The Week In Transgenderism 2/23/15

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Five years ago a trans woman who started transition while she was working as a fitness instructor at a Massachusetts health club was fired after she wore a velour women’s sweat suit to a staff meeting. She sued the company and last week the court found in her favor. Read all the details on Think Progress.

Chelsea Manning

We mentioned last week that the Army seemed to be lightening up on trans service members when they decided to let Chelsea Manning have hormone therapy. Now comes word that they have issued a directive that any trans soldiers discharges would have to issued by one high ranking officer instead of by the soldier’s lower ranking officers. Get the story from USA Today.

You’ve heard about the legislator in Florida who has introduced a bill that activists have labelled the “anti-transgender bathroom bill.” The bill would restrict restroom use to “persons of the sex for which the facility was designed.” We wonder who would be in charge of enforcing that law? How to students at Florida Atlantic University feel about the proposed legislation? Find out in their student newspaper University Press.

Meanwhile, up Vancouver way, students at Simon Fraser University took action to strike a blow for potty freedom. They organized the liberation of a men’s room, occupying it and putting a sing on the door that read “This toilet has been liberated from the gender binary.” Read the story in The Huffington Post.

Malisa and her proud grandpa.

It’s a pretty big deal when a trans girl of 8 can have the acceptance of her parents. Many kids don’t have that. Then, when her grandpa says he is proud to have her as a grandchild that can be a really big deal. Malisa Honda-Phillips can top all the other 8-year-old trans girl’s stories though. Her grandpa is not just some retired guy. He’s U.S. Rep. Mike Honda and he is “the proud grandpa of a transgender grandchild.” Read the story and view video din the San Jose Mercury News.

Did you know there’s a drag queen in Israel called Mishel LawBel? There is but sadly she could not make it to the first ever high heel race in Jerusalem last week. Other queens, 40 of the, did manage to make it. They performed musical numbers for the crowd and then they raced to see who could make it to the finish line without falling over. Read about it and view video in The Jerusalem Post.

There is a charity named Stonewall (after the Stonewall Riots) that campaigns for lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. Last week they announced that they would be adding transgender rights to their mission in an attempt to make up for ignoring trans people for many years. Get the details from The Independent.

The bill introduced in the Kentucky Senate last week that would have given students the right to sue their school if they saw a trans person in the restroom failed to pass. Fortunately both Republican and Democratic senators opposed the bill and it didn’t get enough votes to become law. Way to go, senators. Read about the bill and the vote in The Huffington Post.

Boylan

The trans community activists have been doing a good job in spreading the word that trans people are just as real as any other people and it seems to have been working. There are more and more places putting “gender orientation” into their anti-discrimination laws and trans characters are appearing in television shows in positive roles. Why would The New York Times columnist Jennifer Finney-Boylan write a piece in The L.A. Times saying we haven’t made that much progress? Maybe because there really is a lot of work to still be done. Read her Times column at Vindy.com.

Is the honeymoon over with Pope Francis? He has said things and done some things that made people feel that the Church might be moving into the 21st century. All the stuff that made him a Pope that was more in line with modern attitudes may have been cancelled out by the statements that came out last week. That’s when people noticed that in an interview he equated trans people with “Herods,” and worse. The story is in Metro.

More trans activity came to prime time television last week when Grey’s Anatomy added a trans character. Rosalyn is just beginning her transition and has not come out to her brother. She is in the hospital and her off-the-chart liver levels have her brother concerned that his “brother” is doing illegal drugs. The show review we round says that the trans plot line is handled well. Read it at Bustle.com.

In weather like we have recently experienced in the Northeast the importance of providing shelter for homeless people has become a top concern. The Obama Administration has released a guide outlining how homeless shelters should treat transgender people in single-sex emergency shelters and other types of housing. Read the recommendations in The Huffington Post.

Eden Lane

We recently reported that Zoey Tur, the former news helicopter pilot had become the first trans reporter when she was hired as a special correspondent for Inside Edition. We forgot, and so did the media, that there is a trans reporter who has been covering stories on Colorado Public Television since 2008. Meet Eden Lane in People.

