The Week In Transgenderism 12/15/14

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New on Drag Race, Ginger Minj

The news is out! The cast of the seventh season of RuPaul’s Drag Race has been announced. The big reveal happened on December 7 live on Logo. There are fourteen new queens who will dish and strut and vie for the big win at season’s end. Meet them all on the Logo website.

Who doesn’t love the look, and feel, of a great high heeled shoe? Most crossdressers manage to collect many pairs of shoes and even if wearing them in public makes them standout as the only 6’ 6” woman on the street the lure of the high heel must be satisfied now and then. There’s a new book called Killer Heels that covers the history of the high heeled shoe. While you wear your spike heels read a review of the book in The New York Times.

Did you know that New York state law mandates that procedures related to gender reassignment must be covered under health insurance plans? We guess the insurance companies didn’t know that was the case since Governor Cuomo had to send a warning letter to them saying that they have to cover treatments related to gender dysphoria. Get the details in The New York Times.

Ryan Seacrest Productions got a call from ABC Family. They were calling to order a full season of a docu-series about a teenage boy whose parents are divorcing and his father is becoming a woman. It’s called My Transparent Life and it’s an unscripted reality show that will follow him and his family as they deal with the changes. Read more in Variety.

Emily Brothers

There has been a “first” in the U.K. Long time LGBT activist and trans woman named Emily Brothers has become the first transgendered person to be selected as a Labour candidate for Parliament. Brothers is also blind, and a lesbian. Learn more about her in The Independent.

As the news broke that Ms. Brothers was a trans woman a contributor to The Sun newspaper made a tasteless “joke” in that paper asking how Ms. Brothers could know she was “the wrong sex” since she is blind? Over 17,000 people have signed a petition calling for The Sun to apologize for the “joke.” Find out what Ms. Brothers thought of it at the Pink News website.

The U.S. Air Force is going to review its ban on transgender troops sometime during the coming year. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told USA Today last week that “anyone who is capable of accomplishing the job should be able to serve…” The story is on the CBS News website.

The San Francisco area transit system is patrolled by 200 officers. Their police advisory board is considering new policy that would establish a directive on how those officers interact with trans people. Trans women of color are often profiled by police as sex workers and trans people in general have complained about being disrespected by police who do not use the person’s preferred pronoun or insist on using their legal name. The draft policy will educate officers in the transit system on how to address TGs and interact with them in a respectful manner. Read about the proposed policy on the KQED website.

Winnie is retiring.

What do you do after you’ve been performing in drag, singing close harmony with your “sisters” in a vocal group that has recorded eight albums, toured the world and made countless audiences laugh till they cry? That’s was the dilemma faced by the original Winnie character from The Kinsey Sicks. What to do next? How about becoming a rabbi? Okay, you don’t believe me. Check out the article about Irwin Keller, who has graced the stage since 1993 as Winnie, in the San Fransisco Chronicle

Monti Rock and David de Alba

Our contributor, friend of TGF and female impersonation legend David de Alba sent us a couple of photos that were taken just last night at a press conference in Las Vegas. It seems that next year disco legend Monti Rock the 3rd will be the subject of a play. We assume it has to be a musical and will no doubt feature Monti Rock’s work with Disco Tex with the Sexolettes. Monti and David are pictured at the press conference in the photo on the left. (Click the pic for a larger size.) What is that white furry thing? Someone tell us!

America is often referred to as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” The free part works as long as you’re not a FtM teen who wants to use the boy’s room in his southern high school. But the “home of the brave” part does stand up to scrutiny because that Virginia teen has had to bear up under enormous outrage from the community since it was learned that his principal had been letting him use the boy’s restroom. Read about it on the NPR website.

The Batgirl stereotype.

Easy come, easy go. The Batgirl comic book had gotten praise for introducing a trans woman character who was just a normal person who happened to be Batgirl’s roommate. (Even superheroes need to save on the rent.) But in a recent issue of the comic they lost all their good cred by introducing a flamboyant Batgirl impersonator villain who camped it up in a sequined costume. Now the fans who applauded trans inclusion are upset by the stereotypical murderous drag queen story line. Read of their distress at the Bleeding Cool website.

