The Week In Transgenderism 1/19/15

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“3rd gender”

Thailand, famous for it’s ladyboys, is getting around to finally recognizing their “third gender” citizens in the country’s constitution. There was reason to worry when Thailand was taken over by a military junta but it seems that the military is allowing a Constitution Draft Committee to create a new governing document and the right to not be male or female but something else is being included. Read about it on keyt.com.

You can tell there is a rise in awareness of trans people in the U.S. Of course there are several television shows but you know there is a real movement toward greater acceptance of trans people when business starts to take notice that not everyone is cisgendered. Read an article about why it’s good business for companies to have a diverse workforce in Time.

Dr. Rachel Levine

The incoming governor of Pennsylvania Tom Wolf has appointed a trans woman to his cabinet. Dr. Rachel Levine will take the position of physician general. She is a a Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and is also the chief of that institutions Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders. Learn more about Dr. Levine in Philadelphia Magazine.

The show Glee has not shied away from presenting trans characters. Now they have added a FtM trans man to the show. The coach came out as trans in a recent show. This may cause some upset in the trans community as the actor playing the coach is female. Whether we hear any cries of “They didn’t hire a FtM actor for the part” it’s a good thing that such a popular show exposes their viewers to trans issues with a positive message. Read more in the Daily Mail.

Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts has a student-run theater group that has staged a production of The Vagina Monologues every year for the past 20 years. This year they won’t be mounting the production on Valentine’s Day as they have in the past. Why? They took a survey and feedback from the student body, which now includes trans women, said that the play was not inclusive of trans women. Learn more on the Fox News website.

Captain Winterbourne

It was while deployed in Afghanistan that Captain Hannah Winterbourne made the decision to transition from male to female. She started the process in 2013 and today she is in charge of over 100 soldiers in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. She is also the only trans soldier in the British Army. Read her story in the Mirror.

Puberty blocking drugs were in the news last week. The drugs are used to suppress the hormonal changes that begin the development of secondary sex characteristics in children who don’t identify with the sex they were born into. That gives them a chance to keep their bodies from changing and allowing them to decide which gender they will live in for the rest of their lives. Critics call it child abuse. Read about it on the BBC website.

A new study has found that the wiring in our brains differs depending on whether we think of ourselves as male or female. It seems that transsexual brains process signals somewhere in between of male and female brains. Read all the scientific details on the World Science website.

The Russian bear has rolled over on the ruling that would have kept transgender people from driving cars. Last Wednesday officials there said that being a transsexual would not mean that a person would be denied a driver’s license under new rules aimed at keeping Russia’s roads safer. The new rule banned people from driving is they had one of a host of conditions and diseases. Transsexuality was on the list. Find out why trans people in Russia may still be able to drive in a story on the Reuters website.

Josou exhibit.

Did you know the Japanese have a word for male to female crossdressing? They do and it’s josou. A Japanese josou specialist who has done what we’d call transformations for over 1000 men has a photo exhibit in Tokyo this month called Progression and happiness theory of Josou. Read more and see some photos from the exhibit at RocketNews24.

In 2012 Massachusetts passed an equal rights law that made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity. Hurrah! But, at the last minute legislators stripped out the “public accommodation clause. That means that a restaurant in the state my not refuse someone a job based on their gender identity but they could refuse to serve a trans customer, or deny them the use of the restroom. Now they’re working on getting the law amended to include public accommodation. Get the story in The Boston Globe.

The former Prime Minister of Japan made news headlines last week when he appeared in a parody of West Side Story playing the role of Rosario, a fictional U.S. president who is the country’s first female head of state. The show is called Waist Size Story. Learn more about it in Pink News.

