Trans people in Switzerland will be able to legally change their gender by self-ID at a civil registry office from the start of the new year.
Switzerland joins a growing number of European countries that allow a person to legally change their gender and name through self-declaration. It follows Denmark, Norway, Malta, Luxembourg, Ireland, Iceland and Portugal, according to international trans advocacy group TGEU.
Under the new law, which will go into effect on Saturday (1 January), anyone over the age of 16 and not under legal guardianship will be able to change their gender marker and legal name by self-declaration at a civil registry office.
Younger people and those under adult protection will require guardian consent.
Self-ID will also potentially reduce thousands in administrative fees, taking the cost down to just 75 CHF, according to activists.
Current rules on changing gender markers vary by region in Switzerland, but many often require a certificate from a medical professional confirming a person’s trans identity, Reuters reported.
Some require a person to undergo gender-affirming surgery or hormone treatment to legally change gender. If a trans person wants to change their name, some regions require proof that the chosen name has been unofficially used for several years.
In June, the Spanish government approved a draft bill to allow anyone aged 16 and older to change gender marker and name on government-issued documents without a medical diagnosis.
However, the UK has lagged behind in introducing self-ID laws.
The committee recommended the Tories urgently remove the requirement that trans people receive a diagnosis of gender dysphoria before they can be legally recognised by 2023. It also advised that the government launch an action plan in the next 12 weeks for reforming the GRA.
The committee recommended the government scrap the spousal veto from gender recognition laws and remove the requirement that trans people live in their “acquired gender” for two years before they can seek legal recognition.
From an-depth look at transgender men’s experiences in prison to Olympic diver Tom Daley’s viral knitting, here are 21 of our most clicked on LGBTQ news stories of the year.
Meet the queer teacher behind Bernie Sanders’ viral mittens
Jen Ellis, creator of the famous Sen. Bernie Sanders mittens, lives in Vermont with her 5-year-old daughter and her wife, Liz, and teaches second grade.Courtesy Jen Ellis
Vermont educator Jen Ellis uses her mittens to raise money for LGBTQ youth and show people the power of generosity. (Jan. 30)
Americans identifying as LGBTQ more than ever, poll finds
Pride flag fon July 10, 2021, in San Diego, Calif.Daniel Knighton / Getty Images file
Nearly 16 percent of Generation Z, those 18 to 23 in 2020, consider themselves something other than heterosexual, according to a Gallup poll. (Feb. 24)
Bisexual women with straight male partners least likely to be out
Evgeniy Fedorcov / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Bisexual women’s health and well-being may be affected by the gender and sexual orientation of their partner, according to a study published in the Journal of Bisexuality. (March 6)
America’s remaining lesbian bars are barely hanging on
Cubbyhole in the West Village, in New York City. Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images
“They provide a safe space, a place for camaraderie, a place for community and, of course, a place to get laid,” actor Lea DeLaria said of queer women’s bars. (April 4)
Cherry Grove: How a beach town became a gay ‘safe haven’
Maggie McCorkle and Audrey Hartmann in Cherry Grove, Calif., 1963.Cherry Grove Archives Collection
An exhibit at the New-York Historical Society features rarely seen photos of the LGBTQ community enjoying the freedom offered by Fire Island’s Cherry Grove, one of America’s first gay beach towns. (May 14)
Mark Wahlberg with Reid Miller in “Joe Bell.”Quantrell D. Colbert / Roadside Attractions
The movie, starring Mark Wahlberg, tells the complicated story of a father who wanted to memorialize his gay son while also spreading a message of acceptance. (July 22)
Remembering the ‘Saint of 9/11’ and the ‘Hero of Flight 93’
Father Mychal Judge, Mark Bingham.Getty Images/Courtesy Amanda MarK
Mark Bingham, a rugby player, reportedly confronted hijackers on United Flight 93, and the Rev. Mychal Judge died tending to victims at the World Trade Center. (Sept. 11)
Dr. Rachel Levine becomes nation’s first trans four-star officer
Rachel Levine appears during her confirmation hearing on Feb. 25, 2021. Caroline Brehman / Pool via Reuters
Levine was appointed to lead the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, making her the nation’s first openly transgender four-star officer. (Oct. 19)
Kavanaugh cites landmark gay rights cases in abortion argument
Brett Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill on Sept. 27, 2018.Tom Williams / Pool via Getty Images file
Lawyers who argued for LGBTQ rights in those landmark cases — Obergefell v. Hodges and Lawrence v. Texas — were conflicted on the validity of Justice Kavanaugh’s argument about abortion restrictions. (Dec. 3)
Rabia was just 15-years-old when she became engaged to a Taliban officer against her will in a small village in Afghanistan.
