The Week In Transgenderism 11/5/12

Varla as The Medium.

Varla Jean Merman is playing a straight role in a show in Manhattan. Well, not completely straight. Varla’s male persona is Jeffery T. Roberson and he is playing a female role in a production called The Medium. He’s playing it straight in that he’s just playing his character as a real woman who purports to be a medium and doesn’t unleash any Varla Jeanisms in the audience. Read about the opera in The New York Times.

Varla as Varla.

VP Joe Biden is on your side. Just recently he was heard saying that transgender discrimination is “the civil rights issue of our time.” What makes it so cool is that he’s absolutely right. If we can be discriminated against and made into second class citizens because we don’t fit into our birth gender then it is as important as the civil rights battles of the 1960s and the gay rights battles of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Biden advocates for TG rights but what does the Administration think? Read and analysis at policymic.com.

Much of the printed material on transgender issues during the 20th century was in the nature of underground magazines and newsletters. The vast majority of publications like Transvestia, En Femme, Tapestry, LadyLike and many of transgender support group newsletters fell firmly in the category of ephemera. There are however several GLBT archives that seek to preserve our printed history. Chief among them is the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. Read about it in the Times Colonist.

The East Aurora School District has been in the news for adding protections for transgender students and then, just days later, rescinding the protections. Now, in another flip flop the District has announced they’re forming a committee to study the issues. Get the flip and the flop at LGBTQ Nation.

Laverne Cox

Laverne Cox, who you may recall from her appearance on the reality show I Want To Work For Diddy, stars in Susan Seidleman’s latest film Musical Chairs. The movie is about the life of wheelchair ballroom dancers and Cox plays a beautiful transgender woman who won’t stop living life to the fullest even though she is dependent on her wheelchair. Read about the film in  The San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Brazil, a complicated country where transgendered women are often murdered; where transgendered supermodels are born; now hosts it’s first transgender beauty pageant. The women who enter the contest feel it is useful in bringing greater visibility and acceptance to TGs in that country. The story is in The Huffinton Post along with a slide show.

Miss International Queen

Speaking of pageants, the Miss International Queen contest was held in Pattauya, Thailand on November 2 and the crown was taken by a Filipino lady named Kevin Balot. Ms. Balot beat out 20 other contestants from 15 countries to seize the crown. Ms. Balot isn’t too concerned about her pageant affecting TG visibility. At least not on a macro scale. She is just hoping that now that she has been recognized as the International Queen her father will accept her as a daughter. See the story in the Examiner.

The Federal Government has issued a transgender diversity guide giving general advice to government agencies on what transgender is and how to deal with it in the Federal workplace. The Government is working to ensure that there is not discrimination in Federal workplaces based on all the usual things and gender and sexual orientation. The document is on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s website.

With the election coming up tomorrow this story is very applicable. Clarie Swinford is a TG who was in the early stages of her transition back in 2010. She wanted to vote and was stopped at the polls by an election worker who balked at letting her vote because her gender marker was male and her name was male on her ID. Find out how she and others are managing to cast their vote with the Voter ID laws that have taken effect in many states at The Daily Beast.

On the flip side of the coin, in Knox County, Tennessee there have been no reports of problems during Early Voting for TGs caused by the Voter ID laws. In fact three of the election workers who worked at polling location in The City of Knoxville are transgendered. Get the news in the Examiner.

A transman in Japan is accorded all the rights and recognition of any man by Japanese law. Everything was going fine for one TG man who had a wife and a son, who was concieved with donated sperm, when he ran into a bureaucratic snag. Read about it in The Japan Daily Press.

“One time CD.”

Another Japanese man has written a blog about the 16 things he learned while dressing in drag. He is a 33-year-old who says that he wanted to give dressing as a woman a try just once in his life and he took this past Halloween as the opportunity to investigate the land of femininity. Later in the blog he admits to dressing up before the “just once.” Could this guy be one of us girls? Give his blog a read, look at the pretty pictures and decide. It’s at Rocket News 24.

An opinion writer in the Los Angeles Times poses the question “have social conservatives replaced “homosexual teachers” with “transgendered teachers” as their scare tactic of choice?” Read it in The L.A. Times.

Jackie Green

The English TS who had her surgery at 16 is now 19. She was a finalist in the Miss England contest and now the BBC is running a documentary on her. That means that Jackie Green is back in the news and you can read about her in The Daily Mail.

TWITs

A transgendered student attending Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington was treated properly by the school when they said that it was fine for her to use the women’s locker room since she identified as a female — even though she still retains her male genitalia. We applaud the school but we must award a TWIT to the student who used the sauna in the nude, even though she knew that the local high school swim club and a children’s swimming academy also used that locker room. While she was using the sauna her genitals were seen by a 17-year-old girl and complaints were made. Please, don’t go naked if the plumbing hasn’t been modified. Stories like this just give more ammunition to the right wing people who hate TGs. The college was right for letting her use the women’s facilities but the TG student should have been more discreet. The story is at ABCNews.com.

Our next TWIT Award goes out to the assailants who attacked and beat up crossdressed members of the University of Western Cape in South Africa, and to the school’s security guards who stood by and watched as the assault took place. Read the story in Times Live.

Another TWIT Award must go to the government of Kuwait. You remember that middle eastern country that we went to rescue from an invasion by Saddam Hussien in the early ‘90s? (And there were stories that one of their princes spent the war in Paris wearing glamorus women’s wear.) In 2007 they passed a law their making it a criminal offence to be caught “imitating the opposite sex.” As some may know I produce parties for transgendered people. In Kuwait I could be thrown in jail for a year and fined $3500 for doing that. Read the sad details in Xtra!

Tags: featured, news, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News