A COVID-19 outbreak in Australia has left the queer community reeling as more than 700 patrons of two Melbourne nightclubs have been forced into quarantine.
The Star-Observer reports that health officials in the nation have ordered partygoers of Peel Hotel and Sircuit Bar–two popular LGBTQ nightlife hotspots–into mandatory quarantine. A fellow clubgoer tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID earlier this week, and confessed to visiting both Peel and Sircuit Bar on Monday (December 10).
“Anyone who attended the Sircuit Bar from 9pm to midnight and the Peel Hotel from 11.30pm to 3am on Friday 10 December needs to quarantine and get tested. The period of quarantine begins from their time of exposure at the venues,” the Victorian Department of Health said in a statement.
“Other patrons who entered Sircuit on 10 December between 6pm and 9pm are being contacted by the Department of Health and asked to self-identify if they were present beyond 9pm. They are also strongly advised to get a standard PCR test and isolate until they get a negative result,” the DoH added.
The Department of Health further stated that vaccinated patrons are only required to quarantine for seven days, as opposed to the standard 14 days for unvaccinated visitors. Anyone who attended should receive a negative PCR test at the end of their quarantine periods before returning to public life.
The Department of Health also stated that neither business has violated any kind of statute or COVID-19 guideline. Still, for Tom McFeely, owner of the Peel hotel, the negative publicity–and mandatory quarantine–present an unneeded headache.
“I can’t understand why my staff and my customers have to go into isolation when every single one of us is double vaxxed,” McFeely told Star Observer. “We were supposed to be living with this thing. There’s nothing anyone could do apart from being double vaxxed. I thought that was the be all and end all and everyone gets to go back and we should be fine. Now there is fear. Does this mean we are going to shut down every time there is a case? They might not use the terminology shut down or closed, but if you don’t have any staff or security, you cannot open.”
McFeely added that the Peel Hotel will reopen this Friday, regardless of the number of staff in quarantine.
The news of the nightclub quarantines in Australia comes amid concerns over the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and if existing vaccines offer adequate protection against it. In the United States, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has recommended vaccines and booster shots as optimal protection against the variant.
France’s parliament voted on Tuesday to ban so-called conversion therapy, joining a handful of countries that have taken steps to outlaw practices that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Under the French legislation, people offering LGBT+ conversion therapy could be jailed for up to two years and fined 30,000 euros ($33,810), with even tougher sentences if under-18s or vulnerable adults were involved.
The bill, which must be signed by French President Emmanuel Macron before becoming law, was passed days after a similar ban was signed into law in Canada.
Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, Albania and Germany have also passed legislation that either partially or fully outlaws the practice, which has been condemned by medical professionals.
“Very happy with this agreement,” French Equalities Minister Elisabeth Moreno said on Twitter. “No, being yourself is not a crime.”
European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune, who is gay, tweeted that he was “proud of this agreement”.
From injections to electric shocks, prayer to rape, the myriad methods used to try to change or suppress the sexual desire or gender identity of LGBT+ people have been condemned as harmful and ineffective by numerous medical groups globally.
Bans on conversion therapy have been proposed in at least another 11 countries, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation research, including New Zealand, Mexico, Spain and Britain. ($1 = 0.8873 euros)
A swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania is the latest target in the culture-war debate over whether transgender girls and women should be allowed to participate on female sports teams.
Lia Thomas, who came out as trans in 2019, set three school records and two national records at a meet this month.
Since then, Thomas has faced criticism and verbal attacks from anti-trans groups, conservative media and, reportedly, even two teammates.
Some of the headlines about Thomas’ wins said she “smashed” the records and continued her “dominant” season alongside pre-transition photos of her and using her previous name and male pronouns — practices known as deadnaming and misgendering.
Transgender advocates have condemned that coverage and some of the conversation about Thomas as transphobic. They said it mischaracterizes her victories to make it appear that transgender women are cheating just by being trans and implies that one trans woman winning means trans women generally are dominating women’s sports. They note that Thomas is competing within guidance issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Thomas’ critics have varying views. Some have used explicitly anti-transgender language and argue that trans women should be completely banned from women’s sports, while others argue that the NCAA’s policy regarding trans athletes’ participation isn’t strict enough.
