Ignoring the transphobic slurs thrown by Joan Rivers, because all she wants is more attention, here’s this weeks Trans News!

Largest Study to Date: Transgender Hormone Treatment Safe

More than 2000 patients from 15 US and European centers participated in the retrospective study, called Comorbidity and Side Effects of Cross-Sex Hormone Treatment in Transsexual Subjects, and nearly 1600 received at least 1 year of follow-up, the authors reported.

“Our results are very reassuring,” principal investigator Henk Asscheman, MD, PhD, who heads HAJAP, his clinical research company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, told Medscape Medical News. “There are mostly minor side effects and no new [adverse events] observed in this large population.”

Phew. I’ve read a lot of anecdotal tales regarding the safety of HRT and pretty much all of it conflicted. The more studies we get on the long term effects of HRT the better.

Source: Medscape

The gift of a lifetime: how trans ‘top surgery’ changed my life

The stereotype of transition is that we are desperate for surgery, consequences be damned. In reality, everyone’s transition is different and every surgery carries serious risks. It was not something I could feel breezy about. Sure, life after the fact would be ace, but getting there involved a general anaesthetic, scalpels and a healing process fraught with potential complications.

Surgery is not for everyone, but for some people it is everything. Remember kids, no ‘right way’ to be trans exists. Be yourself, and be kind to yourself.

Source: The Guardian

SC DMV: Boy can’t retake license photo in makeup

“at no time will an applicant be photographed when it appears that he or she is purposely altering his or her appearance so that it the photo would misrepresent his or her identity.”

She said that law enforcement agencies rely on drivers’ license photos to identify people.

“If it’s Thomas Jones on the license and yet it looks like a female, that is very confusing for them,” she said. “They want to know what the identity is.”

But he presents as female, regardless of the fact he still has a male name. How is that confusing? How is more confusing than unusual names? Or foreign names? It isn’t.

This is really unjustified, and it’s a policy against trans people. The constant denial of trans identity in small ways like this is wearing and hideous.

Source: MSN

Policy on transgender inmates is unsafe and unjust: Editorial

Avery Edison is a woman. She says so. Her passport says so. The United Kingdom says so. And yet, on her last visit to Toronto, she was detained by border services at Pearson airport and incarcerated for 20 hours in a correctional facility for men.
That’s because Edison, who overstayed a student visa during a previous stint in Canada, was born a man. And while Ontario law says biological sex doesn’t determine gender status, the province’s correctional services disagrees. The department’s policy is to disregard the legal sex status of transgender inmates and instead place them according to their biological sex.

Source: The Star

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: Roadmap to transgender

Transgender rights are gaining visibility in Canadian cities and provinces of late. The Vancouver District School Board recently allowed students to use the gender pronoun and bathroom of their choice, and Alberta issued a new birth certificate to a transgender Edmonton boy. But roadblocks at the federal level remain; a move in Parliament to give transgender people additional protection under the cyberbullying bill was quashed last month.

Source: Globe and Mail

Green Party calls transgender candidate a first for provincial election campaign

Garneau, the party noted, is the first transgender person to seek election, provincially, in Saskatchewan. “I’m not a man or a woman,” Garneau told CBC News in an interview Friday. “I could be aspects of both. I’m just sort of outside of the understanding of gender.” Garneau says advocating for human rights, in general, was a key motivator for entering politics adding transgender issues — especially discrimination — is of particular interest. “That is something I would like to focus on, but that’s not the core of my campaign,” Garneau said. Garneau hoped to appeal to anyone looking for a candidate who listens to them, and acts on their concerns. “I am here for human rights, I am here mostly just to help out people who need help,” Garneau said, adding the Green Party was the most open-minded when it comes to policies.

Well done Green Party. Hello other parties, time to wake up to LGBT.

Source: CBC

Transgender pronouns not in immediate future for Saskatoon schools

“I don’t necessarily fit into the female world and I don’t really fit in the male world either so where do I go,” said Hitomi. ‘They’ identifies as non-binary. Hitomi admits the wording can get confusing as ‘they’ generally refers to more than one person. The Vancouver board of education recently approved a policy change allowing students who’s gender expression does not align with their biological gender to be referred to as xe, xem and/or xyr as an alternative to “he or she”, “him or her”, and “his or hers”. “That could make all the difference,” Hitomi said, when thinking about how this would have affected their experience while attending high school. It is a time in life when Hitomi was suicidal.

This piece does say that in public schools they use the preferred gender pronoun of the child on request and schools are getting gender neutral bathrooms.

The hold outs of course are the religious schools and the official stamp of approval. Because after all, making such a simple change and helping prevent the possible suicide of children is too hard. Grr.

 Source: Global News

Marcy Cook

Female geek, author and blogger. Non-cis, non-straight, non-single, non-asshat.