The Week In Transgenderism 2/16/15

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Cox

It could be getting close to the time when the trans community can stop complaining that trans characters in television shows are all played by cisgender actors. The trans woman who became one of the first to play a trans woman on Orange is the New Black, Laverne Cox, has just been given a role in a new CBS series titled Doubt. And what’s more, the character is an Ivy-League-educated attorney, not a prisoner or a hooker. Learn more about Cox’s new gig in Entertainment Weekly.

Another show, this one a “reality” show, will follows a group of trans women around Kansas City, Missouri. It’s titled New Girls on the Block and was shot at the end of last year. It will premier on the Discovery Life Channel on April 2. The women who participated in the show say they did it to show the world how normal they are. For some of them the decision to appear on television took some mulling over. Read about it on the KCUR radio website.

Beck

Kristen Beck is going into politics. The author of Warrior Princess is in the process of launching a primary challenge against Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) campaigning on the premise that Hoyer has been in office too long and is soft on Wall Street. Beck recently moved back to Maryland’s 5th Congressional District. If she were to win Hoyer’s seat Beck would be the first trans member of Congress. Get more information in The Huffington Post.

The film Boy Meets Girl premiered last week and the reviews are in. How was the story of a young trans woman living in a small town handled in the film? And what does the title mean? Does the trans woman meet a guy? Be prepared for a film that does handle the trans woman issues well but throws in a plot twist that is pretty interesting. Read the review if you don’t mind spoilers. It’s in the Washington Post.

Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia has become the fourth U.S. women’s university to welcome all trans students. The college will now accept applications from trans women, trans men and “nonbinary” people. Learn more in The Advocate.

Drag in the 1800s.

Dressing up has been going on for centuries and thanks to photography we have visual records of some of the men in the past who posed for the camera en femme. While this article and photo feature classifies the subjects as “drag queens” it’s more likely they are either cisgender men who are dressed up just specifically for a “funny” photo or they are early crossdressers. Some are most likely performers in drag. See the pictures in The Huffington Post.

And drag events have popped up in places most would not associate with alternative lifestyles. When someone says Vermont do you think of maple syrup or drag? For 20 years Burlington, Vt. has held an annual winter Drag Ball. It has to be a pretty special event to attract people to Vermont in the middle of winter. Learn all about it and enjoy historic photos in the Vermont newspaper Seven Days.

Mitchell as Hedwig.

John Cameron Mitchell, the creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has stepped back into that role in the Broadway show. Then he made a misstep and hurt his knee, which meant he had to step back out while Michael C. Hall filled in. But this week he should be back in Hedwig’s boots and ready to rock. Read what he had to say about his relationship with Hedwig and what he might have planned for her in the future in The New York Times.

The 2011 ruling by a Texas court that classified the marriage of Nikki Araguz and her late husband Thomas as a same-sex marriage and therefore invalid under Texas law has been overturned. Last week a three judge panel in Corpus Christi ruled that Araguz was not “a man” at the time of her marriage. Read the whole story and see video on the My Fox Houston website.

The show Glee is certainly about a lot more than the high school glee club. It has featured GLBT characters and just last month the “manly” female coach came out as a trans man. In last weeks episode the trans woman character Unique came back to the school to help the coach with his transition. She did it with a choir of 200 trans people from all over the country. Check it out in the promotional clip below.

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The Mata Hari of the WikiLeaks incident, Chelsea Manning, has been granted approval to undergo hormone treatment and counseling while she serves the sentence handed out in her espionage conviction in 2013. This is a shift in Army policy since they not only do not allow trans soldiers to serve but had previously not provided transition assistance to soldiers. Get the details in The Christian Science Monitor.

Black

Britain seems to be leading the way in trans people portraying trans characters on the tele. Last week we told you about a show in production at the BBC that will feature trans actor Rebecca Root. Last week she was trumped by the show Banana, the creation of Doctor Who revitalizer Russell T Davies, which featured trans actor Bethany Black as a trans character. Learn more in The Independent.

During 2014 12 trans women of color were murdered. Many of them were the victims of hate crimes. There is a feeling in the community that their deaths did not get the attention in the media that they deserved, making them invisible. That’s the thesis of a blogger on the NBC News website.

