The Week In Transgenderism 5/20/13

Vet Autumn Sandeen

A transgendered veteran has had her Navy records updated to indicate that she is a woman. Many TG vets may not be aware that they can have their records changed, get updated Certificate of Release or Discharge and get an updated military ID card. And while transgendered people still can’t serve openly in the armed forces TG activists view this as a first step toward that goal. Read about it in the Daily Mail.

There’s another high school graduation controversy caused by a TG boy who is being told he can’t attend graduation unless he wears the girl’s white cap and gown. The school, St. Pius Catholic school, is sticking with the letter of the law saying that since the boy’s birth certificate still says “female” so he has to graduate that way. Read more at The Raw Story.

Transgendered economist Deirdre McCloskey is being honored by The Competitive Enterprise Institute at their annual dinner. McCloskey will appear at the dinner along with keynote speaker Rand Paul. That’s right CEI is a libertarian think tank. Their choice of McCloskey has left some conservative columnists asking “WTF?” Read about the ripples in the conservative media in Mediaite.

Dr. Michele Angello

A familiar name to long-time readers of TGForum is Dr. Michele Angello. Dr. Angello, a clinical sexologist and gender specialist, has written several columns for TGF over the years. Her name is now appearing in press reports because she is publishing her first book, On The Couch With Dr. Angello; A Guide to Raising & Supporting Transgender Youth. The book comes out in the third week of June. Read a review of the book on the hysterically named website O-blog-dee-o-blog-da. Congratulations Dr. A!

A transgendered woman in Hong Kong has won a court appeal and will now be allowed to marry her boyfriend. The court decision is a major step forward for TGs in Hong Kong since now the marriage laws will have to be amended to allow TGs to marry. Read about the decision at aljazeera.com.

Iceis Rain

Our Meet the Drag Queen article this week comes to us from the rough and tumble oil sands region of Alberta, Canada. It’s a place where men are men, women are women and their drag queen is a happy lady. Why? Because she’s the only drag queen in town and she appears at one of the town’s hot night spots hosting karaoke. The trucks in the parking lot may all be sporting truck nuts but the men are there to see Iceis Rain on stage. Iceis is preparing to go national with a singing career. Read all about the queen of Fort McMurray, Alberta and a documentary that she appears in at noisey.vice.com.

Sorrawee

In Thailand a former Miss Tiffany, drag performer Sorrawee, has had her implants taken out and foresworn the world of glamor and heavy eye makeup to become a Buddhist monk. Of course there are those who claim that Miss Tiffany 2009 is only doing it for the attention. He could be doing it for sincere religious reasons. A girl doesn’t get her implants out just for publicity. Check out the story in The Nation.

Jinkx Monsoon

The winner of the latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race is a feisty redhead named Jinkx Monsoon. Like the storm she’s named for she swept into the competition and proceeded to clean up in all the weekly challenges. We mentioned last week that she has an off Broadway show coming up. A few weeks back she was in Philadelphia, Pa. for a live appearance at a club. While she was in town she sat down with Philadelphia Magazine for an in-depth interview. Check it out on the PhillyMag website.

Sometime drag queen and friend to drag queens in NYC for over 30 years, Michael Musto (who I once made pose for a photo at Wig Stock) was laid off by The Village Voice. The move came last week and it’s attributed to the paper’s desire to attract younger readers. All good things come to an end so Musto is now a former weekly columnist. You just know Musto will pop up again in pop culture and he’ll be working with queens. Read about it in NewNowNext.

TG Sunshine Girl

Many of the tabloid newspapers persist in the sexist practice of featuring feminine eye candy on one of their pages and calling them “Page 6” girls or, in the case to Sun Media papers in Canada, the “Sunshine Girl.” For newspapers it’s a free feature since there are always women who will submit their photos so there’s not a lot of work to do in picking a woman to feature. So not that we’ve established that it’s just sexist and wrong we must congratulate the Sun Media papers for making a transgendered woman their Sunshine Girl. Amelia Maltepe submitted her photos and she was picked and published on May 10. While there has been some outcry over a TG Sunshine Girl the paper has stood by their choice saying that “She’s cute and we ran her photo.” Get the news in Xtra.

While transwomen who want to be published as tabloid paper cheesecake girls have now made a big advance in Canada other areas are not so advanced. TG activists in that country are upset because there is still no national protection specifically for transgendered people in the country’s Human Rights Act. So you can be in the paper or work on stage in an oil sands area bar but you’re open to discrimination and harassment with no legal recourse. Oh Canada. Oh Canada. Get the story in The Telegram.

Here in the States, Nevada is the latest state to add “gender expression and identity” to its current hate crimes law. The bill became law last month but the additional protections for transgendered people was added on May 14. Get the story on the HRC Blog.

In Ohio it’s still legal to fire someone, evict them from an apartment or otherwise discriminate against GLBT people. But they’re working on it. The Equal Housing and Employment Act is on the state legislature’s agenda, again. Read all about it in Gay People’s Chronicle.

Claire at the BAFTAs

Grayson Perry, the crossdressing artist/potter/tapestry weaver and television host from England was honored last week with a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for his three part series on “taste.” Not tasting food but looking into the various kinds of British style. Perry wove his art into the show by making tapestries to represent the lives of the people he interviewed for the show. He accepted the Specialist Factual Programme Award as his femme self, Claire. Bravo Claire. The story is in the Chelmsford Weekly News.

TWITs

The government of the country of Cameroon (next to Nigeria in Africa) gets the first TWIT Award today. In 2011 two transgendered women were arrested at a police checkpoint. They were arrested because the police thought they were biological males dressed as women and that indicated that they were engaged in “homosexual conduct” which is illegal there. After forcing them to sign “confessions” the two TGs were railroaded into five year prison sentences. In January or this year they were freed on appeal when the appeals court found that they were convicted on trumped up charges. Now the government is appealing the appeals court ruling in Cameroon’s Supreme Court. Enough already Cameroon! Leave those women alone. That get’s the prosecutors and officials a big, fat TWIT Award. Read abou the case at the Human Rights Watch website.

The second TWIT Award goes to the security guards at The Paisley Centre, a shopping center in Paisley, Scotland. They stopped a transsexual woman from using the women’s toilet facilities telling her that she couldn’t as there had been a complaint. Complaint or no, the law in Scotland makes it illegal to discriminate against or harass a transsexual person. We’re confident that The Paisley Centre will no doubt rue the day its guards interfered with a transwoman’s toilet rights. In the meantime she’ll have to do her shopping at Paisley’s Piazza shopping center. Get the story from the Paisley Daily Express.

Tags: crossdressing, drag, featured, Iceis Rain, Jinkx Monsoon, news, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News