In the News (with pictures & videos)

[Betty]

Transgender model to star in reality show

E! Canada has ordered eight episodes of the new series Brave New Girl, which will follow Talackova as she relocates from her hometown of Vancouver to Toronto in order to advance her modeling career.

“I’m so happy to sharing my life with the E! viewers,” said Talackova in the E! press release. “It will be fun letting the world watch as I take the next steps in pursuing my dreams.”

Slated to begin filming in Toronto this summer, the series will also devote screen time to Talackova’s entourage, including documentary filmmaker Elena and fellow model Dajana.

Originally born Walter Talackova, the lanky blonde model began her gender transition at age 14 and completed sex-reassignment surgery at 19.

Talackova made worldwide headlines last year when she was disqualified from participating in the Miss Universe Canada pageant by Donald Trump, the owner of the pageant brand. After bringing lawyer Gloria Allred, Talackova was reinstated into the competition by Trump. Although she failed to reach the top five finalists, she was one of four contestants awarded the title of Miss Congeniality.

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[Betty]

Rally for transgender bride who was refused service at bridal shop

Almost 100 people rallied in front of a downtown Saskatoon (Canada) bridal shop to support a transgender woman who says she was refused service.

"I am damn glad to see all these people here supporting me," Rohit Singh Peace said in an interview Saturday afternoon in front of Jenny's Bridal Boutique.

Some in the crowd carried signs with slogans such as "Trans rights are human rights" or "Respect trans rights."

Singh Peace, a native of India who came to Saskatoon in January 2010 to pursue her master's degree in biotechnology, said she went into the store with her then-fiancee, Colin Peace, on April 21.

Singh Peace said she was not allowed to try on wedding dresses because she was a man.

"I was pretty angry to be brushed off like that," she said.

Singh Peace and Peace went to several other shops and were treated well, she said. They ended up selecting a gown from another Saskatoon shop, Mylynh Bridal and Sew. The couple were wed in a Unitarian Congregation of Saskatoon service April 29.


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[Betty]

Gender-Neutral Bathrooms

The University of Massachusetts student government unanimously supported a new policy that would include gender-neutral bathrooms in all new campus buildings as part of the university's "commitment to creating a supportive and inclusive campus environment." While the students' would like such facilities to be included in all university buildings, it recognizes that retrofitting the buildings might not be feasible. In those cases, it supports the current university policy, which allows students to use the restroom designated for their gender identity or to use the gender-neutral bathrooms in each dorm and choose dorms with gender-neutral showers.

That policy, though, the student government argues, is not as sufficient protection for trans-gendered students. The speaker for the student government, Joey Nguyen, noted that transgendered students have been harassed in university bathrooms. The students believe that the inclusion of gender-neutral bathrooms as a choice – not a requirement – could help those students.

[Betty]

Transgender tenant's rights

Question: "I have been renting an apartment to a man named Michael, who recently asked me to start calling him Michelle because, he says, he now identifies as a woman. He has also started wearing makeup and women's clothing.

Both the name change and the change in dress make me uncomfortable, and I'm worried that it may make my other tenants want to leave. At least one of the other tenants has commented about the "freak" in Apartment 201 and has asked me if the "freak" has any plans to move out."

---

Answer: The applicable fair housing laws prohibit discrimination based on gender, which includes gender identity. As a landlord, you are obligated to treat each prospective or current tenant the same, without regard to their gender or gender identity.

This tenant must be called Michelle, regardless of the name she initially listed on her rental application and regardless of how you personally feel about her gender identity. If you continuously and intentionally call her by the name and pronoun that does not correspond to her gender identity, you may be liable for gender discrimination and unlawful harassment.

If you terminate Michelle's tenancy because you or your other tenants feel uncomfortable with transgender people, that action would also constitute discrimination, even if some of those tenants threaten to leave if you do not terminate Michelle's tenancy.

You may not take adverse action against Michelle to satisfy the discriminatory demands of another tenant, even if it means you lose that tenant's business. Further, if you become aware of any other tenant harassing Michelle because of her gender identity, you have an obligation to take action to stop it.

You may want to contact your local fair housing agency to inquire about training that may help sensitize you to civil rights.

[Betty]

First transgender MP seriously ill

 The world's first transgender MP, New Zealand's Georgina Beyer, is seriously ill with chronic kidney failure.

Beyer had been about to announce her candidacy in the Wellington mayoral election. She has not confirmed if she will no longer stand, but her illness means she has to have dialysis four times a week for the rest of her life, unless she gets a kidney transplant.

'I'm sure as hell not going to sit back and think, "woe is me",' said the 55-year-old in an interview with Woman's Day magazine.

'I refuse to be defeatist. This health issue has cast a huge shadow, but I'm going to be positive and proactive.'

Beyer had gender realignment surgery in 1984 and worked as a prostitute in Wellington for a brief time afterwards. She stood for election as a Labour MP in the 1999 general election and won a usually right-leaning electorate in Wairarapa, becoming the world's first openly transgender MP. In 2007, she resigned from parliament.

