Trans News Worldwide

[smalltownguy]

Great -keep the news coming!

thanks

[smalltownguy]

13th May 2019

Transgender National Lottery winner Melissa Ede dies at 58

A taxi driver who won £4 million on the National Lottery has died, her fiancee has said.
Melissa Ede, from Hull, died on Saturday evening according to Rachel Nason and plans are now being made for her funeral. Her death came a week after she showed ‘classic signs’ of a heart attack with crushing chest pains that left her unable to breathe. Speaking before her death she said ‘I really thought my time was up’. Melissa became a millionaire in January 2018 on a Blue Scratchcard. Melissa revealed that she had her lungs x-rayed, several blood tests and her heart monitored during a five-hour stay in hospital.

She said: ‘It does make you think. While I was laid on the bed with ambulance people around me, you do start to think “s**t what is this all about?. What am I doing, I have just won £4m and I’m going to peg it?”I need to be doing more in life.’ Melissa told the Hull Daily Mail said she thought the health scare may have been a wake-up call for her. She said: ‘I need to start doing some of the things I have never had chance to do while I can. ‘I am sat here now thinking how lucky I am. Maybe it is a wake-up call to take better care of myself.’ In December, Melissa spoke about plans to have a face lift and nose job along with dental work to fix her smile. Speaking about her win she said: ‘All those people who say money doesn’t buy you happiness are talking a load of rubbish’. She also spoke openly about being transgender. She said: ‘I’m not scared because my gender reassignment surgery absolutely terrified me but it is the best thing I ever did.’

[smalltownguy]

May 20, 2019

Breaking: Men Can Have Babies


#Babies #Transgender

NBC News has some big news for all the young dudes out there. (It’s Monday. You can forgive me one Mott the Hoople reference.) If you’re a man, you can get pregnant and deliver a baby. But you’re facing some unfair challenges because the medical community isn’t really up to speed on the whole situation and they will probably make some mistakes in your prenatal care. Here’s part of the coverage in this breaking story.

The situation described in the article is a case of taking the whole transgender moment and spinning the dials up to eleven. The husband in this marries is a biological woman – or just a woman if you prefer – and the wife is a male. So when the husband went to the doctor to talk about conceiving, mistakes were made. And the couple feels that this is a sign of a lack of sensitivity, empathy or something else on the part of the medical community.

This has led to what the author describes as cases of “misinformation and discouragement ” in the transgender community. They blame it on a lack of research or the “inherent bias” of some doctors against them. While I’m neither a doctor nor an actor who plays one on TV, I have a third possibility I’d like to offer for consideration.

Perhaps some doctors are unsure about the prognosis or not up to date on all the latest research because you’re delving into areas that are very new and completely foreign to medical science. Stuffing women full of testosterone for years on end, so they can look like men, isn’t something the medical community has had to grapple with for very long. And we haven’t been doing it long enough or to a large enough sample of patients suffering from gender dysphoria to have a firm grasp on what all of the downstream effects might be.

Similarly, there are some doctors out there who are injecting prepubescent children with cocktails designed to stave off puberty, sometimes for years on end. (How these doctors are not in jail remains a mystery to me.) Yes, there is some data out there, but certainly not the volumes of medical information spanning decades and centuries that we rely on for more normal medical procedures.

We’re playing Dr. Frankenstein with human bodies in the name of supporting a politically correct theory of medicine while abandoning centuries of confirmable science. Mistakes will be made. And I don’t just mean the mistake of performing these procedures in the first place. If you want to volunteer to be a science experiment for this social reconstruction project, please give the doctors a little time to catch up in their mad scientist laboratories. As you’ll recall, things didn’t work out well for Frankenstein on the first go either.

[smalltownguy]

27 May 2019

World Health Organization removes transgender from list of mental disorders

This will have a 'liberating' effect on trans people worldwide

The World Health Organization (WHO) has made history and removed transgender from its list of ‘mental disorders’.

The WHO approved the major change to its global manual of diagnoses on 25 May 25. It comes after WHO introduced it as a change last year in the latest. International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The ICD is described as ‘the international standard for reporting diseases and health conditions’. The latest revision is known as ICD-11.

On 25 May WHO’s World Health Assembly voted to make the revision. That revision no longer recognizes gender non-conformity and transgender as ‘mental disorder’.