A high-ranking leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints has indicated in a recent interview that perhaps the Church may be reconsidering its stance on LGBT issues. Does this mean that trans people will gain greater acceptance in the Church? Possibly. Read more on Slate.

Starr

The rap music world is noted for its homophobia so it comes as a surprise that an up and coming rapper who just got signed to a record label would announce his engagement to an out trans woman name Sidney Starr. Even if you don’t care at all about hip hop and rap music it’s interesting to speculate that this might actually happen in that world. The story is an editorial on the All HipHop website.

No doubt you know all about Miss Vera’s School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls and how she’s been in the teaching crossdressers how to crossdress business since the early 1990s. But in case you didn’t know anything about Miss Vera read this article in Out magazine.

Last year we reported that some cities in India were hiring hijra to act as tax collectors. The thinking being that having hijra show up at your place of business would shame many people who were holding out into paying their taxes. While it’s demeaning to hire people on that premise it was paying work for the hijra. Now it seems that the plan has backfired and the hijra are being called bullies. Get the story in the Mirror.

Ireland’s Gender Recognition Bill was enacted in 2014 and it is considered by some to be too restrictive in that it does not recognize trans people under the age of 16, it calls for medical verification of gender and married people are required to divorce before having their gender legally recognized. In 2008 Germany found those sorts of restrictions to be unconstitutional in its  law regarding transsexuals. A writer urges Ireland to not ignore the German ruling in an article in The Irish Times.

Pari

The German version of Next Top Model made history last week when it featured a trans woman. Pari is her name and she is the first trans woman to appear on a German reality show. The 25-year-old is of Iranian heritage and was raised in the Netherlands. Meet her in NewNowNext.

Sometimes trans people in careers such as the medical profession hold off on transitioning until they have retired. They may do so feeling that their patients will not understand their gender change and they will lose them to ignorance. Not always the case. Here is the story of a pediatrician in North Carolina who has the full support of her employer as she shifts from Dr. Hal to Dr. Laura. The story is on Buzzfeed.

TWITs

A 23-year-old man in Chennai, India was arrested for robbery while dressed in women’s clothing. The media report calls him a crossdresser but later in the story it says he started dressing up as a woman to commit his pickpocketing. A TWIT Award to the “crossdresser” for dressing up to carry out his criminal activities and a TWIT Award to the paper for labeling a common crook as a crossdresser and besmirching our good names. The story is in The Times of India.

The next TWIT Award is handed out to a robber who entered a McDonald’s in Australia while dressed in fishnet tights, a blonde wig and a little black dress. He was carrying a device which he told employees was a detonator and if they didn’t give him all the money he’d blow the place sky high. We’ll say it again; stop it with the crossdressing while robbing places! Get the details and video of the robber in the Mirror.

Did you know that there is a “men’s rights movement” in our society? There are men who feel that they are living in a world that’s run by women and that trans women are nothing more than pathetic males who have given up masculinity to “get some sexual pleasure from unwitting men.” Of course these “men’s rights activists” are delusional which is why they’re getting a TWIT Award. The funny thing is that they seem to base their philosophy on the 1999 film The Matrix. Somehow they managed to find the message that men are being oppressed in the plot of the movie. Ironically one of the co-directors of the film is trans woman Lana Wachowski. Read about the men’s rights movement’s twisted logic at FlavorWire.com.

A TWIT Award to the Arkansas Senate for passing a law on Feb. 9 that will ban local governments in the state from passing anti-discrimination laws protecting the rights of LGBT people. They say it’s to keep consistency to such laws by having them enacted at the state level but they passed the law in a knee jerk response to the introduction of a city ordinance in Fayetteville that would have giving equal rights protection to trans people. The ordinance was defeated anyway by voters who were concerned about men dressed as women lurking in lady’s rooms. So another TWIT Award goes to the voters of Fayetteville and yet another is given to the Christian Examiner for saying in their story that transsexuals are “individuals with a confused gender identity.”

Tags: featured, Glee, Hedwig, Kristen Beck, Laverne Cox, news, Nikki Araguz, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News