The Week In Transgenderism 5/4/15
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“Helena”
The Serbian Army major who was forced to resign when she came out as trans has won a victory in her battle with the top brass. A Serbian human rights body has rule that the army acted in a discriminatory manner when they said she needed to resign as she “posed a threat to the reputation of the army.” Read about Helena’s win in The Salt Lake Tribune.
You may have heard of The Breakfast Club and The Mile High Club but you’ve probably not heard of the Transgender Children’s Club. It’s a new club for kids in St. Louis and it holds a monthly meeting were trans children ages 5 through 12 can hang out, play, and just be themselves with other kids who have non-traditional gender identities. Learn more on Yahoo Parenting.
Scot Turner Schofield
Lately we’ve heard about trans characters on soaps but they’ve been trans women and one of them is portrayed by a cisgender woman. Get ready for trans history. The Bold and the Beautiful is adding a trans man character to the cast on May 8 and the character will be played by trans actor, FtM Scott Turner Schofield. Get the whole story from People.
President Obama is the first U.S. president to use the word “transgender” in a State of the Union address. Now he has issued a proclamation that says gender identity should not be a fact in anyone’s ability to become a foster parent or keep them from adopting a child. The statement was included in a proclamation issue by the White House last Thursday. Learn more on the Fusion website.
Maka Brown
Another trans woman has won a prom queen title. Maka Brown, an 18-year-old attending a Utah charter school was crowned prom queen on April 25 at the Salt Lake School for Performing Arts. Read all about it in the New York Daily News.
A transition success story comes to us courtesy of Linda Jensen. It’s an article about a trans woman in Canada who went from being the odd boy no one would play with to being accepted as a woman and winning a humanitarian award on International Human Rights Day. Get the story from Global News.
Even if you have a successful transition from male to female you have to be aware that there are things that you will have to deal with as a woman that were not a problem for you as a male. Thanks to Jenn Williams for passing along one young woman’s list of 10 things she wished she had known before she started to transition. You can find it in The Huffington Post.
TGF reader Naomi sent us info about the school system in Japan. It seems that while some schools let trans students wear the school uniform of their preferred gender the Ministry of Education thinks that all schools in the country should be doing that and allowing students to use the restroom and locker room of their choice. Read about it in the GayStarNews.
Jamie Clayton
The Wachowskis, the film makers responsible for The Matrix and the less than critically acclaimed Jupiter Ascending have a television show in the works that will premier on Netflix thisJune. It’s called Sense8 and one of the stars is Jamie Clayton. Clayton is a trans woman who will be portraying a trans character in a show written by a trans woman. That should mean they’ll get this right. Read about Clayton and the show on the People website.
Rick Santorum, former presidential candidate and possible candidate next year, has come out saying that if Bruce Jenner says he’s a woman then he’s a woman. Since Jenner is a Republican perhaps Santorum was only saying that to get his vote. Or maybe he’s sincere. Thanks to Jamie Roberts for pointing us the story in The Washington Post.
Attention college age trans women. If you always wanted to attend Smith College you now have a chance. The prestigious all-female school is changing its admission policy to allow trans women to apply. Of course you still have to have the grades and the cash. Learn more from Associated Press at the ABC News website.
The U.K. has just added another honorific to the list that includes Mr., Miss and Ms. Now trans people can use Mx on all their official documents. How did they come up with that? Learn more about the move in The Daily Mail.
Eddie Izzard
Also from the U.K. we learn that Eddie Izzard, the “executive transvestite” comedian is taking his entry into politics quite seriously. While not running for any office Izzard has been campaigning for Labour party candidates all around the country. And he’s been wearing long painted nails, a tasteful dress, and high heels. Read about it and see photos of Eddie on the stump at Buzzfeed.
Conservatives in Texas are pushing anti-trans bills in the legislature but the trans people of Texas are not taking it lying down. They are fighting back against the bills that would would restrict their rights. Read the story in the San Antonio Express News.
Caitlyn Strohmeyer
Erie, Pennsylvania has been referred to as the “mistake by the lake.” (Full disclosure: I can say that since I lived in Erie for many years.) But it is, like many other places you wouldn’t suspect, becoming more tolerant of trans people. Bruce Jenner’s television interview prompted the local press to hunt up some trans people for and interview and they Caitlyn Strohmeyer and Melanie Shubitowski. Read the story on GoErie.com.