Thomas declined an interview with NBC News and has done only one recent interview, with the podcast SwimSwam. In that interview, she said she and her coaches expected that there would be “some measure of pushback” in response to her competing, but not “quite to the extent that it has blown up.”
“I just don’t engage with it,” she said, regarding the criticism. “It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t, and that’s all I’ll say on that.”
Swimming as her ‘authentic self’
Thomas swam on the men’s team for her first three years at Penn, and for part of that time, she said she was transitioning. She started her medical transition in May 2019 and began gender-affirming hormones, also known as hormone replacement therapy, which for her included testosterone blockers and estrogen. She said she decided to swim out the 2018-19 season on the men’s team without coming out, which “caused a lot of distress for me,” she told SwimSwam.
“I was struggling,” she said. “My mental health was not very good. There was a lot of unease about basically just feeling trapped in my body, like it didn’t align.”
She came out to her coaches and teammates in the fall of 2019, and swam the rest of her junior year, the 2019-20 season, on the men’s team as well — a time she described as “an uncomfortable experience.”
By the summer of 2020, she had been on testosterone suppressants for a full year, meeting a guideline set by the NCAA in 2011. Its handbook for transgender athletes states: “A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.” She said she submitted medical information that included blood tests of her hormone levels. The NCAA approved her request and cleared her to compete on the women’s team that fall.
But then Covid-19 led to nationwide lockdowns, and the Ivy League canceled its swimming season. Thomas said she decided to take the year off to save her eligibility, “given how important it is to me to be able to compete and swim as my authentic self.”
She began competing on the women’s team in November, at the start of the 2021-22 season, and said she has been on hormone therapy for just over two and a half years.
Thomas has performed well at nearly every meet so far this season, but the media firestorm began after her performance at the Zippy Invitational at the University of Akron in Ohio, where she won three events and set three program, meet and pool records, along with two national records. In the 1,650-yard freestyle in particular, she was 38 seconds ahead of teammate Anna Kalandadze, who finished second. Right-wing media outlets have shared video of Thomas winning the race on social media.
Since then, she’s received international media attention, and two of her teammates, speaking anonymously, reportedly told the sports website OutKick that they disagree with her participation, viewing it as unfair. NBC News has been unable to verify these reports. University of Pennsylvania Athletics and several members of the women’s swim team have not responded to requests for comment.
‘Meaningful competition’
Some critics have argued that Thomas’ performance is evidence that she has inherent physical advantages from going through male puberty and having higher testosterone levels. As a result, they argue that the NCAA should bar trans women from female sports teams or change its policy, saying that requiring one year of testosterone suppressants for trans women isn’t enough.
“While the NCAA’s rules demand the use of testosterone suppressants for a specific duration, the current requirements are not rigid enough and do not produce an authentic competitive atmosphere,” John Lohn, editor-in-chief of Swimming World magazine, wrote in an op-ed. “It is obvious that one year is not a sufficient timeframe to offer up a level playing field. Athletes transitioning from male to female possess the inherent advantage of years of testosterone production and muscle-building.”
Some researchers and advocates disagree, including at least one researcher who supports what is widely considered a more middle-of-the-road approach.
Joanna Harper, visiting fellow for transgender athletic performance at England’s Loughborough University, published the first performance analysis of transgender athletes in 2015. Harper, a trans runner who has master’s degrees in physics and medical physics, evaluated the race times of eight trans women distance runners after they transitioned and found that they were no more competitive in the female division than they had been in the male division.
She noted that it was a small study and that it doesn’t apply to any sport other than distance running, but that it was and still is the only published data on transgender athletes. She is currently conducting three studies of how hormone therapy affects transgender athletes, though she said she is still gathering data, which could take years.
