The Week In Trans 8/13/18

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Violet Vixen

The latest preteen drag queen to make the news is Violet Vixen. She is 11-years-old, lives in the U.K., and is a big fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Violet’s inspiration was Drag Race star Violet Chachki. Violet Vixen’s mother says that at school Violet’s alter ego Leo was teased and picked on for his attraction to drag but the more they picked on him the more he wanted to dress up. Read more on The Sun website.

President Trump’s attempt to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military received another setback this week. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected a motion by the Department of Justice to dismiss the suit against the ban on the grounds that the suit opposed the initial version of the ban, which has been replaced with the Implementation Plan submitted by Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her decision that the Implementation Plan merely supplies details for how to achieve the goal of the ban, while the suit opposes that goal. The Hill has this story.

Earlier this summer, Judge Joseph Kirby of the Warren County Common Pleas Court in Ohio denied a name-change request for a teenage trans man on the grounds that it was too soon. In his decision, the judge wrote, “In essence, the court isn’t saying ‘no’ to the name change. The court is simply saying, ‘not yet.’ Age. Develop. Mature.” The family which received that decision has made a decision of its own. It is suing for violation of their federal civil rights, and is being joined by two other families of transgender teens who are about to go before Judge Kirby for name changes. This story appeared in the Dayton Daily News.

As we reported, judges in three cases have decided that transgender students have a right to use the restroom of their gender identity at school. Art Leonard has analysis from the point-of-view of a law professor. Two of those cases involved cisgender students suing on a claim that their privacy was violated. In a similar case, the plaintiffs withdrew their suit, citing similar cases not going their way and an agreement from the school to improve privacy.

Miz Cracker

Being a RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni does not protect you from people with criminal intent. Miz Cracker is touring Ireland and she and a friend were mugged before her show in Dublin. Apparently they weren’t hurt and tweeted that they needed lots of “snacks and love” to fully recover. Get the story from The Daily Edge website. And be careful out there.

We live in a time when baking a cake for a gay wedding is seen as “promoting a gay life style.” Now we’ve heard of a chicken shop in New York City that thinks selling trans people chicken nuggets is wrong. Several trans people tried to order food at Texas Chicken and Burgers in Harlem and were told they couldn’t be served. One of them was Laverne Cox’s makeup artist. Moments latter a cis white man ordered the same thing and got it. Learn more about the biased chicken shop from Pink News.

The housing of transgender prisoners has become an issue. 67 members of the U.S. Congress signed onto a letter asking the Bureau of Prisons to revise its policy for housing transgender prisoners. The Bureau of Prisons policy places transgender prisoners according to sex assigned at birth “except in rare cases,” at the urging of the Department of Justice, following a suit by four Evangelical women prisoners. The members of Congress are concerned about keeping transgender prisoners safe from rape and sexual assault. The New York Daily News carried this story.

From Australia, there is the story of a transgender prisoner who lost the will to live after she was raped in prison. At least, that’s what her mother tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Evening Echo has news that a transgender woman died in a prison in Ireland. The cause of her death has not yet been determined.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 14 transgender women who had come from Central America to seek asylum in the United States. These were among a group of twenty transgender women whose relase the A.C.L.U. had been pursuing. The Washington Blade has this story.

Jessie Sumler

Police have made an arrest in the murder of one transgender woman from Jacksonville, Florida. The murders of three other transgender women in that area this year remain unsolved, as First Coast News reports.

In Australia, Evie Amati was found guilty of attempted murder charges. She had attacked people with an axe while at a convenience store. Her barrister claimed she had mental illness, and that her HRT medication along with cannabis, amphetamines, and alcohol contributed to her mental health problems. The jury felt that she was able to distinguish right from wrong. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation had this story.

U.S. Representative Kathleen Rice has introduced legislation which calls on the T.S.A. to improve how it deals with transgender passengers. The Screening With Dignity Act calls for training of all officers on how to screen transgender passengers, and it calls on the TSA to improve their technology. The bill also recommends that transgender rights advocacy groups be consulted where possible. This bill was covered by the Washington Blade.

Problems with air travel are not limited to the United States. The CBC reports on Lenore Herrem, whose transgender status was revealed by a loud gate agent at an airport in Calgary.

The Williams Institute has estimated that 78,000 transgender citizens could be prevented from voting if the U.S. strictly adheres to voter I.D. laws.

Photo ID is now necessary to be an Uber driver. When people apply to be drivers the company takes a scan of their drivers license photo. Periodically for security purposes drivers are required to pull over and take a selfie which is uploaded and must match the original photo on file. Transgender drivers are having problems because those in transition can change greatly. Get more on the story from CNBC.

Darcy Daniel. How could this lovely lady scare anyone?

A man in Canada was denied a rental property because the landlord didn’t like the fact that he was a drag queen. Before he lost the rental Darcy Daniel, who had moved back to the city of Kamloops, British Columbia to be near his family, was verbally assaulted on the street. The incident was videoed and uploaded and only a week later the prospective landlord, who seemed initially willing to rent to Daniel turned him away because of the “drag queen thing.” Get the full story from InfoNews.ca.

