Some Events of the year 2010: Part 1 - Organizations, legislation, litigation, political parties.

This is just some of what happened in 2010.

Part 1: Organizations, legislation, litigation, political parties.

Part 2: Persons

Part 3: Internet, Sports, Medicine, Celebrities, Deaths

Part 4: Visual media

Part 5: News Media, Journals

Part 6: Books

Organizations

Europe:

ILGA-Europe published Transgender People and the Gender Recast Directive (direct link to PDF download) which is intended to provide “an introduction to the content of the Gender Recast Directive and an overview of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and their relevance for trans people living in the European Union”.

International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights. Barcelona 4-6 June.

Trans Community Conference, London 16 July.

Two Turkish delegates to the 3^rd European Transgender Council in Malmo were attacked in a local restaurant.

UK: National Trans Police Association (NTPA) trans and intersex police officers officially launched and recognised by the police service in March.

The Law Society of Scotland released figures indicating that 4% (432) of their 10,848 members are "currently living and working in the opposite gender assigned to them at birth".

Project Silverfish – new group in London.

STP2012: Best Practices Guide to Trans Health Care in the National Health System.

Aktion Transsexualitat und Menschenrecht. Transsexual People in Germany

Institute for the Equality of Women and Men. Being transgender in Belgium.

Institute for Conflict Research. "The Luck of the Draw". A Report on the Experience of Trans Individuals Reporting Hate Incidents in Northern Ireland.

Stonewall was heavily criticized for its non-support of equal marriage, and not working on trans issues. And for proposing to honour Sun journalist Bill Leckie.

Americas:

The TransPulse study of Trans People in Ontario. http://transpulse.ca/documents/E1English.pdf

US: National Transgender Discrimination Survey. www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/resources_and_tools/ntds_report_on_health.pdf.

San Francisco: the Trangender Economic Empowerment Initiative, which arranges jobs for trans people, lost its city funding.

Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition sponsored An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes.

Transgender camp for kids.

Shelters for gay and trans homeless

Transgender Michigan opens an office.

The Gender Identity Center of Colorado has a new home.

California's Transgender Law Center celebrated 8 years.

Silueta X, Ecuador, applied to the Ombudsman citing the 2008 constitution after the local registry office refused their change of name. They had new identity cards within a week.

Gender Identity Empowerment Coalition lead by Arianna Davis and Kateryna Guinevere du Lac appeared, claiming to have given emergency financial assistance to various trans people. Suspicions were aroused, and the group disappeared by mid December. More

Accord Alliance no longer lists Bo Laurent (once known as Cheryl Chase) as an advisor.

PFOX, the ex-gay organization embraces Bailey and Lawrence.

Asia:

Koogavan Festival, Villupuram, Tamil Nadu.

First trans beauty pageant in India.

Sangama put forward Christy Raj to Video Volunteers to be a community correspondent. It also launched a campaign to add dignity to lives.

Shemale Rights Foundation of Pakhtunkhwa, Peshawar, founded.

Sisters in Solidarity founded by Leana Lo and two others to oppose the anti-trans discrimination in clubs especially in the Clarke Quay area of Singapore.

Indonesia: the conference held by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) in Surabaya in March was cancelled by the police after complaints and then threats by Muslims.

Indonesia: the National Commission for Human Rights held a human rights training session at the Bumi Wijaya Hotel in Depok. This was invaded by the the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) complaining that the Commission recognized the transsexual community. Afterwards, Satpol disputed that they had a permit.

Indonesia: Asian research network for women/gender studies, Kartini Asia, and the Amsterdam-based SEPHIS (The South-South exchange programme for research on the history of development) put on a 3-day workshop in Yogyakarta on the theme "Bridging the gap between sexuality research and advocacy for sexual rights".

Putroe Sejati Aceh (True Sons of Aceh), which provides shelters for trans women, put on a beauty contest with permission from Aceh's Ulema Consultative Assembly (MPU). It was later condemned.

Equal marriage & civil unions

Albania: dropped promise of equal marriage rights after pressure from Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox leaders.

