This is my weekly roundup of the background radiation I am exposed to. It’s usually the bad and ugly of how the world treats LGBT folks, with a heavier emphasis on the T’s. I like to leave the full links exposed because then you can see where the article is.

I am a big news consumer, and here’s what got my drawers in a knot this week.

Headline: Four Transgender Murders in a Week “Alarming Trend”
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/03/01/four-transgender-murders-week-alarming-trend

Four black transgender women have been murdered in the last week. I wish I could be surprised at the sheer brutality that black transgender women are subjected to, but I can’t. I hear about it again, and again. I don’t face even a fraction of the animosity that these women have to deal with. This is nothing short of heartbreaking.

Part of what makes this background radiation metaphor work, is when you are transgender or love someone that is, you hear about the deaths, the beatings, and the bigotry on a near constant basis. It’s a part of your life, knowing that there are people that would kill you, as soon as look at you. That there are people that will simply cut you out of a job or a home because they feel justified.

I don’t think these kind of perpetrators really honestly care if we are transgender. I think they are the kind of people that look for socially acceptable targets. All too often the kind of people that attack transgender people, also attack people for race, or religion. These folks look for people in a minority because they have an acceptable target.

These next too links pale in comparison to the previous one, but they were things that I ran across this week, and stuck with me.

Headline: Transgender: What does it mean? After Trump rolls back protections, an explainer
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/02/23/transgender-what-does-mean-after-trump-rolls-back-protections-explainer/98293820/

This is a really good article explaining the whole transgender thing. I think this is a good one to keep in your arsenal when you run into that weird aunt, or coworker, that seems to have been in a media blackout lately. It explains things well.

Headline: Many European countries won’t recognize transgender people unless they’re sterilized
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/25/many-european-countries-wont-recognize-transgender-people-unless-theyre-sterilized/?utm_term=.b02522c21f04

It boggles my mind that there are places that force transgender people to be sterilized before letting them transition. I remember when I first heard of this, years back, and I was floored. To be forced to undergo an unnecessary surgery like that? Sure, lots of us are happy to go through surgeries that do render us sterile, but that is our choice. Not all of us want surgery. To legally force someone to, in order to let them get medical treatment is astoundingly backwards. I’m glad people are spotlighting this issue.