The Week In Transgenderism 3/21/16

Links in TWIT will open in the same window. Use the Back button on your browser to return to this page.

Bemz Benedito

The True Colors Fund has picked four trans women activists to receive their Global Transgender Hero award. One of them is Filipina activist Bemz Benedito. The award is given based on how an individual has “challenged the status quo” as well as their contribution to their community. Learn more about the award and the recipients on the Inquirer website.

In 2013 the city of San Francisco introduced a program that provides gender reassignment to city residents who are uninsured and diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Shortly after the program was instituted the state changed it’s health plan to add Medi-Cal for low income people and that meant people with coverage from that plan were also eligible for gender-related care. As of last year the Transgender Health Services program had provided a total of 103 surgeries. Learn more about the program in the San Francisco Examiner.

Janet Mock

Trans activist, television host, and writer Janet Mock will be the keynote speaker for the University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Week. Organizers wanted to have Mock appear to enforce the idea that trans women are women and should be celebrated during an event like Women’s Week. Get more info from The Daily Pennsylvanian.

In Los Angeles they have established a Transgender Advisory Council that will work with the mayor, City Council, city staff and other elected officials to foster awareness of the needs of trans people in the city. It began as a working group devising recommendations for the L.A.P.D. and the department used its input to change how police interacted with trans people. Learn more on the KPCC website.

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan

Back in the Clinton administration a position was created called LGBT Liaison. During the Bush presidency that staff position was discontinued. Last week President Obama reactivated it and appointed, for the first time, a trans woman to be the LGBT Liaison. Raffi Freedman-Gurspan who was the first trans person hired by the White House, has been given the job of LGBT Liaison and is tasked with outreach and recruitment. Read more in Tablet magazine.

Eddie Izzard the British comic who came out as an “executive transvestite” at the beginning of his comedy career is in South Africa running marathons. He is attempting to run over 700 miles to reflect the number of years Nelson Mandela spent in prison. He has run 21 races and has six more to go as part of the Sports Relief marathon. He took a break last week to visit a nail salon and get his nails done. He also took the opportunity to school the press on trans issues. Read what he had to say and view a video in which he identifies as a trans person in the Evening Standard.

Parents, with children in a U.K. primary school, who desperately need education about trans issues are freaking out about their kids being exposed to a planned “transgender day.” The children are supposed to take part in a series of discussions and workshops to better acquaint them with the existence and nature of trans people. The fearful parents are saying they will keep their kids home on “transgender day.” Perhaps they should attend the school on transgender day and learn there’s nothing to fear. Find the story in the Mirror.

Jenner

Rumor has it that Caitlyn Jenner’s reality show, I Am Cait, is about to be canceled. It seems that ratings for the current season are down 500,000 viewers from the first season’s final episode and down by nearly two million from the shows debut. Read the story on the Pink News website.

In Uzbekistan being LGBT is viewed as a sin and a “crime against God.” The country used to be part of the Soviet Union and it is one of three countries that still retains a Soviet era law making sex between two men a crime with a three-year prison sentence. The president of the country encourages homophobia and calls homosexuality “disgusting.” How, in this environment did one trans man manage to transition fully and marry his sweetheart? It’s complicated. Read about it in The Los Angeles Times.

Lilly Wachowski

The recent news that Lilly Wachowski was joining her sister Lana as an out trans woman arrived with none of the teasing and pre-announcement press that Caitlyn Jenner’s did. Part of it was that Lilly was going to be outed by a newspaper and wanted to get ahead of that by letting the world know about her in her own way. The other thing was that she kept it deliberately low key and didn’t go for a magazine cover done up as a glamor girl. She kept it real. Read more about her coming out and reaction to it in The Washington Post.

Have you always thought a river cruise on the Danube would be so much fun? You could wear your loveliest cruise wear, perhaps sit at the captain’s table in a glamorous gown. But, you were concerned that your fellow travelers might not be accepting of your feminine expression and then the cruise would be a misery cruise. Fear not! A new company called Transgender Vacations has put together a Transgender and Friends European River Cruise. Learn more on the Travel Weekly website.

The University of Victoria is the home of the Transgender Archives and has been for some time. But until just recently the archives were only available to those who could visit the university in person. All that changed when the digitized contents of the archive became available online. Learn more and view eleven images from the archives on the Tech Insider website. Or visit the Transgender Archive online.

The University of Victoria is really getting into trans issues. This past weekend they hosted the “largest transgender conference in Canada” which featured presentations of topics ranging from trans people in literature to trans bodies in erotic films, and crossdressing in Early Modern England. Read more on the CBC website.

Bassem Feghali

If you must be a drag queen in the Middle East the safest places are Israel and Lebanon. Other countries, not so safe. One Lebanese drag artist makes a splash on Middle Eastern social media by being what they consider “outrageous.” Bassem Feghali’s latest tweak to conservative Arab society was posting a photo in which she is kissing a man. Oh! What a tramp. Check out what other antics she has gotten up to on the Albawaba website.

In the good old USA we have RuPaul’s Drag Race which has become a huge showcase for drag performers and has opened up careers for many people. It’s a symbiotic relationship between RuPaul and her contestants. They help her by competing on the show and the show helps them by making them famous. What do some well-known performers think about Drag Race? Recently Latrice Royale, Mimi Imfurst and Coco Peru all talked about it with Queerty.

