The Week In Transgenderism 12/8/14

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Maines

We told you last week that Nicole Maines won her case against the school district that made her use the staff restroom instead of allowing her to use the girl’s restroom. Now comes word that the court has imposed a $75,000 settlement on the school district to cover legal expenses and related costs. Read more from Rueters.

In other TG student news, the U.S. Department of Education has issued a 34-page memo that makes it explicit that federal law protects student’s decisions about their gender identity and makes it mandatory for schools to treat trans students consistent with their expressed gender. If this memo had been in effect when Nicole was being forced to use the staff restroom there wouldn’t have been a need to sue. Her family could have just contacted the Department of Education. Read more on the Time website.

Courtney Act

Don we now our gay apparel. Jackie Beat, Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska 5000 and Courtney Act are all in New York City this holiday season to perform at the Laurie Beechman Theater on 42nd Street. It will be serial Christmas themed shows all month long with each performer doing their own take on the holiday season. Will the shows be all holly jolly? Jackie Beat’s show features a song titled It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Syphilis. So, no. These shows are not for the kiddies. Learn more about the shows in The New York Times.

Some people are worried about the course drag performance has taken. It seems like performers such as Courtney Act are bringing back classic female impersonation since they look so much like women. To those people who are fans of drag because it is shocking and a mixture of the grotesque and the beautiful rather than a close approximation of femininity Drag Race winner Bianca del Rio is a shining star. Sometimes called the “Joan Rivers of drag” del Rio won Drag Race and the adulation of her many fans by lampooning ladylike things. Read all about her and her new show The Rolodex of Hate in The New York Times.

In Minnesota it’s time to pick a team and start playing! The Minnesota State High School League has voted to let transgender athletes join the sports team of the gender they identify with. The vote was 18-1 to let trans student athletes pick their team. The vote for the change came despite a vigorous campaign by opponents who fought tooth and nail to stop boys from calling themselves girls so they could take unfair advantage on a girl’s team. Right. The other objection was that girls would be forced to shower with boys. Their foolish lack of understanding has caused us to hand out TWIT Awards in the past. Today we say kudos to the League for doing the right thing. Read all about it at the Minnesota Public Radio website.

After the vote in favor of trans student athletes Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton called the campaign against the change “hate mongering” among other things. In other words he spoke like a leader who saw that the objections people were expressing had nothing to do with the reality of trans teen athletes. Read his remarks and view video on The Uptake website.

A trans woman in Cuba.

On November 24 we ran a post about Mariette Pathy Allen, who has been documenting trans people in photos since the late ‘70s, and her new book TransCuba. It seems she is not the only photographer who is interested in the transgender population of Cuba. Claudia González, a photographer who was born in Chile but raised in Europe has done a series of photos of trans people in a “before and after” format. The trick in this is to figure out which way the gender shift is going since none of the photos are captioned with any info on the subjects. Take a look at her work in the Daily Mail.

Padmini

India’s first transgender “newsreader” (in the U.S. a news anchor) Padmini Prakashi is the first trans woman to anchor a news cast in that country. She has had a successful career as an actress, is married to a man and is the mother of an adopted son. Her story will be familiar to any trans person who has had to live in a body that doesn’t match their gender but she has come through and landed on top. Now she is speaking out about the plight of many trans people in her country and calling for free sex-change operations. Learn more about Padmini Prakashi in the Daily Mail.

Back in November we told you about the debate at the Miami-Dade County committee meeting over extending their human rights ordinance to cover transgender people regarding discrimination in housing, public accommodation and employment. The vote of the full commission came last week and we can report that the measure passed by a vote of 8-3. Read the story and watch video at the Local 10 website.

A progressive Jewish denomination in the U.K. has set up an interfaith project to showcase the experiences of trans people. It’s a collection of photos, stories and films that document the experiences of over 40 transgender British people who are members of Abrahamic faiths. Read more about the project in Haaretz.

Panti Bliss accepting the award from Stephen Fry.

We mentioned previously that Irish drag performer Panti Bliss won the Irish Person of the Year award for her activism for LGBT rights. She picked up the award last week on a live broadcast during which actor Stephen Fry presented the award. Read more at Pink News.

The U.S. Army has decided to let two transgender veterans from New Jersey change their names on a military record. The form that veterans use to access their benefits is the DD-214. With the new ruling by the deputy assistant secretary f the Army Review Board veteran’s name on the form can now reflect their true gender. Read the story in the New Jersey Law Journal.

