Tag Archives: colorado

Transas City Founder Speaking at iCON16

iCON16_Presentation
Tomorrow I shall be speaking on both gender and transgender issues in the workplace at iCON16, the regional Society of Women Engineer’s conference in Boulder, Colorado. This is my first professional presentation on gender/transgender subjects, and the audience will be composed mostly of women engineers, engineering managers, engineering interns, and students. For my topic I shall be comparing and contrasting the differences in the workplace as a “woman” versus a “man,” drawing on not only own experience but that of Ari Copeland, a transgender man who also works at my company.

If there are any readers in or near Boulder who would like to stop by and say hi while I’m at the conference this weekend, please let me know.

I have submitted an abstract to another conference to talk about this same issue, and I intend to post a version of the presentation on Transas City here after the conference.

Several New Colorado Bills Are Attacking the LGBTQ Community

What bothers me, dear readers, is not so much the anti-transgender vehemence of some of the supporters of these bills, such as that of Toilet Policewoman Kim Ransom, pictured above. No, what bothers me more is that for the last several years Colorado has seen a strong pushback against treating transgender persons with dignity and respect. In this article which I’ve linked, the authors discuss three different bills introduced by arch-religious-conservatives, all of which could remove rights from transgender citizens of the state.

New Colorado Bills Attacking LGBTQ Community? | Westword.

South Park’s “Cissy” Episode was Actually Pretty Good on Trans Issues

I don’t often just share a link on Transas City without some commentary, but this writer at Slate essentially says what I would have about a recent South Park episode which focused on transgender issues. I saw the episode online and I agree with the summary from slate below almost 100%. I mean, I felt a little more sensitive to the aspect of making fun of transgender persons via Cartman as a vehicle (which is why is use the descriptor “pretty good” in lieu of “great” as per the original article), but really, after thinking about it for a while, it was a positive portrayal overall, and after the debacle of the plot with Mr. Garrison’s sex change (the reason I stopped watching the program), a pleasant surprise.

South Park’s “Cissy” episode was great on trans issues..

Colorado Springs Transgender Teen Up For Homecoming Queen

Scarlet Lenh

I’m always happy when I see runs at homecoming royalty or the prom which involve these visible, fearless, fighting transkids. I admire so much their courage and strength for doing what they have to do, and it often reminds me of just how bad it was in the 1980’s to be LGB, let alone T in high school. I am always amazed when I step into a high school nowadays for a lecture or for youth counseling just how different of a world these kids are living in and being educated in. It’s times like that when I truly don’t feel so afraid for the future.

Of course, all you have to do is read the comments at the bottom of the article, and then you’ll see why I’m so afraid for the present.

Transgender Teen Up For Homecoming Queen.

Another Christan Williams Report – Fact Check: Anti-trans “Parents of Students” Speak Out at School Board Meeting

MenaceChristan Williams has done it again, pulling back the manhole and showing the sewer of the anti-trans movement. In this case, it appears that the reporter for the Canon City Daily Record either did a shitty job of reporting, or deliberately slanted her article. Hey, I’m in the newspaper business, believe me, I know how to spin something better than the Harlem Globetrotters on speed.

Here the primary issue is the reporter deliberately or negligently calling an anti-trans activist from outside the school district a concerned parent who asserted the cisgender girls going to the schools were victims. When called on this, the anti-trans activist admitted:

“The [cis] girls are the victims because, they’re the one’s who are being victimized, they cannot ridicule him [sic] and they have to show him [sic] respect.”

Ah…they’re “victims” because they can’t ridicule the transgender student. I’ll take “things people say while on shrooms” for $200, Alex…

Later, Williams reports on the bizarre anti-Obama-New-World-Order-Esque rant from the activist, which to be blunt, is scary.

Does anyone out there doubt that there’s a group of people who if given half the chance would round us up and put us into internment camps, or have us subjected to church-run medical experiments to kill off the evil transgender demons within us?

Fact Checking: anti-trans “parents of students” speak out at school board meeting | The Transadvocate.

Rolling Stone – Coy Mathis’ Fight to Change Gender

Coy Mathis made the news quite a bit this summer, and then her story dropped out of the public attention. Rolling Stone magazine is bringing it back to the forefront via a comprehensive and well-done article which was forwarded to me by Attorney Madeline Johnson.

I do question this statistic which was reported:

If the trans movement is the LGBT’s final frontier, then transgender youth represents its farthest outpost. Kids are coming out as trans earlier than ever: A survey of the San Francisco school district found that 1.6 percent of high school students and, incredibly, one percent of middle-school students identified as transgender.

If true, that blows any other survey out of the water, as IIRC the highest percentage reported for transgender youth by any scientific study was about 0.3-0.5%.
The article does a good job of outlining the hatred of religious conservatives towards our existence.

