The Week In Transgenderism 3/28/16

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Jordan Gray

A trans woman from Scotland has made it to the finals of The Voice in the U.K. Her name is Jordan Gray and she is the first trans woman to reach the finals of the program. Gray came out as trans two years ago but has been a musical performer for ten years. Learn more about her in the Edinburgh News.

The Restroom Wars rage on but there’s good news from one battle. Last week a House committee in Tennessee held a hearing on the state’s proposed restroom restriction bill and after impassioned testimony from several trans youths the bill was tabled for further study. Learn more from the ABC News website.

Where did the Restroom Wars originate? We know conservatives are pushing back against what they consider “special rights” that let trans people use the facility of their choice but they are actually reacting to the idea of trans people having rights, of any kind, something that they can’t accept. And they use “information” that is not true to back up their attacks. Where are they getting it? It’s possibly the effect of radical feminism. So says one writer for Pacific Standard magazine.

March 31 is the International Transgender Day of Visibility. It’s a day to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of trans people while pointing out how much discrimination is directed toward us. A writer from PFLAG in California has eight tips on how to maximize the impact of the International Transgender Day of Visibility and you can find them on the YubaNet website.

Tossed out of rally.

A lot of the news recently has been about the level of violence that has erupted at rallies for presidential candidate Donald Trump. His followers and his campaign manager seem determined to root out and eject anyone they believe is there to protest or interrupt the proceedings. Middle Eastern looking people, black and Latino people, have all be subjected to attacks and removed. Last week at a rally in Arizona a trans woman was dragged out and the only reason she can imagine is that she was perceived as being trans. Get her story on the Salon website.

Dan Savage is a gay man who presents straight talk about sex on his Savage Lovecast program. Recently he got a question from a 26-year-old man who has being dating a trans woman. What he wanted to know was, if he didn’t enjoy going down on his pre-op girlfriend’s penis did that make him “innately transphobic.” We would say he just isn’t into that particular activity but wants to be a thoughtful lover. Savage told him to discuss it with his lady. Read more about his advice in Cosmopolitan.

Those who may be contemplating transition and vaginoplasty probably would like to get all the information they can on what to expect before they begin. Fortunately there are people who have undergone the complete male to female process and one of them answered questions, in detail, about all the aspects of surgical transition in an interview with the Truth Speak Out Project.

Once again a fashion and beauty publication has mined the fertile fields of professional drag queens to ferret out beauty tips that any woman, or trans person, can use to boost their beauty quotient. You can find one important tip and five different products that drag performers use to great effect in an article on the Bustle website.

RuPaul

RuPaul, the reigning queen of the drag world, has been around for awhile. She has been doing RuPaul’s Drag Race since 2009 and has launched the careers of many young drag performers. RuPaul is a Scorpio and in a recent interview her stinger comes out now and then. She has definite views on drag, gender, transgender, and the nature of reality. Read all of it, as long as you’re not too sensitive to “trigger words,” on the SBS website.

How do young people look at gender? It feels like they are more open to the idea that people can be gender fluid, not locked into a binary of absolutely male or female. To test that perception The Guardian asked young people around the world to write about their thoughts on gender. You can read how the young people responded to the survey on The Guardian website.

Trans activist and entrepreneur Angelica Ross has created a video series for the Human Rights Campaign called Let’s Talk About the T. The videos are produced by a trans crew and feature trans people on camera discussing trans issues. Learn more in the LGBT Weekly.

Amnesia Sparkles

Amnesia Sparkles is a self-identified crossdresser who was the first crossdresser to appear on American Idol in 2002. She is a web personality, makeup artist and photographer. She is currently engaged in pursuing her dream of traveling the country doing male to female transformations on eager men. She has done such makeovers in her New York City studio since 2013 but she’s hoping to take it on the road soon. Read all about it in The Huffington Post.

Can suffering for years living the wrong gender be bad for your mental health? Could rejection and lack of love make you mental? Sari L. Reisner, Sc.D., and her associates have compiled statistics concerning mental illness in young trans women. 41% had either a mental health diagnosis or a substance abuse problem, and roughly 20% had at least two psychiatric diagnoses. You can see more result from the study in Science Codex.

The U.S. government is trying to get health insurers to cover the cost of transition for transgender patients. The new provision, which has yet to be finalized, covers insurers “receiving federal financial assistance.” This includes insurance companies, state Medicaid agencies, and service providers, including hospitals. However, it does not include private companies which cover their own health care plans. Some of those companies feel that it is oppressive for the government to make such a demand. ABC News has more.

The U.S. Department of Justice has issued new guidelines which make the placement of prisoners more complex. This is especially true in the case of transgender prisoners. Factors beyond anatomy at birth are to be taken into consideration. The Guardian has this story.

