• Sen. Cory Booker calls out Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo on LGBT rights
• Newly-elected Alabama Sen. Doug Jones became the latest co-sponsor of The Equality Act citing his son Carson’s coming out as affecting his view on LGBTQ rights
• Out UK diverTom Daley speaks out against Commonwealth anti-gay laws
• Matt Bomer’s casting in upcoming film trans-oriented ANYTHING gets boos from transgender community
• And the latest political parody from Randy Rainbow – “You Can’t Stop His Tweets”
All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report.
• 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 EastSiderswas 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.
• 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?
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.
“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.
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.”
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.
You can take performance enhancing drugs and still be an athlete, just not in the Olympics. pic.twitter.com/HkJjzXzUGm
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.
Each morning I pray to set aside everything I THINK I know, so I may have an open mind and a new experience. I understand and regret the hurt I have caused. The trans community are heroes of our shared LGBTQ movement. You are my teachers. pic.twitter.com/80Qi2halN2
In the 10 years we’ve been casting Drag Race, the only thing we’ve ever screened for is charisma uniqueness nerve and talent. And that will never change. pic.twitter.com/0jsyt6MRvO
so @Rupaul point blank lied in that apology. Casting ALWAYS asked about hormones transitioning etc tellin girls to get off mones/delay transitions til after taping. Ask the dolls. She’s trying to save face and even Mathu’s touch couldn’t save it now
• 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 Womanmade 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.”
• 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.
• 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.
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.
I am canceling upcoming public appearances because I have given enough. I have given beauty, in return I was VERBALLY ASSAULTED for two full minutes @BNBuzz by an actor paid to verbally assault a woman who has been terrorized by your system. And no ONE in that room did anything
And everyone from my publicists, t assistants, managers and every person sitting in their chairs frozen by their weakness, a weakness called COMPLICITY. The truth is you all failed me. Again. And again. And again.
I would like an apology from the manager of the Union Square @BNUnionSquareNY and all security people, and the audience, who did nothing and let the paid verbal assault of an assaulted woman happen. Cool?
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.
• 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:
