The Week In Transgenderism 5/25/15
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Pejic
Andreja Pejic has become the third trans woman to land a modeling contract with a major beauty company. According to reports she has signed a contract to be the face of Make Up For Ever cosmetics. There’s no word on when the campaign will launch. Learn more on the EntertainmentWise website.
There’s more mainstream news coverage of trans issues and history. Last week The New York Times Opinion page had an article that had a timeline of important advances in the American transgender movement. Read it in The Times.
So far there have been several actors playing Hedwig in the Broadway production. Of course Neil Patrick Harris was the first one but there have been at least three others since he stepped out of Hedwig’s boots. One of them was the creator of the show John Cameron Mitchell. Now word comes that the next actor to play Hedwig will be Taye Diggs.
Trans child
A Dutch photographer has been taking photos of trans kids for a project titled Inside Out: Portraits of Cross-Gender Children. She has been working on the project since 2003 by taking photos of Dutch trans kids. Holland is much more progressive about gender issues than the U.S. and the children she photographs are in therapy at Europe’s only gender clinic for children. Read more and see photos on the Bustle website.
Tesco’s is a supermarket chain in England. There’s a one man play running off Broadway in New York called Tuesday’s at Tesco’s. The only character in the play is trans woman Pauline and it is about her Tuesday trips to the supermarket to do the shopping for her aged father who still sees her as his son. Read a revue of the play in The New York Times.
Despite the sounds of conservative heads exploding all over the country the Girl Scouts are standing by their decision to allow trans girls to join. Not only standing by it but doubling down on their commitment to trans inclusion. Read more in Elle.
Wurst
Austrian songstress Conchita Wurst hosted the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest last week and she really turned heads. Well, tilted them up in this case. She made her entrance flying in (on a wire we assume) from the back of the hall singing one of her songs. Not in a dress, for modesty’s sake, but a glittering pantsuit. Get more about the entrance along with photos on the Hollywood Life website.
Trans people transitioning while at work is happening more often. Just ten years ago most companies had no idea on how to handle an employee changing sex. Thanks to the work of many trans employees and activists more companies are aware of what needs to be done. Learn more in Business News.
Attention drag performers. Especially those who love opera and speak German. The Bavarian State Opera is looking for a drag queen to appear in their upcoming production of Salome by Richard Strauss. They want her for the title role. If you read German you can get the details on the opera company’s website.
Luna Winters
A U.K. trans woman is on a crusade. Our culture makes the female breast an overly sexual part of the anatomy. Luna Winters posted a topless photo of herself on Facebook and put her change of name document next to it. Her actions were taken to make Facebook accept that its policy of banning photos of nipples is sexist. Male chests, some with larger than average breasts and large nipples, are allowed to be displayed on Facebook but female nipples arebanned. Winters also hopes to educate about the spectrum of gender. Learn more on The Huffington Post U.K. site.
Why are stiletto heels sexy? You know they are but where did these hard to wear, often uncomfortable shoes come from? Thanks to the Cannes Film Festival “ban on flats,” which is either real or not, depending on which report you read, people are talking about why women wear high heels and the vast majority of men (Eddie Izzard excepted) don’t. For a brief history of women’s shoes, the time when men wore heels, and the evolution of other feminine fashions read an informative piece in The New York Times.
Raquel Willis
Education was the goal of an individual in Georgia who started college as a timid, confused boy and graduated as a full grown woman. Raquel Willis spent four years transitioning in a conservative school, in the South where football and binge drinking were the main areas of interest. Learn how she managed to navigate campus life as a gender-queer black person in her blog on the Autostraddle website.
If you think crossing the gender border is tough today think about what it was like 150 years ago. A new book titled The Rebellion of Miss Luch Ann Lobdell is based on the true story of a FtM who started living as a male fiddle player in 1853. Discovery, betrayal, love and violence all are part of Joseph Lobell’s story. Learn more about the book and Joseph’s hard life in The News-Gazette.
Shoes for FTM men.
You know trans is here to stay when it starts to attract the attention of business types. There are more and more companies popping up that are catering to trans people’s apparel needs. MtF fashions and shoes are becoming a trending business. Learn more in Fortune.
Can any good come from a “reality” television show about about a group of no-talent celebrities whose only claim to fame is that they’re famous? The Bruce Jenner interview with Diane Sawyer looked as if Jenner was handling his public transition in a responsible manner. Then he went right back to Keeping Up With The Kardashians to be the subject of an episode titled About Bruce. Was it just reality show hype or did they actually achieve something that could be of value? Read a review in Bustle.
