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TOPIC: lgbtq

LGBTQ Plus

Milan Forced To Stop Registering Babies Of Same-Sex Couples

Milan will now only allow the registration of biological parents. The city had been one of the few in Italy to recognize same-sex parents, but it was overruled by the country's conservative government.

MILAN — There will be no more official registration of children born to same-sex couples in Milan. After an attempt at resistance, Mayor Beppe Sala was forced to step back following a request from conservative Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.

Milan had been one of the few cities in Italy to automatically recognize at the registry office the parenthood of same-sex couples who became parents through heterologous fertilization or surrogacy abroad. The decision to discontinue this practice was announced by Sala on Monday. The certificates made so far remain valid.

The current legislation does not specifically prohibit this practice, but it does not mention this possibility either, which is why some cities, like Milan, decided to enact special laws to allow it.

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What A Barcelona Suicide Tells Us About Trans Bullying And Media Blind Spots

The case of 12-year-old twins, one of whom was transgender, who jumped off a balcony after being bullied, led experts in trans childhoods to reflect on how to better protect children. And how to talk about it.

TW: This content may address topics and include references to violence that some may find distressing.

In Barcelona, two 12-year-old Argentine twins, Leila and Iván, climbed on two chairs on a balcony and jumped into the void from a third floor window. They left letters by way of farewell, where they wrote that they suffered bullying for their Argentine accent. They had been living there for two years — and Iván was teased at school for his transgender identity.

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

Leila, who survived and is in very serious condition, wrote on that piece of paper that she was jumping in solidarity with her brother. Although the school has denied that they suffered bullying, peers and acquaintances, as well as their Argentine grandfather, made statements that support this scenario.

While the facts and circumstances are being investigated, many media outlets have reported the news without respecting Iván's gender identity, treating him as a female and mentioning his former name. Some, appealing to supposed journalistic accuracy, have inserted a disclaimer among their notes that states: “There is only evidence of the desire of the minor, aged 12, to be treated as a man through indirect sources. Neither his family nor his closest environment have spoken yet."

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Meet The Transgender Women Breaking Into The World's Top Beauty Pageants

After years of resistance, more and more major beauty pageants are selecting transgender women to compete. It's shaking up ideas about inclusivity, questioning the modern world’s beauty standards — and perhaps redefining gender itself.

Jenna Talackova’s selection to compete for Miss Universe Canada in 2012 was a watershed moment for both beauty pageants and transgender rights. Believed to be one of the first trans women to participate in a major beauty contest, Talackova won the title of Miss Congeniality, and many hoped it would pave the wave for more trans pageant contestants around the world.

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

It would take awhile, but just over a decade later, the revolution that Talackova sparked is finally gaining momentum. As Berlin-based Die Welt reports, Germany just announced that for the second year in a row, a trans woman has made the finals of its national pageant. Last week Miss Universe Puerto Rico said it will include its first openly transgender woman, all adding to a wave the past three years of top pageants opening up to trans contestants to compete.

Not surprisingly, there has been resistance. Last year, a U.S. judge rejected the appeal of Anita Green, a transgender woman, who had sued The Miss United States of America pageant for barring her from participating in the competition.

Meanwhile across the world, Miss Fabulous Laos 2022, a beauty pageant competition that allowed transgender women to participate, has been discontinued after the country’s ruling party banned transgender people from entering any beauty pageants.

Still, it seems as though the universe of women’s beauty pageants is reaching its transgender tipping point with more and more competitions opting for inclusivity, questioning the modern world’s beauty standards and redefining gender itself.

Here’s a look at some of the transgender women participating in beauty pageants around the world:

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How Mexico Is Leaving Its Trans Citizens In ID Limbo

Without the option to change their ID documents to reflect their gender, trans residents in Chiapas and 12 other Mexican states are denied certain rights.

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS — When Santiago Santiago Rodríguez began his hormonal transition a year ago, he discovered that he wouldn’t be able to change his name and gender on his documents in his home state of Chiapas, which doesn’t have a law regulating the administrative process.

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

He decided to have his name changed in Mexico City, one of the country’s 19 states with a gender identity law, a type of legislation that guarantees a person’s right to modify their birth certificate through a simple administrative request. Fewer than half of the country’s 32 states have such laws.