Human rights and trans advocacy groups celebrated the move after years of campaigning for change.

‘The WHO’s removal of ‘gender identity disorder’ from its diagnostic manual will have a liberating effect on transgender people worldwide,’ said Graeme Reid, LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

‘Governments should swiftly reform national medical systems and laws that require this now officially outdated diagnosis.’


Basic human rights

HRW pointed out that governments around the world had used the previous classification as the basis for discriminatory policies. Those policies require diagnosis and sometimes other medical procedures, such as sterilization, before transgender people are recognized before the law.

Governments often require a ‘gender disorder’ diagnosis as a precondition for changing transgender people’s names and gender markers on official documents. Advocates have argued that diagnoses imperils basic rights like work, education, and travel.

Dr Jack Drescher, a member of the ICD-11 working group, wrote: ‘there is substantial evidence that the stigma associated with the intersection of transgender status and mental disorders contributes to precarious legal status [and] human rights violations’.

The process for legal recognition of gender identity should be separate from any medical interventions, HRW argued.

‘Transgender people are fighting stigma and discrimination that can be traced in part to medical systems that have historically diagnosed expressions of gender non-conformity as a mental pathology,’ Reid said.

‘But it’s the stigma, discrimination, and bullying – and not anything inherent in gender nonconformity – that can inflict mental health problems in transgender people.’


Intersex

But in the same assembly, the WHO also managed to enrage the intersex community.

More than 50 intersex organizations released a joint letter condemning the (WHO) for classifying traits as ‘disorders of sex development’.

‘We urge WHO to open an immediate, public and transparent dialog with intersex advocates and experts, to work with us to dismantle decades of torture and ill treatment in medical settings,’ said Mauro Cabral Grinspan, executive director of GATE.

‘Intersex people around the world have the right not only to be protected from pathologization, but also to have full access to reparative justice and to universal health coverage.’

[smalltownguy]

4th June 2019

Transgender woman's body pulled from Texas lake is latest in string of deaths

The Dallas police department asks FBI for help in multiple open investigations into attacks on transgender women

Police in Dallas have asked the FBI for help after the latest murder of a transgender woman in the city raised questions about the possibility of a serial attacker.

A game warden pulled the body of Chynal Lindsey from a lake last Saturday evening, two weeks after Muhlaysia Booker was fatally shot and found lying in a street.

The Dallas police chief, Reneé Hall, said that Lindsey’s body showed “obvious signs of homicidal violence” but did not reveal a cause of death during a press conference on Monday in which she urged the local transgender community to be vigilant.

“We are concerned, we are actively and aggressively investigating this case and we have reached out to our federal partners to assist us in the efforts,” Hall said.

An FBI spokeswoman said the agency was “prepared to assist” if evidence emerges of a potential civil rights violation.

At least eight transgender people have been reported killed in the US this year – all of them black women.

The Dallas police department has multiple open investigations into attacks on transgender women in addition to the deaths of Lindsey, 26, and Booker, 23, whose body was discovered on the morning of 18 May.

In April a woman was repeatedly stabbed and left for dead, police said, but survived; a 29-year woman, Brittany White, was fatally shot in a vehicle in October last year; and a victim’s remains were discovered in a field in July 2017, in an incident police classified as an unexplained death. The decomposed body of Shade Schuler was found in a field in July 2015. The case remains unsolved.

Asked if the string of deaths could be the work of a serial killer, Hall said: “Right now we don’t have the evidence to substantiate that.”

White Rock Lake in north-east Dallas, where Lindsey was found after being spotted by a passerby, is a short drive from the address where Booker was discovered.

Police in Dallas have asked the FBI for help after the latest murder of a transgender woman in the city raised questions about the possibility of a serial attacker.

Booker was beaten in a sustained attack in front of a mocking crowd about five weeks before her death. Cellphone footage of the assault, which happened after she was involved in a minor car accident at an apartment complex, went viral, and Mike Rawlings, the Dallas mayor, decried “what appears to be mob violence against this woman”.

A 29-year-old man, Edward Thomas, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault but police said there was no evidence connecting him with Booker’s death.