Now 22-years-old, Rabia has fled Afghanistan and has managed to get away from the man who made her adolescence hell. She is temporarily living in Pakistan, but she’s hopeful she will ultimately be able to claim asylum in either Canada or the UK so she can build a life for herself.
Like so many others, Rabia had no choice but to flee when the Taliban seized power. She is a lesbian, which makes her a threat to Taliban rule. To make matters worse, she knew the man she was engaged to as a teenager was still trying to track her down.
That’s why she and a friend – another lesbian – decided to travel to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“We had lots of problems because the Taliban stopped us along the way several times,” Rabia tells PinkNews.
Thankfully, Rabia and her friend managed to get into Pakistan with the help of a journalist who advocated for them at the border – but she wishes leaving was never a necessity in the first place.
“Before the Taliban, we had the opportunity to work, to study, to have a job,” Rabia says. “We had opportunities, and I was a student at a university.” Life was far from perfect – Rabia had to hide her identity and she couldn’t live openly as a lesbian. But once the Taliban seized control, things became much worse.
“After the coming of the Taliban, everything changed. I couldn’t go anymore to university, and I couldn’t go to my job,” she says. “I received a call from the job and they told me that you can’t come anymore because you are fired. I don’t know why.”
In the weeks that followed, Rabia changed her location several times out of fear that her ex-fiancé would track her down. She didn’t want to live with her family as she feared doing so would put their lives at risk.
Rabia’s father was forced to accept the engagement by a Taliban officer in Afghanistan
She still remembers vividly what it was like to be a teenager and be forced into an engagement against her will with a man she did not want to marry.
“He was a security member, that was the time that the Taliban was not controlling Afghanistan and they didn’t have any role or right to be in Afghanistan,” Rabia says. “They forced my father for the engagement. They told my father, if Rabia doesn’t accept this, we will go for your other girl, my sister. I didn’t want them to hurt my sister because she’s so sensitive. I had to do this because I didn’t have any option. Fortunately I found a way to escape from him.”
Rabia got away from her fiancé after six months. She was able to make contact with a woman in Kabul who dedicated her time to helping young girls get to the city where they could study and work. Rabia spent some time in a safe house in the city, and she later moved in with a family based in Kabul.
It was there that Rabia finally started to come to terms with her sexuality.
The beauty treatments listed at the new La Beauté & Style salon are much the same as those offered by the dozen or so other parlours that dot the traffic-heavy Dilshad Extension area of Ghaziabad, 17 miles (28km) east of Delhi. But that is where the similarity ends.
The wall behind the reception desk is painted in rainbow colours; a mural of a trans man with flowing multicoloured locks decorates another wall; a woman wearing a sari is having her eyebrows plucked next to a trans man who is telling a stylist how he would like his hair cut.
I feel loved and appreciated here. I no longer have to act or hide behind a different identity just to do my job
Nakshatra Rajput, salon employee
La Beauté & Style salon created history in September when it opened as India’s first salon run by transgender men. The owner, Aryan Pasha, 30, is a lawyer, activist and India’s first transgender male bodybuilder. He opened the salon to create a space where trans people would feel comfortable requesting beauty treatments. Everyone is welcome, he says, not just the LGBTQ+ community.
Of equal importance was creating a business that would generate employment for his community, which “continues to face social discrimination and rejection in academic institutes, as well as at workplaces, despite the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019,”, he says.
“While conducting food and ration-distribution drives during the epidemic, it was heartbreaking to encounter young transgenders who were educated and skilled but jobless due to their gender. They were surviving on charity donations, while others were forced to return to unsupportive and abusive families in their villages,” says Pasha.
Aryan Pasha, owner of the Beauté & Style salon in Delhi – and India’s first transgender bodybuilder. Photograph: Siddharth Behl/The Guardian
With financial help from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids and the Gravittus Foundation, a Pune-based charity that works for social change, Pasha set up the salon with his partner, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, 43. .
Tripathi has been a transgender activist since 1999, campaigning for numerous causes from HIV to community-led social enterprises. Through their charity, the Gaurav Trust, the couple focuses on raising awareness and protecting the health and rights of male sex workers and others within the LGBTQ+ community.
