An assistant principal bullied a trans boy and challenged him to prove his gender by using a urinal, according to a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The student at Liberty High School in West Virginia was using a stall on November 27 when he was allegedly confronted by the senior staff member, Wave 3 News has reported.
“When he came out of the stall, the principal was essentially blocking him in so he could not leave.”
— ACLU West Virginia executive director Joseph Cohen
ACLU West Virginia executive director Joseph Cohen said: “He misgendered him, at one point challenged him to come out and use a urinal, essentially to prove that he was a boy.
“When he came out of the stall, the principal was standing in front of the exit, essentially blocking him in so he could not leave.”
The trans boy has reportedly returned to the school in Clarksburg, in the north of the state, but is suffering from anxiety and has experienced at least one panic attack since the bathroom incident.
The ACLU has sent a letter of complaint to the Harrison County Board of Education, in which it is also alleged that the trans boy was deliberately misgendered at school.
Cohen called on the school and the state to better address trans issues, saying: “More than 50 percent of male trans teens attempt suicide.
“This really is a life or death issue and it’s time that West Virginia schools take LGBTQ issues seriously.”
Superintendent Mark Manchin said that due process was needed, but added: “The preliminary information that I have received is perhaps, it does appear from what I’ve been able to confirm that our employee did not act in an appropriate manner, and was not sensitive to the needs of one of our students.”
Manchin continued: “Everybody has certain rights and also responsibilities, and we certainly take this very, very seriously to ensure all of our children are treated fairly and equitably.”
The assistant principal has not been disciplined by the high school, according to the ACLU.
Last month, a trans girl at Osseo Senior High School in Maple Grove, Minnesota, posted a horrifying video which appeared to show staff breaking into a women’s bathroom stall while she was using the toilet.
In the clip, the student is on the toilet with her trousers down while several adults attempt to force their way into the locked stall.
One person can be seen peering over the top of the stall, before a stick is used to unlatch the lock on the stall door, which swings wide open in full view of several male and female staff members.
The student tells viewers: “I’m using the bathroom right now and they just violated me. They’re some perverts.”
This week, Tumblr announced that it would ban all adult content from its platform and said any user who was hurt by the decision could simply migrate to another site. But creators and readers alike don’t believe there’s another website that fosters the same kind of sex-positive spaces that Tumblr has. It’s as though Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio has failed to understand his own platform, how unique these communities are to Tumblr, and how unlikely it is for them to survive beyond the shutdown.
“Sex wasn’t this separate, shameful thing. Tumblr allowed it to exist right next to every other facet of our messy, millennial experience,” says Vex Ashley, who runs the blog Vextape that’s inspired by her work as a cam model and making DIY porn. “We shared it, discussed it, debated it, and curated it.” Porn, she says, was as appropriate on Tumblr as song lyrics.
Tumblr is home to a myriad of sex-positive and body-positive blogs, in additional to indie porn blogs and curated archives that provide something not found on Pornhub, YouPorn, or any of the other mainstream adult portals. It’s also been relatively unique among social media sites for allowing nudity and sexually explicit content to be posted. Most sites, like Facebook and Instagram, prohibit nudity and regularly remove posts that are flagged. With Tumblr gone from the equation, creators and readers fear their hubs of sex-positive and body-positive content will vanish.
“There is a lot of value in being able to share images of and information about sexuality. This change will erase years of content from countless Tumblr users,” says the anonymous author behind Bijouworld, which curates photos of vintage gay porn, old magazine covers, and newspaper clippings. They believe that other blogs focused on the history of erotica will also suffer. “This was a good spot for us all to exchange and combine our info and knowledge, so I hope we can find a new way to do that.”
Bijou Classics, the gay adult company behind the blog, also posts regularly to Pornhub and maintains an extensive web presence across multiple platforms that allow adult content. But Tumblr, the blogger says, filled a void when the company wanted to explore the archival and historical aspects of gay porn.
“I do think Tumblr is unique … [it] was one of the few platforms that is broadly open to the public where we could share explicit photos in any sort of organized fashion.” The anonymous person behind the blog says that since 2011, Bijou Classics has “used our Tumblr presence to post images from our archives, written blogs, trivia, and more.” The purpose is to “keep information circulating about the history and evolution of erotica and gay culture.”