Lindsey’s cousin, Tamaya Seaphus, told WFAA local news that Lindsey had a gentle personality and grew up in the Chicago area before moving to Texas about six years ago. “This was a person that I had never seen mad,” she said. “Not aggressive, not violent.”

[smalltownguy]

June 10, 2019

2 transgender groups clash in Meerut, police use baton charge

Two groups of transgenders clashed in Meerut city of Uttar Pradesh in country India on Monday over their area of operation, police said.

The incident occurred in the afternoon when a group entered an area to collect 'badhai', a tradition where they sing, dance and offered money, and a rival group intervened. There was an argument that was followed by a clash over their area of operation, the police said.


When the police reached the spot, there was a scuffle between the personnel and the transgenders. Police baton-charged the two groups to disperse them, an officer said.

Nine transgenders have been arrested, the officer said.

[Del06]

Dunno if you've seen this yet. Nobody seems to post here but smalltownguy, but maybe a few are listening in. Anyway, here's another one - Community Demands Answers After Trans Black Latinx Woman Died at Rikers

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/...6d35-190634001

[smalltownguy]

June 14, 2019

The 9th Circuit’s Latest Trans Troops Ban Ruling Looks Like a Loss for Trans Rights, but It’s Actually a Win

President Donald Trump walks to the Rose Garden of the White House to speak at an event about health care on Friday.

On Friday, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling declaring that Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service is unconstitutional. Its decision might seem like a setback for the service members challenging the policy—but it’s actually a qualified victory for transgender rights with sweeping ramifications in other cases.

After Trump announced his ban on trans military service via tweet in July 2017, four federal judges issued injunctions prohibiting its implementation. All four courts found the policy to be an unjustified violation of transgender Americans’ equal protection rights. In January, however, the Supreme Court lifted two of those injunctions by a 5–4 vote while the government appeals the rulings. The other two injunctions were eventually lifted in light of SCOTUS’s order, allowing the Pentagon to implement the ban. Meanwhile, appeals courts have continued to mull the policy’s constitutionality.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finally issued its decision on the matter Friday, vacating U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman’s 2018 ruling against the ban. This outcome in Karnoski v. Trump is no surprise, since the Supreme Court already lifted Pechman’s injunction. The 9th Circuit found that Pechman hadn’t properly assessed whether former Defense Secretary James Mattis’ final implementation plan shored up the legality of the ban by providing the “considered military judgment” absent from Trump’s impromptu tweets and the resulting scramble to rationalize them. Its decision in Karnoski also found that Pechman had improperly applied strict scrutiny, thereby giving insufficient deference to the commander in chief.

But the 9th Circuit didn’t stop there. It went on to explain that the trans ban does discriminate against transgender people—a fact contested by the administration, which insists that the policy only discriminates against people with gender dysphoria. (This distinction makes no sense.) Moreover, the court found that discrimination on the basis of transgender status constitutes sex-based discrimination and is therefore subject to intermediate scrutiny. That means anti-trans policies must be supported by an “exceedingly persuasive justification,” one not “hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation.” It directed Pechman to apply this test to the trans troops ban.

What “exceedingly persuasive justification” might lie behind this policy? The Trump administration asserts that transgender service members “undermine readiness,” “erode reasonable expectations of privacy,” and “impose disproportionate costs.” These claims are demonstrably false. We know that because trans troops could already serve openly when Trump announced his ban, and none of these problems arose. These excuses were cooked up by anti-LGBTQ advocates in response to litigation against the ban, precisely what intermediate scrutiny forbids. The Trump administration’s justifications cannot be “exceedingly persuasive” if they are ungrounded in reality, discredited by experts, and disproved by experience.

Thus, Pechman is almost certain to conclude that the ban remains unconstitutional. In the meantime, Karnoski establishes precedent in the 9th Circuit, confirming that transgender discrimination is subject to intermediate scrutiny. The court will now apply this test to other trans cases—including Arizona’s effort to exclude transition-related care from its state health plan. ACLU attorney Joshua Block noted on Friday that he’ll cite this development in his effort to block Arizona’s discriminatory exclusion in court. Karnoski may also compel the 9th Circuit to rule that prisons must provide transition-related care to inmates in a case currently pending before the court.

