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Local victories: gender-neutral bathrooms, more accessible birth certificates
The biggest news of the month, that the Supreme Court has overturned DOMA and dismissed Prop 8, has certainly been reason to celebrate. And hopefully it will pave the way for marriage equality in Oregon come 2014 (fingers seriously crossed!). But there have been a couple smaller, more local victories recently that we appreciated.…
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Kickstart Tobi Hill-Meyer’s next project
Tobi Hill-Meyer, winner of the Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 2010 Feminist Porn Awards and director of Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project, now has an even bigger project in her sights: an epic two-volume follow-up movie called Doing it Again: In Depth. Doing it Again: In Depth will be partially funded by a…
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Trans rights victories in Ontario and Argentina
Rest of the world, take note. Both Ontario and Argentina have recently taken some big leaps forward for trans rights, allowing for gender self-determination on birth certificates without proof of medical, judicial, or psychiatric procedures first. Ontario’s change came in the form of an April decision that struck down a previous rule in the Vital…
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Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival starts tonight
Tonight marks the beginning of the Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival (POWFest), which runs through Sunday. POWFest is a fantastic showcase for the work of female directors. This year’s festival includes an array of documentaries, animated and experimental shorts, international shorts, shorts with mature themes, classic films, and even a special screening of…
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Pushing back against the transphobic Girl Scout cookie boycott
Last fall, Girl Scouts of Colorado issued a statement formally accepting transgender youth into their troops. “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl,” the statement read, “Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.” Now that Girl Scout cookie season is on…
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Cervical Health Awareness Month
In the U.S., approximately 12,000 people are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, and 4,000 lives are lost. The United States Congress has designated January as Cervical Health Awareness Month to get the word out about HPV, cervical cancer, and the importance of early detection. Cervical cancer is caused by specific types of the Human Papillomavirus…
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Third gender category to be added to Pakistani identity cards
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has done something quite radical: they’ve agreed to add a third gender category to their national identity cards. Surprisingly, there has been little opposition to the ruling, neither within the registration authority nor outside it. This may be because trans people — of which there are an estimated 50,000 —…
