In the last several weeks, both the state of North Carolina and the city of Oxford, Alabama have passed legislation limiting or prohibiting the trans community from utilizing the public facilities of their correct gender. These bills are HB2 in North Carolina and City Ordinance 2016-18 in Oxford. Join me as I breakdown some of the points, counterpoints and realities of these bills and the harm they inflict on the trans community, as well as the complete lack of protection that they provide to the people who claim they are needed. Below you will find a number of resources that …
Christian Zsilavetz & Pride School Atlanta
If it’s felt lately like there has been a large number of anti-trans bills proposed across the country…it’s not your imagination. There has. NCTE is currently tracking some 49 proposed and inactive bills in 19 states in the 2016 legislative session. And a vast majority of those laws affect transgender and gender non-conforming students. These are the bathroom and locker room bills you’ve likely heard about: That a student must use the restroom that matches their sex assigned at birth, or in some cases, their genitals. And then there’s bullying: According to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, only …
Family Matters
Each of these segments will feature a story about events involving a family member or members. I have some amazing stories for you today, about pain, about joy, and hopefully you’ll laugh a bit along the way as well.
Story Tellers:
Eli Strong [“Expectations”]
Julian [“Black and Blue”]
Ari Agha [“Aunt Miriam”]
Julian [“Black and Blue”] is a 30 something year old black trans man navigating life as a mental health professional in Washington, DC on a non-profit salary. When he’s not working, he enjoys learning about ways to be a better therapist, playing and listening to music and long …
About Face
The stories in this episode showcase a few of the ways in which we present ourselves to the world around us and how those performances and presentations affect our lives moving forward. Is the face that we show to the world the same one we see in the mirror? How do we view society and how are we viewed in it? And will these experiences change the trajectory of our future and how we move through our daily lives? Welcome…to The Strong Stance Stories.
Story Tellers:
Eli Strong [“Strangers”]
Tracee McDaniel [“1996: The Year That Transformed My Life”]
Melvin Whitehead…
FTMFitCon 2015
I recently presented at the FTM Fitness Conference in Atlanta. It was three days of speakers, breakout sessions and events focused on the acknowledgement, discussion, education and celebration of transgender fitness in all forms: physical, emotional, mental and financial. This was the second year for the FTMFitcon, which will soon be going thru a rebranding of sorts…but we’ll get to that later. For most people that have heard of FTMFitCon, they know it as the ‘First FTM Bodybuilding Competition’, but that event is just one aspect of the conference. In addition to the historic bodybuilding competition, there was a fashion …
The Injustice of Incarceration
In the last few years, there has been ever increasing media attention on the subject of incarceration, particularly in how those institutions affect transgender inmates. From CeCe McDonald’s imprisonment for defending herself in an assault, to Laverne Cox’s portrayal as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black, to Jennicet Gutierrez’s White House protest of transgender detainee treatment in ICE custody. Today we have two guests joining us to discuss the current state of the American prison system, the concept of abolition and the reforms necessary to protect transgender and gender non-conforming prisoners. Joining me are Mik Kinkead, staff attorney …
The Rampant Murders of Transgender Women
For all the advancements that the transgender community has seen over the last couple years, there are still staggering statistics of discrimination and oppression that our community faces on a daily basis. We face employment and housing discrimination, the outright denial of adequate healthcare or the coverage thereof, bullying, suicide and murder at alarming rates.
Tracee McDaniel of the Juxtaposed Center for Transformation, Cheryl C. Courtney-Evans of T.I.L.T.T, Inc. (Transgender Individuals Living Their Truth), and Sasha Alexander of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) join me to discuss these devastating losses, the violence plaguing our community, and where …
The Trans-lation of Marriage Equality
A month ago The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that same-sex marriage is now legal nationwide. NPR’s Nina Totenberg said that this case, Obergefell (OH-ber-guh-fell) v. Hodges is a landmark ruling that is “right up there with Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade.” Facebook exploded with rainbow flags and the White House was lit up in rainbow spotlights; and people celebrated in the streets, in their homes and at events. But how does this decision affect the transgender and gender non-conforming community? How big IS this win for us? And obviously there is …
Did We Leave Pride, or Did Pride Leave Us?
It’s Pride season again and while so many people are attending festivals, parties and parades to celebrate the equality gains that have been made in the LGBTQ community and rejoicing in the existence of any space that allows us to truly exist in the comfort of our own skins without the judgement and burdens that come with daily life in the non-queer world, I have to ask the question of where the trans community fits into this schema. It’s ironic that we have to have a conversation about where trans people belong in an annual affair that basically celebrates an …
Is the T Transitioning Out of LGBT?
When it comes to the referring to larger “gay” or “queer” community (and I’m using air quotes here), most people and organizations have settled on the acronym LGBT, or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. While each of these individuals are not identical, nor do they sometimes even share some of the same characteristics, they have found themselves grouped together as one collective community. But why is that? And what are the benefits of the collective versus the individual, or rather the collective and the splintering off of one particular segment of that community? There is an ongoing debate as to …