In addition to her research, one oft-cited study published last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that transgender women in the Air Force performed better on fitness tests after one year of hormone therapy when compared to cisgender women. After two years, their performance was “fairly equivalent” to cisgender women, the study’s author, Dr. Timothy Roberts, told NBC News this year.
Harper said she’s been following the news about Thomas closely and believes it’s true that trans women will maintain some advantages even after hormone therapy. But she said Thomas — who is swimming slower now than she did pre-transition — is just one person, and she doesn’t represent all trans athletes.
“I have seen trans athletes who undergo transition — and either because they don’t adapt well to the change in their testosterone levels, or they had trouble with the medication, or perhaps their life focus changes somewhat — who are not nearly as successful after transition as they were before,” Harper said. “And we’re never going to hear in the media of those trans women who are less successful after transition than they were before because they’re not successful.”
She said she believes that the NCAA’s guideline of requiring one year of hormone therapy is “perfectly reasonable,” and that it “will result in meaningful competition between trans women and cis women,” or women who are not trans.
She added that the NCAA’s rule has been in place for 10 years, and that trans women “aren’t taking over NCAA sports and are still underrepresented.” She noted that there are more than 200,000 women who compete in the NCAA every year, and that trans people make up about 1 percent of the population. If they were proportionally represented in the NCAA, there should be about 2,000 trans women competing, but she estimates there are less than 100 each year.
“We’ve never seen a transgender NCAA champion, and Lia is not likely to do it either,” Harper said. “But even if she did win an NCAA championship, we should see a few trans women each and every year winning NCAA Division 1 championships. So at some point it has to happen, and this idea that it’s some horrible miscarriage of justice that Lia is successful just doesn’t add up.”
Is the NCAA policy working?
The NCAA’s policy regarding trans women athletes is considered among the strictest of sports governing bodies, especially after the International Olympic Committee nixed testosterone testing and limits for trans women athletes in a new set of guidance released in November.
Anne Lieberman, director of policy for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates for LGBTQ-inclusive sports policies, said that part of the conversation about Thomas has been focused on whether the NCAA policy is “working.”
“What do we mean by ‘working’? So for many people, working means that it will prevent trans athletes from either succeeding or even participating in college athletics — and I think that that’s an important distinction,” said Lieberman, who uses gender-neutral pronouns. “Trans athletes — Lia, in particular — deserve love, support, care, access to be able to swim. And Lia, like any other athlete, should be able to win and lose.”
Lieberman said they don’t think the conversation about Thomas is just about sports, because, they noted, there hasn’t been an issue with the NCAA policy in the last 10 years. Rather, they said the conversation about Thomas and trans athletes generally is part of the “fuel for the political fire that is absolutely ravaging trans rights in this country.”
Ten states — nine this year — have passed laws that ban trans girls and women from playing on female sports teams. More than 20 additional states considered similar bills. Over two dozen states also weighed legislation that would ban trans minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care such as hormones and puberty blockers. Governors in two states — Arkansas and Tennessee — signed such legislation into law, though a judge blocked Arkansas’ law from taking effect in July.
“While people might think more broadly that this is just about sports, this is really about the broader conversation about the humanity of trans folks and whether or not we deserve to participate in all aspects of life in society, and that includes college sports,” they said.
Gillian Branstetter, press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, added that there are real needs that female athletes have, including equity in funding, safety from harassment, mental health support and making sure they have equitable facilities.
“I don’t know that if you were to poll female athletes the participation of people like Lia Thomas would come up very much,” she said. “There are much bigger issues at hand for female athletes, and people who think that they’re saving women’s sports by putting forward their transphobia have never expressed a single piece of interest in saving women’s sports before.”
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first long-acting injectable medication for use as pre-exposure prevention, or PrEP, against HIV, the agency announced Monday.
Apretude, the new drug, is an injectable given every two months as an alternative to HIV prevention pills, like Truvada and Descovy, which have been shown to reduce the risk of HIV by 99 percent when taken daily.