Binki

A drag performer named Binki called for a cab to take her home after a performance a couple of Sundays ago in Canada (you can’t walk home in heels like that) and when it arrived the driver wouldn’t let her get in. When she called to complain the cab company apologized and evidently sent another cab to take Binki home. The story is good because the cab company was on the drag queen’s side but the newspaper account is mildly annoying as they refer to Binki as “he” and “him.” Now many drag queens don’t mind that but… Read the article on the CBC News website.

We’ve mentioned this before but it seems that the producers of a new HBO show are still looking for their Southern drag star performer. The show is called Mamma Dallas and they need to cast a young, 20s to 30s something, drag queen who can play flirty, and upbeat. This could be your big break, doll face. If that’s you and you have the necessary personality and acting chops then you should read all about it in The Tennessean.

Flawless Sabrina

Drag history is ephemeral and too much of it has disappeared. Sometimes we’re lucky and people find things at rummage sales and flea markets, like old photographs of men dressed as women or posters from drag shows decades past. Sometimes the history of drag is just waiting in some old drag performer’s apartment. That’s the case with Flawless Sabrina (who is not completely flawless anymore) who is still alive and willing to share her trove of memorabilia and memories. Flawless is the person who is responsible for drag pageant that was filmed for the 1968 film The Queen. Her life is connected to the Amazon show Transparent since one of the producers is running a Kickstarter campaign to archive the trove of historical art, documents and artifacts Flawless has collected over many years. Read more in Slate. There’s more on Flawless on the Hyperallergic website.

Scotland now has a National Gender Identity Clinical Network that is aimed at improving gender identity clinical services for trans people across the country. The organization will work to achieve coordinated equitable access to gender reassignment, primary care, and holistic services. Read more in Kaleidoscot.

OMG! Millennials are not bound by society’s gender norms anywhere near as much as old people. A third of the people in the 14 to 34 demographic agree that gender doesn’t have to define a person the way it used to. You’re a guy and you want to wear nail polish? No problem. You’re female and feel good in a men’s suit? Go for it. On the one hand that’s great. They’ve been getting the message. On the other hand it means we’re heading for a society where anyone can wear anything. How will we be able to crossdress if there’s no gender norm? Read the article by NPR on the GPB website.

Meet Siobhan Ellis, a trans woman from Australia who is an enterprise services expert working for HP. She says that there are a lot of transsexuals in the information technology field but she is still treated differently when it come to job offers. Read about her in The Sydney Morning Herald.

TWITs

The anti-TG students in high school sports crowd was at it again in Minnesota before they lost the fight. The group most opposed to trans girls participating in sports on girls’ teams is the Child Protection League. The League mobilized their members to fight the inclusion of transgender athletes on high school teams using the meme that transgender athletes would be able “to take showers with your daughter.” They ran ads in newspapers in Minnesota hitting that point. Their last gasp before defeat was an ad saying that “males” will be taking female’s spots on teams causing young women to lose their chances at athletic scholarships and that would destroy girls’ sports. TWIT Awards to the CPL and to the paper who keeps running their ads. Read about it on the Minnesota Public Radio website.

Monica Jones the trans activist from Arizona who we reported last week was in court to appeal her conviction for “manifesting prostitution” in Phoenix wasn’t actually in court. Her legal team was there and she was in Australia. Jones had gone to that country to attend an international AIDS conference and then stuck around to do things related to her status as a social work student. Because of her conviction in the Arizona case the Australian immigration department revoked her visa and had her deported as a “possible threat” to the Australian community. We give a TWIT Award to the Australian immigration department. What kind of threat? The story is in The Guardian.

A religious-Zionist Jewish journalist in Israel forgot one of the rules of journalism when she hosted a talk show and had a drag performer on as a guest. Don’t let your prejudices intrude on the story. The drag performer was on the show to promote a children’s play in which he played a female character. Dropping any pretense of journalistic neutrality the interviewer said she would be “aghast” at the mere thought of taking her child to a show featuring a drag queen. A TWIT Award goes to “journalist” Emily Amrousy. Read about it in Arutz Sheva.

Tags: Alaska 5000, Courtney Act, drag, featured, History, Identity, Jackie Beat, news, Nicole Maines, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News