The Week In Transgenderism 1/21/13

Cross gender performer

The art of female impersonation is on the rise in China. We have mentioned a few times the crossdressing groups that have sprung up and give performances all around that country. Those performers are all modern dressed hotties. Now we have just learned of the increase in popularity of cross-gender performers, Fanchuan, who specialize in impersonating classic Chinese women. One of them, Li Yugang, sings in his own voice and becomes a delicate and graceful woman onstage. Read about Li and some others in the People’s Daily Online.

If you live in Oregon we’ve got good news. Insurance companies in that state are no longer able to say your gender dysphoria is a “pre-existing condition” that they can use to deny your health insurance coverage. Get the good news at thinkprogress.org.

Calvo

Speaking of Oregon, the second transgendered woman to be elected to the Democratic National Committee is from that state. Her name is Laura Calvo an she’s a former sheriff’s deputy who was forced into early retirement when her department learned of her transgender status. Since then she has transitioned, become an activist and now will be going to work for the Democratic Party. Read all about it in The Oregonian.

Stop motion gender change.

An Australian TG has made her gender transition into art, of a sort, by documenting every stage of it in timelapse videos on YouTube. Check out the videos using the links on The Huffington Post.

Are you transgendered and live in New York state? Would you like to be a part of the movement for civil rights and social equality for TGs? If so this is your lucky day. A new group has formed to work toward that very goal in the Empire State. Transgender Advocates of the Capital Region. Soon you could be walking the halls of the New York Legislature as a volunteer lobbyist. Get the story at timesunion.com.

Krolikowski

A transgendered teacher at St. Francis Prep school in Queens, New York worked there for 32 years and was a pillar of the school. Until he (he prefers to continue the use of male pronouns) was forced by his feminized presentation to come out to his principal as transgendered. Then he was told he was “worse than gay” and fired. Now Mark Krolikowski has filed suit. He has the support of his former students. Get the story in The New York Post and Business Insider. (TWIT Award recommendation to the Post for the use of “tranny” in the name of the photo file.)

Oh sure, blame the drag queen. President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has gotten oppostion from Republicans because of his stance on Israel. He’s also getting flack from some Democrats because back i 1998 he called a our Ambassador to Luxembourg “openly, aggressively gay.” What made Hagel say that about the ambassador? He saw video of the ambassador delighting in a “performance” by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Read about it in The Mail Online.

Ruffles on your fella?

Fashion designers are at it again. Ever few years some designer puts out a collection of menswear that features traditionally feminine outfits. In the past they’ve tried to get men to wear long skirts or coulouttes. This time it’s minidresses skorts with ruffled hems. It’s the London Men’s Fashion Week and they’re showing designs for the Fall Winter 2013- 2014 season. The ruffled mini thing is off the shoulder. I don’t see anyone wanting to wear that in fall and winter weather. Other designs in the collections make the models look like Ming the Merciless or a Mexican wrestler. Is it a male fashion apocalypse? Check out the photos in Yahoo.

The SyFy channel has a show called Lost Girl. (Does anyone watch SyFy since they canceled Stargate SG-1?) Recently a character on an episode of the show, the warden of a supernatural jail for women run by Amazons, was found to be a shapeshifter who took on the form of a female to rape and impregnate the prisoners. “She” was attacked by the guards after they learn her true nature (whatever that is for a shapeshifter) and some fans of the show saw it as violence toward TGs. The producers say it ain’t so. Read about the controversy at zap2it.com.

In Sweden you have not been allowed to persue gender reassignment unless you were sterile. The law was put in place in the 1970s and has been on the books all that time. Till last week when a court decision threw out the law. Now you don’t have to undergo forced sterilization to get your gender changed. But, we must ask, is changing your gender pretty much certain to leave you sterile? Read the story in Time’s Newsfeed.

Some cow in Britain, who calls herself a commentator, wrote an op-ed slamming TGs for the British paper The Observer. To call it inflammatory is not doing it justice. Apparently Julie Bruchill, the writer, is already considered controversial but if the cracks she made about transgendered people are an example of the kind of screed she normally writes we’re not sure why she ever gets published. Read some of what she said (the original piece has been taken off the Web) in The Huffington Post.

In the early 1980s a young marine finished boot camp in San Diego, went out the gate and disappeared. While the marine was AWOL he became a she and moved across the country to her home state of Maine. After 30 years the Marine Corp caught up with her and she was arrested for the decades old disertion. Find out why she deserted and why she didn’t cover her trail better in the Sun Journal.

Wenzel

The latest beauty pageant contestant to have been born male entered the Miss USA contest last Saturday in Pasadena. Kylan Arianna Wenzel dreamed of competing in the pageant since she was 11 but being a boy made that seem impossible. Six months ago she had her reassignment surgery earlier than she had planned so she would be able to compete. Contestants must be between 18 and 27 and Wenzel is 26. Read her story in the Pasadena Sun.

Some time ago Barbara Walters did an interview with a young TG girl named Jazz who was 7-years-old at that time. This past week she revisited the girl who is now a tween and arriving at those years when girls start getting interested in boys and start thinking about dating. Find out how it’s going for the tween TG at ABC News.

If you want a country that’s pretty macho and resistant to GLBT influences then look to Israel. But things may be changing. As evidence we offer the marrage of Chen Arizona, a transgendered salon owner, to her unidentified husband. The wedding was a media circus but they kept hubby’s face blurred as he “prefers discretion.” Read about the happy couple’s nuptials at gaystarnews.com.

A report on Being Transgender in America that was featured on Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show last April has been nominated for a Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media award. The show featured TG celebs Kate Bornstein and Mara Keisling. Read about the nomination and see a clip from the report at MSNBC.com.

Star of Burning Wig

Are you ready for drag queen animation? A female impersonator who happens to also be a comedy writer and animator has created an animated series about just how crazy — crazy funny and just plain crazy — it can get back stage at a drag show. follow the adventures of Veronica Vinyl and Roxy Mountains as they claw their way to the top and on each other. It’s called Burning Wig. Read about it and get the link to the series online at Digital Journal.

TWITs

We reported a few months ago that the off-duty police officer who fired his gun five times into a car full of transgender people was found guilty of assault with intent to kill while armed. The TWIT Award goes to the court that just sentenced him to five years in prison plus 30 days for soliciting a prostitute, then suspended the sentence to time served and three years of supervised probation. But the story is murky and there are enough TWITs involved that we can easily pass our TWIT Awards to one and all. The story is in The Washington Examiner.

A drag queen named Deandre met a young man online and represented herself as a gg woman. She added a lot of other embellishments to her story including a retired NFL player father, a job at a radio station and connections to the music industry. We award Deandre the major TWIT Award in this story but we have one for her stupid mark who fell for the whole thing hook line and sinker. And a minor TWIT Award to the website tat takes a bit of glee at the success of the queen’s scam. Get all the details at projectqatlanta.com.

Our final giant TWIT Awards of the week go to Bill O’Reilly and his partner in crime Megyn Kelly. On last Friday’s The O’Reilly Factor O’Reilly and Kelly trash talked famed Massachussets prisoner Michelle Kosilek. To be fair Kelly’s major contribution was to continue to use male pronouns when talking about Kosilek and to make a weak joke about how good Kosilek must look to the other inmate. It was left to O’Reilly to say the state got cheated if that’s how pretty a million bucks make a TS look. The photo they used of Kosilek while O’Reilly made his statements is from long ago and Koslilek did not look that good. We’re sure she has improved her presentation since the photo was taken. Read what they said and view a video on queerty.com.

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Category: Transgender Community News