Two FDA trials analyzing the safety and efficacy of the novel drug found that Apretude was more likely to reduce HIV than the daily oral medications — by 69 percent for cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men and by 90 percent for cisgender women. Apretude’s superior efficacy was apparently driven by the greater ease with which study participants adhered to the every-other-month regimen compared with taking a pill every day.
“Today’s approval adds an important tool in the effort to end the HIV epidemic by providing the first option to prevent HIV that does not involve taking a daily pill,” Dr. Debra Birnkrant, the director of antivirals division at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “This injection, given every two months, will be critical to addressing the HIV epidemic in the U.S., including helping high-risk individuals and certain groups where adherence to daily medication has been a major challenge or not a realistic option.”
While gains have been made in PrEP use over the past several years, only 25 percent of the 1.2 million people for whom PrEP is recommended were prescribed the treatment last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that as of 2019, there were approximately 285,000 people using PrEP, the vast majority of them gay and bisexual men.
The hope is that the newly approved, long-acting injectable — made by ViiV Healthcare, which is majority owned by GlaxoSmithKline — will make adherence easier, help increase PrEP usage and drive down the national HIV rate.
“People who are vulnerable to acquiring HIV, especially those in Black and Latinx communities who are disproportionately impacted in the US, may want options beyond daily oral pills,” Deborah Waterhouse, ViiV Healthcare’s CEO, said in a statement, adding that “Apretude was studied in one of the most diverse and comprehensive HIV prevention trial programs to date, which also included some of the largest numbers of transgender women and Black men who have sex with men ever enrolled in an HIV prevention trial.”
Men who have sex with men accounted for 66 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2019, according to the CDC. When the numbers are broken down by race, Black Americans accounted for the highest percentage, representing 42 percent of all new diagnoses that year.
In July, the federal government announced that almost all insurers must cover the two approved forms of PrEP pills, Truvada and Descovy, as well as the lab tests and clinic visits required to maintain such prescriptions — and to do so with no cost sharing. As it stands, insurers will not be required to cover all costs for the new injectable version of PrEP, which has a list price of $3,700 per dose and is slated to begin shipping to wholesalers and specialty distributors in the U.S. in early 2022.
Kenyon Farrow, the managing director of PrEP4All, an advocacy group that fights to increase access to HIV prevention and treatment, said his organization is “definitely happy to see the FDA approval of another option for people who want to use PrEP.”
However, he said he fears that the “implementation of this option will likely take years to make it real for most people.”
“Due to COVID, public health systems are already overburdened and much of the workforce needed to implement this large scale are leaving the field due to burnout,” he said in an email. “Because it will need to be administered in clinical settings, it won’t be treated as a pharmacy benefit by payers, but instead as a clinical benefit, which will take time to implement the proper coding for billing, as well as education and training for nurses who will likely bear the brunt of the work to implement.”
When he wasn’t working his day job as a medical technician, Suraj Mahadeva helped people in need.
The 26-year-old taught kids with autism how to swim and helped young Chicagoans experiencing homelessness, his sister Althea Mahadeva said. He was also an active member of Chicago’s LGTBQIA community, always spreading awareness about pride events.
“He liked everything and everyone, and what he loved the most was helping people,” Althea Mahadeva said.
Suraj Mahadeva was killed in a shooting in Palmer Square over the weekend, just a few days before he was supposed to go on a family trip, according to his sister and police.
His grief-stricken family and friends are in disbelief over his murder, which they believe could’ve been a random act of violence. They’re urging anyone with information about the shooting to come forward as the police investigation continues.
“This has hit very hard for us because we don’t know what the reasons were. We don’t know who did it,” Althea Mahadeva said. “The best way to be safe is to catch the person who did this and to stop people from being able to do something like this again.”
The fatal shooting happened around 3:25 a.m. Saturday in the 2100 block of North Albany Avenue, police said.
Suraj Mahadeva was standing on his friend’s porch waiting to be let inside when someone shot him in the head, police and family said. Suraj Mahadeva’s friend heard loud gunfire and came outside to help.
