The Week In Trans 12/18/17

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B’e Noj

Guatemala’s first Reina Indígena Trans is Aquetzali B’e Noj, a 26-year-old drag queen from Huehuetenango, Guatemala. The title means Indigenous Trans Queen and B’e Noj was given that title in September as part of an effort by the LGBTQ rights group Positive People to improve services for Guatemala’s indigenous trans population. Learn more from NBC News.

It has been known for some time that transgender people have problems with the health care system. A study by Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota puts a number on that. Transgender people are 60% less likely to have health insurance when compared to the general female population. More on this study can be found at WSMV-TV Nashville.

Dr. Maurice Garcia made The Week In Transgenderism recently, when he announced that he would bring his practice to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. He is profiled by the Huffington Post.

Arial Trampway

This past February the Hard Rock Hotel in Palm Springs, California hired drag performer Arial Trampway to produce a drag show in the lobby of the hotel in an effort to reach more gay customers. After successful shows in the lobby area up to October the hotel suddenly decided to move the show to a space on the second floor. Ms. Trampway not only cried foul but has filed a lawsuit claiming that the hotel had become concerned that people would think it was a “gay property.” Get the dish from the Desert Sun.

Those of you of an age will remember George Carlin’s classic routine, “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television.” The Trump administration has come up with a new list of seven terms that it forbids, but they are forbidden from use by the Centers for Disease Control. The banned terms include “fetus,” “diversity,” “science-based,” and “transgender.” The apparent hope is that banning these terms will make the CDC drop studies into areas where these terms would be used, but that isn’t likely to happen. The Huffington Post has the story. Ms. Bob Davis found more on the story from The Washington Post.

Danica Roem

Danica Roem got elected by not focusing on trans issues. She instead stuck to issues of concern to residents of the district she won. Her main issue was improving traffic flow on Virginia’s Route 28. That may not seem that difficult but you need to know that traffic on that highway is subject to gridlock on a daily basis. Traffic backs up for miles. Roem has a solution that she believes will alleviate the backups but the transportation authority, which has been studying the issue for a long time, says her idea won’t do much good and will cost a lot of money. Will Roem be able to deliver on this campaign promise? Read more about it in the Denver Post.

A transgender woman was found shot to death in Houston. Debarione Seals is the twenty-sixth transgender person to be murdered in the United States this year. Fox 26 Houston has more on this story.

An intruder broke into Casa Ruby, an LGBT center in Washington, D.C., and attacked a transgender client with mace. The victim was taken to a hospital in ambulance and is doing fine. The attacker got away, but police have video of the incident. You can read more in the Washington Blade.

Daniela Vega

A Fantastic Woman has received a nomination for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globe Awards. The movie stars transgender actress Daniela Vega as a widow who has to fight her deceased husband’s children for his estate. It is also on the short list for Academy Awards nominations in the foreign film category.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected a request from the Justice Department to delay implementation of the order to begin accepting transgender recruits into the military on January 1. Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted that the military has had a year and a half to prepare to accept transgender recruits, and she noted that the Justice Department took their time in filing this request. The Washington Post has this story.

The Justice Department is not done fighting to keep transgender recruit out of the military. They have filed a request with the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, again asking to continue the ban on transgender recruits. The Justice Department argues that the military should not have to change its policy when it is still conducting studies which could lead to a different policy. Could that problem have been avoided by doing the studies before changing the policy? This report comes from Politico.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed with Judge Kollar-Kotelly and District Judge Marvis Garbis, finding the ban to be arbitrary and without merit in study. This latest ruling against the ban came in the case being tried in the state of Washington. The Associated Press has this story.

Coral DeVille

Last week London based drag queen Coral DeVille was turned away from a Mariah Carey concert. Why? Because she was in drag. What kind of world are we living in when a queen can’t go see a concert in her hottest outfit? Carey is an LGBTQ+ icon, or so they say, and it is believed by most that she knew nothing about the rebuffed queen. Read all about it in Metro UK.

Although the military will accept applications from transgender recruits beginning on January 1, The Daily Beast wonders how many will sign up. There is the possibility that a further court decision could permit the government to remove all transgender people from the military, ending that career and possibly making it hard to get another job. Also, the requirement that transgender recruits be “stable in their gender” for eighteen months before signing up is will keep some people out, while perhaps making others shy away because they worry if they fit that vague description.

Two of the Trump Administration’s choices for federal judgeships have been effectively rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee. One of those whom the White House was told to “rethink” is Jeff Mateer, who once said that transgender children were part of “Satan’s plan.” The Washington Blade has more.

With the current political climate in the USA there are some places it is not safe to travel while being LGBTQ. While most of our large cities are fairly safe (you don’t run much more in the way of risk than straight people do) there are areas of the country where people have a bad attitude about other humans who are not exactly the same as them. A woman with a trans partner of color writes about her experience down south. Find the article in The New York Times.

