Joanne Cassar Taking Trans Marriage Fight To ECHR

Malta's Joanne Cassar recently lost a round in her fight for her marriage rights, but is going to continue that battle by taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights.

“I’m not inferior to other women… They can invent a million type of partnerships. I want the right to marry... I am a woman and want the rights that come with it.”

The 29 year old Cassar has been fighting this protracted legal battle over her marriage rights since September 2006.   Having exhausted all of her legal options in Malta to resolve the case, Cassar and her attorneys David Camilleri and Jose Herrera will open a case in the European Court of Human Rights.  Malta is a signatory to the treaty that established the ECHR, and whatever decision it makes in this case is binding.

She admitted in a May 25 Times of Malta interview that she was initially disappointed by the adverse ruling. "I was in a bad state at first but then I picked myself up as I realised I had always been willing to take the case to Europe. I always knew it would end there."   

“Like any other woman I feel the best thing in life is getting married and having a family. And don’t bring children into the argument... For me marriage is not only about having children. You marry a man because you love him,” she said adding that hopefully, one day, she would get to wear a white dress."

She is a woman who has human rights that were violated, and hopefully the European Court of Human Rights judges will be far wiser than the ones in her homeland in seeing that.

Here We Go Again-Transwoman Denied Entry At Dubai Airport

We've had increasing documentation of incidents in which transpeople have been denied entry at world airports in various nations or are harassed by customs officials when they do.

It was one of the reasons why the US State Department changed its policy last summer and allowed transpeople to acquire passports that have gender markers consistent with current gender presentation rather than being based on birth gender.


It was also one of the reasons international trans people became alarmed when the new Thai start up airline PC Air announced with the hiring of of several trans flight attendants that they were going to have them wear specialized gold colored ID that outed them to customers and custom officials.

PinayTG chronicles another story of a transperson who unexpectedly found herself being harassed and denied entry into Dubai due to mismatched ID.

All Jen Janice wanted to do before heading back to the Netherlands after a business trip to Kuwait was take a few days to visit friends in the UAE.    That side trip was one that opened her up to discrimination and disrespect..

International Womens Day 2011-Where Do Transwomen Fit In?

Today is not only International Women's Day (IWD), but we're celebrating the centennial observance of it.

The first observance of International Womens day was on March 19, 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland .   Over one million women and men attended rallies in which they called for women to have the right to vote and hold public office.  They also demanded women's rights to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.

The IWD is marked with a message from the UN Secretary-General and hundreds of events occurring on this day and throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Of course, you know the TransGriot had to ponder the significance of this day from a transwoman's perspective.

As the 100th observance of this day dawns, we are 50 plus years past the February 1953 date when Christine Jorgenson stepped off a plane from Denmark and into the flashbulb popping glare of the world's consciousness as the first transwoman to garner widespread media attention. 

As of IWF 2011, we transwomen around the globe have had a mixed bag of progress and pushback that in many ways mirrors our cissisters, but in other instances pales in comparison.    

We have been fortunate to have had a long list of transwomen around the world who have been willing to do and are eminently capable of doing the education about our issues to their nation's citizens.and in some cases to international bodies such as the United Nations.  They have tirelessly pointed out our shared humanity and the intersectionality of our concerns with our cissisters and anyone else who would listen.

But we do have a long hard road to travel as we take a snapshot of where international transwomen stand as we celebrate the centennial IWF anniversary.   


In terms of our economic status, while there are transwomen that do well economically, others depending where they reside aren't so fortunate.  Far too many of us are unemployed or underemployed thanks to the discrimination we face.   Still more are forced to engage in sex work with all the inherent risks involved just to survive.

Politically since Georgina Beyer and Vladimir Luxuria left the New Zealand and Italian parliaments, we currently don't have any out transwomen in national legislative making bodies.

There has been some slight progress in local or regional lawmaking bodies.   We have had increasing numbers of transpeople running for public office.  We have in the United States one elected and one appointed judge, and one transperson was reelected to serve on the Hawaii State Board of Education..

We've also had a transwoman receive a historic presidential appointment from President Barack Obama as well. 

Legislation addressing our various issues in several nations has either passed or is progressing in the various levels of government.   But sadly, there are instances where trans friendly legislation is stalled, delayed, or doesn't address the ills it purports to cure because of flawed crafting by allies unfamiliar with or insensitive to our concerns..

Socially we continue to fight across the globe to have our human rights in our various nations respected and protected.   We continue to have to battle in court for basic human rights cispeople take for granted.   We continue to deal with police brutality issues and cope with anti-transgender violence directed at us as the yearly TDOR ceremonies painfully remind us every November of the people we lose to it .

The centennial IWD 2011 theme is 'Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women'

We definitely need that in the trans community    Access to education and training in science and technology would go a long way toward providing that decent pathway to meaningful work for transwomen.

But at the same time we need laws on the books to protect our human rights so that we can get that education without being harassed.   We need legislation with enforcement teeth in our various nations so that we can confidently enter the workforce and compete for, get and hold whatever job we acquire without interference from the transbigots who would seek to impede our social and economic progress.


And yes, we need more transwomen willing to fight for our human rights as spelled out in the Yogyakarta Principles and the UN Charter. .  We need transwomen tough minded enough to run for public office in our various nations to help craft those laws that will help our transsisters get that employment to improve their lives..

And where do we transwomen fit in on this International Womens Day 2011?   Alongside our cissisters as allies ready, willing and able to do our share to help them out, and we hope they feel the same way about us as well..

Hasta La Vista, Hosni!

It took this stubborn Taurus a while, but former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down as the nonviolent demonstrators in Tahrir Square demanded when this revolution started in Cairo 18 days ago.

I discovered a while back that Hosni Mubarak and I have the same May 4 birthday, but I digress..

It is a historic day for the Egyptian people and one they and the world won't ever forget, and neither will those of us witnessing this history unfold in front of us from the comfort of our living rooms.

We can only hope and pray that the Arab world's most populous country will continue on the path of peaceful evolution to a democracy that consistently holds free and fair elections.  

We also hope that Egypt return to its place of leadership and respect amongst the nations of the Arab world and internationally.

Here's hoping the rest of the autocratic rulers in the region got the message that was sent from Cairo.   Change your ways now and give the people residing in the various Middle Eastern nations more of a say in how they are governed or suffer the consequences..

2010 World AIDS Day

It's December 1, and that means we have reached another observance of World AIDS Day    

Since the first observance of it in 1988 as a method of raising awareness of HIV and AIDS the disease has killed more than 25 million people worldwide since 1981, and it's estimated that 33.2 million people worldwide live with HIV.

It's also an issue in the trans community, which is why I'm writing about World AIDS Day.    Various needs assessments have documented infection rates in trans populations of up to 25%.    Some trans people contracted it through sharing needles due to silicone pumping party injections with an infected person, engaging in unprotected sex either with an infected partner or while performing sex work.   


The 2010 theme for World AIDS day is Universal Access and Human Rights.   In this current climate in which people with privilege arrogantly think they can run roughshod over the rights of others, it's even more important to stand up for folks who are fighting to live with HIV/AIDS and say 'hell no you can't'.


I have dear freind who are living with HIV, and have lost dear friends, classmates and family members  to AIDS.   So on this day I take a moment to think about the people we've lost, the folks struggling to live a quality life while battling HIV, and pray that a cure is found for it as expeditiously as possible.