In a country where gay sex is against the law, it can be almost impossible for the LGBT community to access services tackling domestic violence – and during the pandemic, lockdowns saw abuse soar
All photos by DeLovie Kwagala
* Names have been changed. Since these interviews took place all the subjects have ceased living with their abusers and are finding ways to heal
Continue reading...Labour leader says it is not right to say ‘only women have a cervix’ and calls for ‘respectful debate’ over issue
Labour and the Conservatives have clashed on the issue of trans rights, as Sir Keir Starmer said it was wrong to say “only women have a cervix” and the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said this was a “total denial of scientific fact”.
The Labour leader called for laws to go further to protect trans rights after he was asked about one of his MPs, Rosie Duffield, who said “only women have a cervix”.
Continue reading...Her huge-hearted portrayal of Blanca has made Rodriguez the first trans performer to be up for a leading actress Emmy. Will she take the crown on Sunday? We join her for a Zoom call with a twist
MJ Rodriguez can see me but I can’t see her. This is not the sort of existential issue that afflicted pre-pandemic interviews, but minutes before my Zoom encounter with the actor and singer I get an email from Rodriguez’s rep saying she will no longer be appearing on camera. This comes hot on the heels of another message saying Rodriguez, who this year became the first trans actor in history to be nominated for an Emmy award in a lead acting category, for her fantastic performance in Pose, would rather I didn’t ask her about the ballroom scene. Which is basically the entire world of Pose, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s era-defining drama, set in the New York underground vogueing culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I take from this nervy preamble two things. First, constantly being seen as the living embodiment of the importance of representation is exhausting, and curiously diminishing. And second, Rodriguez is ready to walk out of the shadow of her character on Pose: Blanca Evangelista, the no-nonsense “house mother” who takes all of queer New York under her wing, has a seemingly never-ending supply of wise words for them, and a heart bigger than any disco ball.
Continue reading...The Rev Megan Rohrer will lead nearly 200 congregations of one of the largest Christian denominations in the US
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has installed its first openly transgender bishop in a service held in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral on Saturday.
The Rev Megan Rohrer will lead one of the church’s 65 synods, overseeing nearly 200 congregations in northern California and northern Nevada.
Continue reading...Conservatives think they can avoid accepting trans people by reducing our existence to a passing fad. But we’ve always been here
Whenever the subject of transgender identities comes up today, there is a tendency for conservative politicians – perhaps most of all in the United States – to trot out a particularly specious argument: that the idea of being trans is a “new” concept, a notion that “no one” in their right mind had heard of, or would entertain, in previous eras.
At its most extreme, this argument suggests that a peculiar concoction of things is to blame for our existence – from social media, indoctrination by well-paid gender studies professors, or even an excess of supposedly hormone-altering substances, like soy or arcane chemicals, in our diets. Non-binary identities particularly confound conservatives.
Continue reading...Answer to sex question can differ from birth certificate, without need for gender recognition certificate, says NRS
People can answer the male or female question in Scotland’s 2022 census based on how they identify themselves rather than according to legal status, according to new guidance from the body responsible for the survey.
Issued by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) on Tuesday, the guidelines tell people to answer the sex question according to how they self-identify, regardless of the details on their birth certificate or whether they have a gender recognition certificate.
Continue reading...Trans children and their families still often face suspicion and suppression, but attitudes are changing
‘My preconceptions about trans people came from the media, and I certainly hadn’t heard of trans children. So it just flummoxed me having an assigned male child who didn’t have especially ‘feminine’ interests and yet was saying consistently, ‘I’m a girl.’”
Kate was telling me about her eldest daughter, Alex. (Names of all trans young people, and of their parents, have been changed for their privacy.) It was a warm July evening, and we were sitting in the kitchen of their family home, in a comfortable British suburb populated by middle-class couples with young families. Alex, still at primary school, is trans. A few years ago, her mum assumed she was a boy who was clumsily trying to ask for typically feminine things. “I remember I used to have conversations with her at a very young age in the car because she’d get really upset. I’d say: ‘But I don’t understand what would be different if you were a girl? What can’t you do that you could do if you were a girl?’ I’d ask: ‘Do you want a doll?’ She’d just reply: ‘I don’t like dolls!’”
