This Trans Day of Visibility, we must be active in the fight against anti-trans legislation proliferating across the country, starting with Arkansas, Alabama, and South Dakota.

Visibility Alone Will Not Keep Transgender Youth Safe

This is why we expanded Trans Day of Visibility, which annually falls on March 31, into Trans Week of Visibility and Action, an effort to mobilize our community and allies against the national wave of anti-trans legislation and rhetoric that attacks and questions our existence. If we don’t put up a coordinated and spirited fight, these bills will devastate the lives of vulnerable youth across the country—and many already have. They will continue to be a threat in the coming weeks, and possibly years to come—which is why we have to start acting now.

The massive Republican push to ban trans athletes, explained

About 30 states have introduced bills to prevent trans kids and women from playing sports. It’s the GOP’s latest attempt to force trans people into hiding.

Federal court rules that professor can sue school that disciplined him for misgendering student

The professor successfully argued that not being able to misidentify a student went against his First Amendment rights as an educator and Christian.

03/27/21

Sorry, nothing new tonight. I’ll come up with something tomorrow.

A trans woman said she was stopped by airport security after scanners flagged her body parts as ‘an anomaly’

Rosalynne Montoya, a transgender Latinx model and activist, shared her uncomfortable experience going through airport security with her 481,000 TikTok followers on March 20.

Weird Art of The Mentally Disturbed

Senate confirms first out transgender federal official, Rachel Levine, as assistant health secretary

Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine speaking at the virtual press conference. The Pennsylvania Department of Health today confirmed as of 12:00 a.m., March 20, that there are 83 additional positive cases of COVID-19 reported, bringing the statewide total to 268. County-specific information and a statewide map are available here. All people are either in isolation at home or being treated at the hospital. Harrisburg, PA- March 20, 2020

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services, the first out transgender federal official to be confirmed by the chamber.

The vote was 52-48. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined all Democrats in voting yes.
Levine, a pediatrician, previously served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health and as physician general — the state’s top health official and top doctor.

Attacks on Transgender Athletes Are Threatening Women’s Sports

A flurry of legislation claiming to “protect” women in sports by potentially requiring athletes to prove their gender through invasive exams threatens the bodily autonomy of all girls in sports.

“The only thing to be gained from this legislation is to traumatize young people who are already at increased risks of depression and suicide,” Torres says, referring to the high rates of suicidality among trans youth. “This is not what our legislators are for. We are supposed to protect our children from predators, not subject them to predation.”

Robina Asti (1921–2021), WWII veteran and transgender advocate

Asti served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, installing radios in aircraft in the Pacific Theater. After the war, she operated a supper club with friends and later worked for mutual fund company E.W. Axe. In was in the 1970s that Asti began her transition, and she later married Norwood Patton. After his death in 2012, she filed to receive his Social Security benefits. She was denied her claim because, according to her birth certificate, she was legally a man at the time of her marriage. Asti enlisted the help of Lambda Legal and fought to receive the benefits. She not only won, receiving two years of back checks; the Social Security Administration and IRS changed their guidelines so the situation can’t happen again. A lifelong pilot, Asti continued to fly and work as a flight instructor into 2020, and she was in the process of being certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest flight instructor. Asti founded the Cloud Dancers Foundation, which “focuses on granting wishes to people, particularly seniors, who experience discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”

The latest form of transphobia: Saying lesbians are going extinct

Transphobia is surging through the United States with a record-setting number of anti-transgender legislative bills, many of which pit vulnerable communities against one another. Proponents of a bill in Tennessee, for example, say that allowing trans children to participate in youth athletics would “destroy women’s sports,” casting cisgender women as the victims in a disingenuous claim to a feminist politics. Others attempt to exploit divides in the LGBTQ community. Leaders of the British group LGB Alliance warn that lesbians are “going to become extinct” as individuals increasingly identify as trans, a fear echoed both by trans-exclusionary groups and by lesbian feminists who in other ways advocate for trans rights. Feminist writer Aimee Anderson frets about “the extinction of an entire people,” and Cherríe Moraga worries that butch lesbians, self-actualizing as transmasculine, might “become a dying breed.” Tomboys, too, have become a point of contention,seen by some as a “rarer and rarer species” that is “going extinct” as more tomboyish children identify as trans and/or nonbinary.