The Week In Transgenderism 1/4/16

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Loiza Lamers

A trans woman has won the title of Holland’s Next Top Model. Loiza Lamars beat the competition last week and is the first trans woman to win in any of the Top Model shows around the world. Isis King was the first trans contestant in America’s Next Top Model. Read the story in the Oceanside Post.

It was rumored earlier this year that the reality show Real Housewives of Atlanta would replace one of their housewives with a trans woman. Trans model and makeup artist Amiyah Scott was reported to be the new cast member. Turns out the rumors were true and she did join the cast but after a month of shooting she quit the show. She did not like the way she was being urged to act on camera. The producers wanted her to be overly sexualized. Read about it on the Yahoo News page.

Hari Nef

How do you get ahead in show biz? Is it talent, hard work, endless self promotion? No. It really helps if you know someone. That’s how trans model Hari Nef started her acting career on the Amazon show Transparent. Her counselor while she was in art school was the creator of the show’s sister. Read more about Nef’s role in the new season of Transparent in the Boston Globe.

The year end wrap ups continued last week and among them is a list of the “biggest transgender moments of 2015.” You can find it in the Independent.

Check out the 10 Ways This Was A Banner Year For Transgender People on the Queerty website.

Not content with just 10 positive things for the trans community in 2015 the Advocate lists 25 Trans Pioneers Who Took Us Past the Tipping Point in 2015.

The Huffington Post has a column by the executive director of Gender Rights Maryland, Dana Beyer. Ms. Beyer chose to do a “year in review” for her last column of 2015.

While many media outlets chose to look back The Guardian decided to look ahead to 2016.

Sushi

Every New Year’s Eve down in the Florida Keys the city of Key West counts down to midnight by lowering a drag performer name Sushi in a giant high heel. This year, 90 minutes before the midnight shoe drop, Sushi and her longtime boyfriend used the giant shoe as a wedding altar and tied the knot with a drag notary officiating. Learn more on the CBS Miami website.

A trans woman is running for a seat in the Philippine congress. Her name is Geraldine Roman and she is hoping to take the seat representing Bataan that was previously held by her mother. Ms Roman was her mother’s chief of staff in Congress so she would know what the job entails. There is opposition to her based on her trans status. Read the story on the Interaksyon website.

Last Monday was the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Leelah Alcorn.  People gathered at the Woodward Theatre in Cincinnati to remember her, and to discuss how things have changed in the last year.  WKRC-TV in Cincinnati has the story.

Mermaids, the British support group for trans children and their families, has seen a rise in the number of children identifying as trans. Eighty primary-school-age children per year are seeking help with gender issues. The chief officer of Mermaids, Susie Green (whose daughter Jackie transitioned at age 5), talked with the Telegraph about this.

Japan’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has introduced a new bill which would call on companies to avoid discrimination against LGBT people in employment. Japan Times has more on this story.

In India, transgender children have traditionally been given away or sent away to live in hijra communities. Some people in the government of India wants to do away with that, and towards that end, they have introduced the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill of 2015. For more on this, read the story in the Times of India.

Jaden Smith on the right.

The fashion house Louis Vuitton has chosen a model to be the face of its Spring/Summer 2016 campaign. Is it Andreja? Lea T? No. The new face of the Louis Vuitton womenswear campaign is the son of actor Will Smith, Jaden Smith. Over the past year Jaden has been seen out and about in Hollywood wearing women’s apparel. Now his fashion choices have won him a position that many models would kill for. Read all about it on Yahoo News.

Lambda Legal was founded in 1973 with the goal helping lesbian and gay people achieve equality. The organization provides legal assistance to members of the LGBT community. Throughout 2015 they assisted many trans people with legal battles. They have published an overview of those fights on their website.

A new film exploring trans themes is set to premier in January. It’s called Her Story and is about two trans women in Los Angeles who have given up on the thought of finding love. Then they have chance encounters with people who change their lives. One of the film’s stars is the entrepreneur who founded TransTech Social Enterprises. Who knew she was an actress? Learn more about the film and view the trailer on the Her Story website.

Sue McConnell

The latest Veterans Affairs hospital to start providing services to trans veterans is located in Tucson, Arizona. There are over 130 trans veterans taking advantage of the new services. One of them is Navy vet Sue McConnell. Learn more about the hospital’s services and Ms. McConnell on the NPR website.

Anxious for the new year to get rolling so you can attend some of the big trans events? While most of them happen later in the year you can get your first taste of gender conference fun at First Event in Boston, Mass. from January 20-24. Visit their website for all the details.

With the start of the new year, many new laws take effect. In Illinois, conversion therapy can no longer be performed on people under age 18, existing hate crimes laws have been strengthened, and an effort has been made to honor the wishes of trans people to be buried in their preferred gender. Chicago Now has the story.

Only eighteen of the fifty states in the U.S. have laws which protect trans people from discrimination. Michigan could be added to that number, if the voters approve a referendum on the ballot this coming November. The wording of the proposal has been approved, and Fair Michigan will begin getting signatures on petitions in an attempt to get the measure on the ballot. You can read more on MLive.

Canada’s new Minister Of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, says that the government will introduce amendments to the Canada Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to protect trans Canadians. Such amendments passed the House of Commons under the previous government, but were defeated in the Senate. Daily Xtra has this story.

With rising awareness of transgenderism comes a flood of new terms used by members of the community to describe where they are on the trans spectrum. If terms like “GSM” or “genderqueer” seem unfamiliar to you, you may want to check out the 2015 Gender Dictionary compiled by The Guardian.