‘My family turned its back on me, but the salon embraced me,’ says one stylist. Photograph: Siddharth Behl/The Guardian
“Despite our collective advocacy and action over the years to mainstream issues like the welfare, rights and health of transgender people, stigma remains a major challenge. We face a hostile environment within schools, colleges and at the workplace, which leaves us scarred for life,” says Pasha, who transitioned from female to male after gender-reassignment surgery in 2011.
According to a 2017 study by India’s National Human Rights Commission, 92% of transgender people in India are deprived of the right to participate in any form of economic activity in the country; 99% have suffered social rejection on more than one occasion, including from their family; and 96% are denied jobs and forced into areas such as sex work or begging to survive.
A customer gets a haircut at the Beauté & Style salon. Photograph: Siddharth Behl/The Guardian
At Le Beauté, the six newly trained staff earn £100 to £300 a month, depending upon their level of expertise and skill.
More beauticians are being trained near Mumbai. “We plan to open our next salon in Pune and ultimately go national once we get more funding,” says Pasha.
Bhanu Rajodiya, 25, says he was at the lowest point in his life when Pasha recruited him. “I used to work at an export house in Delhi and earn £80 to £100 a month, but I lost my job during the pandemic. My family turned its back on me, but the salon embraced me and I now have a secure job with a fixed income. It’s so empowering.”
Another employee, Nakshatra Rajput, who transitioned last year, worked in Delhi as a team leader but lost his job when the management discovered his identity.
The salon, in a busy satellite town near Delhi. Photograph: Siddharth Behl/The Guardian
“They started finding faults in my work and the work atmosphere became so toxic, I had no choice but to leave. This was despite the fact that I was transparent about my gender to the HR department when I joined. They hired me for my skills and paid me well, but kicked me out at whim,” says the 25-year-old.
Rajput added that though his parents and friends had accepted him, Indian workplaces were far from inclusive. “This discrimination really hurts. After leaving my first company, I joined another one but had to leave that also within days because of my identity,” he says.
However, he is happy that La Beauté opened a door for him and trained him as a hairstylist – and has recently made him a part of the salon’s management team. “I feel loved and appreciated here,” he says.
“I no longer have to act or hide behind a different identity just to do my job. It’s so liberating. And that’s how society should be too – inclusive and diverse,” he says pointing proudly to the salon’s rainbow-hued walls.
Openly gay Brazilian Olympic diver Ian Matos died aged 32 following a severe infection that left him hospitalised.
Matos had been in hospital for two months before his condition worsened on Wednesday (22 December), the Sun reported. He had initially sought treatment because of an infection in his throat which later spread to his stomach and lungs.
He had won three bronze medals in the 2010 South American Games. He placed eighth in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro where he competed in the men’s synchronised three-metre springboard alongside his diving partner Luiz Outerelo.
Brazil’s Olympic Committee said in a statement that it is “profoundly saddened” to have received the “news of the premature death” of Matos.
The statement continued: “Team Brazil acknowledges his contribution to the evolution of the discipline.
“Our sincere condolences to his family and friends.”
“From a young age, I knew I was gay, but it was here that I got to live my sexuality,” Matos said at the time, referring to his home in Rio.
According to OutSports, Matos said a friend advised him to stay in the closet until after the 2016 Olympic games. But he said the pressure of hiding boyfriends, avoiding queer parties and not being able to live his truth was ultimately too much for the young diver.
At the time, Ian Matos had been part of a small number of out LGBT+ Olympic athletes. A then record-breaking 56 openly-LGBT+ athletes competed in the 2016 Rio games, OutSports reported.
In last summer’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, there were at least 186 out athletes, more than triple the number who participated in the Rio Olympics.
Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isaev, gay brothers detained in Chechnya, have begun a hunger strike after a judge denied a request to move their case to another region.
The brothers fled to Russia in June 2020 with the help of the Russian LGBT Network after they were tortured in Chechnya, the site of deadly so-called “gay purges”, for running an opposition Telegram channel.
The Russian LGBT Network said in a statement through its crisis group “North Caucasus SOS” that Magamadov and Isaev “declared the beginning of a hunger strike”.
The Washington Blade reported the declaration came after a judge denied the brothers’ request to move their case from Achknoy-Martan, a locality in Chechnya’s Achkhoy-Martanovsky District, to another court in the semi-autonomous Russian region.
The group said that Magamadov and Isaev had been detained in “the Detention Center No 1 in Grozny, Chechen Republic [for] more than 10 months”, the Advocate reported.
