Trans News Worldwide

[smalltownguy]

May 24, 2018

Coffee Wagera hires its first transgender barista

Coffee Wagera made waves with its incusivity policies when it announced it wants to hire transgender people.

Now the coffee shop has brought its first transgender barista Moni Bhatt on board and made the happy announcement on social media.



Images got in touch with the cafe owner Mush Panjwani, who had earlier expressed his desire to have trans people feel welcome at his coffee shop.

"I've had the job posting out for so long now and it was not easy finding someone. Not all trans people want to work in a cafe. In my search, I've had a few phone conversations and most of them were hesitant and for the right reasons. One of them told me about her bad experiences working in similar places. Either because of the customers or because of the co workers or even management; they wouldn't understand the problems a trans person would go through."

"Such horror stories are so common that many don't even want to give a job a shot. But I didn't give up."

Mush continued his search. He knew he needed to connect with the right people and so he did.

"Last week I attended an event by the Sub Rang Society at Goethe. It was an event which aimed for solidarity withing the community for trans people. I asked about why trans people are hesitant to work even when there are places giving opportunities and the people there gave me answers that were really eye opening."

The coffee owner added,"They explained all the issues a trans person has when working and its something as small as transportation. They can't use public transportation because they get harassed by people. There are also very few job openings and then there is always the fear of how they'll be treated,"

Through this interaction he realised how difficult it truly is for a trans person to lead a normal life. Mush also revealed that is was Kami Sid, who also heads the Sub Rang Society, who got in touch with him to find someone for the job.

"She is amazing, she took it up as a challenge and that's how we met Moni."

Speaking about Moni's experience at the cafe, Mush said, "She's just had her first day yesterday and she loved it. She's a fast learner and got the hang of the job very quickly. The best part is that my other team members treat her as a member of the team. For me that was a concern, that my team members understand this and neither cause her any discomfort or are uncomfortable themselves. I was very happy with the result of her first day."

Coffee Wagera's latest team member has inspired other places to take on the same initiative. Recently, Red Riding Hood Bakery has teamed up with Actcept and posted a job ad for a trans person as well.

The transgender community of Pakistan has been making strides recently and this is yet another welcome addition. We hope to see more such initiatives in the near future.

[tao1kiku]

For the first time in Pakistan’s history, trans people will run for the general elections.
At least thirteen trans people will run for office in the 2018 national elections. Two of them will run for the General Assembly and the rest in provincial seats around Pakistan. The general elections are scheduled for 25 July.
The All Pakistan Transgender Election Network (APTEN) helped coordinate the candidates. The group include nurses, a lawyer, police officer and a doctor
https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/...an/#gs.qPN_qSY

[smalltownguy]

26 MAY 2018

Transgender people encouraged to become priests in Church of England diversity drive



Bishops in the diocese of Lichfield have issued new guidance to parishioners and clergy reminding them that LGBT people "can be called to roles of leadership and service in the local church".

The guidance, titled "welcoming and honouring LGBT+ people", warns that the church's reputation as being unwelcoming towards gay and transgender people is stopping young people attending.

"We very much hope that they, like everyone else, feel encouraged to serve on PCCs, or as churchwardens and worship leaders, for instance, and are supported in exploring vocations to licensed lay and ordained ministries," the guidance says.

"Nobody should be told that their sexual or gender identity in itself makes them an unsuitable candidate for leadership in the Church."

The group, led by diocesan bishop The Rt Revd Dr Michael Ipgrave, also warn against "intrustive questioning about someone’s sexual practices or desires, or their experience of gender", saying it is "almost always inappropriate".

Last year the Church's general synod voted to call on the Government to ban so-called "conversion therapy", which is aimed at helping gay people change their sexuality.

It also voted to support the introduction of a new liturgy for transgender people, though bishops announced earlier this year that one was not needed, and that people in this circumstance could instead use the existing liturgy for affirmation of baptismal faith.