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In The News
Emma Albright, Ginevra Falciani Anne-Sophie Goninet and Bertrand Hauger

Putin State Of Nation Speech, New Turkey Quake, iPhone Antique

👋 اسلام عليكم*

Welcome to Tuesday, where Russian President Vladimir Putin lambasts the West in his much-awaited state of nation speech, a new 6.4-magnitude earthquake kills at least six in Turkey, and you’ll wish you’d held onto that old iPhone. Meanwhile, for Portuguese-language digital magazine Questão de Ciência, Natalia Pasternak gauges whether The Last of Us and its fungus-linked zombie apocalypse is actually so far-fetched.

[*Ssalamū ‘lekum - Darija, Morocco]

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LGBTQ Plus
Teresa Son and Emma Gómez

Mayan And Out! Living Proudly As An Indigenous Gay Man

Being gay and indigenous can mean facing double discrimination, including from within the communities they belong to. But LGBTQ+ indigenous people in Guatemala are liberating their sexuality and reclaiming their cultural heritage.

CANTEL — Enrique Salanic and Arcadio Salanic are two K'iché Mayan gay men from this western Guatemalan city

Fire is a powerful symbol for them. Associated with the sons and daughters of Tohil, the god who bestows fire in Mayan culture, it becomes the mirror and the passage that allows them to see and express their sexuality. It is a portal that connects people with their grandmothers and grandfathers, the cosmos and the energies that the earth transmits.

Enrique and Arcadio say that they see in the flame of fire the light that illuminates their way to liberating their sexual orientation.

In the case of Enrique, from the age of 23, he decided to live his human experience from the perspective of Mayan spirituality: "I discovered an important difference. In religion, it is either white or black, but in Mayan spirituality, you live from what your heart and the fire tell you and you make that decision.”

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés, Inès Mermat, Renate Mattar and Hugo Perrin

LGBTQ+ International: Lithuanian Fairy Tales, Egypt Dating App Gangs — And Other News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

This week featuring:

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LGBTQ Plus
Riley Sparks, Ginevra Falciani, Renate Mattar

Where Conversion Therapy Is Banned, And Where Its Practices Are Ever More Extreme

After almost five years of promises, the UK government says it will again introduce legislation to ban conversion therapy — and in a policy shift, the proposed law would include therapies designed for transgender people.

Conversion therapy, which includes a range of practices that aim to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity, has long been controversial. Many in the LGBTQ community consider it outright evil.

As the practice has spread, often pushed on young people by homophobic family members, there has been a worldwide push to make conversion therapy illegal, with the UK as the latest country set to ban such practices as electric shocks, aversion therapy and a variety of other traumatic, dangerous techniques to try to change someone's sexual preferences or gender identity.

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

The British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, the professional body which governs therapists in the UK, calls the practice “unethical (and) potentially harmful.”

In France, journalists have documentedmany healthcare professionals offering the pseudoscientific practice. In one case, a self-described “LGBT-friendly” therapist offered to “cure” a young lesbian through so-called "rebirth therapy," a dangerous practice that was banned in some U.S. states after unlicensed therapists killed a 10-year-old girl during a session.

For one Canadian man, therapy included prescription medication and weekly ketamine injections to “correct the error” of his homosexuality, all under the guidance of a licensed psychiatrist. Some people are forced into treatment against their will — often minors — but most of the time, those who receive conversion therapy do so willingly.

The UK announcement of plans to ban conversion therapy for England and Wales comes after four separate British prime ministers had promised, for almost five years, to ban the practice.

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortès Sierra, Riley Sparks, and Hugo Perrin

LGBTQ+ International: UK v. Scotland On Gender, Uganda Ends “Vagabond” Laws — And Other News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

This week featuring:

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Beatriz Gimeno

Feminism Should Not Fear Trans Rights

At some point, certain branches of feminism will have to explain how they ended up on the same side as the extreme right. But societies that fight for the rights of all are better to live in for everyone. View from a veteran of the feminist battle.

-Essay-

MADRID — As time passes, it will become more evident that a branch of feminism fell into a kind of "paranoia campaign" over what it calls trans ideology.

Someday, there will be regret about the support given to the global extreme right that invented the so-called “gender ideology” to combat feminism. For extreme right-wing evangelicals, ”gender ideology” is the great threat, comparable even to communism.

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LGBTQ Plus
Worldcrunch

LGBTQ+ International: Gender Recognition Changes In Scotland, Same-Sex Ice-Skating — And Other News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

TW: This content may address topics and include references to violence that some may find distressing.