Argentina legalized equal marriage.

China: first gay marriage.

France: heterosexual couples can choose between a civil partnership and marriage, and now there are two civil partnerships for every three marriages.

Iceland unanimously introduced equal marriage. Prime Minister married under new law.

Ireland will have Civil Partnerships next year.

Lebanon: protest march in favour of secular marriages.

Mexico City: first gay marriages

Nepal to introduce equal marriages.

Portugal introduces equal marriages.

UK civil partners living in France now recognized by French tax authorities.

US:

DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) was found unconstitutional by a District Court Judge in Massachusetts. This decision is being appealed by the Obama administration.

California: Proposition 8 found unconstitutional by a Federal Judge. California government declined to appeal, but third party did so.

Connecticut: all civil unions converted to marriages.

Iowa: 3 Supreme Court Judges voted out in 2010 elections after permitting equal marriages.

New Hampshire. In January 2011, all civil unions will become marriages.

Washington, DC. First gay marriages.

Other Legislation, Litigation, other government actions, etc

The UN voted in November a new proscription on extra-judicial and summary executions. The previous version specifically mentioned sexual orientation. The new version, resulting from an amendment introduced by Benin, does not. However in December, as a US initiative, the change was reversed.

The separate UN statement condemning human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, especially with regard to the application of the death penalty and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions has been signed by 68 countries. The US which refused to sign under Bush, did do so under Obama. 124 countries are declining to sign it.

IOC organized a two-day conference in Miami in January to consider guidelines for sex verification cases. IAAF and FIFA sent representatives. It proposed health centres to diagnose and treat athletes with 'disorders of sex development', and to do expeditiously. The athlete could face suspension if they do not cooperate. Dr Maria New (see below) was on the panel.

US and many other airports: the full scan machines that can see your genitals under your clothes complicated travelling for non-ops and pre-ops.

Quite a few close to surgery had their plans disrupted by the political demonstrations in Bangkok.

EU:

Draft resolution on “Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Italy: opened trans-only prison.

Ireland: dropped its appeal against changing birth certificates.

Macedonia: passed an anti-discrimination law with no mention of GLBT persons. This of course is deficient re the EU 2010 draft resolution. Amnesty urged that it be instantly returned to Parliament for amendment.

Malta: February, Joanne Cassar in February won a civil case to order the Marriage Registrar to issue her wedding banns; in May the decision was revoked on appeal; in November the First Hall of the Civil Court ruled that this was a breach of human rights; in December the Attorney General filed an appeal.

Netherlands: law barring universities from issuing replacement diplomas not to apply to transsexuals.

Norway: fetishism, fetishistic transvestism, sadomasochism, multiple disorders of sexual preference, and transvestism removed from official list of medical diagnoses.

Scotland: Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) (Scotland) Act. It will mean that homo/biphobic, transphobic and disability-prejudice crime is properly recognised as hate crime. Scotland is thus the first country in Europe to include transphobic crime in its hate laws.

Sweden: the Socialstyrelsen (Health and Welfare Board) in line with the EU recommendations has called for the end to the requirement that an applicant for a change of sex must be single and sterilized.

UK: Equality Act has nine categories of ‘protected characteristic”: age, disability, "gender reassignment", marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief (including lack of belief), sex, and sexual orientation.

UK: In AC v. Berkshire West Primary Care Trust, the High Court ruled that the NHS rules rationally in refusing to provide breast enlargement surgery to a transsexual. AC had been diagnosed with GID, had been on hormones and had refused genital surgery

Australia:

Trans persons now allowed in military


New South Wales: in late February, Scottish-born Norrie mAy-welby was granted a Recognised Details Certificate giving aer gender as “not specified”. In mid-March, after it was news around the world, the Certificate was revoked.

New South Wales: Family Court permitted 15-year-old trans girl to have hormone therapy. This was published in 2010, and now becomes a precedent.

Western Australia: Court to Appeal rules that trans men cannot get a gender reassignment certificate without having an hysterectomy.

