The Week In Trans 9/10/18

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Danica Roem

The Prince William Times and the Gainesville Times polled their readers on various topics. Their choice for Best Local Politician was Delegate Danica Roem. She says that this is the result of lessons that she learned as a reporter for those two newspapers, where she came to know what local issues matter to people. Metro Weekly

Alexandra Chandler lost her primary election in Massachusetts. She was in a ten-way fight for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. This story came from the Washington Blade.

Charleston Police have made an arrest in the assault on a transgender woman and her sister. Despite some missteps from the police (which they will use as learning experiences), they got the information that they needed in order to get an arrest in the case. This story comes from the Charleston Post and Courier.

Shantee Tucker

Shantee Tucker was murdered in Philadelphia this week. The 30-year-old was shot in the head after she argued with a man in an older model pickup truck. Police do not suspect a hate crime and are looking for a truck that was seen in the area at the time. The area is used by sex workers. The Philadelphia Inquirer has this story.

A new law in California will make it easier for transgender people to change their gender. The new law allows people to choose to have their gender listed as “non-binary,” rather than “male” or “female.” The Los Angeles Times has this story.

A bill in California which would have labeled conversion therapy as a “deceptive business practice” has been withdrawn. The author of the bill has been listening to critics who worry that the bill may be too broad and may outlaw some other things that were never meant to be illegal. The author of the bill, Assemblyman Evan Low, has pulled the bill with the hope of making the language more specific. This story comes from Metro Weekly.

The New York Times had a story about the change in civil rights views at the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions. While many of the specific cases are familiar, the collection of cases shows a pattern. The story can be found in the Bend Bulletin.

In a story which should surprise no one, the Washington Blade reports that Bob Woodward’s new book about President Trump makes the claim that the tweets banning transgender people in the military caught everyone in the White House by surprise.

Atalia Israeli-Nevo

A transgender woman from Israel was attempting to travel to Egypt when she was stopped by the Egyptian border guards who denied her entry into the country. The reason they turned Atalia Israeli-Nevo away was her passport said she was male. Upon turning around and going back into Israel the situation deteriorated further when the Israeli authorities refused to refund the transit tax she had paid to cross the border. Get the story from The Times of Israel.

A new policy which came out from the Department of Education this week would make it harder to sue a school for sexual harassment, and would allow for mediation as a method of resolution. As LGBTQ Nation points out, many of those who sue for sexual harassment are transgender students.

The Christian Science Monitor Ran an article about how schools are not ready for transgender students. While the article looks mostly at schools in Britain, they do mention that the problem exists in the U.S. as well.

The garage of a transgender person in Newberry, Florida, was defaced with the phrase, “move or die.” A short item about this appeared in The Ledger.

The Texas Values group had their big meeting this week, and one of their top priorities is a bathroom bill, according to the Austin Statesman.

83 members of the House of Representatives have signed onto a letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs, asking them to incorporate transgender medical care into their health care. The Washington Blade has this story. This comes one day after the Advocate ran a commentary piece in which Charlotte Clymer of the Human Rights Campaign called on the VA to cover transgender care.

Stav Strashko

Stav Strashko has been nominated for an Ophir Award as best actress. The Ophir is given out by the Israel Academy for Film. In the film Flawless, Strashko plays a transgender teen who sells a kidney to get breast enlargement prior to her prom. The Times of Israel covered this story.

In The Advocate, filmmaker Eisha Marjara asks if transgender stories are the most fascinating stories to tell.

The chief rabbi of the U.K., Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, has come out with a foreword to The Wellbeing of LGBT+ Pupils: A Guide for Orthodox Jewish Schools. The rabbi actually recommends that Orthodox Jews welcome LGBT+ people into their synagogues and their schools. You can read more in Pink News.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently retweeted the following blurb to an article: “Teachers are being trained to identify potential transgender children in the classroom and experts say that has contributed to a 200 percent surge in the number of kids wanting to change their gender in the past three years.” The P.M. commented, “We do not need ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids.” All that the teachers would do is to inform the students of available resources. Once the children try to access resources, they meet with counselors who will evaluate them. Anyway, when he came onto a television show called The Project, the P.M. was asked to respond to a comment from 13-year-old transgender student Evie Macdonald, who said, “There are thousands of kids in Australia that are gender diverse. We don’t deserve to be disrespected like that through tweets from our Prime Minister.” This story came to us from Pink News.

After five years of deliberation, the Senate of Chile has finally passed a bill which would allow that country’s citizens to legally change their name and gender without surgery. The bill now goes to the House of Deputies, and if it passes there, it will go to the president. The Washington Blade has this story.

A bill about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression equality has been lingering in the Philippines for some time. As it lingers, various states have taken it upon themselves to pass laws on the subject. There is a roundup of such things in Gay Star News.

Kinley

Colin Mochrie, one of the stars of the TV show Whose Line is it Anyway? has a transgender daughter. Her name is Kinley and she had a birthday recently. To celebrate Mochrie posted a photo of him with his wife and their daughter and captioned it “Happy Birthday to my lovely daughter! 28 years old and everything we’ve ever hoped for in a child.” Online trolls crawled out from under their digital rocks and started attacking Kinley. Mochrie was quick to shut that down. Read the story on the People website.