Educating about trans issues is the best way to help cis people to accept trans people and for trans people to learn they’re not alone, and not weird. Did you know there’s an app for that? Well, not just yet but it’s been in development for several years. Users could ask a trans avatar questions and the avatar would provide information in the form of a conversation. But the developer needs more support to finish it. Find out all about it at cincinnati.com.

Cheers for TG rights.

A trans cheerleader in South Dakota was allowed to join the cheerleading squad in her birth gender. She loves being a cheerleader but hates having to wear the male cheerleader uniform. Recently the legislature in South Dakota introduced a bill aimed at making sure school kids only participate in sports in the gender listed on their birth certificates. Our brave cheerleader went to the hearings held on the bill to oppose it. Read her story and see video on the Keloland Television website.

Rejected by girl group contest.

A TG model in England tried to audition for what’s being put together as an “all girl” supergroup. Just before it was her turn to audition a talent manager who was acting as a stage manager coordinating the auditions pulled her aside and told her, in cruder terms, that she couldn’t audition for the group since she she hadn’t had surgery. This caused a massive kerfuffle involving one of the celebs who was judging the event. Read more in the Mirror.

Back in January Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter Mary posted on her Facebook page that men doing drag was like white people doing blackface, Since she posted that comparison various people have been firing back and forth trying to decide if it’s actually true. Drag performer Miz Cracker has thought long and hard on the issue and done a bit of research as well. Find out what she thinks of Mary Cheney’s pronouncement at Slate.com.

A Sparo design.

Where does everyone from Madonna to Amanda Lepore and new brides to drag queens go for custom made corsets and costumes in New York City? To Garo Sparo. His designs have clad competitors on RuPaul’s Drag Race, crossdressers and even dogs. Learn about his artistry on the Racked website.

Can a reformed football hooligan find happiness as a part-time crossdresser? One named Katie, who used to be a member of one of Great Britain’s most notorious football gangs (we call it soccer but don’t try that in front of one of the gang members or they’ll put the boot in) has started a group to help crossdressers met each other for social purposes. In the article photo Katie keeps her face hidden. It would not do for one of her former mates to learn she was a part-time lady. Get the story in the Mirror.

TWITs

Two people in Britain, a gay rights activist and a professor at Cambridge signed a petition calling for freedom of speech for everyone, including the freedom for individuals who may be deemed “transphobic.” That’s the thing about free speech. If you start denying it to the people you disagree with then it’s not free speech anymore. Trans activists learned of the pair’s support of the free speech petition and instead of applauding them for supporting people’s right to express their opinions they attacked them as transphobic. For picking on these two people we give a TWIT Award to all those who attacked them. Get the story in The Independent.

The silicone “pumper” known as Black Madam went on trial last week in Philadelphia, Pa. for the death of a 20-year-old exotic dancer from England who came to her for figure enhancement. The industrial grade silicone traveled in the young woman’s body and caused a pulmonary embolism. We’ve given Black Madam a TWIT Award before but today we hand her one for her behavior in court. Bragging about her “work” and flirting with the assistant prosecuting attorney are probably not good ideas. Read the story in the Daily Mail.

The TERFs are acting up again. That’s “trans exclusionary radical feminists.” We have other names for them but they’re not polite or printable. These women believe that trans women are not “real women” and they fight to keep us out of women’s restrooms and to convince the world that trans women are delusional males. One of the biggest TERFs is 1970s feminist author Germaine Greer. She’s someone we used to think was cool but now she and her TERF pals are getting a TWIT Award. Read more about the TERFs and why they hate you in the International Business Times.

Billy Graham’s son gets a TWIT Award for his defense of a Charlotte City Council ordinance that’s coming up for a vote in a few weeks. It would open restrooms in that city to trans people. Graham’s defense of the bill is, just like everyone else who opposed restroom rights, base on the “safety” argument. Read of his Twittery on the WCNC website.

Tags: Black Madam, Eden Lane, featured, Garo Sparo, Mary Cheney, news, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News