The 9th Circuit encompasses Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, the Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, and Washington. Following Karnoski, any anti-trans law passed by these states and territories must survive intermediate scrutiny. Few will be able to clear this high bar. Yes, the Supreme Court’s conservatives may ultimately issue a devastating decision writing transgender people out of the Constitution if and when these cases come back to SCOTUS. They could also undermine the logic of Karnoski in next term’s LGBTQ employment discrimination cases; anything is possible with this far-right bloc in control. But until then, trans people in a huge chunk of the country will enjoy heightened protections against unjust discrimination.

[smalltownguy]

27 June 2019

Transgender hate crimes recorded by police go up 81%

The number of transgender hate crimes recorded by police forces in England, Scotland and Wales has risen by 81%, latest figures suggest.

Data obtained by the BBC showed there were 1,944 crimes across 36 forces in the last financial year compared with 1,073 in 2016-17.

The Stonewall charity said it showed the "consequences of a society where transphobia is everywhere".

The Home Office said it was largely due to better reporting and recording.

Some 36 out of 44 police forces in England, Scotland and Wales fully responded to a BBC freedom of information request for their most up to date figures. Eight forces did not provide the full data.

West Yorkshire Police and South Yorkshire Police saw reporting of transgender hate crimes more than treble over three years.

Suffolk Constabulary and Merseyside Police were the only forces which recorded fewer crimes in 2018-19 than in 2016-17.

In Wales there were 82 transgender hate crimes in 2018-19, up from 37 in 2016-17.

Police Scotland recorded 92 crimes in the year to March 2019, compared with 76 two years earlier.

Sue Pascoe, who lives near York, was flagged as a vulnerable person by North Yorkshire Police for the amount of transgender hate abuse and threats she had received.

"It's a sad fact of life that this abuse is going to happen and I'll challenge it whenever it does," she said.

"The trend for the last five years is nothing but going up and those divisions are in our society generally. For me it's one of the scariest times I've lived through and I'm 59 now."

Equal rights charity Stonewall estimated that two in five trans people had experienced a hate crime or incident in the past year.

Andi Woolford, from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, works in social housing and was abused while she was sitting in her car.

"A guy came out of a block of flats, called me a paedophile, threatened to stab me, smashed my car up, held a dog chain up to my face, just really unbelievable."

"Given what's happening on the other side of the Atlantic and the divisions with Brexit, everything seems to be kind of tribal - oh you're not in my tribe so therefore I must hate you."

A hate crime is defined as "any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice" based on one of five categories: religion, faith or belief; race, ethnicity or nationality; sexual orientation; disability; or gender identity.

Section 146 of The Criminal Justice Act 2003, amended in 2012, says that if an offence is motivated by hostility towards persons who are transgender then prosecutors can apply to the court to increase the offender's sentence - called a sentence uplift.

As these latest hate crime figures show, transgender people in the UK currently have it harder than most.

Hearing people talk about being too scared to leave their homes in fear of being attacked does not sound like modern day Britain, but this is the sad reality for a lot of transgender men and women.

While the increased rates may be somewhat due to more people coming forward about their experiences, some may find it shocking that more is not being done to protect these clearly vulnerable individuals.

Many have described the current plight of transgender people as being similar to that of the gay rights movement in the 1980s and 1990s. Restricted, ridiculed and ignored.

Transgender people have their existence debated on a near daily basis across UK media, and several activists believe this negative attention reinforces the poor treatment they receive on our streets.

Whilst the gender debate rages on, many of those at the heart of it will have to continue living in fear.

Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke, from the National Police Chiefs' Council, said: "Traditionally, transphobic hate crimes have been significantly under-reported but we are working closely with trans groups to increase awareness and understanding of our staff; as well as to build confidence and trust in the police by the trans community.

"We believe some of the increase may be down to better reporting, however, there is always more that can be done."

Transgender no longer ranked as 'disorder'

Why do young people love to hate?

'How to be body positive as a trans person'

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Abuse or violence directed at someone on the basis of their transgender identity is never acceptable.

"That's why we are committed to tackling hate crime in all its forms, including abuse targeted at transgender people, through the government's hate crime action plan."