Suraj Mahadeva was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.
“I feel so bad for his friend because he had to be there as he passed,” Althea Mahadeva said.
Police would not say whether the shot was fired by someone on foot or in a passing vehicle, and had no suspect description or further information available. No one is in custody, they said.
Althea Mahadeva said her brother was shot in the back of the head, but neither police nor the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office could confirm that, saying that reports only listed a gunshot wound to the head as a cause of death.
“Only a coward could do something like that from behind,” Althea Mahadeva said. “If you saw him from the front, saw his smile, it was so infectious.”
Suraj Mahadeva grew up in Michigan in a Filipino and Sri Lankan household. After graduating from Michigan State University in 2018, he moved to Chicago, a place where he felt a strong sense of belonging, his sister said. He lived in the Palmer Square area.
“While he was still in school, he would come out to Chicago for pride events. The LGTBQIA community in Chicago, as well as his friends from high school, is why he moved to Chicago,” Althea Mahadeva said.
Althea Mahadeva described her brother as a compassionate young man who lived a life of service.
“His love languages were acts of service and quality time and touch. He gave the best hugs in the whole word,” she said through tears. “He was so sensitive and such a good listener and such a fierce protector of anyone who he felt needed help. He was there to help them.”
In his last Instagram story before he died, Suraj Mahadeva wore a Mahatma Gandhi T-shirt with the phrase, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of them,” Althea Mahadeva said.
“In a way, that was the best shirt he could’ve worn because it gave me one last bit of advice,” she said.
Suraj Mahadeva is survived by his sister, mother and father. His funeral is Wednesday in Michigan, where his family resides.
Friends are holding a vigil for Suraj Mahadeva at the LGTBQ community hub Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., Thursday evening.
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South Africa’s trans and non-binary community is facing a worrying shortage of testosterone, leaving many at serious risk.
The shortage is down to manufacturer Pfizer restricting its production of its Depo-Testosterone, a prescription hormone replacement therapy that helps many transmasc people, in favour of producing COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr Anastacia Tomson told IOL that the current shortage is “serious” as the “communication from the company anticipates stock to be restored only in or after the second quarter of 2022”.
As such, Dr Tomson warned that many trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming patients could be without the “essential and often life-saving” treatment potentially for months.
She added that she believed the shortage resulted in “extreme demand” and that “any stock that is still usable has been bought up”.
This is not the first time that South Africa has experienced a shortage of testosterone and other vital treatments. According to New Frame, there was a short-term shortage of Pfizer’s Depo-Testosterone in 2019. The company said at the time the interruption in supply was due to circumstances outside its control.
Nino Maphosa, a trans activist, told New Frame that he had used his last shot of testosterone at the end of September and hadn’t been able to find any more since then. He said he had been “trying to research how to navigate” this shortage.
“It’s frustrating,” Maphosa explained. “Now my sex levels are low and you keep asking: ‘What the hell is wrong with me?’”
He described how he was “able to gain more muscles” while he was able to access the gender-affirming medicine. But he feared that his progress “will reverse” now that he isn’t able to take testosterone.
Maphosa said: “I can’t believe that my whole life is in that little bottle … When I don’t take it, I’m grumpy, I’m depressed, I’m snappy, I’m irritable.
“I can’t even look at myself. I keep fearing that I will go back.
“I was so excited that my moustache was growing, now I fear that it will go back.”
Savuka Matyila, a spokesperson for the NGO Gender Dynamix, told IOL it had received several queries about the shortage from trans and gender non-conforming people in South Africa.
Matyila said the organisation had heard reports of some people being “offered testosterone through the private sector” that was potentially “expired and which might have adverse effects on their health”.
“These medicines would be entertained by community members who were left wanting,” Matyila added.
Maphosa told New Frame that he had heard of people being offered testosterone on the “black market” and even said he would consider buying it. However, he said he would “do my research” and “won’t just do a stupid thing without speaking to my doctor”.
But he told IOL that he was worried that others within the trans community might be so desperate that they might take the “black market” medication without thinking about the risks.
