Imagine a graduation ceremony where your principal purposely reads the wrong name. Add your voice in support of trans equality activist and high school senior Isaak Wolfe.
Issak Wolfe is a senior at Red Lion Area Senior High School and will be graduating with the rest of the senior class on June 7th. Issak, who is a female to male transgender student, started his transition the summer before his Junior year and has been going by the name Issak for the past two years. Now, as graduation approaches, his school is refusing to read the name Issak Wolfe when he receives his diploma because it is not the name on his birth certificate. School administration reported that they would only read the name Issak if he got it legally changed but the process takes far longer than the one month before graduation day.
This is not the first time that Issak has run into conflicts of discrimination at his school. Earlier this year, Issak intended to run for Prom King of Red Lion High but school administration refused to put him on the list, instead telling him that he could only run for Prom Queen because they did not identify him as a male.
Despite these conflicts, Issak has been a stellar member of the Red Lion High community. He leads the Gay Straight Alliance group at school and loves taking art and ceramic classes. He also had his prom outfit (seen above) custom made for him and wants to pursue a career in business and fashion after graduation!
Please show your support for Issak by signing this card in celebration of his graduation!
1) IN GENERAL- No prosecution of any offense described in this subsection may be undertaken by the United States, except under the certification in writing of the Attorney General, or his designee, that--
`(A) the State does not have jurisdiction;
`(B) the State has requested that the Federal Government assume jurisdiction;
`(C) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence; or
`(D) a prosecution by the United States is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.
"Members of targeted groups are prevented from purchasing goods and services, obtaining or sustaining employment, or participating in other commercial activity"Nothing could be truer in this instance. The atrocious reporting by local media was amplified time and time again nationally and internationally as editors jumped at the chance to sensationalize and dehumanize Dove parroting the original reporting by the Plain Dealer resulting in the demoralization of our minority internationally.
It became immediately clear that we cannot design a system based on biomarkers or cognitive performance because we lack the data. In this sense, RDoC is a framework for collecting the data needed for a new nosology. But it is critical to realize that we cannot succeed if we use DSM categories as the “gold standard.
That is why NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories. Going forward, we will be supporting research projects that look across current categories – or sub-divide current categories – to begin to develop a better system”
RDoC, for now, is a research framework, not a clinical tool. This is a decade-long project that is just beginning. Many NIMH researchers, already stressed by budget cuts and tough competition for research funding, will not welcome this change. Some will see RDoC as an academic exercise divorced from clinical practice. But patients and families should welcome this change as a first step towards "precision medicine,” the movement that has transformed cancer diagnosis and treatment. RDoC is nothing less than a plan to transform clinical practice by bringing a new generation of research to inform how we diagnose and treat mental disorders. As two eminent psychiatric geneticists recently concluded, “At the end of the 19th century, it was logical to use a simple diagnostic approach that offered reasonable prognostic validity. At the beginning of the 21st century, we must set our sights higher.”3
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) is deeply concerned of three unsolved homicides of transgender women of color that occurred during the month of April in 2013, which continues a trend of murders of transgender and gender non-conforming women and people of color in the past few years. On Wednesday, April 3rd, Kelly Young, a 29-year-old black transgender woman, was found shot to death inside a home in Baltimore, Maryland. Then on Thursday, April 4th, 30-year-old Ashley Sinclair, a black transgender woman, was found shot to death in a wooded area in the Oak Ridge section of Orange County, Florida. And on April 30, another young black transgender woman, Cemia Dove, also known as Ci Ci was found on April 17 in a retention pond in Olmsted Township, Ohio. Dove, a 20-year-old woman, had multiple stab wounds, was tied to a concrete block, and was found naked from the waist down. As of April 30th, all three of these homicides remain unsolved.
The Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization (BRAVO), an NCAVP member organization that works to end LGBTQ-related violence and homicide, has issued a press release about Dove’s murder, but media failed to pick up the story. “BRAVO is saddened to learn of the most recent hate crime murder, and outraged at the media’s flagrant disregard for human dignity,” said Gloria McCauley, Executive Director of BRAVO, “Every homicide deserves to be investigated and all possible leads followed so that we can understand what the cause of the homicide was. This is particularly true when the homicide involves a community that we know is at a higher risk of bias-related homicides such as transgender women of color.”
On April 25, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania sent a letter on behalf of Wolfe, asking among other things, that the school allow Wolfe to attend graduation wearing a black cap and gown for boys, as opposed to the yellow cap and gown mandated for girls, and have his male name read at the ceremony. The letter also asked that the school adopt a policy to allow students to run for prom court in accordance with their gender identity, as well as a broader nondiscrimination policy protecting transgender students in the district. In his response, the school district's solicitor agreed to allow Issak to wear a black cap and gown but denied the rest of his requests.
"I am really disappointed that the school district doesn't want to do anything to protect transgender students," said Wolfe, a senior at Red Lion Area High School. "I want to make sure that future transgender students are not humiliated and disrespected the way I was."
Wolfe plans to take his case to the RLASD school board at their next meeting on Thursday, May 16
When the story was published, Caniglia and his editors began to get emails from all over the country, objecting to the tone of the story, the use of male pronouns, the description of Acoff's clothing and the recounting of his criminal record.
Some were cordial. Some were profane. Some were threatening. Nearly all were angry.
Caniglia was stunned.
"I was trying to be as sensitive as possible," he said. "I never had a thought to be unfair or hurt somebody who was already brutally slain."
"The AP style change is understandable, but perplexing."
"Where do we draw the line?" said Chris Quinn, the editor in charge of the paper's local coverage. "What's a cop to do when filling out the gender form of a police report? What's a census taker to write? What about a driver's license?"
Quinn said future stories will say something like, "Acoff self-identified as a transgender woman so, for the purposes of this story, will be identified with female pronouns."
I have been renting an apartment to a man named Michael, who recently asked me to start calling him Michelle because, he says, he now identifies as a woman. He has also started wearing makeup and women's clothing.Continue reading the LA Times for the answer. The Times did not include the links to the laws below.
Both the name change and the change in dress make me uncomfortable, and I'm worried that it may make my other tenants want to leave. At least one of the other tenants has commented about the "freak" in Apartment 201 and has asked me if the "freak" has any plans to move out.
Michael has been an otherwise good tenant for several years. I don't really want to terminate his tenancy, but I don't think I should be forced to call him anything but the name he listed on his rental application. I also don't want him to stay if his behavior will provoke the other tenants. What am I allowed to do?
"Thirteen states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) protect
transgender people from discrimination in housing. These laws require that a tenant or homebuyer’s transgender status not be used as a basis for refusing– or offering less favorable terms in – leases, mortgages, homeowner’s insurance, and home sales.
Many housing and real estate non-discrimination statutes prohibit landlords, sellers, and real estate brokers from requesting information about a tenant or homebuyer’s transgender status." ~ National Center for Lesbian Rights