Argentina: Gender Identity Law has been stuck in the Senate since 2007

Canada:

The government ordered Correctional Services Canada to halt all sex change surgery for inmates.

A Toronto judge struck down Canada's prostitution laws as unconstitutional. However the ruling remains suspended.

Canadian forces issued rules for trans service persons.

Quebec health system, RAMQ agrees to pay for services at Brassard's clinic.

Alberta finally removes homosexuality from its list of diagnostic codes. Transsexualism and transvestism remain.

British Columbia: medical service plan to cover chest surgery for trans men.

Cuba: confirmed that its health service is paying for sex changes.

Guyana: four men, who were fined for wearing female attire, have filed a motion in the High Court that the law contravenes their fundamental rights.

Honduras: a police officer was convicted and sentenced to 10-13 years for an off-duty stabbing attack on a trans sex worker who had declined to give him sex. The sex worker and witnesses were subject to death threats and kidnappings during the trial. This is the first such conviction in Honduras.

Hong Kong: High Court ruled that there is insufficient evidence “to demonstrate a shifted societal consensus in present-day Hong Kong regarding marriage to encompass a post-operative transsexual”. The petitioner would be allowed to marry her boyfriend anywhere else in China.

India: 

National Identification Authority will permit transgender as a third gender option.

Tamil Nadu: The government program of free gender surgery is up and working. 87 operations have been performed, and there is a waiting list of 500.

Hyderabad: the state government brought the 1.2 lakh transgender community under the Minorities Welfare Department, but the Muslims (another minority) objected and the order was reversed.

Indonesia: the Ulema Council has barred Muslims from watching television gossip shows or changing sex.

Kenya: robbery convict, Richard Muasya, intersex and as such denied official documentation, sought recognition of a third gender, as he has been harassed and badly treated in prison because of his intersex status. Ae was awarded Sh500,000, but his request for a third gender status was rejected.

Kuwait: launched an all-women moral police with the particular responsibility of chasing transvestites, and stopping the mixing of sexes.

Nepal: although in 2007 the Supreme Court ordered the government to amend laws to end discrimination against gays and trans, and give them the same rights as other citizens, this has not happened. In September there was a rally to protest this lack of action, and 70 were arrested.

New Zealand: the charities commission denied Exodus charity status in that: it does not provide any public benefit, and that Homosexuality is not a mental disorder and does not need changing.

Norway: Directorate of Health, following the earlier lead of Denmark (1995) and Sweden (2009), invalidated the diagnostic code for "Fetishistic Transvestism" in the standard Norwegian psychiatric manual.

Thailand: A new amendment to the conscription law being vetted by the Council of State means transsexuals would be relieved from draft service due to "gender identity disorder". Previously the document used the expression "mentally ill" which caused employment problems. Trans activists would prefer "physical appearances do not match their biological sex".

Turkey: Supreme Court of Appeals recognised gender change of Turkish woman who transitioned in Germany.

US:

Illinois: anti-bullying law inclusive of GLBT students.

Massachusetts trans-intersex couple awarded $6,000 after being discriminated against in rental market.

Rhode Island: Governor Donald Carcieri vetoed bill that would have expanded the definition of hate to include gender identity and gender-related expression.

Wisconsin: state law preventings inmates receiving gender hormones struck down by judge.

Houston added trans persons to it non-discrimination policy.

Oakland, California, removed its 130-year-old ban on cross-dressing.

US: updated the Equal Opportunity Statement on the federal jobs Web site to explicitly
include gender identity.

The American Academy of Pediatrics proposed that US law should permit pediatricians to offer a ritual nick of girls' genitalia as a compromise to immigrant clients.

US Tax Court rules that a woman could deduct the costs of her sex change operation.

Limited validity passports to be available for those in transition.

Vietnam: a gang rape of a post-op trans woman in Quang Binh province initiated a legal debate about whether it is covered in Vietnamese law.

Political Parties

The Australian Socialist Alliance adopted a positive policy on Intersex people at its National Conference, January 2010.