The new guidance, which is signed by three other bishops within the diocese, warns clergy that they may not "tell or insinuate to people that sexual orientation or gender identity will be changed by faith or that homosexuality or gender difference is a sign of immaturity or a lack of faith".

If they are approached by someone unhappy with their sexuality, they must "be alert to the power relations involved in such prayers and conversations, and the possibility of spiritual or emotional abuse," the guidance says.

It adds: "As Archbishop Justin has made clear, the perception that the Church is homophobic and transphobic is harming our mission, especially to young people.

"We need to challenge this perception by reaching out to LGBT+ people with the good news of God’s love, modelling God’s welcome and care for all people."

[smalltownguy]

5/29/18

CONNECTICUT'S TRANSGENDER PRISONERS FIRST IN U.S. TO WIN RIGHT TO BE HOUSED ACCORDING TO GENDER IDENTITY

Connecticut has become the first state to give transgender prisoners the legal right to be housed according to their gender identity, in a move campaigners have hailed as “groundbreaking.”

The right of transgender prisoners to be searched by an officer who shares their gender identity—for instance, a trans woman being searched by a female prison guard—has been enshrined in bill SB-13.

Transgender prisoners can also expect prison staff to address them in a manner consistent with their gender identity—which suggests they will use the inmate's correct pronouns—as well as buy commissary items they feel are most appropriate, such as clothing.

To access these rights, prisoners cannot self-identify as transgender but must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria or carry an identification card that matches their gender identity.

Gender dysphoria is a term recognized by the American Psychiatric Association for a person whose gender identity does not match the one they were assigned at birth. For instance, a person with a penis assigned the gender “boy” at birth, could innately feel they are a woman. While some see the term as controversial because it pathologizes transgender people, others believe it is important to advocate for provisions such as health insurance, according to LGBT nonprofit GLAAD.

The new law will go into force on July 1. It is part of the steps being taken to enforce legislation approved unanimously by Connecticut's House of Representatives earlier this year. The bill also protects the rights of pregnant inmates, after a baby was born inside a prison cell at York Correctional Institution earlier this year.

A new law in Connecticut will protect the rights of the state's transgender prisoners.

Mike Lawlor, the governor’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, told the Associated Press that Connecticut lawmakers set about improving conditions for trans prisoners after a teen was held at an adult prison for women because the state could not decide where to house the inmate.

Jennifer Levi, director of the transgender rights project of the GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, told Newsweek that the law was “groundbreaking.”

“It sets as the presumptive standard that transgender women are housed with women and transgender men are housed with men, which is in stark contrast to laws in other states and at the federal level,” she said.

Asked how the state can be certain that prison staffers at every level enforce the new law, she said, “Connecticut officials report that there are transgender women in women’s facilities in that state and that they have been moving toward the standard just recently passed into law. They will, of course, have to continue to train prison officials to ensure compliance with the law given pervasive misunderstandings about transgender people’s lives.”

The latest figures, from 2011 to 2012, show that 3,200 transgender inmates are incarcerated in the U.S. In mid-May, President Donald Trump's administration rolled back guidelines set by President Barack Obama, which advised that transgender inmates should use facilities matching their gender identity, according to BuzzFeed.

“I hope there would be advances in other states to reflect Connecticut’s approach, which is far more humane than what we see elsewhere,” said Levi said.

[smalltownguy]

5/30/18

BETSY DEVOS GREETED BY TEEN WEARING TRANSGENDER PRIDE FLAG DURING SCHOOL VISIT

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was challenged during her recent hometown visit to Michigan by a local middle school student looking for an explanation of her transgender policies. Torin Hodgman, an eighth-grader at Grand Rapids Public Museum School, greeted DeVos during her visit to the school by donning a transgender pride flag.