“They have reported being tortured during this time but the Investigation Committee refused to investigate the fact of torturing and to initiate a criminal case,” the group said. “Magamadov and Isaev have said pressure has been applied to them and that they were forced to refuse from legal support.”
The group also claimed that the brothers had been threatened with “honour killings” by distant relatives on television in Chechnya.
The Russian LGBT Network told Russian news site Meduza in March that the men’s friends and families had been encouraged by Chechen police to perform “honour killings”.
In a bizarre turn of events, the gay men were also offered state protection in Chechnya to prevent the “honour killings”.
The Russian LGBT Network petitioned Chechnya’s investigative committee to protect Magamadov and Isayev, according to the Moscow Times. But there was no clarification at the time as to what this protection looked like.
The men’s mother, Zara Magamadova, filmed an appeal with the Russian LGBT+ Network accusing authorities of “fabricating” the case against her children.
“I’m asking anyone who can help, please help me see my sons alive and in good health,” she said.
As of early this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had yet to respond to a Nov. 29 joint letter by 52 members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate calling on the FDA to end its policy of restricting the donation of human tissues such as corneas, heart valves, skin, and other tissue by men who have sex with men, or MSM.
The letter is addressed to Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. The FDA is an agency within the HHS.
The letter says the FDA’s restrictions on MSM tissue donation date back to a 1994 U.S. Public Health Service “guidance” related to the possible transmission of HIV, which stated that any man “who has had sex with another man in the preceding five years” should be disqualified from tissue donation.
“We also call your attention to the broad consensus within the medical community indicating that the current scientific evidence does not support these restrictions,” the letter states. “We have welcomed the FDA’s recent steps in the right direction to address its discriminatory MSM blood donation policies and urge you to take similar actions to revise the agency’s tissue donation criteria to align with current science so as not to unfairly stigmatize gay and bisexual men.”
The letter adds, “In fact, a recent study in the medical journal JAMA Ophthalmology estimated that between 1,558 and 3,217 corneal donations are turned away annually from otherwise eligible donors who are disqualified because of their sexual orientation, an unacceptable figure given widespread shortages of transplantable corneas.”
The letter continues, saying, “FDA policy should be derived from the best available science, not historic bias and prejudice. As with blood donation, we believe that any deferral policies should be based on individualized risk assessment rather than a categorical, time-based deferral that perpetuates stigma.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), the nation’s only out lesbian U.S. senator, and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) are the two lead signers of the letter. All 52 signers of the letter are Democrats.
Among the others who signed their names to the FDA letter are four of the nine openly gay or lesbian members of the U.S. House. They include Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Richie Torres (D-N.Y.), Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), and Mark Takano (D-Calif.).
Also signing the letter are D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).
In response to a Dec. 21 email inquiry from the Washington Blade, FDA Press Officer Abigail Capobianco sent the Blade a one-sentence statement saying, “The FDA will respond to the letter directly.”
The statement didn’t say to whom the FDA would respond or when it would issue its response.
Members of an Indiana high school’s LGBT+ club have won their legal battle after they were banned from raising money and promoting meetings.
A district judge issued a preliminary injunction in favour of the Pendleton Heights High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) on Wednesday (22 December) after the principal barred the group from advertising on campus and raising funds for the club.
The lawsuit – filed by the ACLU of Indiana in September on behalf of the GSA – alleged the school violated the students’ First Amendment rights and equal protection rights.
The high school’s principal claimed the GSA wasn’t an “official” club and banned the group from advertising on the “school’s bulletin boards, on the school’s radio station or anywhere on school property”, according to the lawsuit.
District judge James Sweeney II argued that the GSA was “likely to suffer irreparable harm” with the preliminary injunction and declared the school should give the LGBT+ group equal rights with other student organisations.
The order required that the high school provide the GSA with the same rights provided to its other student groups. This included the ability for the LGBT+ youth group to fundraise, advertise and be listed in the school’s student handbook.
“While this isn’t the first time the ACLU of Indiana has had to take on a public school for treating a GSA group differently than other student-led organisations, we hope that public schools throughout the state will take notice and forgo future challenges by providing equal treatment to all student groups,” the group said.
“The ACLU of Indiana will continue to work to ensure that all schools in our state provide GSA groups and other student-led groups with the equal rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.”
District officials initially argued that the Pride flags needed to be removed from classrooms to “maintain viewpoint neutrality”.