Many sexuality blog authors don’t see a way forward without Tumblr. That includes lawyer and journalist Maddie Holden, who runs Critique My Dick Pic, a blog that’s received attention from sites including The Hairpin, Jezebel, and The Daily Dot.
Holden takes a media that’s often considered a nuisance to receive and approaches it satirically as an art form, going in depth about the shadows and positioning of each photo. She ends her reviews with: “thank you for submitting to critique my dick pic” and a grade ranging from A to F. The latest lyrical review of a dick in the shower, posted on November 30th, reads, “your photo is certainly not coy but it avoids being dick-centric, and apart from minor flares of distraction — a green towel in the bottom-left corner and a blue razor in the windowsill — the background is uncluttered and effective.”
Critique My Dick Pic has been described by its followers as “hilarious and useful,” says Holden. She says a trans woman recently told her that the trans-inclusive nature of the blog factored into helping her decide to come out and transition.
The blog has been around since 2013, but Holden says she’s not sure if she’ll move to another platform after Tumblr hides her content from public view on December 17th. Holden tells The Verge, “I mean, it will be the end of the blog as far as I can tell. I receive a portion of my income from CDMP, which will end, and the site has been pretty beloved for years now, so it’s a shame for its followers.”
The operator of another quirky, body-positive blog, called Things My Dick Does, says he plans to keep his Tumblr open after the ban, but only to share safe-for-work posts to keep in touch with his readers.
Started by an anonymous man in 2015, the blog’s creator draws mustaches and smiley faces on his dick, often placing props around it in amusing situations. He tells The Verge, “I know it’s a silly dick blog, but I’ve gotten to know some pretty amazing people through here. (My girlfriend included!)” He says that as he continued to post pics of his dick sipping coffee, dressed as Batman, or just smiling cheerily, he received positive feedback and even had a woman reach out to him because they lived in the same city. She later became his girlfriend. “People say they’ve overcome some serious rough spots in their lives because of the laughs I brought them.”
The man says he can migrate to other platforms, but his presence on YouTube and Instagram is distinctly different. It’s covered up and less NSFW, obscuring the very quality of his blog that disarmed audiences — a charming, dressed-up dick that more resembled a cartoon than graphic porn. “It’s definitely a loss to the adult content creators out there,” the man behind Things My Dick Does says. “Seems like it’s getting more and more difficult to express yourself.”
There just isn’t anywhere else to go. Other than Tumblr, there aren’t many mainstream, well-acknowledged platforms that allow unique adult communities to grow. Facebook and Instagram both prohibit sexual content and nudity; Twitter allows it, but it’s not exactly known for its positive, supportive communities.
Ashley, who runs the curated, often DIY porn blog, explains that Tumblr was a livelihood and a home for people who didn’t necessarily conform to mainstream porn sites’ ideas of what is sexy. “As our lives move increasingly online, spaces that are safe for sex are becoming smaller and smaller,” she says, in words that are now published on Medium. “If we continue to push our depictions of sexuality into the shadows, we allow them to continue to be defined and co-opted by the status quo — whatever is on the first page of a porn tube site.”
It’s been revealed that the Trump administration quietly shut down a study into a ‘cure’ for HIV in September.
The study implanted human fetal tissue into mice in its quest to find effective new treatment for HIV.
The human fetal tissue came from elective abortions. Although legal, anti-abortion groups oppose the research.
According to a report in Science, the The Department of Health and Human Services forbid National Institute of Health (NIH) scientists from applying for any more fetal tissue to help with their studies.
This impacted on two NIH laboratories. One of them, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana, was studying new treatments for HIV.
A spokesperson for NIH confirmed to Science that it had requested researchers, ‘pause procurements of fetal tissue,’ pending a review.
RML was carrying out a promising study into a treatment that could prevent HIV establishing latent reservoirs in the body.
Even when HIV is treated and brought down to undetectable levels, a small amount of the virus can remain hidden and latent within certain cells. The virus can multiply if people stop taking their medication.
Eliminating these hidden reservoirs of virus has become a key target amongst scientists who wish to find a cure for HIV.
