Tag: transgender

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News Round-Up: March 22, 2018

(via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• First, it was Superman star Henry Cavill going all clean-shaven. Now, one of my favorite InstaHunks, Alex Abramov, (above) is teasing his followers writing, “Trim your scruff!” #KeepTheFur

• LGBT series EastSiders was nominated for 6 Daytime Emmy Awards including Outstanding Daytime Digital Drama Series, Outstanding Writing & Directing for creator and star Kit Williamson and Outstanding Actor in a Digital Daytime Drama Series for Van Hansis.

• San Francisco Airport plans on renaming one of the terminals after gay rights icon Harvey Milk.

• CNN president Jeff Zucker went THERE calling out competitor Fox News as “state-run TV.” He added, “It is a pure propaganda machine, and I think does incredible disservice to this country.”

• Two separate research teams believe they’re found links between genetics and being transgender.

• Emmy Award-winner Lena Waithe covers the latest Vanity Fair in style – her own style. Hit the link because if you don’t know her yet, you will love the uber-talented out writer actress after.

At the recent Black Women in Hollywood Awards, she told the crowd, “Being born gay, black and female is not a revolutionary act. Being proud to be a gay black female is.” Now, how you not gonna love that?

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Trans Model Included In UK Ad Campaign Targeting Period Shame

A new ad campaign from Pink Parcel looks to remove the stigma surrounding menstruation, and included in the spots is transgender male model, Kenny Jones.

Titled the ‘I’M ON’ campaign, the ads will encourage women to talk about their periods and hopefully remove negative perceptions about periods.

Jones, who was identified as a girl at birth and named Kelsey, shares how he coped with his periods when transitioning having come out as trans at the age of 14.

Before beginning hormone blockers at the age of 17, the London-based model continued to have periods every month.

Via The Independent:

“During my transition I did have to deal with experiencing periods each month and many of the negative stereotypes that can come along with it,” Jones said. “Assuming periods are inhibiting to people tends to perpetuate period shame even more, and makes people even more reluctant to talk about them.

“I always found the fact that no one seemed to openly talk about periods quite difficult and made me want to hide mine even more. That’s why I wanted to be involved in the I’M ON campaign.

“We need to encourage everyone to talk about periods, whether they experience them directly or not. Sparking conversation is the first step to normalising periods within society.”

A recent survey of 2,000 British adults showed 34% of Brits see periods as a taboo subject, and a 25% feel embarrassment during their period.

Surprisingly, 50% say they have never spoken to their partner about periods.

Watch a report below on the new campaign.

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Trans Pioneer & Stonewall Activist Marsha P. Johnson Finally Gets NYTimes Obituary

Marsha P. Johnson

Twenty-six years after her death, Marsha P. Johnson, transgender pioneer & Stonewall activist is finally being recognized by The New York Times.

Noting that obituaries in the Times have long been dominated by white men, the new series Overlooked includes a lengthy paean to Johnson honoring her groundbreaking activism on behalf of the LGBT community.

Marsha P. Johnson was an activist, a prostitute, a drag performer and, for nearly three decades, a fixture of street life in Greenwich Village. She was a central figure in a gay liberation movement energized by the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn. She was a model for Andy Warhol. She battled severe mental illness. She was usually destitute and, for much of her life, effectively homeless.

When she died at 46, under murky circumstances, in summer 1992, Johnson was mourned by her many friends, but her death did not attract much notice in the mainstream press.

In the years since, however, interest in her legacy has soared. She has been praised for her insistent calls for social and economic justice; for working on behalf of homeless street youth ostracized by their families for being gay or otherwise not conforming to traditional ideas about gender; and, later, for her advocacy on behalf of AIDS patients. Some have called her a saint.

Although the term transgender wasn’t in wide use during her lifetime, Johnson identified by a rotating list of labels from gay, transvestite or simply “queen.”

In a 1992 interview, Johnson declared, “I was no one, nobody, from Nowheresville, until I became a drag queen.”

In a life long riddled with strife and conflict, Johnson was known to live her joyful exuberance even as she worked for LGBT acceptance.

“As long as gay people don’t have their rights all across America,” she once said, “there’s no reason for celebration.”

Read the full, well-deserved profile at The New York Times.