Salon has an article in which someone named Brian Belovitch claims to have been an Army bride in the 1980s. The article is an excerpt from an autobiography, so you can believe it — or not.

You have most likely heard that Alex Jones gave a demonstration of how to get to a sponsor, using a smart phone which had a transgender porn video in an open tab. According to a technology expert in Pink News, Alex’s excuse is bunk, and besides, there were actually two tabs showing transgender porn videos.

A top aide to Scott Wagner, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, recently sent out a meme which showed a picture of Caitlyn Jenner in the style of a Nike ad, along with the phrase, “Believe in something, even if it means cutting your d*** off.” The meme was sent to four people — one of whom was a reporter. The reporter was asked to “forget about” the email, and told that it should not have been sent to him. The reporter instead wrote about it at Billy Penn.

Here’s something to laugh about. The Augusta Review from Augusta, Georgia, ran an article with the headline, “Judge Upholds Oregon School District’s Policy Allowing Boys to Use Girls’ Bathrooms.” Of course, the policy does not allow cisgender boys to use the girls’ restroom, but does allow transgender girls to use the girls’ restroom. The article claims to have been written on September 7, and says that Judge Marco Hernandez made that ruling on Monday. Two problems: the ruling is over a month old, and Monday of that week was Labor Day.

Rev. Donnie Anderson

The Reverend Donnie Anderson is a Baptist minister in Providence, Rhode Island, who has also been executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. She recently returned from a three-month sabbatical during which she transitioned. She tells the Providence Journal that she has received a positive response from her fellow clergy, including gift certificates from some.

Many drag queens need to have some other source of income in order to make ends meet. Have you ever known one who worked for the U.S. Navy? Meet Joshua Kelley, who plays the character Harpy Daniels. Pink News has a profile.

Here’s a heartwarming story. A transgender woman in Salt Lake City decided to fly a transgender pride flag outside her home. She got a letter from a 15-year-old trans boy who lives nearby, who deeply appreciated the gesture. You can read more at Pink News.

TWITs

The Sunday Times of London recently found that 120 out of 134 complaints of “sexual misconduct” in connection with swimming pools or sports centers took place in “unisex changing rooms,” even though the majority of facilities are gender-specific. It should be pointed out quickly that the vast majority of “sexual misconduct” complaints are voyeurs rather than sexual assaults. Moreover, the complaints do not involve transgender people committing these acts. Even so, MP David Davies used this information as a justification of his opposition to legislation which would make it easier for transgender people to get their genders legally recognized. For very bad logic, and for not listening to people who tell him how wrong he is, David Davies get a TWIT Award. The Times also gets a TWIT for playing up the bad logic and playing down the response from transgender activists.

OneNewsNow reports that the Family Research Council claims that hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery are dangerous. This information comes from Peter Sprigg, a research fellow who has no medical background. Not incidentally, the news story describes HRT as “essentially estrogen for men who want to transition to the opposite sex.” Apparently, they are unaware of FtM transgender people and their use of testosterone. Now, it is true that HRT, like any medical treatment, has the potential for harmful side effects, but the people who should be evaluating this are doctors, not people who work for some think tank (and especially not those who work for a think tank that discourages thought). For attempting to overrule doctors on a matter of medicine, Peter Sprigg gets a TWIT Award.

The Federalist ran an article from Jamie Shupe, whose transgender claim to fame is being the first American citizen to be declared to have gender “X” by a federal court. Jamie declares, “Reading tens of thousands of media articles about ‘all things transgender’ has left me siding with the Brown University study’s conclusions.” Unfortunately, as Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson tells us, science is true whether you believe it or not. The fact is that Dr. Littman’s data gathering methodology is faulty. [Editor’s Note: Read Dr. Dana Bevan’s post which analyses the Littman study.] Bad data can lead to a true conclusion, but it would be like getting the right answer to a math problem by doing the calculation wrong. As for the “lots of other reports” which corroborate Dr. Littman’s findings, those reports tend to be stories of just a few individuals. Jamie also seems to think that hanging around transgender people on social media makes one more likely to identify as transgender. But, this person is hanging around transgender people in social media because he or she suspects that he or she is transgender. The social media are less likely to cause the transgender feelings than to confirm them. A TWIT Award to all involved in disseminating this faulty data.

Sophia Reis, a transgender woman from Nottingham, had her bank account frozen because a customer service person from the bank thought she sounded “like a man” when she called. Although she told the customer service specialist that she was transgender, she had her account frozen anyway. For not listening to the customer, this customer service representative gets a TWIT Award. The Sun had the story.

Amazon has a new series based on the Jack Ryan character created by writer Tom Clancy. In the third episode, there is a gratuitous use of the T-slur, in an alleged joke about transgender people. For using transgender people for a cheap laugh, the Jack Ryan series gets a TWIT. You can read more in the Advocate.

Jim Banks is a Republican Member of Congress from Indiana. He has filed an ethics violation complaint against his opponent, Courtney Tritch, because she held a fundraiser with drag queens — and allowed people to give her “tips” without recording exactly who gave her how much. According to FEC rules, donations under $50 do not have to be documented. Of course, the actual donations were not the emphasis — the emphasis was on the presence of drag queens. For using drag queens as a slur on the campaign trail, Jim Banks gets a TWIT Award. The Advocate 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