An article published Monday in the Journal of Emergency Nursing will hopefully change the treatment of transgender people in hospital emergency rooms. The article was submitted by Ethan Collin Cicero, BSN, RN and Beth Perry Black, PhD, RN, from Chapel Hill, NC and was entitled, I was a Spectacle...A Freak Show at the Circus: A transgender Person's ED Experience and Implications for Nursing Practice

The article offers a case study for Brandon James (not his real name), a transgender man who visited an Emergency Department in the southeastern US a few years ago, expecting to be treated like any other patient.

Instead, he was treated like a "freak show at the circus" by hospital staff when the female marker on his driver's license and medical record did not match up with his masculine appearance and preference to go by male pronouns.

The authors point to one recent study, which found that about 19 percent of transgender patients reported having been refused care because of their gender status, and 28 percent said they experienced harassment in a medical setting.

Unfortunately, this is fairly common. From a nursing perspective, those are very alarming numbers to learn about, so that's why we wanted to look a little more closely into this community's health care experiences.

--Cicero, a doctoral student at the Duke University School of Nursing

Laverne Cox appeared Monday at the Social Good Summit on a panel with Shelby Chestnut, co-director of community organizing and public advocacyat the Anti-Violence Project and Cecelia Chung, senior strategist of the Transgender Law Center.

The subject of the Census arose.

Census data has historically focused on the binary gender options: male and female. Emmy-nominated actress and transgender activist Laverne Cox is critical of that fact. The census doesn’t include her, and people like her, by assuming everyone is born into the gender they will forever identify.

I was thinking that visibility is only part of the equation. We must have social policy, systemic change. And then I thought about the census. Systemically, this idea of the gender binary is very much institutionalized in the fact that we just don't count trans people.

--Cox

Marla Krolikowski was better known at her workplace as Mr. K. Mr. K. was a teacher at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens for 32 years before a complaint by one lone parent about the teacher's feminine appearance caused administrators to go ballistic.

Mr. K, for as long as we have known him, has always donned several gold hoop earrings, dyed hair, fashionable (but appropriate and professional) clothing, and well-manicured nails. This was never an issue amongst his students or their parents until that one student’s mother complained to the school.

His long track record of spectacular teaching seemed to carry no weight when a lone parent complained about his ‘feminine’ appearance back in 2011.

--Cristina Guarino, former student

Krolikowski was fired from her teaching job for "insubordination" in 2011, but fought back.

Marla Krowlikowski collapsed on September 20 and was taken to Nassau Communities Hospital, where she died. No cause of death has yet been determined. She was 62.

Perhaps it was a broken heart.

When Jill Soloway accepted her Emmy for directing TransParent, she mentioned her transgender parent and said,

She could, tomorrow, go and try to find an apartment, and in 32 states it would be legal for the landlord to look her in the eye and say, ‘We don’t rent to trans people.’

For as long as Paola Ramirez has journeyed through her gender identity, she has been haunted by housing insecurity — first as a pained young boy living with her parents in Guatemala, then on her own as a gay man and, finally, as a transgender woman in New York.

Paola's studio apartment in Queens has a new owner, so her lease is up for renewal. But Paola is being told she cannot renew unless she presents some ID stating that her female name and gender.

I feel pressure.

--Ramirez

In a decision in Maryland Administrative LAw Judge Denise Shaffer has ruled that officials at Patuxent Institution in Jessup Maryland have failed to comply with the national standards for protection of sexual abuse as set forth in the Prisoner Rape Elimination Act.

Sandy Brown, a 40-year-old transgender woman, was serving a five-year sentence for assault in 2014 when she was placed in 24-hour solitary confinement for 66 days at Patuxent after a routine mental health screening. While so housed, Brown says that guards routinely watched her shower and encouraged her to commit suicide.

They didn't see me for the human being I am.

They treated me like a circus act. I understand how animals at the zoo feel now. They gawked, pointed, made fun of me and tried to break my spirit.

These were people I’d never met, people I’d never done anything to.

--Brown

PREA requires prisons to have clear policies and mandatory training for prison personnel concerning the treatment of transgender inmates.

...cause the vandals stole the handle.

