Articles- Collected Articles For The Transgender Community

For the third year in a row, 19 Bay Area Kaiser Foundation hospitals were ranked amongst the nation’s leaders in healthcare equality for their lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender patients, according to a report released last month by a national LGBT civil rights organization.

In its fifth year administering the survey, the Human Right’s Campaign Foundation considered hospital policies that protect patients and employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation, in addition to ensuring equal visitation for same-sex couples and training staff to deal competently with LGBT health issues. Kaiser’s performance was considered along with that of 87 other hospital systems in 375 facilities through out the United States. (more…)

In a test of District Attorney George Gascon’s appetite for the death penalty, the man accused of raping and murdering a transgender woman in 2007 will not face the death penalty, according to prosecutors.

DNA samples linked Donzell Francis, 42, to the murder of Ruby Rodriguez, who was found dead on a Potrero Hill sidewalk on March 16, 2007, according to the San Francisco Examiner. The DNA was untested for two years before they linked Francis to the killing, the newspaper reported. (more…)

By LAURA RENA MURRAY
Published: August 19, 2011

ZAIRA QUISPE, 42, said she knew as a child that she was a girl, though she had been born male. She picked up a photo that she kept on the windowsill above her bed and held it out as proof. It’s a picture of herself as a smiling baby, naked and with legs crossed, concealing genitals. “Look,” she said, “even then I was trying to hide it.” (more…)

I had an alter ego named Keisha when I was 10 years old. Like me she had bouncy tendrils and a flirty disposition, but unlike me she could present female to all of our friends.

She was someone that I hid as a Tween. She didn’t have a space in my house, where Dad ruled. I was his son, Keisha didn’t exist to him – until a boy who knew her knocked on our door and asked for Keisha, whom Dad soon discovered was me.

I remember the glare in Dad’s eyes upon this discovery. He flashed a look that frightened me because it was a complex mix of love and shame and rage. My father didn’t understand why God gave him a son that was such a sissy, a kid who skipped around the house with his hips swaying and his wrists limp. (more…)

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has directed the city’s Department of Employment Services to begin a first-of-its-kind pilot program specifically directed toward members of the transgender community for job training and job placement.

Gray disclosed plans for the program at an Aug. 4 meeting he hosted with representatives of the transgender community. Officials with several city agencies also attended the meeting. (more…)