Transgender Time Capsule

TrannystarGalactica

Transgender Vt. teen wants genderless bathrooms

By WILSON RING (AP)

August 2009

MONTPELIER, Vt. — A transgender teenager is lending his voice to a movement in Vermont to require the state's middle and high schools to offer genderless bathrooms.

Kyle Giard-Chase, 16, asked the Vermont Human Rights Commission on Thursday to endorse the effort. He said that before he came out last year as transgendered, he was a three-sport athlete and the co-captain of the field hockey team, a girls' sport, at South Burlington High School.

At an away game, he said he was verbally harassed and threatened by the members of the host school's football team for using the girls' restroom. . . .Read More

Now, a Miss India beauty pageant for transgenders in city

2 September 2009

TNN


CHENNAI: About 150 beauties with a difference will congregate in the city when it hosts the first Miss India contest for transgenders on December 19, 2009.

Chennai-based Indian Community Welfare Organisation (ICWO) is in talks with NGOs and AIDS control societies across the country to organise the pageant which it hopes would help strengthen the community's network and fight social stigma. Besides the top title, there would be contests for Miss Beatiful Hair, Miss Beautiful Eyes and Miss Beautiful Skin. People from different walks of life would occupy the chairs of judges.

Participants can enrol themselves individually or through organisations. The only qualification for participation is that the person should say she is a transgender. . . .Read More

Transsexuals in the Middle East Await the Wave of Change

2 September 2009

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -


Hell is what most Arabs think of when the word “transsexual” comes into any conversation since many mistake it with homosexuality, which is a sin in Islam. Most transsexuals prefer to remain anonymous since in some Arab countries they could face jail sentences for dressing or acting like the opposite sex. Many, especially men who feel trapped in the body of a woman, keep their problems hidden to avoid being punished or killed by their families. It is far easier for a woman to have a sex change to become a man than visa-versa. A man who becomes a woman is seen to have dishonored the family.

For 34 years, Bahraini Hussain Rabai felt trapped in a female body. In 2008, the courts officially declared him a man by approving his name change in official documents, from Zainab to Hussain, following sex correction surgery in 2007. . . .Read More

The Rev. David Weekley: Methodist minister comes out as transsexual man

31 August 2009

by Matt Kailey

In the early 1970s, David Weekley began his transition from female to male. And in 1982, he began the process of becoming a Methodist minister.

For 27 years, Weekley, now 58, married, and the father of five adult children, did not reveal his trans status to the church or to his congregations. But on August 30, he finally told his congregation at Epworth United Methodist Church in Oregon that he had been born female with a male gender identity and had transitioned decades ago.

Weekley is only the second clergyman in the United Methodist Church to come out as trans. Drew Phoenix, 50, had his ordination challenged by members of the church after coming out publicly in 2007 to his congregation in St. John’s of Baltimore United Methodist Church in Maryland. He was able to retain his ordination, but is no longer at that church. . . .Read More