Hodgman identifies as genderqueer and prefers to be addressed by the pronouns “they” or “them,” Michigan news website MLIVE reported on Tuesday. When learning that DeVos was going to make an appearance at their school, Hodgman draped a large transgender pride flag over her back and prepared to ask her about how she plans to create a safe learning environment for students who are a part of the LGBT community.

During her tenure as the country’s secretary of education, DeVos has rolled back Obama-era legislation that protected and supported transgender students. In February of 2017, her department revoked Obama-era guidelines that said transgender students should be able to use the restrooms that matched their identity. And, earlier this year, DeVos said that her department will no longer investigate civil rights complaints by transgender students over being barred from using the restroom that matches their gender identity.

When questioned further about her views on the issue last year, DeVos turned the responsibility onto the states and said that they would better equipped do maker their own decisions regarding the school environment for their LGBT students.

Videos of DeVos and Hodgman Tuesday showed the two walking through the school together, but Hodgman later told MLIVE that they were not able to ask her any questions. But Hodgman expressed hope that the decision to wear the transgender flag sent a message about the need for safety and support for LGBT students across the country.

After her visit to the school, DeVos sat down for a full press conference with several media outlets. When asked what federal work is being done to address school safety, DeVos pointed to the president’s creation of the School Safety Commission of which she is the chair. The report, which will be rolled out during the summer, is expected to provide quick answers to some of the most pressing issues regarding school safety and will seek input from teachers, students, law enforcement and other groups committed to ensuring a safe educational environment.

The commission will focus on keeping students safe from all forms of violence and emotional disturbances, ranging from gun violence to bullying. While the report may include some federal legislation, DeVos said, it will mostly serve as a resource for communities across the country to share and integrate their own individual ideas and policies.

“Every student should be in a situation where they feel safe and secure,” DeVos added during the press conference.

[smalltownguy]

Fri 1 Jun 2018

Nothing like this has ever happened': how TV drama Pose breaks new ground

Dominique Jackson as Elektra in Pose. Photograph: FX

Ryan Murphy’s latest show will make history with the largest transgender cast ever on TV and a look at 80s ballroom culture

When Alex Mugler first started watching the pilot to Pose, the new drama from uber-producer-writer-director Ryan Murphy that depicts the ballroom culture of late 80s New York, he immediately began reflecting on his own life. In the show’s opening scene, Dominique Jackson (playing Elektra Abundance, the decorated leader of the House of Abundance) leads her cabal of young dancers through a late-night museum heist to steal royal clothing for an upcoming ball.

“It was almost like I was looking at bits and pieces of my own life,” says Mugler, a prominent young ball voguer. “There were times early in my career when I went to stores with my house’s sister and we would steal clothes from the mall. I wanted to be seen, and I wanted to feel beautiful, and the struggle to get there was very similar in many ways.”

Watching the rivalries between the competing houses and the inner-turmoil within the young dancers depicted in Pose, says Mugler, was simply a reminder of his own journey in New York’s contemporary ballroom community. “The intention was just to be acknowledged and to be appreciated, and in many ways I’ve been through those same things.”

Pose is the latest, and most prominent, spout of mainstream attention for ballroom, which has flourished as a subculture for queer youth of color in New York for decades (it’s also made history with the largest ever transgender cast for a scripted show). The era depicted in the show coincides roughly with the time period documented Jennie Livingston’s landmark 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, which chronicled the rivaling houses and generational differences in New York’s ball community of the late 80s.

Pose widens the scope of Livingston’s film by juxtaposing the flourishing subculture of late 80s ballroom with the rise of mega-capitalist New York gentrification. One of the show’s lead storylines features a young white executive at the Trump Organization who forms a bond with a transgender sex worker named Angel (played by Indya Moore).

Today, almost thirty years after Madonna introduced ballroom vogueing to the world with hit single Vogue, the community has never had more of a widespread cultural impact. As ball has increased in popularity throughout Europe and the United States, it’s increasingly influenced contemporary popular music and mainstream fashion alike. A flurry of national media attention in recent years has also contributed to the subculture’s continued resurgence, from the 2016 documentary Kiki to brand new Viceland show My House that follows leading dancers of today’s current generation of queer ballroom voguers, including Mugler.

