman were married in what is described as the first “rainbow wedding” in the state of West Bengal, India. The Guardian has this story.

Quartz India bemoans the lack of substantive debate on a bill about transgender rights in India, and says that this was all a political show for the west.

Geena Rocero

Trans model Geena Rocero made her debut in Playboy’s August 2019 issue. She talks about that and what goes into making bikinis out of natural materials like fruit and leaves in an interview in Us magazine.

CNN has a photo story about transgender people in Singapore, a place with a rigid adherence to law.

Jamie Roberts let us know about students and recent graduates of Baylor University, one of the country’s most prominent Baptist colleges, who want the National Collegiate Athletic Association to examine the institution’s treatment of gay, transgender and queer students who say they have long faced discrimination on campus and in university policies. The story is in Inside Higher Ed.

Miriam Rivera, the world’s first transgender reality television star, died Feb. 5 in Mexico under mysterious circumstances. She was 38. Though Rivera died several months ago, the news only emerged Friday. Get more details from Variety.

A video has been produced that tells the stories of trans women who came north from their Central American countries to seek asylum in the U.S. Since 2018 over 180 women were held in the Cibola County Correctional Center’s “transgender pod” — the only known ICE-run detention facility for transgender-identifying women. You can view the video on The Atlantic website. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for letting us know about the story.

Sarah McBride

NY Coming Out Trans, an international transgender conference will take place in New York City from October 30-November 3, 2019 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Keynote speakers thus far include trans woman Sarah McBride, national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, and Dr. Jamison Green, a trans man activist who led FTM International from 1991-1999.

Amanda Kerri writes about the predictable similarity of arguments against using the pronouns with which a person identifies. Her column appears in The Advocate.

Kerry McDowell was ten years old when her father transitioned genders. Today, at age 19, she told The BBC that her dad is her role model.

A study by Meredith Worthen, a professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma, found that LGBT, pansexual, and asexual people are more liberal than the general public, and that within that group, transgender people are more conservative than the rest. That is easily misunderstood; it simply means that the others within the LGBT, pansexual, and asexual group, people with other identities are even more liberal than are transgender people. Also, it asks about the participant’s view on certain specific issues, but not on some other issues; it is very possible that the transgender people are less conservative on issues that were not taken into account in this study. People who identify themselves as “non-binary” rather than as “transgender” were found to be even more liberal than the LGB, pansexual, and asexual group. This study certainly needs some follow-up. You can read about it on Metro Weekly or find the study here.

TWITs

Ohio state Representative Candice Keller, in a Facebook post that she has since deleted, wrote, “After every mass shooting, the liberals start the blame game. Why not place the blame where it belongs? The breakdown of the traditional American family (thank you, transgender, homosexual marriage, and drage [sic] queen advocates); fatherlessness. . .the ignoring of violent video games.” At the time she wrote that, we did not know that one of the victims was transgender. For blaming others with no proof of a connection, Candice Keller gets a TWIT Award. You can read about it at CNN. Keller was slammed for her comment by country music star Kacey Musgraves. You can read what she said about her in The Daily Beast.

A study came out which seems to show that transgender female athletes retain the advantages of testosterone after starting HRT. Now, there are lots of problems with this, starting with the fact that there are different HRT regimens. The folks at The Federalist complain their opponents are “anti-science” for not jumping on this study as definitive, when in fact, other studies have disagreed with this one. For cherry-picking that which agrees with what they already believed they knew, The Federalist gets a TWIT Award.

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