The Week In Transgenderism 9/28/15

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The waitress, Liv Hnilicka

A trans woman working as a waitress heard a little girl in her section ask her dad if the waitress was a boy or a girl. What happened next was not the tale you expect to hear in situations like that. The father approached the waitress and told her his daughter had a question and left it up to the waitress to decide how to handle things. Find out how it went on the SheKnows website.

If you know anything about biology you may know that in the womb fetuses are neither male nor female until a certain stage of development. When that stage is reached a hormone bath washes through and in those genetically predisposed to being male the penis grows from the tissue that in females becomes the clitoris. Graham Holmes sent us a link to a remarkable article about the Guevedoces of the Dominican Republic. Born as females they grow a penis at puberty. The majority of them, though raised as girls, go on to become men and don’t miss being female. Read the amazing story on the BBC website.

Kylie Jenner as she usually looks.

We try to stay away from any stories that feature the Kardashians or their relatives. (Except Caitlyn, of course.) But a story from ET on Caitlyn’s daughter Kylie caught our eye. The headline was Kylie Jenner Goes Makeup-Free, Looks Like a Totally Normal 18-Year-Old — See the Pic! Well for one thing, other than being the daughter of an Olympic gold medalist who recently transitioned to living as a woman, and appearing on television all the time in a “reality” show, she is a normal 18-year-old. But the contrast between photos of her with makeup and without is striking. The article perfectly illustrates how much makeup can do to make a basically plain face dramatically sexy. Get the story and see the pictures on the Yahoo TV site.

Jersey City, New Jersey will expand health-care options for the city’s trans workers. The city is the first one in New Jersey to take this step. Learn more in an article on NJ.com. Read our own Babs Casbar Siperstein’s account of the announcement in her Transgender Politics column.

Rose

Our Dispatch From Thailand today has information from our correspondent in that country concerning the prospects for the Thai “ladyboys” in the area of employment. Christine Burr identifies several areas where the trans women are welcome to work but here’s one she neglected to include — Kickboxing. Read the story and view several pictures of  19-year-old trans kick boxer Somoros “Rose: Pholjaroen on the Mashable website.

One of the top five finalists in Men’s Health magazine’s Ultimate Guy search is a trans man. Aydian Dowling is a trans activist, video blogger, and it looks like he’s into working out. He got over 72,000 votes to put him into the top 5. Read about his chances on taking the top prize and appearing on the cover of the November issue of Men’s Health on the People magazine website.

Survivors of a husband coming out: Helen and Betty Boyd

When a trans woman is in the closet and in a marriage it is very likely that at some point she will have to be honest with herself and her spouse and come out about her gender identity. When that happens the reactions from women who have had no idea that their husband had gender issues is usually not good. Sometimes it is but those times are the exception. For most wives the transformation of their husband into a woman is fraught with fears. What will happen to their marriage? If there are children how will they be effected? Will they have to divorce? Learn what other fears will come up and how some people have handled them in an article titled My Husband Is Now My Wife. You can find it in New York Magazine.

A trans prisoner in Maryland was kept in solitary confinement 24 hours a day for 66 days with only one hour of time in the exercise yard. She was also subjected to harassment by the guards, referred to as “it” and otherwise abused. She took the prison to court and has won her case against it. There are rules regarding treatment of trans prisoners and the judge found that they were not followed. The prisoner is now housed in the facility she prefers and will receive $5000 in punitive damages. Get the story in The Huffington Post.

Charlie Baca

A story out of Minnesota is about 17-year-old Charlie Baca, a young trans man, who was crowned homecoming king at Irondale High School in New Brighton. Baca came out to his parents just this past August. He is the first trans man to win the homecoming king title at his school. Next year he is starting an LGBT group at the school. Read the story in the Pioneer Press.

In other legal news: The bar owner in Oregon who called the leader of the Rose City T-Girls group and told her to stop coming to his bar on Friday night because the ladies were bad for business has lost another round of the legal battle that has been going on since 2013. He lost back then and was ordered to pay the trans group $400,000 for violating Oregon’s anti-discrimination law. He appealed that decision and now has lost again. The Rose City T-Girls will be able to buy a lot of cocktails with this settlement. Read the story on the Fox News website.

As you may know there is a contest underway in England to find Miss Transgender U.K.. The prizes include $7600 in cash and a voucher for gender reassignment surgery in New Delhi, India. The pageant, which had the finals yesterday (Sept. 27) is taking flack from trans activists in the U.K. who are upset over the GRS prize. Why are they upset? You’ll have to read the story on the Pink News website to find out.

A trans related plot line is popping up on this week’s Law & Order: SVU episode. Spoiler Alert! The episode features a young trans woman walking home after school. She is attacked by some boys and one of them ends up pushing her off of a bridge. The episode airs on NBC this Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET. View a trailer for the show on the Design & Trend website.

Kate and friend.

The 23rd Annual Transgender Unity Banquet was held on Sept. 19 in Houston, TX. The banquet featured Kate Bornstein as the keynote speaker and Judge Phyllis Randolph Frye was in attendance along with member of the Human Rights Campaign which was one of the event’s sponsors. Read more and see some photos on the HRC website.

Kansas City, Mo. is getting a shop that sells lingerie for trans customers. Peregrine Honig ran a regular lingerie store for cis women and when a trans friend pointed out that trans people’s bodies don’t fit correctly into lingerie for cis women she decided to start a trans line. The article says that the lingerie is the “first-of-its-kind” but Peregrine and her friend are wrong, there has been lingerie designed especially for trans women. We know since we wrote about it on TGF on a couple of occasions. Learn more about this new line of undergarments on the KSHB website.