“In terms of representation for people like me, there has never been a moment like this,” says Elegance Bratton, creator of My House. “Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of American television where our demographic can see itself for six months straight as the lead characters on national television.”

Co-created by Murphy alongside Steven Canals and Brad Falchuk, Pose highlights the joy and liberation of ballroom competition while never shying away from the micro inter-personal conflicts within rivaling houses, the devastation the Aids crisis wrought onto the community, or the larger socio-political struggles facing the young queer minorities depicted on the show.

Today’s generation of voguers are simply grateful for the historical spotlight that Pose shines on the legacy and traditions of their community.

“The 80s was such a specific time, and a very important era for ballroom,” says Kia LaBeija, a dancer who also serves as the current mother of the House of LaBeija, one of the community’s most renowned and historic houses. “Many of those who pioneered the scene came into prominence during these years. Voguing really begins to start its journey into the limelight in a very visceral way at the end of the 80’s, but there was also an eminent sense of loss, as our community was heavily impacted by the Aids crisis.”

“Today, it’s very easy to take for granted an increased visibility for LGBT people but this has been a hard fight for visibility, especially for queer people of color, and they haven’t been bloodless coup’s,” adds Bratton. “Since Stonewall, raising our visibility in day to day life has been a volatile experience. I’m grateful to the pioneer generation depicted on Pose for making it possibly for the cast on My House to even be on television.”

Indya Moore, Ryan Jamaal Swain and Mj Rodriguez in Pose. Photograph: Jojo Whilden / FX

While Mugler and LaBeija both point to a history of appropriation and exploitation of their community from outsiders, they are both grateful for the effort from the creators of Pose to avoid such trappings in the making of the show.

“People like to take. There are a lot of culture vultures and my thing is, if you’re going to take from our community and be inspired, include us. Include the people you’re taking from,” says Mugler. “I was happy with Pose because I have a lot of friends that actually did the show and I felt like they took their time to really get to know the community and include the community.”

LaBeija, who was involved in the making of the show, agrees. “There have always been those who have appropriated and exploited this community’s stories, but the community has fought to make sure that it is protected and that its histories are told correctly,” she says. “Ryan Murphy really dedicated himself to make sure this show really represents our community by creating space for our stories to be told, by us.”

As much as Mugler has been struck by the similiarties between his own journey and the plight of the characters in Pose, the show has also made him even more acutely aware of how much things have changed in thirty years.

“It’s evolved to the point where back then, we felt like we couldn’t have as much as we wanted, but now we can,” he says. “Now, we can get the cover of the magazine. We can be in those pages of Vogue. It’s easier to access material things and goals that we always wanted in the past in the community. They worked super hard to get those things, and now it’s obtainable.”

Pose begins on FX on 3 June with a UK date yet to be announced

[smalltownguy]

06.06.18

This Top Doctor Says Transgender Hormone Therapy Is Safe

How safe is transgender hormone therapy?

Few have been examining that question more closely in recent years than Dr. Joshua Safer, the first director of the new Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai in New York. So far, the answers he is finding are encouraging.

In 2014, Safer and fellow researchers found that the existing scientific literature suggests that transgender hormone therapy is “safe without a large risk of adverse events when followed carefully for a few well-documented medical concerns.”

In 2017, Safer co-authored a study finding that out of the 31 percent of transgender women he saw at Boston Medical Center who smoked, a staggering 64 percent quit while undergoing hormone therapy in order to reduce their risk of blood clots.

In 2018, he and a research team learned that testosterone treatment for transgender men seems to reduce estrogen levels on its own, potentially reducing the need for “other estrogen-reducing strategies.”