The world is starting to catch on to what most of us have known for a long time. The “strict line between male and female simply doesn’t exist.” That quote is from an article that makes that point and goes on to call for the rest of the world to get a clue and learn to accept trans people for who they are. You can find the story in Medical Daily.

Grayson Perry as Claire

Artist and celebrity in the U.K. Grayson Perry is often in the news for one thing or another involving his art or his meeting with royalty in his femme persona Claire. Recently Perry talked to a newspaper in the U.K. about being a transvestite. He made several statements about bring a TV and he refers to the the life cycle of crossdressing in which you can look fabulous when you’re young, slim and androgynous, then you get more masculine in middle age and return to androgyny in old age. He makes some interesting points but please forgive him for using the T word. (Not transvestite — the other one that gets people so riled up.) It doesn’t have the same connotation in England. The article is in The Independent.

A few years back a very talented vocalist in Philadelphia left for New York to seek fame and fortune with his band. The vocalist appeared onstage sending mixed gender messages. His shapely legs were alway on display while he performed and he wore the most fabulous high heels and mini skirts. But his head was shaved and he might have facial hair or not on any given night. Last week Jeffrey Marsh, for that is his name, was interviewed by The Huffington Post about the fame he has found being a social media star on a site called Vine. (We’re just getting a handle on this Facebook thing, now we’ve got to figure out Vine?) Read Jeffrey’s interview with his take on gender in The Huffington Post.

TWITs

Here in the U.S. we have rules regarding who gets to see medical records. The rules are contained in the HIPPA ACT and they are very strict. The premise being that, and it’s probably a good one, that if your health records were seen by people they could be used to take advantage or you or harm you by exposing you to discrimination. Well in the U.K. where they have had some problems already with TG people’s records, another SNAFU has popped up. An 84-year-old pensioner started getting trans people’s confidential letters because his address is close to the address of Exeter’s Specialist Gender Identity Clinic. Apparently health providers were just Googling to get the address of the Clinic and using the first address that popped up. A TWIT Award to sloppy providers. For the full explanation of how it could have happened read the story in Pink News.

We urge you to contact The Learning Channel and ask them if learning to discriminate against trans people is part of what they teach. What we learned was that a city ordinance in Fayetteville, Ark. which gave trans people the right to use the public restroom of their choice was overturned by a vote of 52% to 48% in a special election. The defeat was due primarily to the lobbying efforts of reality television “star” Michelle Duggar who campaigned against the ordinance to keep “males with past child predator convictions who claim they are female” from using women’s only facilities. A TWIT Award to The Learning Channel for giving Duggar a name and fame so she can influence peoples votes. A TWIT Award to Michelle Duggar of course. You can read about it at CNS News.

Some people have no sense of humor. Lack of a sense of humor and perhaps a too strict interpretation of what is “proper” made a charity in upstate New York refuse to accept a donation of food from a drag performer and the cast of her show. Amber Skyy and her troupe travel around the country but are based in Massena, NY. They volunteer to donate proceeds from their shows to local charities. The charity they offered the donation to refused it on the grounds that Amber had “sexually explicit” photos on her Facebook page. She’s trying to donate food to your organization, not date you. A TWIT Award to the Massena Neighborhood Center for refusing the donation. Read (and view video) about who accepted it on the WNYF website.

We’re all for people doing what they feel like for pleasure but we must say that there is a time and place for everything. A country lane in Dumfriesshire, U.K., in broad daylight, was really not the place a crossdresser and her dom should have chosen for a paddling session. The two were caught at it by a local family out for a walk with their two-year-old daughter. The S&M fans panicked when they realized they were being observed and leapt into a car to make a quick escape. The escape got them stopped by police and the driver was fined for careless driving. Perhaps being whipped outside in the light of day added some excitement to the session but we’re handing the couple a TWIT Award for not keeping it in the dungeon. Get the story from the Mirror.

Tags: Batgirl, crossdressing, Duggars, Emily Brothers, featured, Grayson Perry, Identity, Monti Rock, news, RUPaul's Drag Race, The Kinsey Sicks, Transgender, Transsexual, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News