(h/t The OUTfront)

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RuPaul’s “Apology” Doesn’t Sit Well With Trans Community

RuPaul

RuPaul recently got into a kerfuffle with the transgender community when he told The Guardian he would “probably not” include a transgender woman who had fully transitioned to compete on the Emmy Award-winning reality show.

“You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing,” he said. “We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”

As the trans community took exception with the remarks, Ru seemed to pour gasoline on the fire with a tweet that seemed to compare transgender drag competitors to doping athletes.

Alexandra Billings, a transgender star of Amazon’s Transparent, stepped into the fray with a message to Ru via Instagram which read, “Dear RuPaul, You did not invent drag. We did.”

I’m not an expert on drag, so I do have a question:

My understanding is drag is about illusion. Separately, transgender women are women. So, where would the illusion be in trans women competing in a drag competition?

Ru issued a Twitter apology today that didn’t include the word “sorry,” and folks were not calmed by the choice of words.

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News Round-Up: March 5, 2018

Some news items you might have missed:

• Man Crush Monday – Fitness model Quin Bruce (above) has pretty much mastered the “far-away wistful gaze.” #woof

• According to a national tracking survey, support for LGBTQ people across the country has fallen for the first time in four years.

• Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine and Harvard University have found transgender people are increasingly opting for gender confirmation surgery. From 2000 to 2014, researchers found such surgeries have increased fourfold.

• Chilean film A Fantastic Woman made history last night at the Oscars as the first film with a main transgender storyline and starring an out transgender actress to win at the Academy Awards taking home the statue for Best Foreign Film.

• Donald Trump’s self-determined deadline on a legislative fix for “Dreamers” came and went today. The courts stopped the government from deporting “dreamers” but, what now?

• The always ethereal Lana Del Rey covers “You Must Love Me” from the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita.

Sir Andrew penned the song specifically for the film and went on to win the Oscar for “Best Original Song.” I’ve always felt the new tune helped Madonna take home the Golden Globe for Best Actress for her performance as “Eva Perón.”

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News Round-Up: February 22, 2018

Joe Manganiello (via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• Talk about #ThrowbackThursday – how about 18-year-old Joe Manganiello’s first professional headshot (above)? #Woof #Handsome

• The acclaimed revival of Angels In America starring Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield begins performances at Broadway’s Neil Simon Theater tomorrow night. This groundbreaking LGBT-centric play is a “must-see.” Use code “World” to get a discount and see this deeply moving theatrical experience.

• Broadway luminaries Norm Lewis and Brandon Victor Dixon will join John Legend and Sara Bareilles for the upcoming TV presentation of Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter Sunday.

• Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir will share hosting duties with NBC sportscaster Terry Gannon for NBC’s coverage of the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics on Sunday.

• The Kansas Republican Party has endorsed a resolution that opposes any recognition of the transgender community, while still claiming to respect the “dignity” of LGBT people.

• Platinum selling recording artist BØRNS recently released the new video for “I Don’t Want You Back” from his latest album Blue Madonna.

I recently shared his collaboration with Lana Del Rey, “God Save Our Young Blood” here. I like the moody, atmospheric quality he brings to his sonic landscape.

Listen below and let me know what you think.

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Rose McGowan’s Bookstore Meltdown After Being Called Out By Transgender Woman

Rose McGowan

Rose McGowan, who has been central to the #MeToo movement for coming out about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein, recently made an appearance at a New York City Barnes & Noble promoting her book, Brave.

The book addresses the women’s issues she’s been a part of for several years, and along the way congratulates herself for being, well, “brave.”

But the bookstore appearance took a left turn when a transgender woman stood up asking McGowen to address comments she made on RuPaul’s podcast, What’s the Tee? with Michelle Visage.

The woman began:

I have a suggestion. Talk about what you said on RuPaul. Trans women are dying and you said that we, as trans women, are not like regular women. We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. There was a trans woman killed here a few blocks [away]. I have been followed home —.

From there the situation went from zero to 60 in one second. McGowen flipped out cursing at the trans woman, yelling, “What have you done for women?”

“Don’t label me, sister. Don’t put your labels on me. Don’t you fucking do that. Do not put your labels on me. I don’t come from your planet. Leave me alone. I do not subscribe to your rules. I do not subscribe to your language. You will not put labels on me or anybody. Step the fuck back. What I do for the fucking world and you should be fucking grateful. Shut the fuck up. Get off my back. What have you done? I know what I’ve done, God damn it.”

