The Week In Trans 1/8/18

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Paris Lees

British broadcaster and model Paris Lees has become the first trans woman to be featured in the pages of British Vogue. Lees wore a black Yang Li dress and posed among a group of women considered to be a new breed of suffragettes. Learn more about the story on the ABS CBN website.

The previous U.S. administration housed some transgender prisoners according to their preferred gender, rather than biological sex. The current Justice Department has begun to take steps to do away with that, starting with a settlement in a lawsuit by a cisgender female prisoner in Texas. The Dallas Morning News has this story.

U.S. Federal District Judge Jorge L. Alonso has denied a pretrial motion to force a school district to deny transgender students access to restrooms and changing rooms at schools in the district. This decision is partly the result of a previous decision in the case of the Kenosha, Wisconsin school district, and that case is in the same circuit as this case, so its outcome has bearing on this case, as Art Leonard explains.

Candidate Jenifer Rene Pool.

There are five trans candidates running in the Democratic primaries in Texas. Three trans women and two trans men are running for the nomination in several races. Learn more from Out Smart Magazine.

Roger Beasley Mitsubishi in Austin, Texas, was sued by a former employee because the dealership outed the former employee as transgender. In court, lawyers for the dealership tried to defend the action as “free speech.” The magistrate who reviewed the motion in the case has dismissed the claim of “free speech.” You can find more about this case in Gay Star News.

January 2 came without an emergency court order, so transgender people are indeed signing up for the U.S. military. While Buzzfeed found one instance of a transgender person being told that he was not allowed to enlist, that situation was soon corrected with a call to the recruiter and an apology to the enlistee. Other than that, applications are being accepted.

A trans woman in Michigan who used to work as a female impersonator in the 1970s now is a preacher. Selena Little was ordained at the Full Truth Fellowship of Christ Church by Pastor Ronchele Andres in 2012. Today Little is a member of the ministerial team at Whosoever Ministry United Church of Christ in Grosse Pointe Farms and is preaching across the state. Learn more from the Pride Source website.

In his new book Fire And Fury, Michael Wolff says that Donald Trump tweeted the ban on transgender people in the military out of the blue. There certainly was no foundation laid (such as a study that recommended against allowing transgender people to serve openly), but the ban did come in response to a vote in which members of the House of Representatives tried to stop the Department of Defense from funding gender confirmation surgery. You can refresh your memory of this by reading this article in the Advocate.

Alexandra Chandler

Alexandra Chandler is a military analyst and a transgender woman. She is also a candidate for the U.S. Congress representing a district in Massachusetts. Newsweek ran a profile of her.

A transgender preteen in northern California recently went through a naming ceremony at an Episcopal church. KTUV-TV has this story.

Although discussions of a change to the Gender Recognition Act have stalled in the British parliament, the Scottish government has begun consultations, and hopes to have a bill ready in March. They plan to model their bill off similar legislation in Ireland, which has gone without a hitch. You can read more in Pink News.

A court in Germany has determined that a transgender woman cannot be listed as the mother of a child. The child was conceived with frozen sperm that had been stored for the transgender woman before she underwent a gender transition. According to the high court of Germany, that makes the transgender woman the father, not the mother, of the child, and the birth certificate should reflect that. Deutsche Well has this story.

La Prohibita

A Spanish drag performer named La Prohibida was on a float in one of Madrid’s Epiphany parades in the Puente de Vallecas district last Friday. The float was proposed by a gay rights group and was meant to defend “diversity and equality.” Conservative politicians protested that the inclusion of a drag queen in the parade was disrespectful to the Catholic faith. Read the story in The Guardian.

There have been precious few large-scale studies on transgender children, in part because there have been few sources for the data that such studies need. Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould and Dr. Anne Gadomski of Bassett Healthcare Network in upstate New York have started such a database of information using their patients at the Gender Wellness Center. The patients and their parents are encouraged to supply the information for this database. So far, the response seems to be good. The Daily Star has more on this.

The Center for Communication Disorders and Differences at Rocky Mountain University of Health Profession in Provo, Utah, set up a clinic to help transgender students learn to speak like a member of their preferred gender, and the response has been better than anticipated. There is now a waiting list for this service, according to the Provo Daily Herald.

Funko RuPaul

This is big! Finally you can now get a Pop! Vinyl figurine of RuPaul. And not only the hostess of Drag Race has been immortalized in vinyl. You can also pick up Alaska and Trixie Mattel figurines. They’re made by Funko and sadly don’t look that much like the humans they represent. But, who wouldn’t want them? Learn a bit more on the NewNowNext website.