Dan (L) and his fiancé.

The Daily Mail reports that an “entire family” in Arizona has come out as trans. The Mail is known for playing up the sensational side of trans stories but they do get the pronouns correct in their article about Daniel Harrot, a trans man, his trans woman fiancé, and two children who identify as the opposite of their birth sex. Read their story on the Daily Mail website.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation abruptly cancelled a showing of the BBC documentary, Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best from its Documentary channel this week. The program, which the BBC aired in January, presents “experts” who use outdated studies to push the idea that a huge percentage of transgender children desist and become cisgender at some point. The CBC wrote a story about the backlash to the announcement that they would show this documentary, while the National Post notes that one of the “experts” interviewed for the program is Dr. Kenneth Zucker, who was fired from his position at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto because his views were “out of step with emerging practices.”

The majority of crossdressers enjoy the way high heels make their legs look longer and tilt the pelvis so that the derrière is more prominent. Those are also the reasons that many women wear high heels. Sadly the desired effect is oft times hampered due to shoes that are not well made or well fitted so that foot pain impedes our ability to walk in them with confidence. Where did these semi-torturous devices come from? Will they ever cease being fashionable? Get some foot wear facts in an article in The New York Times.

Riley Del Rey

U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham has been accused of firing an intern in her office because the intern was a trans woman. The fired intern alleges that she was routinely reprimanded for inappropriate attire which she deemed to be professional. The former intern, Riley Del Rey, claims that when her trans status became known to the representative her internship was terminated. Get all the details on the story from the Santa Fe New Mexican.

More than 60 businesses in Wisconsin have signed on supporting the inclusion of transgender people in the states nondiscrimination law. Wisconsin was the first state to protect lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations but they have not yet added gender identity to the list of those protected. Learn more in the Wisconsin Gazette.

TWITs

The Liberty Council is suing to stop the city of Tampa from enacting a ban that would prevent licensed therapists in the city from practicing “conversion therapy.” The law only holds within the city limits, and it only effects licensed therapists. The people who would practice “conversion therapy” are religious councillors, who are generally not licensed as therapists. They do not seem to have a client who is a licensed therapist and who wants to use conversion therapy on patients. For using the concept of “religious liberty” to push junk science, the Liberty Council gets a TWIT Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

The National Health Service in Britain has a new survey for school children. There are some questions in the survey about gender identity, which children as young as ten are being asked to fill out. Of course the Daily Mail has turned this into a new rant. For continuing to hold to outdated ideas, the Daily Mail gets a TWIT Award.

A teacher who was put on suspension for referring to a pair of students as “girls” when one of them identifies as male is suing the school, saying that the suspension is a denial of his deeply-held religious beliefs. Now, the man has said that the incident was an accident, and that he apologized for it. So, is he now saying that he was “accidentally” practicing his deeply-held religious beliefs? For inconsistency, Joshua Sutcliffe gets a TWIT. His story appears in the Sun.

One News Now reports that Elaine Donnelly, the president of a group which calls itself the “Center for Military Readiness,” complains that a court overturned Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military. To show how up-to-date she is, she acknowledges only the decision of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (whom she does not name, calling her “[t]he Washington, D.C district judge”[sic]). Two other judges have issued similar decisions, but this expert seems to either not know about them or just ignores them. Her comments indicate that she believe that the Department of Justice is not doing enough to defend President Trump’s order. It is not that the Department of Justice is not doing enough; it is that nothing that they do is persuasive to any of the three courts. For misunderstanding what is going on, Elaine Donnelly gets a TWIT Award.

Roy Moore refuses to concede that he lost the election for Senate to Doug Jones. He defended his refusal to concede in a four-minute video, in which he complained about “the right of a man to claim to be a woman and vice versa.” Moore is nowhere near close enough  in votes to Jones to trigger a recount. For refusing to accept reality, and for blaming everyone but himself for his loss, Roy Moore gets a TWIT. Joe My God has this story.

What is it about some segments of humanity that leads them to viciously attack people who don’t conform to their standards? Desmond Napoles is a 10-year-old drag queen who started his journey into glamor at the tender age of two when he would use towels to create a dress and wig and slip into his mother’s pumps to sashay around the house. Desmond has a Facebook page and it’s got pictures of all of his public drag outings going back to 2015. Last weekend 150 hateful trolls invaded his page where they accused his mother of exploiting him, that Desmond looks like “he’s slow” (he actually is autistic) and “has AIDS” and imply that his mother is a Democrat. Desmond’s mom says the page is meant to be a scrapbook for his drag adventures and she wonders why, as do we, adult humans should be so offended by his existence. We hereby hand out 150 TWIT Awards to the trolling twits who attackrd Desmond’s page. Read more on the Hornet website.

TWIT is compiled by Cecilia Barzyk with additional material and editing by Angela Gardner.

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Category: Transgender Community News