Continue reading...In a country with shocking brutality against LGBTQ+ people, Alexya Salvador is using her faith to help others like her
Desperate calls from LGBTQ+ youths contemplating suicide or from their parents after they have made an attempt on their lives often punctuate Alexya Salvador’s day. When they do, she drops everything to talk.
As a transgender woman, she recognises the anguish in their voices. “I feel their pain in my body because I went through this,” she says. “My family went through this.”
Continue reading...With her debut book, The Right to Sex, a 36-year-old Oxford don is dazzling everyone from Vogue to Prospect magazine. She discusses porn, gender dysphoria – and why her students are no snowflakes
If All Souls is one of the most inordinately beautiful colleges in Oxford – its bone-white gothic, best peered at by mere mortals from nearby Radcliffe Square, is the work of the great Nicholas Hawksmoor – it’s also one of the oddest and most rarefied. Famously, it has no student body. Each year, however, a small number of recent graduates who would like to become so-called prize fellows may apply to take a famously difficult and inscrutable exam during which, as a tour guide I followed earlier put it, they must “write an essay on a single word, like coconut”. As my eavesdropping also revealed, TE Lawrence, AKA Lawrence of Arabia, passed this exam, but Harold Wilson failed it.
In her lovely, wood-panelled room in All Souls – its current tenant wears Adidas sneakers and likes a good martini, but it still makes me think of patched corduroy and sherry – Amia Srinivasan laughs heartily. “Right,” she says. “Those guides. They always come up with things like: everyone here is a priest, or everyone is a man. Or they tell people: ‘Stephen Hawking is in there right now.’ At least the exam thing is sort of true.” Having taken it successfully herself in 2009 – she had to write around the word “reproduction” – Srinivasan was a prize fellow at the college until 2016, when she became a lecturer at UCL (the one-word riff component was abandoned the following year). Now, though, she’s back. Last January, she took her up her post as the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls, a job once held by Isaiah Berlin. She is both the first woman, and the first person of colour, to hold it. At just 36, she is also its youngest ever incumbent.
Continue reading...Misinformation about Wi Spa, a Korean spa in Los Angeles, quickly spread around the world. Since then, trans women in LA have faced violence and online abuse
On 24 June, a woman claimed on Instagram that a Korean spa in Los Angeles had allowed a “man” to expose himself to women and girls in the women’s section.
The unsubstantiated allegations about Wi Spa in LA’s Koreatown neighborhood quickly spread from social media to rightwing forums to far-right news sites to Fox News, and were distorted by anti-transgender groups across multiple countries.
Continue reading...Model, who is black and Filipino, is also the first ever trans woman of color to be featured in the magazine
Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue has unveiled its first ever transgender cover star, Leyna Bloom.
The model follows in the footsteps of model Valentina Sampaio, who was the first trans model to appear in the pages of the magazine last July. Bloom, who is black and Filipino, is also the first ever trans woman of color to be featured in the magazine.
Continue reading...Dozens of people have been arrested in Los Angeles following a chaotic and at times violent demonstration by anti-transgender protesters who targeted a Koreatown spa that has a trans-inclusive policy. The far-right protesters called for a boycott of Wi Spa which allows trans women to use women’s facilities. LAPD also appeared to fire rubber bullets at demonstrators from a close distance as trans rights and anti-fascist activists showed up in a counter-protest
Continue reading...Dumfries course teaches 11- to 18-year-olds how to create a persona, apply makeup and the history of drag
“You can use drag to explore anything you want to,” says Natalie Doidge, the organiser of what is thought to be Scotland’s first “drag school” for teenagers, which opens its doors later this month after facing down controversy.
