Darts team 'ejected from league over transsexual player'

A ladies darts team claim they were kicked out of a league because one of their players is a transsexual.

by Chris Irvine

17 September 2008

Colliers B ladies have been told they have been thrown out of Cheslyn Hay women's league, near Cannock, Staffs, because of the language they used during matches.

But the players suspect it is because some opponents have complained about teammate Melanie Partlow, who used to be a man.

The Sun reported Ms Partlow joined the side two years ago after an operation turned her from a married forklift truck driver called Mick.

She had the sex-change operation in Thailand after she and her then wife Sue won £250,000 on the lottery.

The 57-year-old, who lost part of a leg after an illness, proved to be a star player and has helped the team win several cups. . . .Read More

World's youngest sex change star

September 19, 2008

The Daily Telegraph

A GIRL believed to be the youngest person in the world to have a sex change is set to become a pop star.

 Kim Petras - originally called Tim - changed sex after she started hormone treatment at the age of just twelve. 

Now 16-year-old Kim is ready to storm the charts with her first album after landing a record deal. . . .Read More

The New Transgender Reality

Reality shows have long pioneered inclusive casting. Now they're pushing the boundaries again.

By Joshua Alston | NEWSWEEK

Sep 17, 2008

In the second season of MTV's pioneering reality show "The Real World," the seven housemates played a game in which they anonymously asked each other personal questions to get better acquainted. It was going fine until Beth Anthony, who just so happened to be a lesbian, objected to the questions she was getting--every one was about her sexuality. Not her background, interests, family or education--just the fact that she happened to like women.

Fifteen years have passed, and it's hard to imagine such a scene playing out on a modern reality show: gays and lesbians have become a staple of reality-show casts. The story arc about the girl from the Corn Belt with "traditional values" forced to confront her prejudices seems silly now, on the few occasions we see it played out anymore. But reality shows are, at their cores, social experiments (remember the racially segregated season of "Survivor"?), and as acceptance of gays has increased over the years, in part because of pop culture, two reality shows have chosen a new minority to throw into the mix: the transgendered. . . .Read More

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Korea: 'Rulings of Era' Epitomize Social Changes

By Kim Rahn

17 September 2008

A top court's verdict allowing a female-turned-male transgender to legally change sex opened a new world for these people, an epoch-making ruling acknowledging that mental and social factors should also be considered in deciding a person's gender.

This and 13 other rulings that have brought radical changes in Korean society were picked as candidates for ``rulings of the era'' by the Supreme Court.

As time goes by, the top court has adopted new standards in making rulings to better guarantee gender equality, consumer rights and the human rights of criminal suspects.

Among the candidates, the court will pick ``12 rulings of the era.'' It plans to display details of the rulings in a court exhibition in its building in southern Seoul on Sept. 26. The display is designed to show the 60 years of the nation's judiciary. 

Two of the candidates are about gender equality. In a 1988 ruling, the court annulled the telecom authorities' decision to apply a discriminatory retirement age limit on telephone operators, all of whom were female. The public firm set their age at 43, while that for other workers was 55, and the court decided that setting different limits without proper reason was against gender equality. . . .Read More

Transgender Woman Talks About Life After 'Diddy'

BY ON TOP MAGAZINE STAFF 

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

The first black transgender woman to appear on a reality show, VH1's I Want To Work For Diddy, talks about her experience on the show and life since.

Laverne Cox shared her reality series war wounds with Out.com, where she related her experience as positive overall, but said the month-long, 24-7 filming was physically and emotionally draining.

“None of us got a good night's sleep,” Cox told Out's Tim Murphy. “I think the most I got at one time was maybe four hours. And I slept less than everyone because of my prep time in the morning. But I can kind of sleep anywhere.”. . .Read More

Another Struggle: Sexual Identity Politics in Unsettled Turkey

By Kerem Öktem

September 17, 2008

What happens when almost 3,000 men, women and transgender people march down the main street of a major Muslim metropolis, chanting against patriarchy, the military and restrictive public morals, waving the rainbow flag and hoisting banners decrying homophobia and demanding an end to discrimination? Or when a veiled transvestite carries a placard calling for freedom of education for women wearing the headscarf and, for transsexuals, the right to work? 

If the city is Istanbul, it seems, nothing much. Apart from the anxious glances of a few young male bystanders caught up in the demonstration and the occasional cheers of onlookers, only the presence of riot police at the Istanbul gay pride parade on June 29, 2008 would have reminded the observer that this was a politically sensitive event in a deeply troubled setting. Yet, in contrast to their aggressive tactics against peaceful demonstrators on May Day, the police were remarkably restrained as well.

June 29 marked the largest gay pride event ever to be held in Turkey, and indeed the largest in the immediate neighborhood of southeast Europe, where similar, if smaller, processions were attacked by right-wing extremists and members of the general public. The march's dispassionate reception was surprising, particularly considering that it took place as Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by politicians with Islamist origins, faced an existential threat in the country's highest court. The legal challenge to the AKP's right to participate in politics, mounted by defenders of the state secularist legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and dismissed by the Constitutional Court on July 31, could have escalated into all-out war over Turkey's future. Yet no one used the gay pride parade to pose as champions of public morality. There was no hate campaign, and indeed there was benign neglect, in both the Islamist and secular sectors of the mainstream press. Coverage in the left and liberal press was sympathetic; only newspapers close to the extremist Islamist Felicity Party featured a smattering of incitement. Was this an indicator of growing acceptance of gender non-conforming lifestyles in Turkey, a sign of a more tolerant, outward-looking society, affirmation of a more progressive cultural climate? . . .Read More