Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Potpourri

Today’s blog is made up short trans news articles in today’s Google News…

The first article is about a fired corrections officers harassing a trans inmate;
Corrections worker fired for derogatory Facebook post about transgender inmate
VT Digger
By Alan J. Keays
December 22, 2020


A Vermont Department of Corrections worker has been fired for a slur-filled, obscenity-laced Facebook posting complaining that he had to work on a holiday and guard a transgender inmate who was on suicide watch.

“HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY from the communist haven of VT,” James Frank wrote on his Facebook page, according to public records obtained regarding his termination.

“Have to go in 4 hours early to sit and watch a he she who wants to hurt/kill self,” Frank added in the posting. “SO sick of the LIBERAL BULLSHIT. I think it’s just a p-ssy that won’t do it anyway and needs attention.”
No matter what you are doing time for you had a right not to be harassed and belittled in prison. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that trans people reported,
More than half (53%) reported that they had been physically assaulted once, 12% reported that it happened twice, 16% said that it happened between three and seven times, and nearly one in five (19%) reported that it happened eight or more times.


In Germany activists are trying to change the law...
Germany's Transgender Law seen as 'archaic, degrading'
Trans* people in Germany are subjected to a long, expensive assessment process to change their legal gender. A new self-determination law would reform this — and activists say it's long overdue.
DW
By Elliot Douglas
December 28, 2020


"Degrading, expensive and illogical" — that is how one trans* person described her experience of legally changing her gender in Germany.

Felicia Rolletschke is one of many activists who is fighting for a reform to the so-called Transsexual Law, which determines the legal process for trans* people to change their gender and name in Germany. By the beginning of 2021, the law will have been in place for 40 years — a time frame in which many countries around the world have seen great upheaval in their legislation around trans* rights.

There are currently two bills before the German parliament that aim to ease this process with a new "self-determination law" (Selbstbestimmungsgesetz). Activists hope such a law would reform the current costly, lengthy process — but the reform has faced some stiff opposition.
[…]
"In late 2015, before I even came out properly, I found a really good therapist," Rolletschke said. "Then we agreed I should begin the paperwork for the court in order to change my name, even before I began hormone therapy and surgery. But in order to get that process started, I needed to pay €1,600 ($1,955)."

This payment is often a barrier for trans* people, especially those who are younger and lack independent resources. Rolletschke was also hampered by being under 25, meaning any state financial support she could receive was assessed based on her parents' income — even though her mother had cut off contact with her.

Meanwhile here in the states, a federal judge ordered the state of Ohio to allow changes to birth certificate…
Ohio Department of Health to allow sex marker changes on birth certificates
JD Supra
By Bricker & Eckler LLP
December 22, 2020


On December 16, 2020, in Ray et al. v. Breda et al., the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio found that the Ohio Department of Health’s (ODH) policy to deny requests for sex marker changes on birth certificates by transgender individuals is unconstitutional, aligning Ohio with the 48 other states that have already permitted such changes.


Does being LGBTQ+ affect our health and why?
Gay and transgender children more likely to be obese, study finds
The New York Post
By Hannah Frishberg
December 28, 2020


There’s a new link between kids’ sexual or gender identity and obesity.

A new study has found that gay, bisexual and transgender children are the most vulnerable to obesity and binge eating disorders.

About 12,000 American children, with an average age of 10, answered a virtual questionnaire in a new study published this month in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The scientists at Maryland’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences quizzed the kids on their age, sexuality, race, socioeconomic status, weight and eating habits. From the results, they determined that kids who self-identify as sexual or gender minorities were more likely to be obese.

The 1.6 percent (190 kids) who answered “yes” or “maybe” on questions asking them if they were gay, bisexual or transgender were 3.5 times more at risk of having a binge-eating disorder, the Daily Mail reported.

Of course the article just points a finger at us and doesn’t go into details of the why.

Maybe being persecuted by society, government, and religious organizations might have something to do with it?



Over in Russia the orthodox church added their two cents to Biden’s comments about trans people…
Russian Bishop Calls Biden’s Transgender Statement Blasphemous
Chronicles
By Srdja Trifkovic
December 28, 2020


Propagating gender reassignment among children should be a criminal offence, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of External Church Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, recently declared on “Russia 24” TV network. His comment was made in response to Joe Biden’s recent statement of support for the supposed right of children to choose their gender.

“The idea that an eight-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides you know, I decided I want to be transgender. That’s what I think I’d like to be,” Biden said with his customary eloquence at a televised Town Hall event on October 16.
[…]
Such clarity is no longer present in some Western theological circles. It is legitimate to see genders and sexualities as creative expressions of the self, argues David Cloutier, a moral theology professor at The Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in America: The Jesuit Review. Commenting on the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education’s document on “gender theory” last year, Cloutier declared that it is legitimate to see genders and sexualities as creative expressions of the self. The further we get from a relatively discrete trait like sexual attraction, Cloutier wrote, the more difficult it becomes to sustain “born that way” arguments. If male and female are social constructs, then it makes no sense to claim that a person is “really” one or the other. The more gender identities proliferate, the less plausible it is to claim a firm biological basis for them:
But what do you expect from a church that call’s itself orthodox?

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