“People don’t think about the risk, they only think about the progress that they have achieved and don’t want to reverse that,” Maphosa said.
A Kansas City-area school district must pay a transgender student $4 million after it refused to let him use the boys’ restrooms or locker rooms, a Jackson County jury decided.
The jury on Monday found the Blue Springs school district had discriminated against the student, NBC affiliate KSHB-TV reported.
The school district said in a statement that it disagreed with the verdict and would be “seeking appropriate relief from the trial court and court of appeals if necessary.”
The student had legally changed his name in 2010 and amended his birth certificate to reflect his new name and gender in 2014, according to the lawsuit. He filed the lawsuit in 2015.
Although the state recognized him as a boy, the district denied the student access to the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at Delta Woods Middle School and the Freshman Center, the lawsuit said.
The student participated in boy’s physical education and athletics in middle schools but was required to use a single person bathroom outside the boys’ locker room, according to court documents.
He did not participate in fall sports at the Freshman Center because he could not use the boys’ locker room or restrooms.
Gender-affirming hormone therapy is strongly linked to a lower risk of suicide and depression for transgender youths, according to the first large-scale study to examine the issue.
The research, published Tuesday in the Journal of Adolescent Health, was based on a sample of more than 9,000 transgender and nonbinary youths from the ages of 13 to 24 who provided data on hormone therapy as part of an online survey conducted last year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention group.
Young people receiving gender-affirming hormones reported a lower likelihood of experiencing recent depression and considering suicide compared to those who wanted but did not receive hormone therapy. For people under age 18, receiving hormones was associated with nearly 40 percent lower odds of recent depression and of a past-year suicide attempt.
“It’s clear that gender-affirming care has the potential to reduce rates of depression and suicide attempts while banning this vital care and exposing young people to harmful political rhetoric can cause real harm,” Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, said in a statement. “It’s critical that all transgender and nonbinary youth across the country have access to medical care that is affirming, patient-centered, and evidence-based.”
More than 20 states have considered bills aiming to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors this year alone. Only Arkansas has passed a law completely banning access to gender-affirming health care, including puberty blockers and hormones, for trans minors, but a judge blocked that law from taking effect in July pending the outcome of litigation. Tennessee enacted a more limited law that bans doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment and surgery to prepubescent minors.
Some transgender and nonbinary people receive hormone therapy — which can include hormones such as estrogen, testosterone and other medications — to align their appearance and secondary sex characteristics with their gender identity. Hormone therapy is also used to treat many other conditions and illnesses, including cancer, precocious puberty and the symptoms of menopause.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, widely considered the leading international body in transgender health care, doesn’t recommend starting hormone therapy until an individual reaches the age of legal majority, usually 18. In some cases, the association recommends hormone therapy for younger teens.
On average, the young people sampled in The Trevor Project’s study were just over 17 and a half years old.
This latest study adds to growing evidence that gender-affirming care can improve transgender youths’ mental health. A study published in the journal Pediatrics last year found that transgender people who received puberty blockers during adolescence had a lower risk of suicidal thoughts as adults than those who wanted but could not access the medication.
Another study, also published in Pediatrics last year, found that trans children who receive gender-affirming medical care earlier in their lives are less likely to experience poor mental health, such as depression and anxiety.
The Trevor Project has previously found that transgender and nonbinary youths have an elevated risk of depression, thoughts of suicide and attempting suicide compared to youth who are cisgender and straight. A survey that the group conducted last year found that 52 percent of trans and nonbinary youths seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 20 percent reported attempting suicide, compared to 32 percent and 10 percent of cisgender LGBQ youth.
“This study emphasizes the potential benefits of gender-affirming hormone therapy as a mechanism to reduce feelings of gender dysphoria and minority stress among transgender and nonbinary youth — thereby working to improve mental health outcomes and prevent suicide,” Amy Green, a clinical psychologist and the vice president of research at The Trevor Project, said in a statement. “These data should serve as a call to action to resist blanket bans on gender-affirming medical care and to invest in more research on this topic so that youth and their families can make evidence-informed decisions regarding care.”
