Middleborough teen becomes high school's first transgender prom queen

my Fox boston.com

29 May 2013

MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- A Middleborough High School girl became the town's first transgender prom queen Tuesday.

Cody Tubman proudly donned her sash the day after the big dance. The teen tells FOX 25 she "came out" freshman year to her mother, Tammy.

"I leaned over and I gave him a big hug," said Tammy.

Cody began dressing as a woman around sophomore year and the high school was responsive to her needs, allowing her to use the female bathrooms and locker rooms. . . . Read More

Miss Tiffany becomes a monk

Bangkok Post  Learning

14 May 2013


In Thailand, only males can become Buddhist monks.

Thus, it was more than a little surprising to most people  when news came out that the winner of the transsexual Miss Tiffany Universe 2009 contest, Sorrawee ‘‘Jazz’’ Nattee, had entered the monkhood on Sunday at a temple in southern Songkhla province.

While technically a man, Jazz had lived as a woman for much of his adult life. 

His family says, however, that while Jazz had had breast implants, he never underwent transgender surgery. Removal of the implants have returned him to his original male gender. . . . Read More

OPINION: What Makes a Mother? Suffering

by Jennifer Finney Boylan
May 11, 2013

BELGRADE LAKES, Me.

ONE day, toward the end of my transition from father to mother, I came home to find my 6-year-old son looking thoughtful. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sean said quietly. He was playing with Thomas the Tank Engine. His favorite engine was No. 5, red James. That had also been my name, back before it became Jenny. . . . Read More

Taxi to Mars? Hull cabbie Melissa wants one-way ticket to red planet

by James Campbell
9 May 2013

An East Hull taxi driver is a step closer to embarking on a one-way mission to Mars after beating 40,000 other applicants in the first round of selection for an ambitious reality TV show.

Transsexual Melissa Ede has made it past the initial selection process to take part in the Mars One project, which aims to establish a colony on Mars by 2023. . . . 

A Pioneer, Reluctantly

by Greg Bishop
10 May 2013

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — Fallon Fox climbed inside the steel cage, past the sign that read “The Beating Will Continue,” and onto a black mat. She followed right jabs with left hooks and kicks flung at imaginary kneecaps, safe, if only for a moment, from the questions and insults and the suffocating fame that descended overnight. . . . Read More

For Your Cortex: Judith Butler - Gender Performance (profmcgowan, 10 Dec 2011)

ABC News Producer Comes Out As Transgender

by Claire Gordon
9 May 2013

For six days, many of Don Ennis' 1,236 Facebook friends were a little confused. The ABC News producer started a countdown on his profile, hinting at a big change to come, posting videos of Sam Cooke singing "A Change Is Gonna Come," and Aretha Franklin and Luther Vandross covering Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."

"You better not be planning to kill yourself, Ennis!" commented one friend. When May 3 arrived, Don Ennis was gone. Dawn Ennis had taken his place. 

Don changed his name to Dawn on Facebook, posted a photo of himself in a long brunette wig, along with the quote, "To thine own self be true." That same day, the 49-year-old father of three marched into his office at ABC News in a "little black dress," the New York Post reported, and announced her new identity to co-workers. The next day at her home, Ennis moved out, leaving a wife. . . . Read More

Pakistan's once-ridiculed transgender community fight elections for first time

Hijras can vote and run for seats in polls following supreme court decision recognising them as 'third gender'

Jason Burke in Sargodha
9 May 2013

In a small, dark room above a mechanic's workshop, Naina Lal is planning her campaign. Her supporters stack leaflets and sheets of stickers on a grubby carpet. Phones play a jingle composed for her. Outside, the noon sun sends the temperature past 40C (104F).

Lal, 28, is one of a handful of candidates from Pakistan's "transgender" community standing in national and provincial elections on Saturday. Known as "hijra", a catch-all term for transexuals, hermaphrodites and transvestites but usually indicating someone born male identifying as a woman, they have faced discrimination and ridicule for centuries. Living apart, they have traditionally earned a living as dancers, circus performers, sex workers and beggars. . . . Read More

Why it is hard to monitor bullying at schools — report

by Valerie Strauss on May 8, 2013

A new report that reviewed years of research says that it is hard to accurately monitor levels of bullying in schools because there is still no consensus on exactly what it is and that educators and scholars “should not limit themselves to the traditional definition” as they seek ways to combat it.

The report, called “Prevention of Bullying in Schools, Colleges and Universities” and just released by the American Educational Research Association at its 2013 meeting in San Francisco, is the work of a blue-ribbon task force that was charged with finding short- and long-term recommendations for institutions to address bullying of young people. . . . Read More

Visions of Justice: Whipping Girl Author Julia Serano Considers How We Regard Gender Non-Conformity

By Jackie Leahy

April 27, 2012

Tonight, at 7:30 p.m. in Weinstein Auditorium, scholar Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, will give a lecture entitled “On Gender Entitlement and Perception.”

Transcending Gender, an advocacy group for gender-nonconforming students and their allies at Smith College, is sponsoring Serano’s visit. But, according to Kati Giblin  ’15, the group’s historian, it was actually Serano who contacted the group first, as part of an effort to reach out to gender related organizations at many colleges and universities.

“How we got her here? It’s kind of a funny story,” said Giblin. “Transcending Gender uses a gmail account, but Smith College sets up Smith accounts for every student org … We found out that we had another e-mail account with a handful of e-mails in it, and once we figured out how to log in, we found that Julia Serano had contacted us to help bring her to Smith! So in March, Claire Brown ’14, one of our two co-chairs, e-mailed her and asked if she would still like to visit. Of course, even though Serano has a busy schedule, she still wanted to come to Smith College.” . . . Read More

“We’re always performing gender, but we don’t think about it all the time”

by Alli Langley

April 30, 2013

Nic Bravo darted from the kitchen, to a table, to the bar, back to another table.

