Op-ed: Trans, Intersex Visibility and the Myth of Scarcity

The recent media focus on Caitlyn Jenner’s coming-out as a trans woman seems to celebrate her conformity to binary gender standards. But that media spotlight has illuminated some existing tensions among and between trans and intersex communities. As transgender civil rights have progressed and positive media attention increased in the past year, so have concerns about scarcity of coverage for the differing issues of each community. Inflamed tensions between the trans and intersex communities are even more deeply rooted in the common misconceptions that intersex and trans people often have about each other.

Specifically, the celebration of a particular type of gender-affirming surgery as liberating, brave, and beautiful can be triggering and even offensive to many intersex people. In many cases, intersex advocates are fighting for the right to not be involuntarily subjected to surgeries many trans people find medically necessary to live authentically. Opposing involuntary gender-assignment surgeries is central to the intersex awareness and advocacy movement.

By contrast, the common but mistaken assumption that all transgender people actively seek out similar surgeries as gender-affirming treatment has been promoted to oppose “transgenderism,” as if it were a choice or a social movement. Read More

US: History of the US government’s cruel, malicious campaign against gay Americans

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the dismissal of every single gay person working for the federal government. For the next several decades, the FBI’s sex deviate program investigated all employees suspected of being gay, collecting evidence on their sex lives and turning it over to the Civil Service Commission—which promptly fired them. Gay men were routinely entrapped by police officers, and politicians used knowledge of their enemies’ sexuality for blackmail.

This horrible history has largely been swept under the rug. But Michael Isikoff’s new documentary Uniquely Nasty unearths some of the government’s worst abuses against gay people, including blackmail that led to a senator’s suicide. Read More

Germany: Museum launches show on 150 years of gay history

Germany's main national history museum on Wednesday launched an exhibition tracing 150 years of gay history in the country, including the first uses of the term "homosexual," the brutal Nazi-era repression of gays and gradual moves toward legal equality starting in the 1960s.

The exhibition at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, which is staging it together with the capital's privately run Gay Museum, has been four years in the planning but is opening amid a new debate in Germany over whether to allow full-fledged marriage for same-sex couples. Read More

Zimbabwe: Transgender woman speaks on her fight against abuse

In Zimbabwe the idea of having a family member who transits from being a man to a woman (transgender) is unheard of and considered a taboo. Robert Tapfumaneyi spoke to Tatenda Karigambe who has since gone to have a sex change operation at a cost of about $80,000 to hear of some horrible moments, humiliation and discomfort she has suffered, the deep violation of her rights and how she has overcome them:

People have a lot of perceptions. When I read local newspapers I hear someone saying the transgender disease has hit our country; it's because people don't know and they don't understand it, it's like seeing a tree in a desert, it becomes very strange.

But we need to educate people so that they understand because daily our rights are being violated...Some accuse us of being swayed by Western influence; that is very wrong, transgender is also here in Zimbabwe. Make yourself known, make your voice loud, be proud, stay strong; that will bring out what I personally call gender identity revolution where we say the whole family of Zimbabwe be it black or white, be it heterosexual, be it transgender, we just speak in one voice of love and understanding. Read the full interview 

Cameroon: LGBTI rights leader faces police shakedown

The president of the LGBTI rights group Humanity First Cameroon returned from a trip yesterday to find a police sergeant waiting for him with death threats and a demand for money in exchange for his freedom.

Returning shortly after midnight at the end of a trip to Europe, Jules Eloundou was accused of homosexuality. The friends who came to pick him up were detained and assaulted. The police demanded bribes, hurled abuse, and beat the three men before eventually releasing them. Read More

UK: Hate crime is everyday reality for rural LGBT people, study says

LGBT people in Britain’s rural towns and villages are being bullied relentlessly because of their sexuality, leaving some too scared to leave the house, according to an expert in hate crime.

