The Week In Trans 8/27/18

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Christine Hallquist

Christine Hallquist, the transgender woman who is running for Governor of Vermont, has been receiving death threats. She has felt the need to move some campaign events and to not publicize other events, according to The Washington Post.

To the list of transgender candidates this year, add Brianna Titone. Ms. Titone is running for Colorado’s House of Representatives. Westword has a profile of her.

Politico ran a story about transgender students and their access to a restroom at school. It seems that the Department of Education dismissed five out of six cases, while the one remaining case is receiving little attention from the department. They talked with one student about his case.

Many transgender students have bypassed the Department of Education and taken their cases to courts. Those cases have produced some victories for the rights of transgender students. However, in the case of Drew Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, the school board has filed its intent to appeal the judge’s decision. This story comes from WJXT-TV in Jacksonville.

Maddie, the girl in Oklahoma.

In the case of the student in Oklahoma who received threats that caused the school to close for two days, the family of that transgender student has started a GoFundMe campaign to move out of Oklahoma. The Washington Post had this story. Also in that matter, Frontier Airlines has suspended one of their pilots for his contribution to the comments about the case.

Reuters found that several all-girls schools in the United States have come up against problems posed by transgender students. Different schools have had different approaches to this issue. Reuters also had an article about transgender people’s access to toilets.

Perhaps you are a trans woman who is interested in having surgery to create a neo vagina and are wondering just what the procedure entails. If so you will want to check out a video from the European Society of Urology that shows the process in detail. You can view the video on the MamaMia website.

Josie Totah

J.J. Totah, who co-starred with Mindy Kaling on the television series Champions, has come out as transgender. She wrote about it in an essay for Time Magazine. The Hollywood Reporter tells us of a very nice Twitter comment from Mindy Kaling to Josie.

On Friday, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled against both sides in one of the cases against the ban on transgender people in the military. Both sides had asked her to summarily dismiss the suit and declare their side the winner. The judge refused to give either side a summary judgment. She said that the government “withheld information concerning the deliberation, study, and review” of the plan, and that doing so caused “genuine disputes of material fact.” She said that those disputes must be resolved before a decision is reached. Courthouse News has this story.

The Supreme Court is allowing the R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Home of Michigan to have more time to put together their appeal of a Circuit Court decision that their dismissal of a transgender employee was sex discrimination under Title VII. The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether they will take up that case; the extra time is for filing of a request to take up the case. This story comes from Metro Weekly

Two states have taken action to help transgender people. The Wisconsin Group Insurance Board has decided that state employees will have transgender health care coverage once more. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission will allow transgender people to bring complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Despite the many setbacks for transgender people by the Donald Trump administration, Stars and Stripes reports that the Veterans Administration is considering covering gender reassignment surgery and other transgender health care for disabled military veterans.

Marissa Rodway-Norman

Barrie Today profiled Dr. Marissa Rodway-Norman, a psychiatrist at a Veterans’ hospital in Orillia who transitioned three years ago.

Following the recent story of a transgender woman being outed at the airport in Calgary, Canada’s Minister of Transportation has contacted WestJet about the incident. The minister wants to make sure that this sort of thing does not happen again. The Toronto Star gives us this story.

In response to the longstanding complaint that transgender patients in Wales have to go to London to see a doctor, the Health Secretary has announced that there will be a Welsh Gender Team as soon as October, with a specialist GP as soon as next month. This story comes from the BBC.

If you are an LGBT student and you’re thinking of studying abroad you need to do your research and be careful. It’s not entirely safe to be “out” in the USA but in some other countries if definitely not at all good to be out of the closet. Get some tip on studying abroad from NPR. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for the story tip.

A bill to allow transgender people to change legal gender without surgery has been introduced in the legislature of the U.S. territory of Guam. KUAM-TV has this story.

Writer Corey Rae.

We throughly detest the tendency web bloggers have to use the word “hack” in their headlines. A hack is an attack against a computer’s security, not a makeup tip, or style statement. But, even though the word “hack” is used in the title we have to share Corey Rae’s “8 Key Style Hacks for Transgender Women in Hot Weather.” Perhaps the “hacks”” will help you survive the rest of the summer in comfort and beauty.