Nov 20, the Quebec wing of the federal New Democratic Party called for the government to strip Exodus Global Alliance of its Canadian charitable status at a convention in Gatineau.

Canadian MP, Bill Siksay, of The New Democratic Party, has introduced a private member's bill repeatedly for many years to add 'gender identity and gender-expression' to the anti-hate-crime law. This year the bill has reached third reading.

Georges Marasco (1890–?) lion tamer, stigmatic.

Berthe Mrazek was born in Brussels of a Bohemian father and a Belgian mother. As a child Berthe exhibited psychic powers and dominated her parents.

At 13 she joined the circus of Van Been Frères as a lion tamer, and as a contortionist. She never had any problems with the lion, Brutus, which later killed a male tamer. She also sang at cafés-chantants, the Chat Noir and the Minerva in the rue Haut. In 1913 she gave birth to a daughter, Irène.

In the Great War she was a nurse for political prisoners held by the Germans at St Gilles Prison in Brussels. She escaped from the Germans and arrived at the Belgian headquarters in male attire. As Georges Masasco he performed several useful mission for the allies in the closing months of the war. Afterwards Georges became well-known and popular at dancing resorts and night cafés, where he was immaculately attired, usually in a dinner jacket. He had many lady friends.

In 1920 he fell sick, wasted away, became paralysed and blind. He became religious and expressed a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. He could not afford this and was advised to pray at the statue of the black virgin at the nearby shrine of Notre Dame de Hal.  Georges was driven there and carried in, and on arrival, almost immediately, he arose and declared himself cured. He was able to walk and could see. And on his hands, feet and chest were the stigmata of the wounds of Christ. A French Abbé became for a time his director.

The Catholic Church investigated and accepted the miracle as fact, but forbade the administration of Sacraments to Georges until he stopped pretending to be a man, and the French Abbé was instructed to withdraw. Georges refused to stop. He declared that he was a man, and also an apostle sent by Christ to to heal the sick. He exhibited his stigmata, withdrew to a chapel of his own, soon had a large following, including many rich society women.

In 1924 he was arrested on a charge of obtaining money by a trick. He was examined by doctors and pronounced to be mad: "a marked case of schizofrenia complicated by acute mythomania". He was removed to an asylum near Mons.

• "Priestess in Prison: Girl Lion-Tamer Who Became a Spy: Amazing Masquerade and Miracle Cure". The News of the World, 16 Nov 1924, reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 42.
• Montague Summers. Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. London: Rider, 1950. Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2003: 198, 200-4, 208. Online at: www06.us.archive.org/details/physicalphenomen007373mbp.

____________________________________________________________

I can find no mention of what happened to Georges Marasco after the age of 34.

Montague Summers declares, having read the Belgian newspaper accounts, that the Stigmata are genuine, but that Georges, lacking humility, has been ensnared by ‘the fiend’ into spiritual pride.  Given that he had been a circus performer, it may have been a good idea to get a professional magician to investigate, as has now become standard procedure for all psychic phenomenon.

Hal (15 km SW of Brussels) is the major Marian shrine in Belgium.  Why is the statue black?  There are of course many black Madonnas across Europe.  In this case the following tale is told:

“In 1580 the deciding battle took place. An overwhelming Protestant army laid siege to the town, bombarding it with canon balls. But, legend says, the Queen of Heaven appeared on the city walls and intercepted the fiery balls in her lap. The gunpowder turned her black. The grateful population brought hundreds of canon balls that had landed inside the city walls to Our Lady, piling them under her bell tower. 32 of those are still kept in the church.”

Kenneth Lisonbee (190? – ?) barber.

Katherine Wing was raised in Utah.

As Kenneth Lisonbee he moved to Los Angeles, and became a barber. In 1927, Kenneth married 16-year-old Eileen Garnett, and two years later was living as the husband of 19-year-old Stella Harper.


He was arrested for bigamy that year, and his sex was discovered and his girl name reported in the Los Angeles Times  The district attorney released him on the ground that no-one had been damaged.