Most recently, Safer helped find in an April study that prolactin levels did not rise significantly among a sample of transgender women taking the traditional combination of estradiol and the anti-androgen spironolactone, suggesting that “it may be unnecessary to monitor prolactin in women on this treatment combination.”

“The theme,” Safer tells The Daily Beast, “is that the studies to date have tended to reassure that transgender hormone treatments are safer than people realized.”

Safer was part of a team of endocrinologists, or hormone specialists, who updated the Endocrine Society’s guidelines for transgender treatment in late 2017.

Prior to that, the inaugural set of guidelines were published in 2009–a landmark step forward for transgender health care, despite how cautious those initial recommendations were.

“The 2009 guidelines were very conservative,” Safer recalls. “But they were really enormous in their impact because it was a conventional medical organization that took this on, and it just changed the entire conversation.”

Nearly a decade after those guidelines were first published, Safer says there is still “a lot of work to be done” to refine them through “much bigger, more comprehensive studies.”

But so far, every time Safer has examined a fear that physicians might have about transgender hormone therapy, the results have helped alleviate those fears.

Take blood clots, for example. Estrogens can increase the risk of getting them. That’s not a situation unique to transgender women, as Safer tells The Daily Beast, given that some of the “worst offenders” for blood clot risk can be found in “birth control pills given to millions of [cisgender] women.”

But as recently as a few years ago, as Safer recalls, some physicians would go so far as to deny estrogen to transgender women who smoked, for fear of increasing their risk of blood clots.

Safer took a different approach: Instead of denying them the medically-necessary treatment that is hormone therapy, he was “pretty aggressive” in petitioning his transgender female patients to give up cigarettes as they medically transitioned.

When Safer and a student of his later looked through the files of his patients who agreed to be included in his 2017 study on the subject, they found that the transgender women smokers quit at a rate about ten times higher than the 6.2 percent of adult smokers who “successfully quit in a given year.”

And because smoking increases the risk of blood clots far more than estrogens do, that encouraging trend was a net gain for his patients as a whole.

“Just counting out those who managed to quit smoking more than offset the total risk of blood clots from all that estrogen being given to everybody,” he says.

Indeed, the benefits of getting these transgender women hooked into the health care system—rather than turning them away—proved to be much greater than the increased risk of blood clots that may come with an estrogen prescription.

As the abstract for the study notes: “While some physicians raise concern over morbidity from hormone therapy, in our experience, good health habits initiated with care in our system more than outweigh the modest risks currently described.”

Safer tells The Daily Beast that his work lately has largely been about “addressing fears.”

As he explains it: “That’s exactly where you want to begin: What is everybody worried about?”

He doesn’t necessarily begrudge his peers in the medical community for being cautious about administering transgender hormone therapy, attributing their hesitations around the area “almost exclusively” to the Hippocratic promise to “do no harm.” By now, doctors recognize the enormous mental health cost of leaving gender dysphoria untreated—and major medical associations have long affirmed the necessity of transition-related health care for those who suffer from it.

But fine-tuning the hormone regimens for transgender men and transgender women, and evaluating their risks remains a challenging task—one that will require frustratingly slow and methodical labor.

Contrary to popular belief, says Safer, it’s not the size of the transgender population that makes it so difficult to carry out longitudinal studies with large samples. According to the latest estimate, about 1.4 million adults in the United States are transgender, which is certainly small by percentage of the population but not in terms of total number.

“The numbers of [transgender] people are bigger than for a lot of medical conditions, so I don’t think that’s the biggest barrier,” he tells The Daily Beast.

The problem, says Safer, is that the population isn’t “well-identified,” meaning it is hard to sue out through “conventional medical records” which of the patients in large databases of medical information are transgender.

Add to that a delay in funding being directed toward this issue—it wasn’t until September 2017 that the National Institutes of Health added a funding opportunity for research on transgender health—and you get what Safer calls “a little bit of a lag in getting high-quality, sophisticated research done.”

