The Week In Trans 10/15/18
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Amelia Marquez
Thursday was Coming Out Day, and The Advocate got twelve politicians to tell their coming-out stories. Two of the twelve are transgender people who are running for office this year: Amelia Marquez, who is running for the Montana legislature, and Christine Hallquist, who is running for governor of Vermont. Also included is Betsy Driver, an intersex individual who is running for a seat on city council in Flemington, New Jersey.
Gender “X” designation will come to New York City on January 1, 2019. Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the legislation which the City Council had passed. People will be allowed to choose between “M,” “F,” and “X” sex designations on their birth certificates and other documentation from the city, with a personal affidavit and a small fee. Mayor de Blasio said, “You be you. Live your truth, and know that New York City will have your back.” Reuters has this story.
Recently, a federal district court ruled that the state of Wisconsin had violated the Affordable Care Act when it specifically excluded transgender medical care from its health insurance plan. This week, a jury awarded Shannon Andrews $479,000 and Alina Boyden $301,000. You can read more in the Madison State Journal.
In connection with her role on the TV series Supergirl, Nicole Maines was profiled in The New York Times, interviewed in Mic, and appeared on The Ellen DeGeneris Show.
Haru at the resort.
If you are into video gaming you might be interested in looking at a short “visual novel” from Japan that can be played in a weekend. It’s called One Night, Hot Springs and is about trans woman who is invited by a cis female friend to go to a hot springs resort all expenses paid. That give the trans woman, Haru, an approach/avoidance conflict. She wants to go but she hasn’t done a physical transition yet. Learn more from The Verge.
In light of last week’s story of a transgender student at a Virginia middle school who did not know where to go during a lockdown drill, The Washington Post ran a profile of a transgender middle school student.
Teen Vogue has a video profile of 7-year-old trans kid Kai Shappley:
Recently, there were stories about a transgender prisoner in Britain who was accused of “sexually touching” other female prisoners, which was catalogued as a sexual assault. The prisoner, Karen White, has been sentenced to life in prison, and moved to a male prison. The Independent has this story.
Researchers in China recently attempted to make baby mice using parents of the same sex. Some of the mice with two mothers fared well, while others did not; the mice with two fathers did not survive long. Some very advanced gene-splitting technology was involved in making this happen; it will be a while before scientists know how to safely use this for human reproduction. The BBC has more.
Angelica Ross
Angelica Ross is using her celebrity from portraying Candy on the FX show Pose to promote her other venture as founder and CEO of TransTech Social Enterprises, an incubator fo LGBTQ people to use and gain technical skills. learn more from Vice’s Motherboard.
Although social media companies keep getting top grades on their treatment of LGBT employees, they keep getting entangled in problems which make LGBT users feel less welcome on those platforms. Samantha Allen of the Daily Beast takes a look at the problem and potential solutions.
One bit of advice that teachers often get regarding transgender students is to not tell the parents. If the teacher is aware that the parents already know, then it is fine to discuss their child’s transgender status with them, but it is not the teacher’s place to inform the parents that the child is transgender. Still, Madeleine Kearns of the National Review has worried about this. (Content warning: the National Review is a social conservative publication.)
Shangela
You may have heard of a film that came out last week called A Star Is Born. It stars two stars, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. It also has a supporting character that makes it of a bit more interest to us. Shangela, who you may recall from RuPaul’s Drag Race, is featured as the owner of a drag bar where Lady Gaga’s character sings. Learn more from The Daily Beast.
Jacob Anderson-Minshall writes in The Advocate about going through various at-home DNA analysis tests. One even had HPV testing, though he (a trans man who still has a cervix) had to identify as female to get that test. Some of these companies do need to make their language clearer for transgender people.
This comes from the “Huh?” file. A longtime expert on foreign policy for the conservative American Enterprise Institute who built a career there as a man named Thomas Donnelly is now living openly as trans woman Giselle Donnelly. Donnelly came out at the age of 65 after hiding her true self for decades. We put this in the “Huh?” file since the Institute is reported to be supportive of her transition. We wonder how the people she has to interact with on the conservative side of Washington will react to the change. Learn more from the conservative Washington Examiner.