Though more research is finding that access to gender-affirming health care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy is beneficial to trans youths’ mental health and overall well-being, not all who want it are able to access it.
Half of the transgender and nonbinary youth surveyed by The Trevor Project said they were not receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy but would like to, while 36 percent were not interested in receiving it and 14 percent were already receiving it. The research found that young people living in the South, youth of color and nonbinary respondents were underrepresented among those who received gender-affirming hormone therapy when they desired it.
Whether a youth has parental support also affects their access: The study found that 80 percent of those who received hormone therapy reported that they had at least one parent who supported their gender identity.
Esteemed queer Black feminist author bell hooks has died at age 69.
She died Wednesday at her home in Berea, Ky., the Lexington Herald Leader reports. She had been ill, and friends and family were with her.
Her dozens of books included essays, poetry, and works for children, and she dealt with issues of intersectionality long before many others. These issues were at the core of her 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which examined the impact of sexism on Black women throughout history as well as racism within the feminist movement.
All About Love: New Visions, first published in 2000, deals with how love can heal a polarized society and asserts that love cannot be separated from justice. Amid the protests against police brutality and systemic racism last year, it “became sought-after reading,” according to the bell hooks center at Berea College.
She was one of Time’s 100 Women of the Year in 2020, and the magazine called her a “rare rock star of a public intellectual.” Utne Reader in 1995 listed her among its 100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.
She once described her identity as “queer-pas-gay.” She was critical, however, of those who viewed racism and homophobia as the same. “White people, gay and straight, could show greater understanding of the impact of racial oppression on people of color by not attempting to make these oppressions synonymous, but rather by showing the ways they are linked and yet differ,” she wrote in 1999’s Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black.
She was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Ky., as Gloria Jean Watkins. Her pen name was her great-grandmother’s name, which she styled in all lowercase letters as a way to place importance on “substance of books, not who I am,” she said.
Growing up in Kentucky, she attended segregated schools that did not teach about the impact of racism. She went on to study at Stanford University, then earned a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She taught at Stanford, Yale University, and the City College of New York, then joined Berea’s faculty in 2004. Berea was founded in the 1850s by abolitionists who were dedicated to equal education for people of all races and genders.
The bell hooks center at Berea hosts speakers on feminism and social justice, and seeks “to chart a new chapter in Berea College’s great, historical commitments — one that cultivates radical coalition between women, LGBTQPIA+ students, and students of color,” according to its website. The college also houses hooks’s papers and artifacts.
“Berea College is deeply saddened about the death of bell hooks, Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies, prodigious author, public intellectual and one of the country’s foremost feminist scholars,” said a statement from the school.
“I want my work to be about healing,” hooks once said. “I am a fortunate writer because every day of my life practically I get a letter, a phone call from someone who tells me how my work has transformed their life.”
The church volunteers assembled furniture and hung decorations in the newly renovated apartment building. They laid out nearly every necessity, down to the bath towels, bed linens, cooking supplies and televisions.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, the first residents of the home in Worcester, Massachusetts moved in: three gay men seeking asylum in the U.S.
“I don’t even have the words,” said Alain Spyke, 26, who fled Jamaica after being continually harassed and threatened by a local gang for being gay. “To come into this country and have a safe space to escape all the hardships and trauma? Not everyone has that opportunity.”
A Massachusetts church group that’s uniquely focused on support for immigrants fleeing their countries due to their sexual orientation has opened a new, permanent home for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender asylum seekers.
The LGBT Asylum Task Force, a ministry of Hadwen Park Congregational Church in Worcester, raised more than $500,000 to purchase and renovate a dilapidated, three-story former group home on the city’s well-heeled west side.
It’s the ministry’s biggest investment amid long-running efforts to help LGBTQ immigrants, said Al Green, the task force’s director.