However, any reasonable discussion on the subject has been drowned out by conservative Republicans, who have staked out a position that is reflexively anti-trans. “Is that not the craziest thing you’ve ever heard?” Mike Huckabee asked at October’s right-wing Values Voter Summit, speaking of California’s anti-discrimination-schools law; California Republicans have already targeted its repeal as a top priority. Earlier this year, House Republicans tried to strip the Violence Against Women Act of its protections for transgender women, and Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh introduced a bill that would have made it a crime for trans people to use their preferred bathrooms. Fox News commentators vehemently oppose any accommodation of trans kids in schools, something Bill O’Reilly calls “anarchy and madness.”

Perhaps no one is more outraged, however, than the religious right, of which Focus on the Family reigns as a dominant force. On Focus’ 81-acre Colorado Springs campus, some 600 employees put a chunk of their $90 million annual budget to work creating LGBT intolerance on every front, including fighting “safe-school” anti-bullying initiatives and pushing reparative therapy. Leading Focus’ charge to push people back into the closet is its “gender-issues analyst” Jeff Johnston, himself a proud “ex-gay” – now a married father of three boys – who blames what he calls the “sexual brokenness” of LGBT people on a combination of poor parenting, molestation and original sin. In his newsletters for Focus, Johnston treats trans people in particular with amused pity. “Male and female are categories of existence,” he wrote this year. “It is dehumanizing to categorize individuals by the ever-proliferating alphabet of identities based on sexual attractions or behavior or ‘gender identity’ – LGBBTTQQIAAFPPBDSM – however many letters are added. No. We stand with the truth.”

Don’t ever kid yourself that a large segment of America wouldn’t be quite happy to eliminate us.
It’s also telling reading how the principal of the school which discriminated against Coy just simply didn’t give a shit that he was breaking state law.

As attorney William Kelly Dude would write in the accompanying position paper, while perhaps it seemed acceptable for a harmless six-year-old like Coy to enter the girls’ room, he vividly described what a future infiltrator could look like: “a male high school student with a lower voice, chest hair and with more physically mature sex organs who claims to be transgender and demands to use the girls’ restroom” – a menacing portrait of an impostor that echoed the threat of Focus on the Family’s “Predator” ad. That hairy deviant would soon be Coy herself, as Dude would write the Mathises: “As Coy grows older and his male genitals develop . . . at least some parents and students are likely to become uncomfortable with his continued use of the girls’ restroom.” The decision had come down swiftly: For the protection of the district as a whole, Coy was to be banned from the girls’ restroom.

“You know this is against the law, right?” Kathryn demanded of Principal Crow in his office a couple of days after his phone call. This wasn’t just about finding Coy a toilet. It was about the larger message Coy would be forced to internalize every time she had to relieve herself: that she was abnormal, that there was something so grotesque or unsafe about her that her very presence in a place as delicate as a bathroom was intolerable. And Coy wouldn’t be the only one digesting that attitude; so, too, would her peers.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Crow, a tall, soft-spoken man with dark, slicked-back hair, told Kathryn. “My hands are tied.”

Well too bad, dude, you lost and civil rights won. Deal with it.

Coy Mathis’ Fight to Change Gender | Culture News | Rolling Stone.

Christian Broadcasting Network Bears False Witness in Claim Trans Student Harassed Girls in the Restroom

falsewitnessI reported on this a few days ago, and called into question the veracity of the story. It turns out, thanks to fine detective work by Cristan Williams at The Transadvocate, it’s a fraud. One, single, parent complained about a transgender student’s mere presence in the school. Says Superintendent Rhonda Vendetti in the audio clip at the link below, “there has not been a situation…there’s not been an incident of harassment…” etc. She further reports that the vast majority of the students and parents support the trans student.

So who are the bad actors here? The Pacific Justice Institute, the Christian Broadcasting Network, The Examiner, etc. Not one of which has issued a retraction.

Trans Student Attacking Girls in School Restroom! Or, you know… not. | The Transadvocate.

Transgender Woman Sues After Being Denied Free Breast Cancer Screening

NIHMammogramA pretty nasty deal overall, and note that this is a post-op woman too. I’m a little surprised that they claim the CDC disallows anyone who is not genetically female from having a screening, and I’m a bit shocked that Planned Parenthood doesn’t consider transwomen to be women, at least when their health is at stake.

Transgender woman sues after being denied free breast cancer screening | 9news.com.

Transgender Teen Settles Landmark Health Case

More big news for us – transman Miki Alexander Manigault takes on health insurer Kaiser, wins a settlement out of court, and then Colorado steps in and orders all health insurers in the state to stop discrimination against transgender persons.

Thank you Miki for your successful crusade! Now California, Oregon, DC, Vermont, and Colorado prohibit trans discrimination.

Transgender teen settles landmark health case | Health Policy Solutions.