Ms. Krolikowski

Marla Krolikowski has passed away. Ms. Krolikowski was a teacher at a Roman Catholic high school in Queens, NY who was fired from that job in 2011 after acknowledging that she was trans. Her lawsuit against the school was a step in the fight to prevent such discrimination. Read her story in The New York Times.

Another teacher in Portland. Ore. left school on a medical leave to deal with cancer. When they returned to school after a double mastectomy and chemo therapy they realized that they had to do it as a person named Leo who did not identify as female. Though Oregon has anti-discrimination laws Leo was not treated well. Read the story in The Washington Times.

Anti-discrimination laws are being passed in many municipalities and states but passing the law is only the first step toward helping trans people get housing and jobs. The laws have to be obeyed and for them to be obeyed it may take trans people standing up and challenging discrimination. That’s something that many trans people may not be comfortable doing. Read about what it takes to get landlords and employers to obey the laws on the Al Jazeera America website.

Discrimination against LGBT people isn’t new. It’s been happening for years and years. But today, while we fight discrimination in employment and housing it’s hard to imagine that something that is pretty common in the modern world, an LGBT party, could get you arrested and locked up in the 19th century. Read the story of the goings on in Washington, D.C. in the 1880s on the Truth Dig website.

Who?

If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, the British science fiction show about a Time Lord who travels through all of space and time inside a blue box that looks like an old-time English police call box, then you may know that the Doctor’s nemesis The Master reappeared last season as The Mistress, Missy for short. Now there are rumors that the next actor to play Doctor Who may be a trans woman. There’s one trans actress lobbying for the role currently played by Peter Capaldi. Find out who she is and if it might happen on the Radio Times website.

We take a journey now through space and time to land in a curious place called haute couture. It’s a strange land inhabited by odd people. Two of those people are a “design duo” called The Blonds. They are David Blond and Phillipe Blond. Phillipe is the one who is almost always seen in drag. Which he considers to be a label he can accept since is seems to be what most people call a boy who dresses like a girl. The Blonds got together with a mannequin company and the result was a pair of mannequins in the likeness of Phillipe — one dressed as a male the other dressed as a glam female. Find out what it all means on the Refinery29 website.

TWITs

Ever since the 9/11 terror attack the U.S. has been practicing “security theater.” People who fly regularly face security screenings and those who don’t exactly fit into the T.S.A.’s template often get more grief. One such traveler was a trans woman named Shadi Peosky, a writer and producer who was on her way to Minneapolis last week. The body scanner was set to scan a “woman” and it detected an “anomaly” in her groin area. What happened next gets the T.S.A. personnel on hand a TWIT Award. Read the story in The New York Times.

We have, over the years, given many TWIT Awards to the people at Fox News. Some may even feel that we’re picking on Fox but the truth is, they deserve every one of the Awards we’ve handed them. We’re giving them another general TWIT Award today for demonizing trans people to up their ratings. If you want to learn exactly how Fox goes about making trans people into villains read about it on the Media Matters website.

Everyone is excited about how the Pope came to America and spread his message of compassion, and love to the U.S. Congress. Many people see this Pope as a step in the right direction for the Catholic Church. He seems to champion poor people, stewardship of the environment and humility. But his church is still up to its old tricks. In May of 2013 a trans woman told her employers, two Catholic churches in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, that she would be transitioning and hoped she would be able to keep her jobs with them as music director. Both churches fired her. One even told her that they would treat her with “compassion” but then they fired her anyway. Perhaps they thought firing her expressed their compassion. She applied for unemployment and the Archdiocese fought that and won. She was forced to pay back thousands of dollars and lost her home. A TWIT Award goes to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. We hope Pope Francis learns of this and shows her some real compassion. The story is on the HRC website.

A group of gay activists and some of their trans friends were going to a movie at a mall in Hyderabad, India to see a film titled Time Out. The film has a queer theme. The first trans woman to attempt to buy a ticket was stopped by mall security and told she had to leave. Even after they were told that the group was there to see the queer themed film security insisted that they leave. After arguing over it for close to an hour the group was finally allowed to enter the mall. A TWIT Award for the security staff at the GVK One mall. Read the story in The Hindu.

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about the supposed assault on Christians. Presidential candidates spout diatribes against the LGBT community for having an “agenda” that is anti-Christian. They claim that they are under attack and it’s all part of a gay conspiracy. Odd how when people stand up for their rights there’s always some group that feels they are being denied theirs. The problem is that it’s Christians, of some sects, who want to be able to deny LGBT people their rights and to make it easier to sell to their followers they feed them the lies that there is no such thing as different gender identities and that sexual preference for anything other than the opposite sex is a perversion. We have to give a TWIT Award to The Association of Certified Biblical Counselors for having a conference on transgender issues. Why? Because there will be no trans people speaking at the conference and the people who will speak have all signed and agreed with a statement that says there can be no other gender than the gender “indicated by biological sex.” Sadly this conference is sold out. Get the evil details from The Washington Post.

Tags: Aydian Dowling, Charlie Baca, featured, guevedoces, Jersey City, Kylie Jenner, Liv Hnilicka, Marla Krolikowski, news, Rose Pholjaroen, The Blonds, trans husband, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News