Morgan McMichaels
Drag queen Morgan McMichael suffered a broken hand from punching a self-proclaimed Nazi in the face, according to Pink News. It appears to be self-defense, as the self-proclaimed Nazi had threatened to “slit your fa***t throat.”
Virgin Airlines has announced that, next June, they will have a “Pride Flight” from London to New York which will be staffed entirely by LGBT employees. The flight will also feature a DJ, Drag Queen Bingo, and a Judy Garland sing-along. Prices for the flight start around $500. Pink News has more.
In other drag queen news, a new drag act in Florida features the character of Lady Voldemort dancing to Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman. This act was featured in Buzzfeed.
GLAAD introduced a new book, Jack, Not Jackie. It is aimed at children ages 4 to 8, and is intended to be “a conversation starter about gender identity and expression, but more importantly, it is a story about love between siblings and wholeheartedly accepting people for who they are.”
Rouge
If you were a drag performer how long would you want your career to last. Normally at least two or three decades, right? How about almost nine decades of sequins and glitter? That’s what Australian drag queen Rouge celebrated on her 87th birthday. Rouge was in a show playing a male character when he was called on to take on a female role in the production due to the other actor’s inability to add sibilance to words. He had drag up for the role and Rouge was born. Learn more from the Australian Broadcasting website.
At the other end of the age spectrum we find Australia’s youngest professional drag performer, Miss Verity Von Queef. She is a 15-year-old who performs monthly at Gender Bender Bingo in Canberra. Get to know Miss Von Queef on the Into More website.
A feature film titled Death and Bowling is now in post production and the cast and crew is predominantly trans. Despite all the transgender people working on the film it is not about being transgender. The focus of the film is a multiracial, multigenerational bowling league made up of lesbian women coping with grief in one form or another. Gender identity plays a role in the film but it’s not the main focus. Learn more from The Los Angeles Times.
TWITs
Three police officers and a firefighter took pictures of a transgender person in Nashville, and they posted their pictures to social media. Five additional police officers, another firefighter, a dispatcher, and a teacher then shared those pictures. All this sharing was in the spirit of mocking the transgender individual. For shaming someone publicly, with no care for the person’s feelings, these public employees get a TWIT Award. This story comes from Scoop Nashville.
Mail on Sunday is the weekend edition of The Daily Mail. Last Sunday, it featured a story about a base at Paderborn, Germany, where three British soldiers have transitioned from male to female. The story is told in the usual Daily Mail style, with the number three spelled out in capital letters in the headline. As Pink News points out, Mail On Sunday was criticized for including the names of two of the soldiers (current names plus deadnames) as well as pictures of them and where they are currently stationed. For bad security procedures, Mail On Sunday gets a TWIT.
The Daily Mail also publishes a free newspaper called Metro. The paper is free because it sells ads that pay the bills. It sold a 40,000 pound ad to a nonprofit called “Fair Play For Women,” which is very much opposed to the updates to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 that the British government is currently consulting on. Fair Play For Women often says that gender self-identification will lead to men in the ladies’ room. They refer to trans women as “male-bodied people.” Even so, the staff of Metro found their ad did not violate the guidelines for the paper. For taking money from an obviously biased group, Metro gets a TWIT Award. Pink News reports that the Advertising Standards Authority is looking into the ad.
A transgender woman from Ireland was continuously misgendered by airline and security staff as she went from London to Dublin. Although Lilith Carroll corrected them, they continued to misgender her. They also made her show them her breasts. She has since received an apology from the airport, who says that they are looking into the incident. For unprofessional behavior, the staff of Ryanair and the security people get a TWIT The Irish Sun has this story.
TWIT is assembled by Cecilia Barzyk with additional content and editing by Angela Gardner. Care to make a comment on this post? Login here and use the comment area below.
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Congrats on the 87 year old Aussie queen, Rouge. In my 8/27 Diner column I had an item that said Guinness world records had crowned two 85 year olds the “oldest drag queens” but maybe they need to go further south and east to find the real record holder.