The Week In Trans 8/19/19

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Naaz Joshi

Naaz Joshi recently won the Miss World Diversity title again. It is her third win in that competition. She is from India, and has worked her way up from working odd jobs such as washing dishes. She was profiled in The Better India.

On Friday, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the Supreme Court, in the matter of Stephens v. R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Home. The DOJ feels that transgender people are not protected from discrimination in employment under the Civil Rights Act. The Hill has this story. President Trump has also urged the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop protecting employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, so that the administration can present a united front to the Supreme Court, according to LGBTQ Nation.

125 House Democrats sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, urging them to keep in tact the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that protect transgender patients. The members of Congress say, “The proposed rule would dramatically undermine Congressional intent by inviting widespread discrimination.” Democrats in the Senate already sent a similar letter, according to The Hill. Metro Weekly reports that Elizabeth Warren voiced her opposition in a tweet, and that the American Medical Association has also been vocally opposed to the new rule. The AMA called the proposed rule, “the rare occasion in which a federal agency seeks to remove civil rights protections.”

The Trump administration is also moving forward with plans to remove the requirement that contractors working for the federal government not discriminate against LGBTQ employees, according to LGBTQ Nation. The comment period on that will end on September 16.

Layleen Cubilette-Polanco

The family of Layleen Cubilette-Polanco has filed suit against the City of New York. They blame “deliberate indifference” by the city for the death which occurred at Rikers Island. Certain officials were named in the suit. The Advocate has this story.

The state of North Carolina has moved Kanautica Zayre-Brown to a women’s prison, according to WTVD.

Yet another black trans woman has been murdered. The Houston Chronicle identified her as Tracy Single, a.k.a. Tracy Williams. She was stabbed repeatedly. Outsmart tells us that she is the sixteenth transgender person murdered in the U.S. this year, and the third transgender woman murdered in Texas.

A South Carolina man has tuned himself in, to face charges in the murder of Denali Berries Stuckey, a black transgender woman whose body was found on July 20. WSOC-TV has this story.

A transgender woman and former employee of The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is suing the institution for wrongful termination, civil rights discrimination and sex discrimination. While working at HUB she helped set up the standards for treatment of trans patients but when she was a patient at the facility she was not treated under those standards. Find the story in the Pennsylvania Record.

The Internet Movie Database has announced a new policy regarding transgender actors and their dead-names. The site will remove the birth name of a person who requests that it be removed. The new policy follows an outcry against the publication of previous names. You can read about it in Indiewire.

The State of California has approved a new policy which would require school districts to update the name and gender on student records, upon request. The measure applies to those who have already graduated. The Associated Press has this story.

Janet Mock

Janet Mock, writer, producer and author recently sat down for an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

More than 7,250 drivers licenses and ID cards in the U.S. now carry a gender identification of “X”. While some see this as a security concern, others praise it for allowing people to express their true selves. USA Today has this story.

Ryan Tiêu, a transgender person of Vietnamese heritage who lives in the Sacramento area, was profiled in The Sacramento Bee.

Getting a job as a transgender person is not easy, and maintaining it through a gender transition is not always possible, as The Charlotte Observer noted. They also tell us that local Pride had a job fair especially for transgender people, a positive sign.

Dr. Don Haider-Markel, a former Air Force officer who is now the professor and chair of Political Science at the University of Kansas, has been studying the attitude towards gender expressed by people in the military. His research is a topic at Phys.org.

The American Journal of Public Health reports that nearly 200,000 transgender people in the U.S. have been exposed to conversion therapy. They found that more than one-third of those were exposed in the period from 2010 to 2015, shortly after the change in diagnosis from Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria. This indicates that the diagnoses are an ongoing phenomenon, or at least that they were ongoing before states started banning the practice. NBC News has a story, and the full study can be found here.

Carmen Liu

Carmen Liu has announced a new line of underwear for transgender children. She already has a line of underwear for transgender women. Metro Weekly of the U.K. has this story.

Transgender men who become pregnant, especially those over the age of 35, are at increased risk of depression, a condition which is not helped by the fact so many doctors have little to no experience in helping a pregnant man. You can find a link to the study in a story on it at EurekaNet.

22 men gave birth in Australia last year. Pregnant men are not such an unusual phenomenon these days. The Daily Mail has this story.

Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia is closing due to bankruptcy. The hospital’s transgender fellowship training program will be moving to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital next summer. Nurse.org has this announcement.

Maebe A. Girl is a California-based drag queen who performs at night and holds public office during the day. She is the first drag queen to be elected to any government seat in the United States. And even after a night of performing she takes her place at the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council the next day dressed to pass a bill. And, she’s a candidate for U.S. congress. See a video about her on Yahoo News.

Cricket Australia is receiving quite a bit of backlash over its new guidelines that allow transgender women to play on women’s teams, with even the Prime Minister describing it as “mystifying,” as Reuters reports. Meanwhile, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced that they are reviewing their policy regarding transgender women, and they are likely to adopt the same testosterone standard as Cricket Australia, according to The Guardian.

Mj Rodriguez

Mj Rodriguez won Best Actress at the Imagen Awards for her work on Pose. The Imagen Awards are for representation of Latinx people in media. The Advocate notes that she won the award competing in the female category.

