Fil-Am transgender sues Macy’s for discrimination Balitang America Posted at 05/22/2010 1:36 PM | Updated as of 05/22/2010 1:36 PM www.abs-cbnnews.com CALIFORNIA - A Filipino American is suing her former employer Macy’s department store for wrongful termination and discrimination. For close to 3 years, Filipino American Jason “Jazz” Araquel, Jr. was at employee at the Macy’s store in the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, California. Araquel is a pre-operative male to female transgender, which Macy’s management knew when she was hired in 2006. Araquel, who worked in the cosmetics department, was fired in September last year for alleged insubordination and use of foul language. Araquel then filed a lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully terminated, alleging that she was a victim of gender identity discrimination, according to Araquel’s attorney Kelly Chen. Araquel claims that throughout her employment at Macy’s, she experienced ongoing verbal abuse, being ejected from the women’s restroom...

By Ida L. Bata Sunday Inquirer Magazine First Posted 18:56:00 03/06/2010 “I AM a woman. I’m not gay.” This succinct line from a song by a local artist best describes how Transpinays (or Filipino transsexuals) see and accept themselves –and hope the rest of the world would too. The words reflect the experience of Filipino transsexual women, says Brenda R. Alegre, a clinical psychologist who has completed a study on transgenderism. Herself a transsexual, Alegre explains that they are individuals whose sex and gender are in opposition, and so they seek to hormonally or surgically alter their bodies to match their gender identities. Gays, on the other hand, do not feel the need to change their genitals, she adds. Alegre began her research back in 1993 while completing a Psychology course at the University of Santo Tomas. “The research was something I really wanted to do. My feeling of being a woman is genuine and sprung from the time I was 5,” she shares. Her research included watching and...

BY JOHANNA D. POBLETE, Reporter Businessworld Weekender magazine It’s hard to be a woman, but it’s harder to become a woman. Female issues revolve around empowerment, battling for the same entitlements given to men — the right to be educated, to vote, to hold public office, to work and earn fair wages, to have marital as well as parental rights, to have religious freedom, to have bodily autonomy even — but one tends to forget that transgender individuals are struggling for the same fundamental rights sometimes taken for granted by the traditionally male and female members of society. "As far as I can remember, I’ve always identified myself as feminine."?— Nadine The general appellation of "trans-gender" refers to "people who express their gender in ways that are not traditionally associated with their birth-assigned one" (cross-dressers or transvestites, genderqueers, androgynes), and who "identify with a gender opposite to the one assigned to them at...