Beth Greenfield

A 70-year-old lesbian’s lawsuit against her senior housing facility, which she claims has failed to keep her safe from anti-gay harassment, is highlighting a troubling fact of life for many LGBT seniors: the return, in their supposed “golden years,” of bullying.

“I thought, oh no, here we go again: gay hate,” shared Marsha Wertzel in a video she created with her attorneys at Lambda Legal.

Wertzel is currently appealing her recently dismissed case against the Glen Saint Andrew Living Community in Niles, Ill., where she lived for three years (and which maintains it did not discriminate against Wertzel). After coming out to another resident there, Wertzel says she was forced to dodge peers who physically attacked her and called her names including “fucking dyke” and “homosexual bitch.”

“I tried to avoid them, but they would seek me out and taunt me,” she said. “I’ve heard every negative homosexual term, I’ve been hit more than once… When is it going to stop?”

For Wertzel, at least, it has stopped for now, as she’s relocated to a supportive facility in Chicago. But many other LGBT seniors like her — who faced years of bullying in their youth and had hoped to finally be living out their golden years in safety and contentment — find themselves in residential facilities where they must deal with homophobic and transphobic harassment.

“Senior spaces are seeing a huge increase of people who have lived their entire adult lives out of the closet… but then find themselves with aggressors who are completely emboldened in terms of their generational attitudes,” Karen Loewy, lead counsel on Wertzel’s case and the seniors’ program strategist at Lambda Legal, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Situations like Wertzel’s are very common, she adds, though there are scant statistics on the issue. “We know we’re not hearing about the vast majority of them,” largely because coming forward to find help and support in such a threatening environment takes huge resolve, she says. “But anecdotally, we know this is happening all the time.”

According to 2010 statistics (the most recent available) from the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, an estimated 1.5 million adults age 65 and over are lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB); about 4.1 percent of American adults identify as LGB, for an estimated 1.5 million LGB elders today — a total that is expected to grow to nearly 3 million by 2030. (Unfortunately, there is little information on the number of transgender older adults, the report noted.)

Regarding much-needed support in post-retirement years, the resource center notes the following: Although 80 percent of long-term care in the U.S. is provided by family members, LGBT elders are twice as likely to be single and three to four times more likely to be without children than their heterosexual counterparts. Further, many professional caregivers are not accepting of LGBT elders and not trained to deal properly with their unique needs, and therefore might be hostile, discriminatory or simply unaware that LGBT elders exist. For example, 8.3 percent of LGBT elders reported being neglected or abused by a caretaker due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“LGBT people face myriad complications when aging,” Hilary Meyer, chief enterprise and innovation officer at SAGE, a national advocacy organization for LGBT elders, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “On top of the same concerns that non-LGBT people face as they age, such as financial insecurity and declining health, studies have shown that LGBT elders are more likely than their non-LGBT peers to be at risk for social isolation due to shrinking support networks and higher rates of living alone, and face higher rates of discrimination when accessing healthcare and housing. For older people who may already be vulnerable, dealing with discrimination and bullying by peers in a residential setting can be even more difficult.”

She adds that “LGBT older people have lived through decades of stigma and discrimination by their peers, families, and society’s systems of care. For much of their lives — and still for some people, especially trans folks — LGBT people could be fired, involuntarily hospitalized, arrested and prosecuted, and worse by the very societal systems designed to protect people. Because of that, LGBT people carry a tremendous amount of fear and concern about mistreatment.”

In an effort to make it easier, SAGE offers a national training and credentialing program on LGBT aging to facilities and providers across the country on how to provide “culturally competent care to LGBT people,” Meyer says. An agency that completes the program then earns a SAGECare credential, signaling that it’s a safe place for LGBT seniors.

Another helpful trend has been the rise of LGBT senior communities and housing facilities opening up around the country — including in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Provincetown, and Pecos, New Mexico. SAGE is behind the effort to bring such a facility to New York City, where the project has broken ground in Brooklyn and is expected to open in 2019.

In the absence of such safe havens, though, there is often fear of abuse — rightly so, in many cases.