Montreal held its Pride Parade last week. In keeping with their policy of allowing an especially marginalized group to lead the parade, transgender women were allowed to march in front. The Montreal Gazette reports that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched as an ally, and later said of transgender people, it’s time to move beyond “tolerance” of transgender people. “We need to talk about acceptance; we need to talk about openness; we need to talk about friendship; we need to talk about love — not just tolerance.” As if to prove his point, on the other side of Canada, the Vancouver Dyke March saw anti-transgender hate talk. The Georgia Straight reports on the efforts of organizers to overcome the anti-transgender faction.

Reiyn Keohane

A federal judge ordered Florida Department of Corrections officials to provide hormones therapy to a trans woman prisoner. In his decision the judge accused the officials of ignorance and bigotry. He also ordered them to allow inmate Reiyn Keohane to wear bras and panties and have access to women’s grooming items. For more on the story visit the law.com website.

A transgender woman was attacked in Charleston, South Carolina, and is in the hospital as a result of the attack. WCIV-TV covered this story.

The Salt Lake Tribune tells the story of a Morman bishop who has withdrawn his endorsement of a student at Brigham Young University because that student is transgender and has scheduled a double mastectomy.

Because transgender health care can be expensive, many transgender people turn to GoFundMe and other crowdsourcing venues to raise money. Too many such campaigns fail to reach their goals, according to KCUR

TWITs

Researcher Lisa Littman of Brown University published a report in Plos One about Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. The report treats Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria as a real thing. She got her data by talking to parents, ignoring the fact that many of these parents may have either missed the early signs of gender dysphoria or may have been the targets of deception by children who assumed that the parents would not deal well with gender dysphoria in their child. The researcher seems not to be too aware of how gender dysphoria is diagnosed, and is asking parents to make the evaluations that should be made by a professional. As for the journal Plos One, their masthead includes the slogan, “Accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed science.” The best way to speed things up is to care less about accuracy. Both researcher Lisa Littman and Plos One share a TWIT Award. Medical Xpress has an uncritical review of the study.

The Daily Mail has been notorious for its articles opposing the “transgender movement.” This week, they had three more. One headline says, “Two-thirds of youngsters wanting a sex change were diagnosed with serious mental health problems before asking to transition, study shows.” The study is the one by Dr. Lisa Littman which appeared in Plos One. Mind you, she was looking at Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, with no interest in the more traditional type of gender dysphoria. Another article has the headline, “Teenagers who question their biological gender often have friends who have become transgender, scientists find.” Again, this comes from that same study by Dr. Littman. Columnist Sarah Vine asked, “Why do the rights of one transgender pupil trump the rest of the school’s students?” For rampant transphobia, the Daily Mail gets yet another TWIT.

In Montana, Rodney Garcia is running for the state legislature against a transgender woman, Amelia Marquez. Mr. Garcia keeps deadnaming Ms. Marquez, and said that he did so out of “respect and courtesy.” Apparently, he does not reflect the law, since a judge of Montana said that “from this day forward” she is known as Amelia Marquez. His attempt to deflect from his own campaign contribution scandal by attempting to shame a transgender candidate earns Rodney Garcia a TWIT Award. This story was covered by Samantha Allen of The Daily Beast.

The Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, Scott Wagner, decided to address the idea of transgender restroom use during a town hall recently and garners a TWIT Award. He first described a “bathroom bill” as a “tricky issue.” While he said that he would not sign or promote a “bathroom bill,” he added “It’s real simple: If you’re born with male plumbing, you use the men’s room. If you’re born with female plumbing, use the ladies’ room. Period.” Gay Star News has this story.

Alex Jones is the right wing fringe wing nut who produces video segments on his Info Wars website, and until recently when he was banned, on Facebook and Instagram. When he’s not railing about “crisis actors” and pedophile rings that run the government he’s often attacking transgender people who are fighting for their rights. A recent article accuses Jones of allegedly downloading trans porn to his phone. The way the writer explains it it seems getting the evidence was a little complicated but if it’s true that Jones enjoys porn videos featuring trans people while he rails against giving trans people their rights then he’s getting a very big TWIT Award. You can read the article and decide if they’ve got the goods on him or not at The Hill Reporter website.

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