Those of us who go out and about in the world as women have to be as concerned as cisgender women about violence, sexual or just criminal, directed toward us. One woman who was out running and was attacked by a strange man in a wooded area decided to create a special sports bra that holds either a small but very sharp knife or a pepper spray. Vigilance is always your first defense and having a sharp knife nestled next to your breast (or expensive prosthesis) doesn’t sound that safe but read the article and view a video on the WTVR website and decide for yourself. Thanks to Jan Brown for the link.

Mya Taylor

Trans actress Mya Taylor is slated to speak on March 22 at Minnesota State University Moorhead. She is currently touring the U.S. on a tour named #OscarsSoWhite. Learn more from the Inforum website.

A new trans center has opened in New York City. It’s called The Bronx Trans Collective and its mission is to help trans people get GRS, hormones, mental health counseling, and assistance with name changes, and job searches. It will also be the home of several support groups. Learn more about the organization in The New York Times.

Marcelas Owens

Back in 2010 President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Looking on from right next to the President was young Marcelas Owens, who came to be known as the Obamacare kid. Now the kid is 17-years-old — and living as a female. Read her story on The Root website.

TWITs

From the “every move forward gets some push back” file comes this tidbit. Up above we told you that Los Angeles has established a Transgender Advisory Council. No sooner was it announced than Focus on the Family (only if said family is heterosexual with 3.4 kids) released a statement that claims the new council could harm “religious freedom.” One of Focus on the Family’s spokesmen said, “…fundamental human rights will be cast aside for the sake of furthering transgender ideology.” Or not. Focus on the Family is a TWIT Award winner for not accepting that trans people are humans and deserve to have their rights protected. Read about it in The Christian Post.

Prepare to be overwhelmed by the anti-trans bathroom brigade.

You may have heard about a video entitled Women: Decide For Yourselves. This deceitful piece of work presents various incidents which happened in women’s restrooms, but they leave out the fact that all but one of these cases involved cisgender men. They insist that these men would be allowed into the ladies room — even though the law says that they would not. The liars who made this video, and those who keep pointing at it as if it were truth are TWIT Award winners. Think Progress looks at this more closely.

Christopher Doyle heads two groups, Equality and Justice for All, and the National Task Force for Therapy Equality. The “Therapy Equality” he is fighting for is the right to practice conversion therapy, which attempts to convert gays, lesbians, and transgender people into straight people. TWIT Award! Of course, that therapy does not have equality of outcomes with other therapies, and for that reason, it is not endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association or the American Medical Association. But, what do doctors know about medicine? You can read an interview with him on OneNewsNow.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, a union for teachers in the state, has backed H.B. 1577, a bill entitled An Act Relative to Gender Identity and Non-Discrimination. According to a LifeSiteNews story, this bill would “allow adult biological males to shower or change alongside young girls.” LifeSiteNews is a TWIT Award winner. You can read the rest of the story on their website.

Maybe we need separate restrooms just for bigots. The TWIT Award winning Illinois Family Institute, whose idea of “family” is obviously different from what I learned, has an article entitled, Disturbing Video Shows Risk to Girls and Women Posed By Co-Ed Restrooms and Locker Rooms. They do know that we have had transgender people among us for over half a century, and the “risk” they warn about never seems to actually materialize. You can read the story on their website.

Regular readers of The Week In Transgenderism know that Charlotte, North Carolina, recently passed an anti-discrimination act which protects LGBT people. The governor, several members of the state legislature, and now members of the county commission have threatened to pass a law overriding the new Charlotte anti-discrimination act. This earns them all TWIT Awards. A new study shows, to the surprise of nearly no one, that television news coverage of this is dominated by lies about what this would allow to happen in restrooms. So, a TWIT to all those television “news” outlets who let lies dominate their coverage. You can find the study at the Media Matters website.

A significant number of conservative websites, which purport to carry news, have stories about the American College of Pediatricians, who have come out with a study which claims to show the horrors of gender transition before puberty. Two things should be noted here. The first is that they say it is “peer-reviewed,” which might catch your interest. (In the words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) Secondly, if you look carefully at the name of the group, you will notice that this is the American College of Pediatricians. It may sound impressive, but actually, it is a small group of social conservatives who broke away from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the original and still much larger professional group. It is probable that the “peers” who reviewed this study are also socially conservative, and it is noteworthy that they did not acknowledge studies done by real scientists, nor are they up-to-date in what they are criticizing. (They still call gender dysphoria a “recognized mental disorder.”) A TWIT goes to the American College of Pediatrics, whose 200 members should be ashamed of themselves for trying to pull this charade. You can read some of the praise for this so-called study from the Illinois Family Institute and CSN news. The blog SlowlyBoiledFrog has more about this group.

A new study by J. Walter Thompson shows that 56% of 13 to 20-year-olds in the United States say that they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns. This is up from 43% of those about a decade older than them. Breibart, multiple TWIT Award winners, as usual, has given this their special twist. When the same study showed that 39% of boys self-reported that they “reject the ‘gender binary’ when shopping.” they used the example of boys buying high-heels or push-up bras, and thus conclude that these young people are lying to the survey-takers. It doesn’t occur to them that perhaps the boys are buying some makeup to cover their zits. You can read the whole article on their website.

Portions of this edition of TWIT were provided by Cecilia Barzyk.

Tags: Bemz Benedito, Caitlyn Jenner, Eddie Izzard, featured, Janet Mock, news, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, Transgender Archives, TWIT, Wachowskis

Category: Transgender Community News