She smiled as she refilled water glasses. She prepped silverware and chatted with two customers who came to see her every week at The Jones Eastside, the restaurant where she worked for about a year.

Her dark brown hair and blonde highlights fell much longer on the left side of her face. The 25-year-old wore a striped pink tank top, a black skirt, bright turquoise tights and black flower-printed boots. She stood at 5-foot-9 with a thin build, broad shoulders and a low-pitch voice. . .Read More

Purchase College volleyball player finds support in gender transition

Written by

DAN DEFRANCESCO

PURCHASE — Who is Taylor Edelmann?

He’s a 21-year-old Purchase College senior, a native of Bethel, Conn., and a captain of the men’s volleyball team. He’s a resident assistant, a club co-president and a research assistant. On the off chance he has a spare moment between practices, games and meetings, he’s a drummer in a jam band on campus.

And, he is formerly a she.

Born a female, Edelmann identifies as a male and has been undergoing a physical transition, via testosterone shots, for more than a year and a half. But Edelmann said that’s only a small part of what makes him the person he is. . . Read More

'Unlike Some People I Could Mention': On Transgender Identity and Storytelling

Jennifer Finney Boylan

Author, 'She's Not There,' 'I'm Looking Through You' and 'Stuck in      the Middle With You'

05/06/2013

 




Last fall I sat down to read my 2003 memoir,She's Not There, in preparation for a new, 10th-anniversary edition. I returned to that book in the same room in which it had first been written: the study of a summer house, in the heart of winter. From outside came the sound of snow against the window glass, the warp of the water below the ice in Long Pond. I remembered hearing those sounds 10 years before as I sat in that place and looked out the window at the Maine winter, searching for the words to describe my "life in two genders." . . . Read More

Changing Sex, and Changing Teams

By IAN LOVETT

May 6, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Not so long ago, Toni Bias dreamed of playing in the W.N.B.A. But after starring on the girls’ junior varsity basketball team as a high school freshman, Toni came out as transgender last summer, began going by the name Tony and started transitioning to male. . . Read More

Cross-Court Winner

Renée Richards (1934– ), from Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame.

By Emily Bazelon  Oct. 25, 2012

This piece comes from Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame, edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy, and published this week by Twelve.

Before Renée Richards became a star of the professional women’s tennis circuit, she was a nice Jewish boy—the puritz, or prince, of her household. Richards was born in 1934 as Richard Raskind, known to everyone as Dick. The child of two doctors in Forest Hills, Queens, Dick spent weekends fetching tennis balls for his father on dirt courts by the Long Island Railroad tracks.

In public, Dick was a self-assured athlete, captain of the Yale tennis team and one of a small number of Jews picked for his fraternity. But he had begun surreptitiously dressing up in his sister’s clothes at age 9. In the privacy of his college dorm, he shaved his legs and disguised his genitals, urgently trying to give life to his female side. By this time he’d named her Renée, French for “reborn.” . . . Read More

When Talking About Children's Gender, Words Matter

Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D.

Developmental and clinical psychologist; mental health director, Child and Adolescent Gender Center

 

1 March 2012

Over the last year, there is no question that transgender and gender-nonconforming children have become more visible in our media and culture than ever before. Most recently, a Colorado Girl Scout troop ignited a national controversy by stepping up to include a transgender child as a member of their troop. And a very unconventional young boy, Roscoe Kaan, who wears girls' clothing and wants to play Sandy in his school's production of Grease, is a featured character on the popular Showtime series House of Lies. . . Read More

Born This Way?

BETH SCHWARTZAPFEL

MARCH 14, 2013

Transgender activists believe that when children insist their birth sex is the wrong sex, their wishes should be honored. Dr. Kenneth Zucker disagrees. . . Read More

LIFE TIMES Boys No More

Discrimination against girls in Pakistan is so strong that families cross-dress their daughters as boys so they can move more freely about town 

MUDASSAR SHAH

FROM ISSUE #619 (24 AUG 2012 - 30 AUG 2012)

LAST DAY OF FREEDOM: Rafiqa Sayed enjoys her last day dressed as a boy, and plays with a toy gun. Her parents dressed her as a boy so she could go to school in Peshawar.For as long as she can remember Rafiqa Sayed has been dressed like a boy by her parents, she even went to a boy's school in Peshawar. She had grown to like being a boy, but last week when she turned 10, Rafiqa suddenly had to be a girl.

She is among many young girls known as bacha posh (girl in boy's clothes) whom parents dress up as boys just so they can move about more freely and go to school in the conservative culture of this arid and rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. . . Read More

Gender-identity clinic opens for children

'What's hard for some people to wrap their head around is that this condition actually exists,' pediatrician says

March 24, 2013|By Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune reporter

At about age 6, there was dissonance in Jae's life.

"I started to play with dolls and to do all these things that girls would do," Jae said. "But people would say, 'Why are you doing that? You're not supposed to do that.' And I thought, 'I'm just doing what I want to do.'" . . . Read More

CA Bans Insurance Discrimination Against Transgender Patients

SAN FRANCISCO [April 9, 2013]: California’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has ordered California’s health plans to remove exclusions of coverage based on gender identity and expression.

DMHC has issued guidance (.pdf) clarifying the obligations of California’s health plans under the Insurance Gender Nondiscrimination Act. In a groundbreaking directive to health plans, the DMHC confirmed that California’s Insurance Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, authored by former Assemblymember Paul Koretz, guarantees all people the right to access coverage for medically necessary care regardless of their gender identity or gender expression. The directive also provides that patients who are denied coverage can appeal the decision for review by the Department. (See also: FAQ) . . . Read More