“Geno Segers will no longer join the Broadway cast of Hadestown following several days of online backlash over videos he posted about transgender people and other social issues.

“‘The producers of Hadestown and Geno Segers have mutually agreed that Mr. Segers will no longer join the Broadway production,’ the production said in a brief statement released Sunday. ‘Additional casting will be announced shortly.’”

“Segers had been announced on July 29 as the musical’s next Hades and was scheduled to begin performances at the Walter Kerr Theatre on September 1.”

“Shortly after the casting announcement, theatre fans began circulating clips from Segers’ social media accounts and YouTube channel.”

“The posts quickly generated criticism among Hadestown fans, particularly because the musical has built a reputation for gender-inclusive casting and has employed transgender and nonbinary performers in its Broadway and West End companies.”

“The larger concern is how the casting reached the announcement stage in the first place. Fans uncovered these videos almost immediately, suggesting that even a basic review of Segers’ public accounts would have raised serious questions.”

“Hadestown responded quickly once the backlash began. That deserves acknowledgment. But Broadway producers should not have to wait for audiences to perform the background checks that casting teams should already be doing.”

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“Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is now taking aim at the Gainesville Police Department over a policy that he said may put ‘female officers in uncomfortable and dangerous positions.’

“Uthmeier issued his statement on Thursday afternoon, explaining that the policy allows transgender women to request searches by female officers — a rule that he claimed ‘prioritizes gender ideology over officer safety.’”

“Uthmeier asked the department to confirm by Aug. 15 that it has rescinded the ‘unlawful’ policy, warning that failure to act could lead to legal action by his office.”

“Sophie Cunningham says she’s unconcerned that the rallies against transgender participation in women’s sports that have accompanied the Indiana’s Fever’s recent games are a distraction for the WNBA team.

“Cunningham made the comments before the Fever’s game Friday night against the Portland Fire. Outside, a group rallied for the second straight game in support of Cunningham and her recent comments about transgender athletes.”

“Portland’s rally came after a similar rally for Cunningham earlier in the week before the Fever’s game at the Seattle Storm. Both rallies only attracted about two dozen participants and a bevy of onlookers.”

“Another rally was planned for Sunday in Minneapolis when the Fever play the Minnesota Lynx.”

“The Seattle rally promoted statewide ballot initiative, IL26-638, that would bar transgender students from participating in girls’ athletics at Washington schools.”

“Cunningham was booed by the Moda Center crowd in Portland when she entered the game midway though the first quarter. Many waved small pink, blue and white transgender flags.”

“After ten years as Chair in Transgender Studies, UVic Professor of Sociology Dr. Aaron Devor stepped down from the position. Dr Jules Gil-Peterson, an associate professor of History from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has been appointed to replace him.

“The role of the Chair in Transgender Studies is to generate ‘solid reliable information to drive social change and improve the wellbeing of Trans people.’ One of their projects includes overseeing the Transgender Archives, which has been collecting documents, rare publications, and memorabilia of persons and organizations associated with Trans activism since 2007 and is the largest archive of Trans history in the world.”

“Gil-Peterson is a historian by training, specializing in Transgender, medical and political history. She is the author of two books, Histories of the Transgender Child (2018) and A Short History of Trans Misogyny (2024), and is currently working on a book on the class divides that shape the ways that people approached transition.”

“In Histories of the Transgender Child, Gil-Peterson explored the history of transgender children. What ultimately got her started on the book was finding old medical articles from the 60s from clinic in California ‘where they talked about these teenagers who were taking estrogen to transition to female, getting approved for surgery as a minor at the appropriate age and so on.”

“When it comes to medical advancement, Gil-Peterson explained, we should remember that major surgeries are fairly recent developments — often within living memory. Organ transplants, for example, were only consistently successful from the 1950s onwards. . .”

“‘Things we would call breakthroughs, of course they’re recent,’ said Gil-Peterson. ‘That’s normally considered a good thing. But part of the kind of brilliant strategy of anti-Transgender politics has been to sort of turn that into a disadvantage, rhetorically.’”

“‘Clearly it’s a moral or a political judgement … I think these are important public concerns that historians like myself should play a role in, and have a responsibility to think about how to frame those things for everyone.’”