What is about men? Woman have their problems with men, trans woman have their problems with men. It seems that drag queens, who generally identify as gay, also have their problems with straight guys who are attracted to queens. It seems the boys tend to treat the objects of their desire as sex objects. Imagine that. Get the story straight from the queen’s mouth in Miz Cracker’s column for Slate.
A Dutch novelist and newspaper columnist has written a book about his own journey from female to male. Maxim Februari is his name and he transitioned in 2012. If yo want insight into what it’s live to go from female to male you might like to read The Making of a Man. Learn more about it in The Washinton Post.
Lady Bunny
Among the things you might like to know about drag icon Lady Bunny — she can do her makeup in 20 minutes. If she has to. We all need a bit of time to perfect things, don’t we. Learn a lot more about the Bunny including how her family, who told her she could be anything when she grew up, took to the idea that she was going to be a drag queen at Style.com.
The City of West Hollywood can now say they are award winning. No, it’s not a TWIT Award. They produced a YouTube traffic safety video that included the talents of many of the town’s drag stars in a parody of the Taylor Swift song video Shake it Off. WeHo’s vid is titled Alice in WoHoLand and it won the award for Best Governmental Social Media Campaign at the Government Social Media Conference and Expo. Take a gander at the video below and read about it on PRWeb.
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MIT Professor Emeritus John Southard came out to his friends and colleagues as a crossdresser after around 40 years of keeping it on the down low. Now in his 70s Southard felt it was time to let the cat out of the bag. A new film titled A Chance to Dress documents his effort to gain some acceptance from his circle of friends and colleagues. Learn more about it in Wicked Local Arlington.
There’s a new Hedwig in town. On April 29 Darren Criss stepped into Hedwigs heels for the Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It’s a far cry from his previous Broadway role in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Read about it at Broadway.com.
Mitchell as Hedwig.
The 69th Annual Tony Awards in June will honor the creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch with the 2015 Special tony Award. That would be John Cameron Mitchell who just did a another stint in the title role before being replaced by Darren Criss. See the story in the El Paso Times, Mitchell’s home town.
At The WayOut Club
Way back in 1993 a trans woman named Vicky Lee started a club night for the crossdressing and transgender denizens of London and she called it The WayOut Club. That little enterprise is still in operation celebrating its twenty second birthday last week. Read about it at Vice.com.
The Western culture sees gender as a binary system. That is you are either male or female and that’s that. But there are other cultures on the planet where gender is more of a spectrum rather than this or that. One of those is the Native Hawaiian culture. in that culture someone who embodies both the male and female spirit is a person to be revered rather than reviled. Read more about the Hawaiian M?h? an an upcoming PBS show about them in The Huffington Post.
TWITs
A trans woman was among those arrested in Baltimore during last week’s riots. She was recording people looting a clothing store, using her smart phone, when the police rounded her up with everyone else. After they learned she was trans they moved her into a male facility and made her surrender her bra and put on a top that clearly showed the outline of her nipples. When her attorney complained that she was being sexually harassed the police’s attitude was “too bad.” While over 200 of those arrested were freed this woman remains among the dozens still being held. And her bail was originally set at $75,000 but pushed up to $100,000. A TWIT Award to the Baltimore Police Department. The story is on Mashable.
The first person from Trinidad and Tobago to have gender reassignment is running for a public office in that island nation. The islands are not know for their tolerance of LBGT people and Jowelle de Souza is getting opposition from both Christian and Hindu leaders. The church leaders say she is a fine person, even acknowledging that she won an award for community service last year but as far as they are concerned anyone leading a gay or transsexual “lifestyle” is just not suited to public office. A TWIT Award to the leaders of the Christian and Hindu faiths in Trinidad and Tobago. Read more about it in Newsday.
Every year since 1998 Democratic legislators in Missouri have proposed a bill known as the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act. Every year the bill fails to come to a vote in both houses. The
Act would add protections for LGBT people to that states Human Rights Act. Why does this occur? Most of the conservative Republican legislators are actually doing what their constituents want, which is blocking any legislation favorable to LGBT people. Missouri is the “Show-Me-State” and we’re showing them a TWIT Award for lagging behind much of the country in treating LGBT people as people. Read the whole story in the Missourian.
Category: Transgender Community News
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
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