Stevie-Jade Hardy, a lecturer at the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies and the author of a report on hate crime, said harassment and verbal abuse was an everyday reality for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Hardy pointed to national figures that suggest eight in 10 LGBT people have been verbally abused or harassed and one in 10 has been physically assaulted.  She said LGBT people felt they were more likely to be the victim of hate crime if they were “noticeably different”, potentially making those in villages particularly vulnerable.

“Within rural locations those differences are maybe magnified, and so young people will often target someone who they see as being different in that context. People are actually scared to go out into their garden to enjoy the sun; some people had taken some practical steps like having CCTV put into their house.  Read More 

Syria: ISIS executes four men suspected of being gay as the US legalises same-sex marriage

A shocking video uploaded on Friday by anti-violence campaigners, showed the execution of four men. They were thrown off the roof of a building, during which screams were heard by the crowd of hundreds gathered to watch. Pictures and videos of the victims, who were suspected by ISIS of homosexuality, were uploaded by @Raqqa_Sl, which campaigns against violence in Syria. Some tweets even used the #LoveWins hashtag synonymous with the SCOTUS ruling, to tweet messages about the victims.

At time of publication the YouTube video of the execution had been removed. The group known as Islamic State has reportedly been employing “honeytraps” to coerce men into homosexuality before executing them. Read More

Turkey: Police fire pepper spray at gay pride parade

Although the gay pride parade has happened in peace for at least 13 years in Istanbul, this year the parade was interrupted by police who fired pepper spray and rubber pellets at thousands when they arrived to march. Parade organizers noted, "The use of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, as an excuse to curtail the freedoms of assembly, demonstration, and speech is a clear violation of rule of law. In taking this illegal decision, the Governor’s Office has thus broken the law." And further stated that police were not wearing helmets with their registration numbers, making identifying those responsible for the assault impossible.

"This is happening after the elections because they realize the power of the LGBTI movement," said transgender activist Ruzgar Buski. "Erdogan's government has lost their power and they know the LGBTI community stands with minorities."   Read More

Read the Istanbul LGBTI Pride Week Committee full statement here. 

South Korea: This is what happened when Christian groups tried to shut down Korea Pride

Tens of thousands of people marched through the South Korean capital in an LGBT pride festival, despite attempts by Christian groups to shut it down. The atmosphere was defiantly jubilant at the parade, the culmination of the three-week long Korean Queer Culture Festival.

Christian groups have been running a campaign for weeks to try to block the parade. In May, they camped out for a week in front of the police station where parade organizers had to apply for a permit and filed a competing request to hold an event in the same place. Police initially responded by canceling the parade citing the conflicting permit applications, but a court ruled that the parade had to be allowed. The Seoul police deployed thousands of officers to keep order between the queer festival — which began in a large grassy plaza in front of city hall — and eight counter protests that entirely surrounded the area. Read More

US: Conversion therapy group committed consumer fraud, N.J. jury says

A New Jersey jury on Thursday found a non-profit group that provides gay-to-straight conversion therapy guilty of consumer fraud for promising clients they could overcome their sexual urges by undressing in front of other men, pummeling an effigy of their mothers, and re-enacting traumatic childhood experiences.

In the first case in the nation to put the controversial practice on trial, the jury concluded that Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, the founders of Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing in Jersey City and life coach Alan Downing to whom JONAH referred patients, "engaged in unconscionable commercial practices" and misrepresented their services. Read More

Malaysia: Court convicts nine transgender women

An Islamic court in Malaysia has convicted 9 transgender women of violating laws that prohibit “a male person posing as a woman,” Human Rights Watch reported. All women were fined and two were handed jail sentences. The nine women, locally known as mak nyah, were attending a birthday party at a hotel when officials from Kelantan’s Islamic Affairs Department raided the place and arrested them. 

In 2014, a Malaysian appeals court struck down the law against cross-dressing in the state of Negeri Sembilan, with the presiding judge calling it “degrading, oppressive and inhumane.” Enforcement of the law has since been suspended in the state, but the state government has appealed the decision to a federal court. Meanwhile, the law against cross-dressing remains in place across the rest of Malaysia’s 13 states and its federal territories.  Read More