Bryce Axel-Adams, a student at Pendleton Heights, started an online petition to “allow Pride Flag to be flown in classrooms” at the high school. Axel-Adams explained in the petition that the LGBT+ flag is “one of the clearest ways” to support queer youth.
They added: “Having a Pride flag is one of the clearest ways to say ‘I support you, and I am here for you. You are loved’.
“That is so important for LGBTQ+ youth, we have always been told that teachers will always be there for us, and being able to easily identify teachers we can safely go to is extremely important to our mental health.”
Axel-Adams later added that they received an update from school administrators to say they had changed their stance. The school officials said they had “changed their argument from the flag being political speech to taking it down to avoid a discrimination lawsuit”, Axel-Adams wrote.
The Jerusalem Post has reported that thousands of LGBTQ+ Israelisreceived text messages saying they “deserve severe punishment, death and deportation” and calling on them to “repent.” The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel confirmed the news Monday.
“You are LGBT and an apostate. You deserve severe punishment, death and deportation from Israel,” the message read. “Come to Yeshiva Ohr Elhanan in order to repent. We would be glad if you undergo conversion to faith.”
According to The Jerusalem Post, “The message included a phone number and a Telegram account to contact and stated that it was sent by Rabbi Chaim Aryeh Hadash, the rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Ohr Elhanan. The rabbi has denied that he has any connection to the message, saying he has never talked about the issue and the issue is not addressed in his yeshiva.”The Agudah and the Havruta organization for LGBTQ+ religious Jewish men invited Hadash to a dialogue with the LGBTQ+ religious Jewish community. They also called in a letter for Hadash to publish a public condemnation of the messages sent in his name and to “prevent the further great desecration of God that has already been done.” The director-general of the Israel Internet Association, Yoram Hacohen, called for police to investigate whether the person who sent the text used data from the Black Shadow attack, adding that “Since these are text messages, it is possible to find out their source and take criminal action against the perpetrators…These are, on the face of it, elements who have grossly violated the Privacy Protection Law – I call on Israel Police to act immediately to locate the perpetrators. They have the tools to do that.” This latest incident comes just days after a seminar hosted by the 105 hotline for the protection of children online concerning harm against LGBTQ+ youth online.
A Colorado man launched a Facebook page to help solve cases involving LGBTQ people who are missingor have died but have yet to be officially identified.
Lazarus Rise, who is transgender, started the Missing and Unidentified LGBT Individuals Facebook page in April 2020. He was inspired to do so after discovering a decades-old case of a missing woman who investigators originally thought was cisgender but later discovered she was transgender.
The unidentified trans woman was found dead and was believed to have been killed in Clermont, Florida, in 1988. Investigators learned she was transgender after her body underwent DNA testing in 2015, upending the case.
“How many other people are out there like that — unidentified — that could have been trans, but you never know it because they can’t speak for themselves anymore?” Rise asked during an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Denver. “So, it really started making me think about all the people that have gone missing and unidentified that no one ever noticed or cared about it.”
LGBTQ people — and transgender and gender-nonconforming people in particular — disproportionately face discrimination and violence in the United States. At least 50trans or gender-nonconforming people, the majority of them Black, have died by violence this year, making 2021 the deadliest year on record for trans people, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which has been tracking fatal anti-trans violence since 2013.
Rise’s missing LGBTQ persons Facebook page acknowledges this, noting that while the page is dedicated to finding all missing LGBTQ people, it has a “strong focus on missing and unknown transgender/gender non-conforming individuals.”
Aubrey Dameron.via Facebook
Missing people the page has recently highlighted include Aubrey Dameron — a 25-year-old Indigenoustrans woman who went missing in Grove, Oklahoma, in March 2019 — and Baby James Dawson, a Black trans woman who went missing in Caldwell, Texas, in October 2020.
“There is such a lack of representation, especially with queer, Black and brown people,” Rise told KUSA. “No one really cares, and it is such an injustice. So if I could do whatever I can and just put my articles out there and just get people to read and talk about it, then I’m doing my job.”
Rise added that he hopes the page will ensure that missing and unidentified LGBTQ people are identified by their correct names and pronouns.
“Trans people, they fight hard for their identities and their names, so it’s the least I could hope is to give that back to them in hopes that they can be respected in death,” Rise said.
A report released last month by the Human Right Campaign found that in approximately 80 percent of the reported transgender fatalities since 2013, victims were initially misgendered by the media or law enforcement. And in at least 30 of the 50 trans fatalities recorded this year, police initially misgendered victims and used their birth names, an NBC News analysis found.