Eddie Redmayne will play Lili Elbe

The actor nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything is known to be very devoted to getting everything right in his portrayals. He went through all sort so pains, literally, to play Hawking. Now he is slated to appear in The Danish Girl, the film film that has been “in pre-production” for years, as Lili Elbe, the first person to undergo reassignment surgery. He is putting just as much effort into learning all he can about femininity as he did to become Hawking. The report we found is a bit snarky, almost TWIT worthy, when they make a big deal out of him “learning to walk in high heels.” Read the story at u.tv.

If you are trans and you have to wee wee in Weho you should know that a new law makes all the single-stall restrooms in local businesses gender-nuetral. Yay! Of course Weho is West Hollywood and it’s loaded with gender rebels. We always assumed you could use any single stall restroom in that town with only a slight chance that you might confuse someone when you walked out of the men’s room in a mini skirt and high heels. Now it’s official. Learn more about the Los Angeles suburb’s restroom ordinance in the Independent.

Kate, Grayson & kids.

Grayson Perry, the crossdressing artist, potter and television personality in England was in the news agains last week. He was in a “battle of the little black dresses” with none other than the Duchess of Cambridge herself. Kate, who is six months pregnant with her second child, wore a fashionable LBD but Perry’s frock got more attention. Find out what they were up to on the ParentDish website.

After pressure from the Atlanta trans community the police department has agreed to rewrite it’s standard operating procedure for how police interact with members of that community. Get the details from the WABE website.

Moon Baby

Can a drag artiste rise to international fame in Pittsburgh, Pa.? (Well sure, Sharon Needles did it.) One performer is working on it and she got some press in the local paper last week. Her name is Moon Baby and she is not a lip syncing diva who work the local clubs. She’s a musician and singer who appears in performance spaces doing original music. Check out her story in The Pittsburgh City Paper.

TWITs

We’ve tried to steer clear of the “Bruce Jenner is a TG” stories when we assemble TWIT but now we just have to include this one. A magazine has put Jenner on their cover made up as a women and wearing a colorful scarf over a dress. The photo is a total Photoshop creation and the so-called “story” is that Jenner is planning to come out as trans with a cover story in The Advocate later this year. We issue a TWIT Award to InTouch Weekly for trying to shock people with a celebrity gender change. Read about it in another news outlet that’s looking for readers with their story about the InTouch story. It’s the Inquisitor.

A state senator in Kentucky has advanced a proposal that if passed by the legislature would require trans students to avoid school restrooms, locker rooms and showers that don’t correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth. His big concern is minor children observing members of the opposite sex in “various states of undress.” He is an idiot. And he’s getting a TWIT Award. There is more about Sen. C.B. Embry’s proposal that is idiotic. Read about it in The Washington Post.

Good morning spots fans! Greg Anthony, a CBS and Turner Sports analyst, has been suspended from his jobs after being busted in a prostitution sting in Washington, D.C. It is alleged that Anthony had a predilection for trans sex workers. We’re issuing a TWIT Award to the culture we live in that finds the idea of trans sex workers some how worse than cisgender female sex workers. And the whole idea keeping the “world’s oldest profession” illegal is pretty TWIT worthy, too. Read about Anthony at Larry Brown Sports.

The ruling by the South Dakota High School Activities Association that allows trans students to participate in sports on teams of the gender they identity with is in danger. A legislator has decided to offer legislation that would make the Association’s ruling null and void. No doubt to protect student athletes from seeing trans people in the locker room. A TWIT Award is given to Rep. Jim Bolin, R-Canton, for being a reactionary oppressor of trans people. Get the story in the Argus Leader.

While the British Army may welcome trans soldiers into the ranks there are other armies not so open minded. No, we’re not talking about the Untied States Army. At least they’re thinking about it. The Serbian Army is the military organization collecting this TWIT Award. They tossed out a major who had served “half her life” in the army after shows diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Read the story in The Guardian.

Tags: Dr. Rachel Levine, Eddie Redmayne, featured, Hannah Winterbourne, josou, Lili Elbe, news, puberty blockers, Thailand, TWIT

Category: Transgender Community News