However, in late September, an email sent from a researcher at RML to the bioscience contractor that sourced the fetal tissue, said it would not be able to proceed.
In the email to Advanced Bioscience Resources in California, the researcher said: ‘[Department of Health and Human Services] has directed me to discontinue procuring fetal tissue from ABR, the only source for us. I think that they are the only provider of fetal tissue for scientists in the nation who don’t have direct access to aborted fetal tissue. This effectively stops all of our research to discover a cure for HIV.’
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to Science’s request for comment.
It follows news from last week that HHS appeared to be winding down a contract with the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) for fetal tissue research.
One agency collaborating on the RML research is the Gladstone Center for HIV Cure Research in San Francisco, California. Its director, Warner Greene, told Science, ‘We were all poised to go and then the bombshell was dropped. The decision completely knocked our collaboration off the rails. We were devastated.’
GSN has approached NIAID and the Department of Health and Human Services.
UPDATE: 11.12.18
A spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement to GSN the pause on fetal tissue use is to allow it conduct an audit over the procedures being followed.
‘In September, HHS issued a statement announcing an audit would be conducted of all acquisitions involving human fetal tissue to ensure conformity with procurement and human fetal tissue research laws and regulations.
‘In addition, HHS has initiated a comprehensive review of all research involving fetal tissue to ensure consistency with statutes and regulations governing such research, and to ensure the adequacy of procedures and oversight of this research in light of the serious considerations involved.’
Grindr’s director of communications Landen Rafe Zumwalt has stepped down. (LandenRafe/Twitter)
Grindr’s director of communications has resigned from his role, seemingly in response to the dating app’s president saying he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Landen Rafe Zumwalt, who is gay, published a post on Medium on December 7, explaining that he was stepping down from his position at Grindr with “great sadness.”
Zumwalt does not name Grindr president Scott Chen in his statement, but his blog post appears to be in response to Chen posting on Facebook that he agrees marriage should be “between a man and a woman.”
Grindr’s head of communications: “I refuse to compromise my own values”
Zumwalt writes: “As an out and proud gay man madly in love with a man I don’t deserve, I refused to compromise my own values or professional integrity to defend a statement that goes against everything I am and everything I believe.
“While that resulted in my time at Grindr being cut short, I have absolutely no regrets. And neither should you.”
“As an out and proud gay man madly in love with a man I don’t deserve, I refused to compromise my own values or professional integrity to defend a statement that goes against everything I am.”
— Landen Rafe Zumwalt
Zumwalt also tweeted with a link to his blog post on December 7: “Today, I submitted my official resignation as @Grindr’s head of communications. My full statement is here.”
PinkNews has contacted Zumwalt .
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A Grindr spokesperson told PinkNews: “As Landen shared in his Medium post, he has resigned from his position at Grindr. We wish him the best in his future endeavors and appreciate his contributions to the company and the Grindr community.”
On November 30, it was reported that Chen posted on Facebook that he believes marriage is between a man and a woman.
The head of the gay dating app, who is married to a woman, wrote on Facebook: “There are people who believe that marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman. I agree, but that’s none of our business.”
Grindr president Scott Chen sparked outrage with his Facebook post. (scott chen/facebook)
In the post—which was reported by Grindr-owned publication INTO—Chen continued: “There are also people who believe that the purpose of marriage is to create children that carry their DNA. That’s also none of our business.
“There are people who are simply different from you, who desperately want to get married. They have their own reasons. Getting married is a personal issue.”
He added that he wished people wouldn’t donate to anti-LGBTQ causes and instead “donate your money to places which are in dire hunger, poverty, or suffering from war,” asking: “Why spend all that money to stop people who love each other from getting married? Aren’t there more important things in life?”
He concluded: “I’ll never buy HTC products ever again, and I’ll never donate a cent to any Christian groups in Taiwan!”
A 35-year-old transgender person was fatally shot on the East Side of Detroit.
According to the Detroit Free Press, the unidentified person was found around 6 AM on Friday, 7 December. No other details about the victim have been released at this time.
The body was found on E. McNichols Road, between Brush and Omira. The street remains closed for the investigation.
Police are currently investigating the incident, but do not consider it a hate crime.