Savannah Jackson

Australian financier Daniel Kertcher came out via Australian television as a trans woman named Savannah Jackson. The Sunday Night program produced a documentary on Jackson title Becoming Savannah. Learn more on Australian Yahoo.

In Japan, the national government provides health insurance, but that does not cover transgender health care. Patients have to pay for hormones and surgery on their own. A group called the Japanese Society of Gender Disorder is trying to change that. While they do what they can to press the government on the matter of insurance, they have certified nine doctors, some of whom are on their staff, as gender specialists. You can read about this in the Japan Times.

Caitlyn Jenner caused a stir when she came out as trans. The straight world was stunned (unless they were paying attention to the changes Bruce was going through on Keeping Up With the Kardashians) that a male Olympic athlete could become a woman. Various segments of the straight world took it in different ways. The trans world also was divided on how to view Jenner’s new gender. Some felt it was great that a well known celeb should come out. Others thought that Caitlyn was not representative of all trans women. Then Ms. Jenner had to come out as a supporter of Ted Cruz. Talk about controversy. Read about the fallout on Yahoo News.

TWITs

Rapper?

A woman in Alberta, Canada has posted a YouTube video titled Gender Bender that has drawn the attention of trans activists. The video proves that rap music as an art form is in danger. It features a white, Christian, Canadian woman rapping. If you can call it that. She also sings, which proves some people do need help from Auto Tune. The lyrics on one hand minimize the importance of legislation to stop trans kids from using the restroom they like, but on the other hand also minimizes the nature of being transgender. She raps at one point to the effect that they’re just kids and nature keeps animals in the proper gender. Her lyrics contain rhymes like “I am a concerned mother of three. Keep male and female washrooms where our children can pee.” She calls herself “Concerned” but “confused” and TWIT Award winner would be better. You can see her video on the Daily Mail website.

Janet Mock was scheduled to speak to students at Brown University but was forced to cancel her appearance. The cancelation wasn’t due to anti-trans bias at the school. It was due to the nature of one of the event’s sponsors, a group called Moral Voices. Moral Voices operates through the local branch of the Jewish group Hillel. So the liberal students who called for the cancelation are anti-Jewish? Find out what wins the TWIT Award for the students on the Arutz Sheva website.

Bieuruen Regency in Aceh, Indonesia has told beauty parlors that if they hire transgender people, they may lose their business licenses. This threat comes from those who are in charge of enforcing Sharia Law. A TWIT Award goes to this group, for using their position as enforcers of religious law to bully people who have a hard enough life without such a display of power.  The Jakarta Post has more on this.

Last August, a court in France granted a request by a man with “a micropenis” and “a rudimentary vagina” to be classified as a member of a third “neutral gender.” However, the case was reviewed by an appeals court in Orleans, which has ruled that the law has no provision for a third gender. The Local has more on this.

It’s the zombie horror movie that wouldn’t die: Return of the Anti-Trans Bigoted Bathroom Brigade.

Governor Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota recently vetoed a bill which would have forced transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their “birth gender.”  He said that he could see no pressing need for a law, and that if there were, Republican ideas hold that it would be better to solve the problem in a more local manner. Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina got a similar bill, passed by the state legislature in a special session this week. Rather than go with the Republican ideals of limited government and solving the problem at the most local level possible, he used the oppressive power of the state government to crush the city of Charlotte into compliance. For going against the stated principles of his own party in order to oppress transgender people, Governor McCrory gets a TWIT Award, and so do the members of the North Carolina legislature who voted for this bill. And a special TWIT to State Senator Tom Apodaca, who has asked his staff to find a way to make the city of Charlotte pay for the cost of the special session. The Charlotte Observer has this story.

A proposal by the Michigan Department of Education which recommends that trans students be addressed by teachers and staff with their chosen names and corresponding pronouns, and that students be allowed to use the locker room and restroom that they prefer, is being opposed fervently by GOP members of the state legislature. In particular the GOP members who control a House appropriation committee got so upset that they stripped a budget bill of all travel and per-diem funding for members of the Democrat-dominated State Board of Education. The TWIT Award winning GOP representatives say the proposal would take away the rights of parents and upsets the “privacy and safety of Michigan’s children.” Isn’t that the state with lead in the water supply? Are they keeping the children of Flint safe? Read about it in the Detroit News.

Up above we told you that the anti-trans restroom bill in Tennessee was defeated when a sub-committee sent the bill for further study. This just in: The bill was resuscitated by the chair of the committee which oversees the sub-subcommittee. A TWIT Award goes to State Representative Jim Coley, who would not take “no” for an answer, and also to those who went along with him. The Tennessean has more.

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

Tags: Amnesia Sparkles, Caitlyn Jenner, featured, Jordan Gray, news, RuPaul, Savannah Jackson, Transgender, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News