And it kind of went downhill from there.

McGowan has now cancelled her book tour and attacked her own team for not protecting her.

You can watch the exchange below. There are four clips in the post, but 2 and 3 seem to repeat. I’d heard about the incident but you have to see it to believe it.

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News Round-Up: January 29, 2018

(via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• One last shot from the Atlantis Cruise I was on last week. This from Preston Brock previewing his costume for the “Call of the Wild” dance party. #BullsArePrettyWild

 • A transgender soldier will be the guest of Congressman Joe Kennedy (D-MA) at Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

• Josh Weed, a gay Mormon who in 2012 told the world he was happily married to a woman, has announced his opposite-sex marriage has ended in divorce saying that a platonic marriage is no substitute for true intimacy and romantic love. The couple also issued an apology to the LGBT community:

We’re sorry to any gay Mormon who even had a moment’s pause as they tried to make the breathtakingly difficult decision that I am now making—to love myself fully for exactly what God made me—because of our post. We’re sorry for any degree that our existence, and the publicity of our supposedly successful marriage made you feel “less than” as you made your own terribly difficult choices. And we’re sorry if our story made it easier for people in your life to reject you and your difficult path as being wrong. If this is you, we want you to know: you were right. You did the correct, brave thing. You are ahead of me in the sense that you have progressed through things I have yet to progress through. You listened to your gut and to God and did a brave, brave thing. Now I’m following your example.

• House Republicans have voted to release a Republican penned “memo” meant to discredit the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller even though the Justice Department recommending examing the document first.

• NBC News reports that Donald Trump angrily called now-fired Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe when he saw dismissed FBI Director James Comey taking a federal plane home to Washington from Los Angeles after being sacked. During the call, Trump allegedly asked McCabe how his wife felt being a “loser” after falling short in her for state office in Virginia. #WhatEverHappenedToClass?

• Check out this moving coming-out story by BBC correspondent and grassroots footballer from the UK, Richie Anderson, to his teammates:

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News Round-Up: November 25, 2017

Nyle DiMarco (via Instagram)

Some news items you may have missed:

• ICYMI, Dancing with the Stars/America’s Next Top Model champ Nyle DiMarco served up quite the Thanksgiving meal, but I’m not sure which meat Instagram fans were checking out…

• Four Democratic U.S. senators have introduced the LGBT Elder Americans Act, which seeks to expand services for LGBT seniors. The legislation would designate LGBT seniors as a vulnerable population as well as establish the National Resource on LGBT Aging.

• Authorities estimate that a record 10,000 shiny, happy LGBTs and allies marched in this year’s Hong Kong Pride parade.

• Transgender healthcare facts: 31% of transgender Americans lack access to regular healthcare. 22% of transgender American avoid doctors out of fear of discrimination.

• This Reddit user tells the world he hooked up with a “10,” and since he sees himself as a “6” he couldn’t handle it. I remember experiencing this myself once. Read his story here.

• A new docu-series coming to HBO, 15: A Quinceañera Story, follows five Latina girls from different backgrounds as they celebrate their 15th birthdays. The first segment chronicles the story of Zoey, a transgender girl, who lives in Los Angeles and dedicates her Quinceañera to her trans-godmothers, who never got to have one of their own.

Premieres December 19 on HBO. Watch the trailer below.

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2017 Transgender Day Of Remembrance #TDOR17

The year 2017 is already the deadliest year on record for transgender people with at least 25 trans homicides reported so far.

Transgender Day of Remembrance began in 1999 thanks to as a way to honor Rita Hester, a trans woman murdered inside her Boston apartment in 1998.

A vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death, and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Observed every November 20, the day is meant to honor the memory of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.

Click here for a list of those trans people we’ve lost to violence this year.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued this statement in observance of Transgender Day of Remembrance:

On Transgender Day of Remembrance, the United States honors the memory of the many transgender individuals who have lost their lives to acts of violence.

Transgender individuals and their advocates, along with lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex persons, are facing increasing physical attacks and arbitrary arrests in many parts of the world. Often these attacks are perpetrated by government officials, undermining the rule of law.

Transgender persons should not be subjected to violence or discrimination, and the human rights they share with all persons should be respected.

On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, the United States remains committed to advancing the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons. These principles are inherent in our own Constitution and drive the diplomacy of the United States.