That’s not to say that there isn’t solid research to support the current state of transgender hormone therapy. The Endocrine Society would never have published guidelines on the topic if there weren’t. And in fact, Safer says that, in his opinion, even the new 2017 guidelines are “overly conservative in a few areas.”

“Yes, I will be very honest,” he admits, laughing. “I already can see opportunities to revise the revision.”

For example, the new 2017 guidelines direct physicians to monitor the levels of prolactin in transgender women undergoing hormone therapy, for fear that higher levels could lead to growths or tumors on the pituitary gland.

Safer’s most recent study, however, found evidence in the medical records of 98 transgender women treated at Boston Medical Center that there was “no significant rise in prolactin” when treated with the regimen that is customary in the United States. Now, Now, Safer can’t help but wonder if “we might have dropped that recommendation” about prolactin monitoring had that study come out before the revision process began.

What has helped fuel research in this area is the overwhelming willingness of transgender patients to participate in it. Several of Safer’s studies use anonymized data from the patient records at his previous position at Boston Medical Center and, as he tells The Daily Beast, “almost every single patient [they] asked” gave their consent.

“I think people felt very mission-driven,” says Safer, noting that they seemed concerned about helping other transgender people get quality health care.

Safer, too, seems mission-driven, although he is not transgender himself. Circumstance is what led to him to this understudied discipline—and to his new job at Mount Sinai, where he hopes to provide a “model” for comprehensive transgender treatment around the country.

“For me, it’s a little bit of an accident, honestly,” Safer says.

In the early 200s, when Safer was faculty at Boston University, a fellow working beneath him—Dr. Vin Tangpricha, a transgender endocrinology expert in his own right and the president-elect of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health—left the practice. Tangpricha’s transgender patients fell into Safer’s care.

“I knew nothing,” he remembers. “And all of a sudden, I had to really ramp up my knowledge.”

Now, Safer has not only learned about as much as any researcher can learn on the subject, he is helping lead the charge to learn more. But more so than feeling proud, Safer says he feels “lucky” to have been in a position to help advance health care for a minority that has long struggled to access it.

“I would characterize it as a very cool experience,” he says, “to be able to be somewhat useful.”

[smalltownguy]

Jun 8, 2018

Teacher claims school made him resign for not using transgender student's name

An Indiana orchestra teacher claims his former school forced him to resign after he refused to refer to a transgender student by their preferred name.

Brownsburg High School has a policy that mandates teachers call transgender students by their preferred name, in place of their birth name.

John Kluge, who taught at the high school for four years, disagreed with the rule and said he instead wanted to refer to the student by their last name.

"I feel the compelled speech of forcing a teacher to take a side on this very highly controversial topic is a violation of our First Amendment rights," Kluge told ABC affiliate WRTV.

Kluge told WRTV the school told him he must either follow the policy, resign or be fired. He said he submitted a conditional resignation later, but later withdrew the resignation before the deadline.

A school district representative told WRTV that Kluge voluntarily submitted a resignation and the administration accepted it.

Kluge believed he would be suspended pending termination on May 1, according to WRTV. He called his meeting with the administration "very threatening" and "bullying."

"I enjoy being the orchestra teacher at Brownsburg," Kluge wrote in a statement. "It's unfortunate that the administration is not letting me come back and that they are unwilling to continue a reasonable accommodation that most people consider to be very common sense."

He went on to ask that the board reconsider his termination.

The administration told WRTV it's complying with all state and federal laws.

According to the Brownsburg Community School Corporation, a student is allowed to change their preferred name only with a letter from a parent and a health care professional.

"Showing a lack of support for transgender youth is what drives up the suicide rates of transgender youth in Indiana," Chris Paulsen, executive director of the LGBTQ organization Indiana Youth Group, told WRTV.

[Nikka]

First Trans school in Chile

[CherryJ]

Lovely Nikka, happy to hear the good news xx thank you for the post