“Drag isn’t limited to men dressed as women … and this course opens it out to anyone who wants to try it. It’s an exploration of [oneself] – especially for young people at the upper end of high school, when your life is just beginning and you’re thinking about who want to be. Gender is a performance, after all.”
Continue reading...Kataluna Enriquez won the Miss Nevada USA pageant Sunday and will compete in Miss USA pageant in November
A transgender woman who won the Miss Nevada USA pageant will soon become the first openly transgender Miss USA contestant.
On Sunday, Kataluna Enriquez beat 21 other contestants to win the crown. The 27-year-old took to Instagram the next day to celebrate. “Huge thank you to everyone who supported me from day one,” she wrote. “My community, you are always in my heart. My win is our win. We just made history. Happy pride.”
Continue reading...Landmark ruling orders state to pay reparations, protect trans people and legalise gender change
In a landmark ruling for transgender rights, the Honduras government has been found responsible for the 2009 murder of the trans woman and activist Vicky Hernández. The ruling, at the inter-American court of human rights, was published on the 12th anniversary of Hernández’s death, and marks the first time the highest regional human rights court has held a state accountable for failing to prevent, investigate and prosecute the death of a trans person.
The court has ordered Honduras, which has the world’s highest rate of murders of trans people, to pay reparations to Hernández’s family and implement a sweeping range of measures designed to protect trans people, including anti-discrimination training for security forces and state collection of data on violence against LGBTQ+ people.
Continue reading...Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard but even as Pride events are called off there is hope and a promise that the parades will return
This month, for the second year in a row, there was no Pride parade in San Francisco, arguably the city most laden with history and symbolism for the LGBTQ+ community.
It is a decision Fred Lopez, who took over as executive director of San Francisco Pride at the beginning of last year describes as “heartbreaking”.
Continue reading...The New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard is set to make history and headlines, plus an enormous amount of controversy, after being confirmed as the first transgender athlete to ever compete at the Olympic Games.
The 43-year-old will be a live medal contender when she competes in the
women’s super heavyweight category on 2 August. But Hubbard’s inclusion
will also frustrate those who believe she has an unfair advantage
over her rivals, having gone through male puberty before transitioning in
2012.
In One Thousand Dreams, award-winning photographer Robin Hammond hands the camera to refugees. Often reduced by the media’s toxic or well-meaning narratives, the portraits and interviews capture a different and more complex tale
Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories. From photographing the Rohingya forced out of Myanmar and rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to documenting the lives of people in countries where their sexuality is illegal, his work has earned him award after award.
But for his latest project the photographer has embarked on a paradigm shift: to remove himself – and others like him – from the process entirely. Instead, as part of an in-depth exploration of the refugee experience in Europe, the stories of those featured are told by those who, arguably, know them best: other refugees.
Continue reading...Celebrations become ‘month of mourning’ after three murders in a week, with calls for urgent state reform
Guatemala’s LGBTQ+ community is in mourning after two transgender women and a gay man were murdered in less than a week during pride month.
Andrea González, a prominent activist and leader in the transgender women’s organisation Otrans Reinas de la Noche (Queens of the Night) was shot dead on 11 June in the street near her home in Guatemala City. Her murder followed the killing of another Otrans member, Cecy Ixpatá, who was assaulted and died from her injuries on 9 June in a hospital in Salamá, about 50 miles north of Guatemala City. José Manuel Vargas Villeda, a 22-year-old gay man was also shot and killed on 14 June in Morales, 150 miles north-east of the capital.
Continue reading...As oppressive legislation passed by Viktor Orbán’s government, activists plan procession to ‘show LGBT people they are not alone’
For the second year in a row, Covid has succeeded in doing what many had once thought impossible: toning down Pride celebrations. From Berlin to Brighton, Toronto to San Francisco, parades have been cancelled or put online, floats forgotten and parties swapped for quieter, often more reflective events.
But in Budapest, where LGBTQ+ activists are engaged in a near-existential fight against the rightwing government of Viktor Orbán, the stakes were too high for Pride to take a back seat.
Continue reading...