Sunday, August 17, 2008

Fox News: America's Newsroom 08.13.08 - Top Model Contestant



"Fox News' Gregg Jarrett interviews Us Magazine editor-at-large Ian Drew about the transgender America's Next Top Model contestant. Both make anti-transgender comments." glaadvideo

Shame on FOX News, Ian Drew

by Rebecca Armendariz

August 15, 2007


FOX News doesn't have a very clean record when it comes to the treatment of trans people in the news. Morning show Red Eye showed horrendous statements regarding pregnant trans man Thomas Beatie, and now GLAAD has sent out an alert regarding anchor Gregg Jarrett.

During a segment discussing the transgender contestant on the upcoming season of "America's Next Top Model," Jarrett and US Weekly editor Ian Drew made disgusting anti-transgender comments. . . .Read More

My husband the transsexual

August 17, 2008

Telegraph.co.uk

One day the man you married reveals that he wants to become a woman. How do you cope? Anna Moore meets two couples whose relationships have survived the ultimate test - and even flourished

Seated close together in their cluttered country cottage, laughing in unison, interjecting and correcting one another, the Conways are - on one level, anyway - typical of any couple who've managed to remain married for 33 years.

Polly and Sigi Conway at home in Herefordshire
Polly, left, and Sigi Conway at home in Herefordshire

They can recall how - to the day - they met ('The eighth of November 1971, Leicester University. I was on my way to a chemistry practical and she made me late!'), and, from there, the story sounds unremarkable. Paul and Sigi married in their early twenties. Paul was a bank manager, while Sigi taught maths. They had one daughter, Ros, now married and living close by with Abbie, their grandchild. They enjoy walking and boating and, at 55 and 56, remain, in their words, 'best friends'. . . .Read More

Five Questions With… Monica Canfield-Lenfest

helen boyd’s journal of gender & trans issues

As many of you know, Monica Canfield-Lenfest is the daughter of a trans woman and created a new resource, with COLAGE, for kids with trans parents.I highly recommend it.

1) First, tell me about COLAGE & how the book for Kids of Trans happened, what your goals were.

COLAGE (www.colage.org) is a national movement of children, youth, and adults with one or more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer parents. We build community and work toward social justice through youth empowerment, leadership development, education, and advocacy. I first contacted COLAGE five and a half years ago, when I was working on my undergraduate thesis: “She’s My Father: The Social Experience of People with Transgender Parents”. Looking for references for my project, I discovered a diverse community of queerspawn who gave me the space to better articulate my experience and encouraged me to continue my work, since there are hardly any resources for transgender parented families. . . .Read More

Civil rights should protect all people

By Ruth Schneider | The Olympian

August 15, 2008


"When I grow up, I want to be a boy," Alix Elder told me when she was 2 1/2 years old.

I was tucking her into bed for the night and we were playing the usual game . Her goal was to come up with a topic that pushed bedtime a few minutes later; mine to complete the bedtime ritual as soon as possible.

That isn't a blow-it-off kind of statement.

"Well, that is something you can decide when you get older," I told her.

I understood her thinking. Boys had the coolest toys. Who wants to play with dolls when you can protect the world from evil?

Her heroes at that age were basic: Batman and "the red one," Power Ranger. Both had cool toys and great moves.

At 4, she was throwing pennies into fountains, still wishing she was a boy. . . .Read More

Another kind of bullying

August 15, 2008

LoHud.com

A Journal News editorial

We know that parents in New York have an awful lot on their minds, from keeping the lights on to filling the gas tank. What no parent should have to worry about is whether their children are safe in school. The classroom should be a sanctuary for all students, not just from physical violence, but also bullying and harassment. Someone should have to answer for it -students, parents, teachers, administrators - when these minimal expectations aren't met. That should be the major takeaway from a weekend story about Michael Arone, 16, the transgender teen at Rockland's Clarkstown South High School, where he has been treated to all manner of perjoratives this summer, the litany from "faggot" to "queer," and relegated to using a separate entrance.

Arone, a North Rockland school district 10th-grader enrolled in the summer-school program at Clarkstown South, is a male transgender teen who publicly goes by Melissa Andrews and prefers to be referred to as a female. As staff writer Ben Rubin reported, Arone wears eye shadow and lipstick, straightens her shoulder-length brown hair and carries a purse. This reality is too much for some of Arone's classmates; she told Rubin she is routinely called "faggot," "she-male," "it" and "queer," and in one instance a female student threw a punch her way. "Come fight me, you faggot," the girl called out, according to the Clarkstown police report. In response, school administrators had Arone use the separate entrance, changed her class period, and escorted her to and from class. . . .Read More