Authorities are looking into a claim by a man who was allegedly robbed in the area and fired a self-protection shot. He was unsure who the bullet hit. While both these incidents took place close to each other, police are investigating them separately.
Police have a 46-year-old male in custody, according to ABC7 Detroit.
‘I would say that crimes committed against the (LGBT) community are down,’ said Cpl. Danielle Woods, the Detroit police LGBT Liaison.
Woods’ role in the department is to provide ‘sensitivity, awareness, and terminology training.’
Thankfully, ABC7 Detroit and the Detroit Free Press did not misgender or deadname the victim. Unfortunately, not every news outlet provides the same attention to detail for transgender murder victims. For instance, initial reports of last year’s death of trans woman Stephanie Montez identified her as a ‘man in a dress.’
The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS is set to hold a meeting in March, even though the council still has no members nearly a year after President Trump terminated its remaining advisers without explanation.
The meeting will be open to the public, the notice says, except the sessions will include a closed session on March 14 “for administrative briefings to be presented to the new council members.”
Created in 1995 by President Clinton, PACHA is charged with advising the president on policy and research to promote effective treatment and prevention for HIV — maintaining the goal of finding a cure. The council served as an advisory body during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, but has largely been inactive in the Trump era.
As first reported by the Washington Blade, Trump terminated all remaining members of PACHA in December 2017 via a letter delivered by FedEx. Since that time, the council has been vacant, the administration has announced no new members and its fate has remained unclear.
In June 2017, six advisers on the panel resigned over Trump’s perceived inaction in addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Top of the list of concerns was Trump’s refusal to appoint a director for the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, which is a position that remains unfilled to this day.
Kaye Hayes, executive director of PACHA, said in response to a Blade inquiry on how the council can meet without any members HHS is “pleased the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS has been scheduled.”
“We do not have a final list of members to share at this time,” Hayes added.
Carl Schmid, deputy director of the AIDS Institute, said he understands the administration is vetting “potential new members going through clearance and ethics for conflicts of interest, etc.”
Facebook released a new set of community guidelines this week centered around ‘sexual solicitation’. The guidelines specifically harm LGBTI users, by disallowing them from discussing their identities.
In justifying the new community guidelines, Facebook wrote in its policy rationale that the discussion of drawing ‘attention to sexual violence and exploitation’ is important, but it wants to ‘draw the line’ at content encouraging or coordinating ‘sexual encounters between adults’.
The rationale for the new rules | Photo: Facebook
The community guidelines then go on to detail what kind of content users are no longer allowed to post.
Some of this banned content includes mentioning ‘sexual preference/sexual partner preference’ and ‘commonly sexualised areas of the body such as the breasts, groin or buttocks’.
Further, these standards apply to all of the companies Facebook owns, including Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
‘For example, on Messenger, when you send a photo, our automated systems scan it using photo matching technology to detect known child exploitation imagery or when you send a link, we scan it for malware or viruses,’ a spokesperson told Bloomberg.
What people are saying
People are upset at social media companies’ decision to start censoring such content for numerous reasons. While drawing a hard line on exploitative content is good, blanket censoring harms marginalized groups like LGBTI people.
Users are taking to Twitter and elsewhere to express their discontent. Making rules like these both continue to take away spaces for LGBTI users, as well as equate LGBTI identities with harmful sexual content.
Due to work and influence from pro-life and conservative figures, the Trump administrationhas created uncertainty around the future of HIVresearch.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a contract with the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). The school’s work relies on using fetal tissue for research into diseases like AIDS and Parkinson’s.
Now, however, the future of this research is uncertain due to pro-life advocates against research using fetal tissue.
According to the Washington Post, the contract between NIH and UCSF typically follows a year renewal with $2 million in funding. The researcher who runs the UCSF lab, however, said the lab received only a 90-day contract.
She was also told the money would be cut entirely.
Since taking office, anti-abortion activists have been vocal in asking Trump and his administration to ban research involving fetal tissue.
Several lawmakers reportedly targeted UCSF specifically, asking Trump to cut their funding.
Numerous drugs aimed at treating and preventing HIV have been tested as UCSF. Their research is done via incubating human T cells in mice, and NIH has supplied all the funding.