🌐 5 THINGS TO KNOW

• Poland to veto discriminatory law: Polish President Andrzej Duda said he would veto a controversial bill that limits access to comprehensive sex ed and anti-discrimination classes in schools, after weeks of protests led by students and activists.

• Protests against homosexuality trial in Tunisia: Activists gathered on Dec. 19 in front of a court in Kairouan, Tunisia, to denounce the trial of six men prosecuted for homosexuality — which is punishable by up to three years in prison in the country.

• Scotland to introduce “gender recognition” changes: The Scottish government has introduced a bill to reform how transgender people can change the sex on their birth certificate, in favor of a self-declaration system that removes the need for a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

• Anti-LGBTQ+ Ghana churches received millions in Western aid: An exclusive investigation by CNN shows how over the past six years, some Western governments spent millions aiding churches in Ghana that have a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda and activities.

• Canada okays same-sex ice-skating teams to compete: Skate Canada, the national governing body for figure skating, has announced it is now allowing “two skaters” to compete in the ice dance and pairs figure skating competitions at the most elite levels of the sport.

🇦🇷🎧 From church choir to DJ icon: the singular rise of Anita B Queen

Alex Zani, writing for Buenos-Aires-based news agency Agencias Presentes, draws the portrait of Ana Belén Kim, daughter of conservative Korean immigrants to Argentina and a rising star in Latin America's electronic music club scene who's impossible to categorize.

In a world that insists on labels, Ana Belén Kim, also known as Anita B Queen, considers herself a "degenerate." That is: someone impossible to classify. The 26-year-old daughter of a Catholic mother and an Evangelical father, both of whom were Korean immigrants who came to Argentina in their early childhood, her musical career began at Cheil, the First Korean Presbyterian Church in the country.

Anita was still a teenager and was surprised to see so many instruments she could use. She taught herself how to play and was soon in charge of the youth band of the church. When she turned 18, her life turned upside down as she questioned her values and her sexuality.

“Imagine, a lifelong Christian girl, growing up in a small, closed, conservative and orthodox Korean community, trying to understand what she was feeling and trying to accept herself.” That year she left the church, withdrew from her peers, separated from her boyfriend, and began dating other women.

Photo of Anita B Queen with other musicians while in Madrid on Europe tour

Anita B Queen with other musicians on Europe Trip in Madrid — Photo: anitabqueen

"It was at that moment that I started working as a DJ, making electronic music, learning from local and foreign DJs who, without knowing it, were my mentors." It was a world commanded by men into which Anita stormed confidently, without asking for permission. "It's simple," she says. "Breaking through is a matter of attitude.”

Read the full story on Worldcrunch.com

👉 OTHERWISE

• LGBTQ Nation focuses on Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer of Swan Lake and Nutcracker fame, and how his being homosexual was carefully from Russian history.

• 76Crimes highlights the challenges transgender Pakistanis have to overcome today, faced with both a strong conservative Muslim society and a groundbreaking transgender rights law.

• “You've probably heard of the male gaze, but what exactly is the lesbian gaze?” asks Pride.

• T’is the season for queer couples to try to survive Christmas with the family ...

• Feeling nostalgic and looking to binge some good flicks for the holidays? Here’s a nice list of 17 Gay Period Dramas That Will Take You Back in Time.

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Society
Alex Zani

From Church Choir To DJ Icon: The Singular Rise Of Anita B Queen

Daughter of conservative Korean immigrants to Argentina, portrait of rising star in Latin America's electronic music club scene who's impossible to categorize.

BUENOS AIRES — In a world that insists on labels, Ana Belén Kim, also known as Anita B Queen, considers herself a "degenerate." That is: someone impossible to classify. The 26-year-old daughter of a Catholic mother and an Evangelical father, both of whom were Korean immigrants who came to Argentina in their early childhood, her musical career began at Cheil, the First Korean Presbyterian Church in the country.

Anita was still a teenager and was surprised to see so many instruments she could use. She taught herself how to play and was soon in charge of the youth band of the church. When she turned 18, her life turned upside down as she questioned her values and her sexuality.

“Imagine, a lifelong Christian girl, growing up in a small, closed, conservative and orthodox Korean community, trying to understand what she was feeling and trying to accept herself.” That year she left the church, withdrew from her peers, separated from her boyfriend, and began dating other women.

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