Chris Mosier

As the number of LGBT athletes increases, a new organization named GO! Athletes is attempting to provide mentors for LGBT athletes, especially student athletes. The trans man in charge is Chris Mosier. The story is in the Dallas Voice.

Jennifer Finney Boylan has been chosen to receive the Virginia Prince Transgender Pioneer Award for 2016 by Real Life Experiences, Inc. You can read a biography of Professor Boylan on the Fantasia Fair website.

TWITs

Sure, we know it’s hard to keep your cool and not get angry when those outside the trans community stare, or worse, take photos or videos of you when you’re just trying to get on with your day. We understand that it can be hard to control the urge to do something violent. But we have to give a TWIT Award to Merci Chrisette who got upset that she was being videoed by fellow passengers on the New York City subway. After first offering to pose for the video, which was a step in the right direction, she ended up pulling a knife and attacking. Knifing someone is not ever a good idea. Read the story and see the pictures and video in the Daily Mail. And by the way, a TWIT Award goes to the victims, too. It’s best not to provoke anyone. You don’t know what they might do.

In some places, crossdressing is a very serious civil crime and a religious offense. A man in Saudi Arabia was arrested for crossdressing. He was in a mall, wearing an abaya — the traditional black dress and veil of a woman in that region. A TWIT Award goes to Saudi Arabia for continuing to exist in the 12th century. The story can be found in Al Bawaba.

At the Philadelphia Mummer’s Parade on New Year’s Day, one person had a sign with a picture of Bruce Jenner on a box of Wheaties and the legend “1976” beside a picture of Caitlyn Jenner on a mocked-up box of Froot Loops. We realize that that is a joke, and as the late Joan Rivers used to point out, comedy is not pretty. Even so, this joke gets a TWIT Award. You can see the story, along with a denouncement by Philadelphia mayor-elect Jim Kenny, in Philly Voice. The Mummers don’t tend to be the most culturally sensitive folks and there was more Jenner bashing in the parade as well as blackface, latino stereotypes and some gay bashing. Learn more on Yahoo News.

Oh Breitbart. What can we do with you? Perhaps we should just issue a standing TWIT Award on every trans related story you publish. Their latest outrage? Calling trans kids a “fad.” They report that there are “clusters” of trans kids popping up in U.K. schools since the kids are all copying one another. Right. I wish that I had known when I was 6-years-old that my desire to dress as a girl was just a fad. Life would have been so much simpler. Read their TWIT Award winning conservative spin on trans kids on their website.

A TWIT Award must go to the conservatives who are recycling the arguments and objections they used to stop the advance of gay rights to oppose trans rights. For over a decade the right wing fear mongers attacked gay rights by invoking the “slippery slope” saying that protecting pedophilia and bestiality would be the next step. All of those tactics are now being applied in their fight agains trans rights. Read about it on the Media Matters website.

An acoustic duo in Lancashire, England had just completed their soundcheck at a pub when they were told by management to pack up and get out. It seems they have a trans woman friend who attends most of their gigs and helps them load in and set up. The management assumed that she was part of the group and decided that they didn’t want a “man dressed as a woman” performing in their pub since they weren’t “that type of pub.” They were the type of pub that got its knickers in a twist over the presence of a trans woman and they posted remarks about the cancelled gig on their Facebook page that qualified as an illegal “hate incident.” They’ve since apologized and paid the duo for the cancelation but we’re still giving The Chieftain Pub a TWIT Award for their knee jerk reaction to a trans woman arriving with the band. Read all about it in the Lancaster Guardian.

Group Captain Catherine McGregor is a trans woman who is up for the award as Australian Of The Year. However, she is getting a TWIT Award for the way she handled nasty online comments directed at her around two years ago. Bernard Gaynor, Jr., wrote the comments about her transition in a blog post. She was offended so she went to social media to mock both the author of the blog post — and his father. Major Bernard Gaynor, Sr., recently received $25,000 from the Australian Department of Defence in exchange for an agreement not to sue them over the Group Captain’s remarks abut him. The Australian has the story.

The Heritage Foundation has a commentary “showing” that allowing trans students to attend school in their preferred gender discriminates against other students. They cite a “recent report” by Ryan Anderson, who works for the Heritage Foundation — the same group whose news service is the source of this story. That’s one way to get the result you want. It’s also how you get a TWIT Award. Anderson’s “research” consists of a bunch of hypothetical situations. You can read it at The Daily Signal.

A teenager is suing the Fairfax County, Virginia, School Board for taking away his right to discriminate against trans students. The suit seeks to overturn new policy voted in by the board this last May and November, which would allow trans students to use the locker room and restroom that matches their chosen gender. Various groups opposed to the policy needed a student to file suit, as the student would have standing as a potentially aggrieved party.  TWIT Awards go to all who encouraged this suit, especially the aggrieved student (identified as Jack Doe), his parents, and Andrea Lafferty and her Traditional Values Coalition. For more on this, you can read the story in Courthouse News.

Here’s a TWIT Award given for negattive coverage of the Restroom Wars that we found on World Net Daily. The title of the article should tell you the slant: “What do you say to a naked girl in the boys room?” Apparently, they do not know that there are laws against indecent exposure. You can see the rest of their anti-trans spin on the World Net Daily’s website.

Many of the TWIT leads and some of the text was provided by TGF contributor Cecilia.

Tags: Amiyah Scott, featured, Hari Nef, Jaden Smith, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Loiza Lamars, news, Sushi, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News