The group typically houses asylum seekers in rented apartments throughout New England’s second-largest city, but as the effort has grown over the years, it’s become challenging to coordinate services and foster community among the new immigrants, he said.
The task force covers rent and provides a $500 monthly stipend for immigrants, at least until they can receive work authorization, a process that can take around two years, Green said. The group also connects asylum seekers with immigration lawyers, sets them up with bank accounts and health insurance, and helps prepare them for entering the workforce, among other things.
“We found that giving folks stability has helped them better prepare for their asylum cases,” said Green, who is also from Jamaica and participated in the program. “They know they’re in a safe place until they can get on their feet.”
The church effort is one of the few programs providing wide-ranging and long-term help to LGBTQ asylum seekers once they’re in the U.S., says Pastor Judith Hanlon of Hadwen Park Congregational Church, who co-founded the ministry.
Groups like the Rainbow Railroad in Toronto, Canada, help LGBTQ individuals escape persecution in their home countries. Temporary shelters like Casa de Luz in Tijuana, Mexico, provide safe havens for gay and transgender migrants on the perilous journey across the U.S. southern border. And groups like the LGBT Asylum Project in San Francisco focus on providing legal help while others like the Trans Queer Pueblo in Phoenix, Arizona, focus on community building and advocacy.
The church ministry started in 2008, when the United Church of Christ congregation rallied to support a single gay immigrant from Jamaica.
As the church’s reputation spread, migrants from Jamaica and the dozens of other countries where homosexuality is explicitly outlawed began arriving, oftentimes unannounced, Hanlon said. The task force is currently assisting 21 LGBTQ immigrants but has helped more than 400 over the years, with all so far winning asylum, she added.
Among the recent arrivals is a 25-year-old Muslim woman from Uganda who said her parents forced her to marry a man 30 years her senior after discovering she had a long-term girlfriend.
The woman, who asked only to be identified as Aisha, arrived last December after searching online for ways to get out of her forced marriage and learning about the church’s work.
She says she appreciates the group doesn’t impose Christianity or require her to attend church services. “They’re really accepting me as I am, and that’s been heartwarming,” she said.
The new home’s opening comes as immigrant and gay rights activists push President Joe Biden’s administration to make good on his campaign promise to undo harmful policies enacted under former President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration has rescinded a rule that made it harder for migrants, including LGBTQ persons, to qualify for asylum because of domestic abuse or gang violence, said Ari Shaw, a director at the Williams Institute, a research center at the UCLA School of Law focused on sexual orientation and gender identities.
But other Trump-era immigration policies disproportionately impacting gay and transgender migrants also remain in effect, such as the use of Title 42 of the U.S. Code to justify denying asylum claims from migrants based on concerns about the spread of COVID-19, Shaw said.
Following a court order, the Biden administration also recently announced plans to reinstate Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, which forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims were being processed.
The Department of Homeland Security’s guidance for resuming the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy includes a new exemption for gay and transgender individuals, although there’s concern among some advocates about how that will be implemented in practice.
A DHS spokesperson said exceptions for LGBTQ persons and other particularly vulnerable individuals will be considered case-by-case. The agency also noted that Biden issued an executive order in February committing to improving the asylum process and combatting the sexual and gender-based violence and other “root causes” of migration.
DHS doesn’t track LGBTQ asylum claims, but a study earlier this year from the Williams Institute estimated LGBTQ individuals filed at least 11,400 applications from 2012 to 2017, with more than half of those coming from Central America.
Overall, approval rates for all asylum applications haven risen since Biden took office in January. Gay and transgender individuals can seek asylum under the same legal category as those persecuted for their race, religion or political opinions.
Back at the Worcester home, Spyke says he’s still wrapping his head around the freedoms America affords.
In Jamaica, his family ostracized him after finding out he was gay and he faced harassment, even in popular tourist destinations like Montego Bay.
Now living in the U.S. for nearly two years, Spyke says he finally felt comfortable enough to kiss another man in public for the first time just this April.
“It felt really cool,” he said. “I’d never dare to do that in Jamaica.”