Hate crimes against transgender people
Figures from 36 police forces

Police force----2016-17----2017-18----2018-19

Avon and Somerset---- 47---- 71---- 57
Bedfordshire---- 13---- 11---- 19
Cambridgeshire---- 11---- 11---- 25
Cleveland---- 10---- 17---- 25
Derbyshire---- 10---- 10---- 26
Devon and Cornwall---- 30---- 50---- 78
Dorset---- 9---- 14---- 27
Durham---- 11---- 20---- 15
Dyfed-Powys---- 3---- 7---- 15
Essex---- 33---- 73---- 74
Gloucestershire---- 4---- 12---- 18
Greater Manchester---- 54---- 88---- 145
Gwent---- 10---- 11---- 19
Hampshire ---- 56 77 98
Hertfordshire---- 18---- 21---- 28
Kent ---- 36---- 60 ---- 93
Lancashire ---- 69---- 92 ---- 104
Leicestershire ---- 16 ----18---- 32
Merseyside ---- 47---- 66 ---- 44
Metropolitan ---- 201---- 173---- 235
Norfolk ---- 25---- 39 ---- 36
North Wales ---- 1---- 1---- 3
North Yorkshire ---- 4 ----7 ---- 10
Northumbria ---- 44 ----59---- 77
Nottinghamshire ---- 12---- 36 ---- 35
Scotland ---- 76---- 83---- 92
South Wales ---- 23---- 40 ---- 45
South Yorkshire ---- 26---- 69---- 87
Staffordshire ---- 24---- 33 ---- 36
Suffolk ---- 16---- 26 ---- 14
Surrey ---- 1---- 10 ---- 23
Warwickshire ---- 2---- 9 ---- 8
West Mercia ---- 23---- 36 ---- 26
West Midlands ---- 38---- 34 ---- 66
West Yorkshire ---- 59---- 107 ---- 181
Wiltshire ---- 11---- 21 ---- 28

[smalltownguy]

JUL 23 2019

North Carolina ‘bathroom bill’ lawsuit settles, grants transgender people right to use chosen bathroom

Transgender people in North Carolina can use any public restroom in state-run buildings that conforms with their gender identity under a U.S. court settlement approved on Tuesday, in the latest turn of a long-running dispute that divided the state.

The settlement, which overturns part of a state law, ends a three-year legal fight by transgender people in North Carolina seeking the right to use the bathroom of their gender identity.

The Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly filed court papers opposing the settlement.

Transgender people in North Carolina can use any public restroom in state-run buildings that conforms with their gender identity under a U.S. court settlement approved on Tuesday, in the latest turn of a long-running dispute that divided the state.

The settlement, which overturns part of a state law, ends a three-year legal fight by transgender people in North Carolina seeking the right to use the bathroom of their gender identity.

A 2016 North Carolina law, known as House Bill 2, required transgender people in state-run buildings use the bathrooms, changing rooms and showers that corresponded to the sex on their birth certificates.

The American Civil Liberties Union represented transgender plaintiffs seeking to block the law in court, arguing it violated their rights to equal protection and privacy under the U.S. Constitution.

“While this part of the court fight may be ending, so much urgent work remains as long as people who are LGBTQ are denied basic protections from violence and discrimination simply because of who they are,” Irena Como, acting legal director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a statement.

Some businesses and sports leagues boycotted North Carolina after passage of the law, which they saw as discriminatory against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Lawmakers in some other states had proposed similar legislation that failed to advance.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled in 2016 that the state’s university system must allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.

Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration also challenged the law in court.

Facing pressure in the courts, the North Carolina legislature in 2017 replaced House Bill 2 with House Bill 142.

The bill stated that the state legislature had the power to regulate bathroom access, but the legislature did not take action at that time to define access.

The new law left transgender people in limbo, according to the ACLU, which amended its lawsuit to challenge the new law.

The ACLU and the group Lambda Legal later reached a settlement with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, the ACLU said in a statement. It went to Schroeder for final approval.

Schroeder, in an eight-page ruling on Tuesday, said the settlement bars state officials from using the legislation “to prevent transgender people from lawfully using public facilities in accordance with their gender identity.”

The Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly filed court papers opposing the settlement.

House Bill 142 continues to prohibit cities in North Carolina from creating their own ordinances protecting LGBT people from discrimination until December 2020, and that was not affected by the agreement, according to the ACLU.