This week, Buzzfeed published a piece about two transgender employees who quit working for the British newspaper The Guardian because of transphobia among the top brass at the paper, an attitude which one of the former employees says shows up in their reporting. The next day, their football writer Nicky Bandini came out as transgender, and The Guardian treated the announcement with respect, including her own announcement video in their story. The paper also featured Ken the Hen Gender Ambiguity Chicken on its editorial page.

Fans of David de Alba, The Cuban Legend, will be happy to know that there is one final clip from the video documentary on David. You can view it now on YouTube.

The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health has criticized The Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, for the slant of its editorials on transgender people. Among the complaints are such phrases as, “Sex is not a matter of belief,” “Corrupting kids’ thinking,” and “They’re castrating children.” Of course, gender identity is not about sex, and children do not get gender confirmation surgery, but such facts appear not to be important to The Australian. The complaint can be found on The AusPATH website.

Now that the Board of Supervisors has allocated city funding for the Compton’s Transgender Cultural District, Executive Director Aria Sa’id is ready to get to work. Thanks to Ms. Bob for pointing us to the story in the The Bay Area Reporter.

Elizabeth Coffey-Williams

Morning Edition on NPR did a story about Elizabeth Coffey-Williams, a woman who came out to her family as transgender in the 1960s. Thanks to Jamie Roberts who also pointed us to the story.

A story on a transgender woman who set up a make-up business that specializes in helping transgender women is featured in Pink News.

Vanity Fair has a round-up of transgender representation on television.

Last week, transgender filmmaker Lyle Kash defended the new film Adam at The Advocate, largely on the grounds of artistic freedom. This week at The Advocate, film student Leo Allanach takes the other side, saying that the what the film says about transgender people is dangerous.

A street festival was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, to promote transgender rights. It took place during the Edinburgh Fringe. Pink News had a preview.

Pinkfest Chicago is like a conference, but it’s not a conference — no workshops, no hotel food and no registration fees. It’s more like a vacation adventure with great friends in a vibrant city like no other. It’s set for September 24-29 in the Windy City. For more information visit the Pinkfest website.

Amazon Ashley

Amazon Ashley is a back-up dancer for Miley Cyrus. She is black and transgender. At one performance, a fan threw an entire Super-Big-Gulp-size beverage at her. The Advocate has this story.

Ecuador has seen its eighth transgender person murdered this year. This is sparking concern among the country’s transgender population. Pink News has this story.

The New York Post ran a story correcting the gender of the Ohio shooter’s sibling who was killed by him during the incident. The sibling had been referred to in most reports as a “sister” but he identified as a trans man. 

TWITs

Jay Keck is the parent of a child who claims a transgender identity. In response to this, Mr. Keck joined the Kelsey Coalition, a group which believes that transgender medicine presents health issues and psychological harms. He then wrote an editorial for USA Today, describing how the school district would not abide by his request to address his child by the child’s legal name. (Unsurprisingly, Mr. Keck insists on calling the child his “daughter,” and uses female pronouns, despite the fact that his child identifies as male.) He believes that reinforcing the child’s assigned gender will eventually make it stick, even though the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical organizations disagree. He also seems to expect the school to ignore how the law requires the school to act in this case. For insisting he is more knowledgeable than experts and for requesting that others ignore the law, Jay Keck gets a TWIT Award.

Welch College, a small Baptist college in Tennessee, suspended Yanna Awtrey, who would have been a junior this fall, for having a double mastectomy. It was not the medical procedure per se that was the cause of the suspension, but rather it was the fact that Yanna underwent the procedure because of gender dysphoria. Apparently, they are all right with people having depression and anxiety over their gender, but not with them doing something about that. Of course, they say that transgender people are “unBiblical,” but so is electricity in the walls, yet they use that. For selectively complaining about the behavior of others, in a manner that was condemned in the Sermon on the Mount, Welch College gets a TWIT Award. Newsweek has this story. Jamie Roberts let us know about another report in the story from Inside Higher Ed.

In the Philippines, Gretchen Diez was arrested for using the ladies’ rest room. The cleaning lady detained her until the police came, and took her away in handcuffs. This story comes from The Mirror. This incident allowed various people, such as Senate President Tito Sotto, to speak out on the matter of transgender people in the restrooms, which really means that they accused transgender people of having ulterior motives for using the restroom. He said, “Lesbians cannot stand in a male-only urinals,” which shows a lack of understanding what a transgender person is. For making baseless accusations, Senator Tito Sutto gets a TWIT Award. This story comes from The Philippine Star.

At The Federalist, Lindsay Shepherd asks why transgender people can get away with things that others can’t. What kind of “things?” “Threatening others.” Which should raise the question, “With what do transgender people threaten others?” Apparently, giving someone a chance to apologize before reporting their violation of the rules is considered “threatening.” Ms. Shepherd claims the title of “free-speech advocate,” but she also uses the term “biological sex,” even though biology tells us that sex is more complex than chromosomes, and even there, very few children are DNA tested for chromosomes before being assigned a sex. For arguing from ignorance, Lindsay Shepherd gets a TWIT Award.

We would really like to confine Roy Moore to the dustbin of history, but he keeps coming back. He recently declared transgender people to be “unBiblical,” and used Corporal Maxwell Klinger of M*A*S*H as an example of a transgender person, or at least, as a stand-in for an example. Either he is making a straw-man argument, or else he is extremely confused about the topic. In either case, he gets a TWIT. Salon 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