Vic Parsons

Forcing non-binary students to choose “male” or “female” on application forms leaves schools and colleges at “massive risk” of legal action, an expert has warned. The forms that students pursuing further education must complete force them to choose a binary sex option – and non-binary students to misgender themselves. This includes on the individualised learner record (ILR) that further education providers must fill in with a student’s information so they can access funding. This is a policy set by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (EFSA), an “arms-length” official body sponsored by the Department of Education.  But the practice puts further education […]

Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth will welcome an artwork featuring casts of the faces of 850 trans people. For the artwork, 850 Improntas (850 Imprints), Mexican artist Teresa Margolles will cast the faces of 850 trans people in London and beyond. The proposed sculpture would highlight people whose “lives are often overlooked”, many of them sex workers, forming one of the world’s highest-profile public art commissions. The casts will be arranged around the fourth plinth to create a Tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilisations used to display the remains of war captives or sacrifice victims. Due to London’s weather, Margolles expects the casts to wear away and eventually disintegrate, […]

An investigation has unearthed worrying evidence in the case of Mhelody Bruno, a trans Filipino woman who was strangled to death by a former Royal Australian Air Force corporal. Bruno died on 21 September, 2019, in Wagga Wagga, Australia after being choked during sex Her killer, Rian Ross Toyer, 33, initially walked free despite pleading guilty to her death due to a sentencing error. In March 2021, after outrage from activists that Toyer was allowed to escape a prison term, the judge was forced to reopen the case and ultimately sentenced him to 22 months. Details about the days before her death, which were […]