The Week In Transgenderism 1/28/13

Lea T

Lea T has landed a modeling job for Bennetton that is running worldwide. The ad campaign is part of the company’s bid to promote its Unhate Foundation which works to “fight against hate and discrimination in all its forms.” In addition to TG model Leas T the campaign features images of different people who are often discriminated against for their difference. Read about it and see the ads in The Huffington Post.

The country of Nepal has decided to issue citizenship certificates with a third gender to accomodate its citizens who do not wish to be identified as either male or female. . The decision to offer the third gender option came in a court decision back in 2007 but it has taken five years for the government to implement. Get the story from The Huffington Post.

Ikea Ad

Ikea got in trouble with transgender groups in Thailand by running a television spot featuring a woman who has hidden her TG nature from her boyfriend. When she sees a great item at a fantastic sale price she gets so excited she forgets to act feminine and her voice drops an octave. See the ad and read about the controversy it sparked on Brand Channel.

Another television ad that caused trouble was the Irish ad for a mobile phone company that featured a man dancing with a crossdresser at a bar. He is only in the bar to take advantage of the establishment’s WiFi so the implication is that he’ll put up with anything to get access mobile broadband — even dance with a drag queen. The Irish actually have an agency that examines ads and rules whether or not they offend. Imagine that. The agency has not only ruled the dancing ad offensive but another, as well. Get the details in The Guardian.

A FtM rapper in Milwaukee was reported missing on January 2 after failing to show up at his job. Ebony Young, known by his rap name Yung LT, was murdered by his roommate, a former gang member, to show the gang that the roommate was ready to rejoin. There was no indication that the murder had anything to do with Young’s TG nature. The story is at thedrop.fm.

Verbal

The country Chile is mostly one of those South American macho places where a man is a man and a woman’s a woman. But, like many South American countries, Chile is beginning to make strides toward the recognition of transgendered people as normal, not weird. Encouraged by the progress her country has made Valentina Verbal has decided to become the first TG to run for office. She has announced her candidacy for Congress where if elected she will advocate for greater transgender rights. Read about her run for office in the Santiago Times.

Last year a transwoman was given a ticket for disorderly conduct when she used the lady’s room at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. After the TG complained the hospital set up a committee to study the treatment of TGs in their facility and last week their Board of Managers voted 6-0 to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression and genetic information. Find out what “genetic information” means and read the story in the Dallas Business Journal.

The Violence Against Women  Act was passed in 1994 to provide greater legal protections to women and it stayed in effect for nearly 20 years. The House of Representatives threw a roadblock up by failing to reauthorize the Act for 2013. In 2012 the Senate had introduced a modified version of the Act that would have specifically excluded transwomen. Now Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader in the House, has worked with her Democratic colleagues to introduce an inclusive version of the VAWA that would cover transwomen, saying that they are just as much at risk of domestic violence as any other woman. Get the details at Examiner.com. (Watch out for pop up ads that start playing.)

Pham Le Quynh Tram

To many people the place to get gender reassignment surgery is Thailand. It did not work out so well for one Vietnamese transsexual. In 2006 Pham Van Hiep was diagnosed as having sexual organs of both genders and the doctor in charge recommended gender assignment surgery in Thailand. Pham Van Hiep became Pham Le Quynh Tram, choosing to live her life as a female. After she returned to Vietnam in 2009 the authorities in her province officially recognized her as a woman. Now we have learned that the decision has been ruled illegal and the main reason they say she can’t be a woman is that the surgery was not performed at a recognized clinic. Get the story from tuoitrenews.vn.

They say that wisdom can come from out of the mouths of babes. If they mean those talking babies that show up in commercials now and then that’s just creepy. If they mean wisdom comes from hot young women well that seems unlikely (hold your hate mail, we’re just sayin’) but what they really mean is that children will often have a better idea of what’s important in life than adults. Such is the case with a young transgendered girl named Sadie who wrote a response to the President’s inaugural speech. See her letter to the President at sfgate.com.

Oregon seems to be a wise state and it’s recently committed to providing medically-necessary care for transgendered children, like Sadie. In October of 2014 (which would sync up with the beginning of many parts of the Affordable Care Act, coincidentally) the states Healthy Kids Program will begin to provide puberty suppression and counseling to TG children. Get the details at LGBTQNation.

Dawes

It’s often said that it takes all kinds of people to make a world. Last week we ran Dee Levy’s column in which she expressed surprise that there were “rules” to crossdressng. Some people do feel there are rules that everyone should follow and others have their own rules. One young man in England defines himself as “gender neutral” but feels most comfortable dressing in women’s clothing, including hairstyle and makeup. He’s also the lead singer of a band called Bobbly Bob. Meet Peter Dawes and find out what his position on crossdressing is in The Huddersfield Daily Examiner.

Fanny and Stella

Two of the names that come up when we discuss our transgender history are Boulton and Park. That’s not an intersection. Boulton and Park are Fanny and Stella, two young fellas who were arrested in 1870 outside a theater whilst dressed in the finest feminine attire. Like many young ladies Fanny and Stella dreamed of a life upon the stage but they had to make do with being paid “escorts” for men who took them to the theater and then home for sex. Now the girls’ notoriety continues as they are the subjects of a new book title Fanny & Stella: The Ypoung Men Who Shocked Victorian England. Read a review of the book in the London Evening Standard.

TWITs

Transgender crooks keep being crooks. Sure, we suspect that, like Fanny and Stella, many of the TG people who commit crimes do so because they are marginalized by society and can’t get real jobs with good pay. But we here at TWIT still frown on robbery. The latest crook? A TG woman in the New Orleans French Quarter who struck up a conversation with a male victim. While he was distracted by her cleavage her henchmen attacked him and took his wallet. A TWIT Award to the robbing TG and another TWIT Award to the WWLTV.com Eyewitness News writer who referred to the TG as a “transgender male” and “he.” Shame on your WWLTV. See the insensitive reporting on the WWLTV website.

Twittery abounds in this item. The British law doesn’t really mind a fella wearing women’s clothes  anymore. (Unlike it did in the 1800s.) But they do get upset when blokes in dresses engage in sexual offences,like sexually assaulting young people while you’re dressed as a woman. So they have a thing called a Sexual Offences Prevention Order that forbids certain behaviors. David Harris, previously convicted of assaulting two young people while dressed in women’s clothing, had a Prevention Order that banned him from crossdressing outdoors between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Presumably he could have gotten dolled up during the day to do his shopping. In any event, the call of the streets was too much for Harris and he violated his Order 5 times. The last time was in June and now it seems he’s going to the gray bar hotel. A TWIT Award for Harris and a bit of a TWIT Award for the British legal system, which does seem to be trying to accommodate diversity, but should know that you can’t just forbid people something that is a real drive that can’t be suppressed easlly. The story is in This Is Gloucestershire.

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Category: Transgender Community News