A group of graffiti artists (BlakCollectiv), led by Kalkidan Assefa, created an impressive, and legal, mural during Ottawa's Pride Week honoring transgender women of color who had been murdered during the past year.

On Wednesday night an unknown person or group who were offended by the memorial spray painted over much of the mural and added these sentiments:

RACIST BULLS--T

ALL COLORS MATTER

ALL LIVES/NO DOUBLE STANDARD/YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Ironic. Yesterday I wrote an essay about some enlightened parents. Today, I am horrified by some parental behavior.

Shivy is not currently using a last name. He probably did use when when he was a student at Cal Berkeley. But it is common in India for people to use only one name.

Anyway Shivy was born in India but has lived in the US since he was three.Thus he had an Indian passport and a green card. Emphasis on the "had."

Shivy's family has made a habit out of traveling to India to visit with family during the summer. They did so again this year, but had to trick Shivy into joining them. They told him his grandmother was very ill.

What started this whole thing seems to be that Shivy cut his hair. This freaked out his mother and caused a huge argument.

Liv Hnilicka is a Minneapolis waitress. She shared a story on Facebook on Sunday that has gone viral.

This afternoon I was at my waitressing job on a beautiful early fall afternoon. Two parents and their young daughter came in; the tall burly dad adorably scratching his back on the door as they walked in. As I was filling the water station, he came up to me and said, "My daughter just asked if you were a boy or a girl. I didn't want to speak for you so would you like to talk to her?" I nervously said yes and walked to their table. "Hi, I like your hair ribbon," I said. "I heard you asked if I was a boy or girl. I think the important thing to remember is that everyone can be anything they want to be in this world. And it's also important to try to be the best selves we can be for our family and friends. And even to strangers. So to answer your question, I was told that I was a boy when I was little and now I live my adult life as a girl. It sounds complicated but it's actually pretty simple. Do you have any questions for me?" She looked at me smiling and simply said, "Nope!"

I walked away from the table feeling really good about parents intentionally engaging their children about possibly difficult topics. And showing that giving people the power to voice their truths in this complicated world is beautiful and healing.

Way to go, mom and dads out there making space for transfolks/gnc people like me. ❤

(Also I made this post public in case you want to share it with parents you may know.)

--Liv Hnilicka

Now that Pope Francis is on American soil (question: Is the Popemobile considered baggage?), we can turn our attention to the exploding heads on the right (both Vatican and American, from all indications, over the guest list for tomorrow's White House visit.

To put everything in proper context, we should note that there are about 15,000 names on that guest list, so it's not like any one of them is going to spend significant time alone with Francis...or even get close to him, let alone speak to him.

But that's not stopping folks like Mike Huckabee from tweeting:

Classless decision by @POTUS to transform @Pontifex visit into a politicized cattle call is an insult to millions of Catholics.

The man who has asserted that he would have been a pervert if transgender people around when he was young, is especially concerned about the invitations to Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, transgender activist Mateo Williamson, and former Nun on the Bus, Sister Simone Campbell.

My attention, of course, is on Mateo Williamson, a former leader of the transgender caucus within Dignity USA.

The Vatican’s disapproval of my presence at the ceremony speaks to the necessity for continued dialogue between transgender Catholics and the church hierarchy.

This is really not so much of a political statement as it is the reality that there are so many LGBT Catholics and family members of LGBT people who would really benefit from this message coming from the White House.

--Williamson

Jill Soloway and Jeffrey Tambor of Amazon's Transparent earned Emmy awards last night...Solloway for Best Director for a Comedy and Tambor for Lead Actor in a Comedy.

Soloway's male parent, who she apparently calls Moppa (or Mapa...spelling uncertain) is a transgender woman.

Thank you Mapa for coming out and coming to L.A. And coming here tonight. And something interesting about my Mapa, Carrie: She could, tomorrow, go and try to find an apartment, and in 32 states it would be legal for the landlord to look her in the eye and say, 'We don't rent to trans people.

We don't have a trans tipping point yet. We have a trans civil rights problem, so go to transequality.org and vote to pass the trans equality bill.

--Soloway

That caused the website for the National Center for Transgender Equality to crash.