In health news, a new study found that transgender veterans in the U.S. are as healthy as their cisgender counterparts. This study, which used statistics that are publicly available, appeared in Health Affairs. The Washington Blade had an article about it. But another study suggests transgender women who take estrogen are at an increased risk of cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots. Pink News reported on this study. Also, Think Progress wrote about transgender health clinics within Planned Parenthood, and Dr. Kathy Rumer wrote for US News And World Report about the importance of training and accreditation for surgeons offering their services to transgender patients.

In Britain, transgender activists have criticized the National Health Service for not offering to freeze sperm or eggs from transgender patients. The NHS replied that it is up to the Clinical Commissioning Groups to write the regulations for what services they cover. The BBC reported on this difference of opinion.

Kerala became the second state in India to create a fund to pay for gender reassignment surgery for residents of the state. This story comes from the News International of Pakistan.

The mother of a transgender man has donated her own uterus in an effort to help another transgender woman to have a child. It is a touching gesture, but the medical technology does not seem to allow it. The Deccan Chronicle has this story.

The Brighton Pride parade was held last weekend. It is the largest Pride festival in the U.K. This year, it was led by “L With The T,” a lesbian group which has taken issue with “Get The L Out,” the group who led the Pride parade in London. This story comes from Pink News.

Five years after Crossfit told a transgender athlete that contestants may compete only in the sex assigned at birth, management of the event announced this week that they will allow transgender athletes to compete in the gender with which they identify beginning next year. Outsports has this story.

Christine Hallquist

Two transgender politicians received news profiles this week. Christine Hallquist is running for Governor of Vermont. Alexandra Chandler is running for U.S. Congress from a district in Massachusetts.

In the U.K., Ann Sinnot resigned from the Cambridge City Council and quit the Labour Party because of her feelings about allowing transgender women into the ladies’ room. There will be an election on September 13 to fill her seat on the City Council, and the candidate for the Liberal Democrats is Sarah Brown, a transgender woman and activist, who was on the City Council previously. Pink News has this report.

The World Meeting of Families will take place later this month in Dublin, Ireland. Pope Francis is scheduled to attend. One of the lectures will be by Father James Martin, whose talk is entitled, “Showing Welcome and Respect in our Parishes for LGBT People and their Families.” This lecture will take place before the Pope arrives, but the lecture was requested by the Vatican, according to this story in Pink News.

Variety has two transgender stories in its August issue. One is a roundtable interview with transgender actors Laverne Cox, Chaz Bono, Alexandra Billings, Brian Michael, Jen Richards, and Trace Lysette. Separately, they have an interview with Caitlyn Jenner. The magazine also published an open letter in which GLAAD, Outfest, and the Screen Actors Guild urged Hollywood to do a better job of telling transgender stories.

Caitlyn Jenner

Caitlyn Jenner also became the subject of a viral Instagram post this week. In the Variety interview, she revealed that she would like to play a villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, describing the character she wants to play as,”the baddest-ass lady you’ve ever seen in your life.” The Instagram account “pubity” ran the quote along with the comment, “I mean, she is an X-Man.” This led to quite a few nasty comments from the expected sorts of people. Pink News ran this story.

Pink News also has the story of Living Smile Vidya, an actress from India who is known as “Smiley.” She left India, and asked for asylum in Switzerland. The Swiss government turned down her request for asylum saying that India is a safe country for transgender people. (In reality, it varies from region to region.)

TWITs

Some people have put stickers at various places in London that say, “Women don’t have penises.” Among the places to receive the stickers were the offices of the transgender political group Stonewall, the offices of the Guardian and the Observer, and on an advertisement for the National Portrait Gallery. For wanton vandalism, the anonymous people behind this campaign get a TWIT Award. Pink News has this story.

Charlie Butts of OneNewsNow wrote a criticism of a Spanish study which said that there might be a genetic component to the cause of being transgender. His expert is Dr. Michelle Cretella, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, an anti-transgender group which pretends to represent pediatricians. The study in question claims only to be a preliminary study, and it admits that a larger study is needed. Dr. Cretella also claims that adult activity can change the anatomy of the brain, but does not point to any study which shows this. For misunderstanding the science behind this while claiming that others misunderstand the science, Dr. Cretella gets a TWIT.

You may have heard that right wing unhinged ranter Alex Jones has been banned from Facebook but you may be surprised at the rant that got him kicked off the site. He called for drag queens to be burned alive. While many queens are hot none of them deserve to be set on fire. We give Alex Jones a TWIT Award and hope that he goes away completely. Read about it in Pink News.

Maureen Mullarkey wrote in The Federalist of her visit to a lecture that attempted to teach people not to be afraid of transgender people, that they are quite human. But the author had made her mind up, and no matter what evidence was presented, she refused to believe it, instead finding comfort in the same prejudices she had entered with. Indeed, she begins with the quote, “If you judge people, then you have no time to love them,” which she says was projected on the screen as she entered the auditorium. She counters it with this: “The slogan implied that only heartless faultfinders would be skeptical of transgender dogma.” Referring to the presentation as “transgender dogma” shows that she entered with prejudice, and left with the same prejudice. She gets a TWIT Award.

TWIT is assembled by Cecilia Barzyk with additional content and editing by Angela Gardner.
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Category: Transgender Community News