Lisonbee had pleaded that he passed as a man to get more work as a barber.

• Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: basic Books, 2006:24-5, 26.
• Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, Justin Emerick.  Lavender Los Angeles. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2011: 23. 

Luís Fernando Maria Zacarias de Orleans y Borbón (1888 - 1945) Infante.

Luís Fernando, cousin to Alfonso XIII Bourbon (1886 - 1941), King of Spain (1886 – 1931), was born in Madrid. Luís and his elder brother Alfonso were educated in England by Jesuits. In 1900 their parents divorced, which was a big scandal.

Luís Fernando was quite gay and liked to dress as female. He had natural advantages in passing being small, narrow-waisted and small-footed. He appeared in professional stage shows as a girl dancer.  Both he and his mother had an affair with the Portuguese nobleman, António de Vasconcellos.  When de Vasconcellos was seriously ill, both mother and son took care of him.

In 1914 The New York Times announced Luís Fernando’s marriage to a young British woman, but the newspaper was in error. In March 1924 Luís Fernando was expelled from France on the pretext of selling illegal drugs, but probably because of his homosexual activities. His cousin the King stripped him of his status of Infante, and exiled him from Spain. He moved to Lisbon.


In 1926 he was arrested, en femme, in a village in the Algarve, on the Portuguese/ Spanish border, and accused of smuggling.

In 1929 the press announced that he was engaged to a friend of many years, the US actress, Mabelle Gilman, (1880 – 194?).  She was eight years his senior, now retired and living in the Chateau de Vilgénis outside Paris, and rich after her 1923 divorce from William Corey (1866 – 1934) the steel magnate. Gilman converted to Catholicism in preparation for the marriage, but Luís Fernando was still unable to enter France, and his demands for money were becoming excessive.

In 1930, when he was 41, he did marry the 72-year-old Princess Marie Constance Charlotte Say, widow of Prince Henri Amédée de Broglie who had inherited a sugar fortune, despite a lawsuit from her nephew to prevent the marriage.  However the court ruled that a nephew has no such power over an aunt.  Marie owned the magnificent Chateau de Chaumont-sur Loire.  Luís Fernando managed to squander his wife’s fortune in only a few years, and she was forced to sell the Chateau.

In 1935, Luís Fernando was again expelled from France after being arrested in a vice squad raid.

Mabelle Gilman was interned by the Germans in 1940, but released in 1942 with all other female prisoners over 60.

Marie Say, once one of the richest women in Europe, died in ruin in a small apartment in German-occupied Paris in 1943. Luís Fernando then entered a nursing home, also in Paris, where he died two years later, aged 56.

• "Seize Spanish Prince Disguised as Woman", The New York Times, March 26, 1926: 6.
• C. J. Bulliet. Venus Castina: Famous Female Impersonators Celestial and Human. New York: Covici 1928. New York: Bonanza Books. 1956: 217-8.
• Christian Gury. Proust et le "très singulier" infant d'Espagne ; suivi de, Sur Proust, notes, miettes et remarques. Collection "Détours littéraires". Paris: Kimé, 2005.
• Mrs Astor.  Mrs Astor and The Gilded Age.  April 10, 2008.  http://mrsastor.com/2008/04/by-end-of-19th-century-almost-anyone.html
• Eric Lowe.  “Re: Antonio de Orleans and Eulalia de Borbón, Infantes of Spain”. July 25, 2008.   http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=2387.120

  EN.WIKIPEDIA     ES.WIKIPEDIA    

________________________________

William Corey was still alive in 1929, so would his divorced ex-wife be able to have a Catholic marriage, even after converting?

Cousin Alfonso, the King, was not the luckiest of monarchs.  He lost the last Spanish colonies: Philippinnes, Puerto Rico and Cuba, he lost his throne in 1931, he backed Franco's fascists in the Civil War, but they did not back him in turn, preferring the Carlist pretender. However he is the grandfather of the current king.

Toby Dancer (1953 – 2004) musician.

++ updated November 2013 to include the stained window.

