Transgender Woman Fatally Shot in Los Angeles
According to reports from local Los Angeles media, a transgender woman was fatally shot in the head in East Hollywood on Thursday morning while walking down the street during what police believe might have been an attempted robbery. According to witnesses and surveillance footage, two or three men approached the victim when a struggle ensued and one of the men shot her.
The woman was rushed to the hospital when police found her and underwent surgery, but was pronounced dead shortly after. An investigation currently underway has not yet ruled out the possibility that the victim was targeted because of her gender identity.
GLAAD urges media reporting on this story to refer to our resource guide, “Doubly Victimized: Reporting on Transgender Victims of Crime,” to ensure that coverage remains fair, accurate and respectful. If you see defamatory coverage of this story, please report it to GLAAD.
More on GLAAD’s blog.
A Transgender Woman Says She Was Locked In A Cell With Her Rapist
In a lawsuit, Zahara Green says she was wrongly placed in a men’s prison — and when she asked for protective custody, found herself sharing a cell with the inmate who had been abusing her.
The odds were already against Zahara Green when she entered prison on May 10, 2012. Prisons have long been plagued by a culture of sexual harassment and assault, but Green was a transgender woman in an all-male facility — making her about 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than a non-transgender inmate, according to a 2009 study.
Green told BuzzFeed News she distinctly remembers her first day in general population at Rogers State Prison, a facility about an hour and a half outside of Savannah, Georgia. It was two months into her sentence, and she said she can still envision the officer dropping her off at her dorm and walking away.
“I kind of just felt that he was letting me out with the wolves. You’re on your own. It clicked in my mind,” she said. “I found my bed, I placed my stuff on my bed, and then I sat there for about an hour and people were just coming in and out as if this was some kind of showcase.”
Continue reading over at Buzzfeed.
White Mom Who Sued Sperm Bank Over Black Baby Needs To Get A Grip
This foolishness right here: a white woman from Ohio who birthed a Black baby is suing a Chicago-area sperm bank for mistakenly giving her vials from an African-American donor instead of the white one she and her partner chose.
In the lawsuit, Jennifer Cramblett says she and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, chose donor No. 380, who is white, but instead, was sent sperm for donor No. 330, who is Black. Cramblett and Zinkon realized the mistake when they ordered additional vials to make more babies and noticed that the initial donor’s number didn’t match the number on the vials they were sent the second time around. By then, Cramblett was pregnant with the baby of the Black donor.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Cramblett is suing the sperm bank for “wrongful birth and breach of warranty,” which is fair. I mean, if you spend all that time flipping through binders of dudes, checking out their backgrounds, education, height, cuteness and whatever else women are looking for when they’re trying to decide whose sperm they’re going to squirt into their bodies to make the kid of their dreams, you should get what you paid for. Simple as that. I get it.
What I can’t wrap my mind around, though, is that Cramblett is claiming the mix-up caused “emotional and economic losses” brought on when she was forced to birth and raise a Black kid in her virtually lily-white town, amongst her racist, intolerant white family, in her all-the-way white home.
More on MyBrownBaby.com.
White Mom’s Lawsuit Over Black Baby Exposes Ugly Truths About White Privilege
What happens, exactly, when a white family that wants a white sperm donor gets a half-black child instead?
In the case of a lesbian couple from Ohio, it means a “wrongful birth” lawsuit against the sperm bank — two years after the fact. The lawsuit has apparently been prompted by the “racial problems” the parents are experiencing now that their child, 2-year-old Payton, is inching closer toward learning about the cruel, racist realities of American society. But there’s another large issue sitting at the crux of what’s otherwise a lawsuit about medical malpractice.
Dealing with blackness has become burdensome and inconvenient for these two white mothers — because the biracial baby completely upended their decades of enjoying the spoils of white privilege.
More on Mic.com.
The Black Bisexual Experience Presentation at OUT on the Hill | By Faith Cheltenham, President of BiNet USA
On the 2nd day of the NBJC Out on the Hill Conference I was honored to present one of the very first presentation/panel discussions on the black bisexual experience from inside Capitol Hill’s Hart Senate building.
Members of NBJC, BiNet USA, Alliance of Multicultural Bisexuals (AMBi) of Metro DC and Center for Culture, Spirituality and Sexuality all contributed thought leadership into the PowerPoint presentation I presented on The Black Bisexual Experience. Following my presentation we had a 30 minute panel discussion featuring Black LGBT and bisexual icon, ABilly S. Jones-Hennin and Shervon Laurice a D.C. based bisexual psychologist.
Charles Blow’s recent piece for the New York Times surrounding the launch of his book was also shared with attendees of our workshop thanks to the quick actions of Out on the Hill organizers. Blow has written a stunning memoir of growing up black and bisexual, something I myself also aim to do. Having Blow’s piece shared with OOTH attendees helped emphasize the national conversation that is taking place surrounding bisexual community issues of disparities and resiliency.
Read more about the presentation at LGBT Health Link.
Trans Activists Hold Vigil Outside Black Caucus Confab
About 50 transgender activists and their supporters held a prayer vigil outside D.C.’s Walter Washington Convention Center on Saturday, Sept. 27, on the final day that the Congressional Black Caucus held its annual legislative conference there. Organizers said the event was part of a newly launched campaign called Black Trans Women’s Lives Matter and was intended to honor black and Latina trans women who were murdered this year, some of whom were victims of hate crimes.
Lead organizer Ashley Love, a black and Latina woman who identifies as a transsexual and intersex advocate and journalist from New York, said the event was also aimed at sending a message to black lawmakers attending the conference that the mainstream black social justice movement often ignores the plight of trans women of color.
See more at the Washington Blade.
Precious Davis Reflects on Center, Excited for Columbia
Precious Davis is leaving her “labor of love and the place where I found myself” in favor of a full circle journey back to Columbia College.
Davis, 28, who lives in Lakeview announced in late September that she resigned her position at the Center on Halsted, where she has worked for the past three years as the youth outreach coordinator. She will become the assistant director of diversity recruitment initiatives at Columbia—her alma mater.
“I am excited to recruit LGBT youth and other diverse talent to join the Columbia College family,” she said. “Social justice, diversity work, and human relations are natural talents and passions of mine, [and] I am elated to facilitate conversations on what diversity looks like in education in 2014. The scope of my view is broad being a bi-racial trans woman of color who has overcome obstacles and understands the multiple facets and intersectionality that makes up the essence of diversity work.”
Davis said working in higher education and academia is the next logical step her career. “I have worked in the field of diversity work for the last 10 years,” she said. “This job is the best summation of my professional skills to date. I also feel my relative experience as a Columbia College graduate will shape my understanding greatly of Columbia’s unique population’s needs and challenges.”
More at Windy City Times.
Md. Transgender Rights Law Takes Effect
A Maryland law that bans anti-transgender discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations took effect on Wednesday. “We’ve taken one step closer to ensuring that all Marylanders are protected from discrimination under the law,” Gov. Martin O’Malley told the Washington Blade in a statement. LGBT rights advocates also welcomed the law going into effect. “This law is critical in the lives of transgender Marylanders,” said Carrie Evans, executive director of Equality Maryland, in a statement on Tuesday. “For too long it has been okay to fire transgender people, kick them out of their apartments and deny them services at a restaurant; tomorrow this will be rectified.”
Continue reading on the Washington Blade.
*Featured photos courtesy of Washington Blade
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