The tissue comes from elective abortions and many scientists and researchers say there are no other alternative approaches to this research at this time.
The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) of the federal government has also reportedly been holding meetings discussing the government’s stance on supporting research involving fetal tissue.
They have met with people such as patient advocates, scientific societies, ethicists, and abortion opponents.
‘This is a pro-life, pro-science administration,’ HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir told Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC).
HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said future funding remains uncertain as the administration assesses its stance on fetal tissue research.
Transgender Miss Universe contestant Angela Ponce has said that her victory would send a message to the contest’s former owner, US President Donald Trump.
Angela Ponce is set to represent Spain in the Miss Universe 2018 pageant, which is set to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, on December 17.
Her participation is particularly poignant as the contest was owned by Donald Trump until 2015, when he offloaded the business in the run-up to his run for president.
Speaking to TIME, the 27-year-old Miss Spain said: “I’m showing that trans women can be whatever they want to be: a teacher, a mother, a doctor, a politician and even Miss Universe.”
Addressing the Trump administration’s anti-transgender actions, Ponce said her victory would be an important symbol in a contest many still associate with the leader.
“If they give me the crown, it would show trans women are just as much women as cis women.”
— Miss Spain Angela Ponce
She said: “More than a message to him, it would be a win for human rights. Trans women have been persecuted and erased for so long.
“If they give me the crown, it would show trans women are just as much women as cis women.”
Ponce added that she would still have competed in the contest if she had been allowed to when it was owned by Trump.
Transgender Miss Universe contestant Angela Ponce said she wanted to “give a lesson to the world of tolerance and respect towards oneself and towards others.”
The beauty queen said: “I would. I like to think that most people who don’t understand me, it’s not because they’re bad people.
“It’s because no one taught them about diversity. What you don’t talk about doesn’t exist—even though trans people have been here since there were people on earth.”
The contestant has had a long road to the pageant, competing in 2015’s Miss World Spain contest, only to find out the rules barred transgender women.
She said: “It wasn’t easy… I found out on the day of the competition that their rules didn’t allow a transgender woman to win. It crushed me.
“I had to go on and perform, and it felt horrible. But after I got to the Miss Universe final, Miss World changed their rules too. I changed the rules.”
Ponce, who lives in the Spanish city of Seville, wrote on Instagram after her win: “My goal is to be a spokesperson for a message of inclusion, respect and diversity not only for the LGBTQ+ community, but also for the entire world.”
Miss Universe Canada faced legal action in 2012 when model Jenna Talackova was blocked from competing for being transgender.
Young black American gay and bisexual men are 16 times more likely to acquire HIV than white gay and bisexual men, according to a new study.
Northwestern University found black 16-29-year-old men who have sex with men (MSM) are the most at risk of HIV. This is despite reporting fewer sexual partners, more frequent testing and safer sex practises.
Researchers said this is because of ‘more dense and interconnected social and sexual networks’ within the black community.
There are also disparities with access to healthcare after an HIV diagnosis.
The study warned if the trend persists, one in two black men will acquire HIV at some point. This compares to one in five Hispanic men and one in 11 white men.
Senior study author Brian Mustanski said: ‘Black young MSM engage in fewer risk behaviors but have a much higher rate of HIV diagnosis.
‘Their social and sexual networks are more dense and interconnected, which from an infectious disease standpoint, makes infections transmitted more efficiently through the group.’
He then added: ‘That, coupled with the higher HIV prevalence in the population, means any sexual act has a higher chance of HIV transmission.’
Researchers collected data from 1,015 men who have sex with men living in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Jesse Milan Jr. is the president and CEO of AIDS United.
He said in a statement to Gay Star News: ‘This report demonstrates what we already knew to be true – that HIV has never affected all populations equally, having its greatest impact on society’s most marginalized communities.
‘The alarming disparities that we’ve seen in black gay and bisexual men have been so for decades. Despite recent progress in some populations, HIV continues to have a devastating and disproportionate impact on communities of color, especially black gay and bisexual men and transgender women.
‘We have to do more to bend this curve. It’s a moral imperative and its essential to ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S.
‘We cannot end this epidemic without addressing the stigma, racial and socio-economic factors that fuel it,’ he said.