The New Museum in New York City has an exhibit entitled Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. The exhibition looks at the role of gender in modern art and culture. The exhibit runs through the end of January. Out Traveller has a story on the exhibit, while the museum’s website can be found here.

In the midst of debate about whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete against people of their preferred gender, the LGBT International Powerlifting Championships has created a third category, one specifically for people who are transgender, non-binary, or intersex. Gay Star News has this story.

Nong Rose Barnjaroensuk

The Star ran a profile of a Thai kickboxer who happens to be transgender. Nong Rose is about to go to France to compete.

In Britain, one expert has recommended that physical education classes include such feminine exercises as ballet and zumba, as Pink News found.

WSVN-TV in Miami profiled a local transgender woman who is homeless but still attends beauty college. Lala Diior sleeps in a park in Fort Lauderdale.

A mother in Britain has set up a support group for parents of transgender children. Mienna Jones started a Facebook group for local parents of transgender children, called “Acceptance.” The group now has members from all over the U.K. Recently, the families took the step of meeting in London. This story is in The Huffington Post.

Desmond is Amazing

New York drag kid Desmond is Amazing is said to be establishing the “first ever drag house exclusively for kids who are doing amazing drag.” The “house,” called Haus of Amazing, is only online at this time but the hope is that it will become a real place where drag kids can hang out, exchange makeup tips, and meet other kids who are into glamor. Learn more on the Life Site website.

Regular readers of The Week In Transgenderism know that there is a support group for transgender children and their parents in Britain. It is called Mermaids, and its CEO, Susie Green, wrote an article for Gay Star News, about the need to support transgender children as certain elements of the media continue to publish nasty pieces that play to the worst fears of some people.

VIZIN

A cover version of the Sylvester song You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) has made the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart in the number 26 position. It was recorded by a Native American drag queen named VIZIN (pronounced vision). That’s not all that is interesting about VIZIN. Learn more from the Hornet website.

While Susie Green was fairly diplomatic about the media stories, transgender activist and model Munroe Bergdorf lashed out at some elements of the British media for the way that they cover transgender people. Pink News covered her remarks.

To illustrate the bias of parts of the British press, The Sunday Express wrote an article last week in which they expressed shock and the displeasure of people who found that transgender women were allowed to use a women’s only swimming area — including its changing room. A much more even-handed account appeared in a local paper.

Melissa Ede

A transgender taxi driver from Hull won 4,000,000 pounds on a lottery scratch ticket. Melissa Ede bought the ticket with change at a filling station. She has an idea of what she wants to buy. BBC News has her story.

TWITs

A Russian television program called Sputnik (which, for those too young to remember the first satellite launched by humans, translates as “fellow traveller”) made fun of the U.S. military for accepting transgender people. They even launched the “t-bomb” in making fun of the American military. For mocking diversity, the people on Sputnik get a TWIT Award. Pink News covered this.

LifeSiteNews has published a piece by Doug Mainwaring in which he claims that courts that do not accept President Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military are “undermining the Constitution” and more specifically eroding “the power of the Commander-in-chief.” Of course, when President Obama asked the military if it could accept openly transgender people, people at LifeSiteNews insisted that the courts had to stop him. For hypocrisy, LifeSiteNews gets a TWIT. The article can be found here.

We mentioned above that Judge Jorge Alonso denied a motion to forcibly change the policy whereby transgender students can use restrooms and locker rooms of the gender with which they identify. This was done on the recommendation of a magistrate, who examined previous rulings that are binding on this district. Nonetheless, the Illinois Family Institute, who is helping the plaintiffs who filed the motion that was denied, calls Judge Alonso a “Worker of Lawlessness” in their article on the matter. Judge Alonso is a veteran of the legal system, who has been given his position because of his expertise in the law. The author of the article presents no legal credentials of her own. For bombastic rhetoric in an area in which no expertise is established, the Illinois Family Institute gets a TWIT Award. Their website has the article in question.

According to the Washington Times, Planned Parenthood is entering into transgender medicine as the number of abortions dip and they close clinics. First, Planned Parenthood has been engaged in transgender medicine for some time. They may be expanding their services in this area, but they have been doing this for some time, so the verb “enters” is inaccurate. Further, abortion has always been a very small part of what they do. Beyond that, if they are closing clinics, it is likely to have more to do with safety or lack of donations than with a downturn in abortions. For very sloppy reporting, the Washington Times gets a TWIT Award. Here is a link to the story.

TWIT is assembled by Cecilia Barzyk with additional content and editing by Angela Gardner.

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Tags: Alexandra Chandler, Desmond is Amazing, featured, La Prohibida, Lala Diior, news, Nong Rose, Paris Lees, Selena Little, Transgender, TWIT, Vizin

Category: Transgender Community News