Adrian Chornowol grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. His Ukrainian-born father was a musician with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Adrian was a child prodigy who played classical piano in the window of the Harmony Kids store. He grew up to be a record producer of note.

He was the music director of a country music television program, where he met Ian Tyson, who credits Chornowol with creating a unique sound for his platinum album Cowboyography, recorded in Calgary in 1987.

In 1989 Chornowol was repeatedly stabbed in his home by two homeless aboriginals. Shortly

afterwards he moved to Vancouver, and as Toby Dancer attempted to transition, as her brother had already done. She was very lonely and succumbed to heroin and then morphine.

Toby drifted to Toronto in 1998. She found the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre, and a worker there found her a room. She sometimes played the piano, but needed coaxing. Zepheniah James, from Jamaica via New York, brother of the late Philip James of the Blues Busters, taught music at the Centre and slowly got Toby to play with him. They recorded two CDs. Toby also contributed to the music at Emmanuel Howard Park United Church, and confided in the minister Cheri DiNovo, who is now a New Democrat Member of the Provincial Parliament.  Emmanuel Howard Park United Church now has a stained window to remember her.

Toby died at age 51 of a drug overdose.

The Ontario Private Members Bill introduced by Cheri DiNovo in 2007 to add Gender Identity to the Ontario Human Rights Code is known as Toby's Bill in her memory.  It finally became law in 2012. 

• Ian Tyson. I Never Sold My Saddle. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1994: 59.
• Catherine Dunphy. "Toby Dancer, 51: Musical genius died a drifter". The Toronto Star, Dec 03, 2004. http://www.thestar.com/article/107917. 

___________________________________________________________________________________

For somebody who made such a mark on Canadian music, Toby has a very small imprint:  Merely a paragraph in Tyson's book, and the obituary in The Toronto Star.  If you google Adrian Chornowol you find entries in Music databases, but they are no more than the name and sometimes a list of albums.

Gene Armstrong (1898 - 1962) and Noel Armstrong (1900 - 1968)

Geneva and Nola of Anderson, Indiana, who had four elder brothers, were 33 and 31 when their mother died in 1931.

They then switched to dressing as men, explained that they had only recently learned that they were men, and that their mother, desperate for daughters, had raised them as girls. They asked a court to change their names to Noel and Gene.

++Gene married and became father to a daughter and stepdaughter.  He became co-owner of the local potato chip company.

++He died in 1964; Noel died in 1968.

• “Miscellany, Dec 7, 1931”. Dec 07, 1931. Time.   Archive.
• L.H.Hamsley. “Imposters in Petticoats”. In David O. Cauldwell (ed). Transvestism … men in female dress. New York: Sexology Corporation. 1956: 63.
• "Gene Armstrong". Anderson Herald Buletin, Oct 23, 1962: 15.

Find a Grave(Gene D Armstrong) Find a Grave(Noel W Armstrong)

Thanks to researcher Kyle Phalen for finding the Find a Grave sites.

Ernest Wood (1900 – 1924) cellarman, waiter.

Ernest Wood was taken on by Pinoli's Italian restaurant in Wardour Street, Soho, London, when he was 14. He worked first as a cellarman, as which he had to roll heavy barrels and catch rats. and then as a waiter.

He shared a bedroom with a half-dozen workmates. Wood was described as a dandy, and was said to have three girlfriends whom he would take to the cinema or to the variety theatre. He also bred dogs. His workmates made fun of his light voice, and Ernest joked back that he didn't shave either.

In 1923 he moved to the Astoria hotel as a waiter, a job at which he was very successful.

Wood died of consumption at age 24, which led to the discovery that he was female bodied. No family came forward, and officials at the infirmary were at a loss how to bury the body as his female name was unknown. "Miss Ernest Wood" was suggested.

• The News of the World. 18 May 1924: 9; 22 May 1924:4.
• Wigan Observer and District Advertiser. 20 May 1924: 2,16
• Illustrated Police News. 22 May 1924: 4.
• Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 19, 23-6, 46.