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[Betty]

Pediatricians support transgender student’s use of girls bathroom

The president of the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics said Friday that “a transgender girl needs to be treated like any other girl” and should be allowed to use the girls bathroom at school.

Dr. Steve Feder, a pediatrician in Boothbay Harbor and Damariscotta, said in a telephone interview that the Maine Supreme Judicial Court should recognize that gender identity is internalized and not simply a matter of physical characteristics, especially for transgender children.

The physician said that his organization has joined a “friend of the court” brief in a case pending before the state supreme court. Other groups who signed onto the amicus brief are the Maine Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers-Maine Chapter, Trans Youth Equality Foundation, the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Downeast and Southern Maine chapters of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

The case concerns a transgender student’s (Nicole Maines) use of the girls bathroom at schools in Orono.

“We would like [the justices] to recognize that from a medical and mental health perspective gender identity is internalized,” Feder said. “It involves more than hormones and external genitalia. Gender identity is a mixture of those things and that is well recognized in the literature.”

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[Betty]

Transgender Sports Columnist Comes Out

Mike Penner, longtime writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has come out in the paper as a transsexual, Christine Daniels.

"Today I leave for a few weeks' vacation," Penner wrote in a column that ran on Page 2 of the Times sports section "and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation.

"As Christine.

"I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them."

In the column, Penner describes the mental anguish as he came to grips with what he had been fighting for more than 40 years: "As extensive therapy and testing have confirmed, my brain was wired female.

"A transgender friend provided the best and simplest explanation I have heard: We are born with this, we fight it as long as we can, and in the end it wins.

"I gave it as good a fight as I possibly could. I went more than 40 hard rounds with it. Eventually, though, you realize you are only fighting yourself and your happiness and your mental health -- a no-win situation any way you look at it."

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[Betty]

Civil Services for third sex

The results for the civil services examination that were out yesterday have a fine blend of achievers - men, women and even physically challenged. But the country's top bureaucracy is not yet open for transgenders. One such civil services aspirant from Madurai is taking on the government head on, demanding equity.

When she was 18, Ms Swapna's parents chased her away from home just because she was a transgender. She begged on the streets to pay for her studies to realise her dream to become the first transgender to clear the IAS. But after graduation, a rude shock awaited her. Civil Services had no place for the third gender and she had to apply only as a female candidate.

"The application form offers only two options, male and female. When I received my admit card for the preliminary exam I wasn't comfortable. I'm not a female and how can I be forced to assume that sex. I was also worried, what if a flying squad member drags me out of the hall saying I'm cheating?" she told NDTV.


The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) that conducts these exams turned down her RTI petition asking her to approach the government. But Swapna has decided to pursue the issue. "Canada and Thailand have recognised transgenders as the third sex. They even train them to participate in the next Olympics. But in India we still let transgenders beg," she said.


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[Betty]

Author Went From Dad to Mom

As James—a dark-haired man with a “feminine streak” who was a teacher of literature and a fan of Grateful Dead music—he met and fell in love with his wife, Deedie, in his late twenties, and soon became a father to their two sons. But James was harboring a secret: He was transgender, and, in his heart, had never truly felt male. He suppressed the notion for several years after marrying Deedie, but it eventually racked him with debilitating anger and sadness.

“I used to tear my hair out thinking, when you have children, you’re not only living for yourself,” Boylan told Yahoo! Shine in an interview this week. “I was willing to bear a pretty heavy burden that meant keeping the people around me safe, but I got to the point where I couldn’t take another step living a life of falsehood.”

And so, beginning when his sons Sean (now 17) and Zachary (now 19) were about 3 and 5 years old, James, with Deedie’s eventual blessing, began the major, at times heart-wrenching transition to become Jenny. It was a four-year process that began with a difficult conversation with Deedie when James was 44, and culminated with surgery to become a fully physically female (Though the “transition doesn’t end with surgery. And surgery is not the most important thing,” she stresses). Boylan wrote about her transition in what became a best-selling 2003 memoir, “She’s Not There,” landing her on Oprah and making her one of the most recognizable trans individuals in the country.

Now the professor of English at Colby College in Maine and author of a dozen books has published a follow-up to that memoir, “Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders,” exploring what it means to have been a father for 6 years, a mother for 10, and, “for a time in between, neither, or both.”

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[Betty]

I guess I won't be tuning in Alex Jones anymore. He's finally totally lost his mind

Alex Jones Says Transgender People will Vomit & Crap All Over The Place

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones went on a rambling, transphobic rant during his radio show, warning that protecting the rights of transgender people will cause them to start "vomiting and crapping all over the place."

During the April 30 edition of his radio show, Jones launched a screed against the "globalist mafia," which he blamed for efforts to reduce discrimination against transgender people. After claiming that he isn't bothered by transgender people - but that their "fake rights" don't exist - Jones warned that "transvestites" would "throw up all over the walls" in public bathrooms. "I don't want my daughters growing up in a country where some transvestite walking around hopped out of their brain on drugs vomiting and crapping all over the place."

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