While Kris Jenner is dealing with her estranged husband’s gender change on a reality show the fuss over Bruce Jenner has caused the media to look for people who have already had a spouse transition. One of them is Helen Boyd whose husband became her wife making their relationship a lesbian one. Boyd answers questions about what it was like on the Salon website.
Looking for a date but frustrated by dating apps that make you choose one gender or the other before you can start looking for love? A Harvard student has created an app that let’s users choose from over 20 genders. The app creator thought the world needed a dating and social app that would cater to the needs of LGBTQ people. Learn more about the app, “Q” on the Tech 2 website.
Perry
Britain’s transvestite artist Grayson Perry shares his secret to keeping his girlish figure. He is an off-road bicyclist and he claims that “Cycling is the perfect sport for transvestites.” It might be but isn’t there a chance for severely cut up legs caused by spills in the dirt and gravel of the wilderness? Read Grayson’s take on it in The Guardian.
Thanks to TGF reader and contributor Claire Crowley for pointing us to an opinion piece by Dana Beyer discussing how the trans community relates to women. There are feminists who are cisgender straight and lesbian women who don’t approve of trans women, to say the least. Ms. Beyer talks about that and other issues between trans and cis women in The Huffington Post.
TGF reader Robyn Byrd pointed us to an article addressing the question “What should you do if your son says he’s a girl?” One of the authors of the op-ed is J. Michael Bailey. Bailey is the author of the controversial book The Man Who Would Be Queen, which created the controversy by supporting the theory of autogynephilia. That is a theory that transsexuals seek reassignment surgery strictly because they are sexually aroused by inhabiting female bodies. The op-ed doesn’t mention sexual arousal as a reason small children say they are the opposite gender but it claims that most gender dysphoric boys grow up to be male. True or untrue? Read the op-ed in The Los Angeles Times. Remember, it’s in the opinion section.
The Wyoming open and out crossdresser Sissy Goodwin has moved out of the “Cowboy State” and is now living in in the land of mist and great coffee, Portland, Oregon. Goodwin wasn’t driven out of Wyoming since pretty much everyone who lived in his town knew him and all the haters stopped bothering him years ago. He and his wife moved to Portland after his retirement from a local college. Read more about it on the Oregon Live website.
TWITs
What’s gone wrong with Michigan? It used to be pretty progressive but in the past few years things have gotten pretty repressive. Since 2011 if you want to change your gender on your driver’s license you have to show that you have had your gender changed on your birth certificate. You can only change the gender on your birth certificate by showing proof that you have had gender reassignment surgery. TWIT Award coming your way Michigan, with a special Award for Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson who implemented the current policy. Learn more on the PBS Newshour website.
A trans woman who has been in prison in California expected she would be getting her reassignment surgery paid for by the taxpayers of that state. The state has been providing hormone therapy and she was scheduled for surgery in July after it was ordered by a lower-court judge. Then she was found eligible for parole and suddenly the surgery appointment was canceled. This seems worthy of a TWIT Award. Enjoy it California penal system. Get more details on the CBS Sacramento website. A TWIT Award to CBS13 for using an awful photo of the inmate.
A young trans woman was stabbed to death in Philadelphia, Pa. last week. London Kiki Chanel was involved in a dispute with her roommates and one of them stabbed her multiple times. He is under arrest. We’re issuing a TWIT Award to the local media that initially reported that Chanel was a male. They need to take the extra steps in researching a story rather than just running with the first thing they get from the police. We also have to issue another TWIT Award to publications that characterize this senseless killing, very much a tragedy, as a transphobic hate crime. The murdering roommate knew full well what his victim’s gender was. If it was anything it was violence against a woman, or just general violence against a human being. But Buzzfeed makes the story about violence against a trans woman and makes no mention that the killer was her roommate.
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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Am I the only one bothered by the increasing use or discussion of trans children for advocacy?
While I understand some may find portraits of trans kids to provide some sort of normalizing view of transgenderism for the public. But I find it a bit exploitative. One example is the upcoming Southern Comfort Conference which will feature Jazz Jennings as a keynote speaker. So an audience of predominately 40+ crossdressers ( I have been to SCC many times) are going to cheer ad applaud 15 year old giving a speech on her transition?
Perhaps there is a way to advocate for the few children that do need to transition pre-adolescence, without what at times seems to be a fawning approach by the trans adults.