Archive for gender non-conformists
National Legal Panel at Equality Forum: Opening Wide for a Fire Hose of Information
Did Lambda Legal’s Executive Director, Kevin Cathcart, really “start the LGBT movement for legal rights,” as National Law Panel moderator Brad Sears playfully suggested at the opening of last night’s Equality Forum event?
If he didn’t, he certainly has a deep understanding of what most people think of as the legal “movement” – the litigation that’s [...]
Anti-Gay Violence in Senegal and Throughout Africa
There I was, listening to Kiki Dee on iTunes, when I came across this horrific story, posted by the AP this morning. Here’s how it starts:
(Thies, Senegal) Even death cannot stop the violence against gays in this corner of the world any more.
Madieye Diallo’s body had only been in the ground for a few hours [...]
This Won’t Help
Issues involving the proper and respectful treatment of transgendered people are inherently difficult in a few situations. A recent story on FOX News (hardly a trustworthy source) about a proposal by the Maine Human Rights Commission to extend the ban on discrimination against the TG community to virtually every school-related context can’t be the best [...]
Judicial Difficulty with Gender
A day late (not my fault! really!), here is my column over at 365gay.com. Toggle on over and give it a look. The post examines a few cases in which courts were called upon to decide whether to give legal recognition to someone’s sexual reassignment surgery. In service of a larger point about the difficulties [...]
Nepal Votes for Equality
As states throughout the U.S. have moved to impale discrimination into their constitutions by banning same-sex marriages, other countries are sprinting in the other direction.
This just in: Nepal is about to join South Africa in explicitly guaranteeing equality to its gay and lesbian citizens. Same-sex couples will be able to marry.
Meanwhile, in Cuba sex-change operations [...]
More on William and Mary’s Trans-Line
Judging from the origin of incoming traffic, many people looking for further information on gender-queer Jessee Vasold, who was honored earlier today as William and Mary’s Homecoming Queen, found last night’s post. This is just a quick nudge to go the school’s paper, The Flat Hat, to read the full range of comments the story [...]
More Fun with the Trans-Line: William and Mary Students Elect a Gender-Queer as Homecoming Queen
A friend and fellow William and Mary alum emailed me earlier today, responding to my earlier post on the scariness of messing with the gender line, and informing me that our alma mater had just elected a self-identified gender-queer as Homecoming Queen. Read all about it, right here in the school’s daily paper, The Flat [...]
Prowel v. Wise Business Forms, Gender Stereotyping, and Caster Semenya
This just in: the South African track star, Caster Semenya, turns out to be of ambiguous gender. Testing reveals that the athlete, who competed in the recent World Championships and easily won the 800-metre run, has internal testes that produce a large amount of testosterone. There are currently no plans to strip Caster of the [...]
Bash Back!
How much of this is theater — angry theater — and how much is meant as true, violent threat, I don’t know. But Bash Back! seems to be the spiritual descendant of ACT UP!, mixing a radical (not always clear) political message with performance. Read the whole article to get a sense of who these [...]