“Many of our constituents describe the action of ‘scanning the environment’ for clues that this is a safe place to be openly LGBT. If they don’t see signs of safety, or worse, hear disparaging remarks or see harassing behaviors, they will likely stay closeted so as to try to ensure that they do not become victims themselves,” Meyer explains. “For anyone having to hide core parts of their identity, especially where they would otherwise call ‘home,’ there are damaging results to a person’s ability to be happy, healthy and age successfully. For example, just imagine if you lived in a place where you could never talk with your neighbors or peers about a deceased partner with whom you shared your life, instead pretending the person never existed? It’s incredibly destructive to a person’s wellbeing.”

As for Wertzel, she moved into Glen Saint Andrew after losing her partner of 30 years to colon cancer — which followed being shunned by her adult son, being evicted from her home, and getting shut out of the family by her late partner’s relatives. “No one would drive me to her funeral,” she said. It was then, amidst her grief, when she opened up about her late partner and the child they had raised together, that she wound up being bullied, and luckily being directed to the Lambda Legal help desk by a caseworker. The staff at the residence facility, she reported, did nothing to try to protect her.

“I don’t feel any safety in going to them… they ignore me like I’m a ghost,” she explained in the video. “I put in a complaint, I hear nothing. I’m not treated like the other residents. If you can’t go to the staff, who do you go to?”

And while taking the abuse is in some ways easier than it might be for children and adolescents, Wertzel noted, it definitely took its toll. “The older I’m getting and the pride I feel knowing [my late partner] Judy Kahn and loving her, and her loving me, it’s easier to handle these taunts,” she said. “But still, there are some that surprise you and hurt you.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

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Two men who ordered programs for their September wedding from a popular printing company but instead received a boxful of anti-gay pamphlets warning, “Satan entices your flesh with evil desires,” have filed a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and emotional pain.

“At first we thought it was simply a mistake, and we had accidentally received someone else’s order. But once we saw the images and actually read a bit of the pamphlet, we quickly realized this wasn’t a simple or innocent error,” husbands Stephen Heasley, 31, and Andrew Borg, 39, who live in Australia, tell Yahoo Lifestyle through email. “Both of our initial reactions were ones of shock…utter shock. The wording and imagery was aggressive, threatening and deeply personally offensive.”

The claim was filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, the state where the company in question, Vistaprint, is based.

“This was by far the most direct, personal, and aggressive act of homophobia either of us has experienced to date,” they added, regarding the shipment of homophobic pamphlets, which the couple received on the eve of the ceremony and party for 100 guests.

The wedding programs ordered by the couple were to have listed the order events, members of their wedding party, and lyrics to the Above & Beyond song “Treasure,” which played as they walked down the aisle. Instead, the fire-and-brimstone pamphlets they received warned that, among other notions, “Satan knows our flesh is weak. He preys upon our weaknesses to tempt us to sin. Satan can only influence us to want to sin. He cannot make us sin.”

The men did not immediately (or at any time since) contact Vistaprint to inquire about the bizarre mailing. Instead, they paid to have quick replacements printed up and went through with their wedding — though it was marred by anger and fear, they say.

“We realized that whoever had sent this had our personal addresses,” recalls Heasley, a portfolio manager for an educational publisher (Borg is a property manager for a Sydney retail facility). “We were getting married on a family farm in what we understand to be a fairly conservative and rural part of Pennsylvania. If ill-intentioned people decided to target our wedding and guests, we would have very few options to escape or seek shelter.”

The couple then hired legal representation — Cetrullo LLP in Boston and Wigdor LLP in New York City — to go after Vistaprint, and are now seeking an award of unspecified damages and a trial by jury.

When contacted by Yahoo Lifestyle, Vistaprint spokesperson Sara Nash offered the following response: “Vistaprint would never discriminate against customers for their sexual orientation. We pride ourselves on being a company that celebrates diversity and enablescustomers all over the world to customize products for their special events. We have just been made aware of this incident in the last few hours. We understand how upsetting it would be for anyone to receive materials such as these the night before their wedding and we have immediately launched an internal investigation. Until we have had the opportunity to complete our investigation, we cannot comment further.”

Vistaprint is part of custom-print company Cimpress, founded in 1996, with manufacturing facilities around the globe, from North America to Europe and India, and a network of more than 7,000 employees in 13 offices worldwide. Its orders are “absolutely guaranteed,” with the website noting, “We want our customers to be 100 percent happy with their order. If for any reason they are not, we will make it right.”

Which will likely be good news to Heasley and Borg, who say the entire experience left the men feeling rattled by anger and fear — emotions that have not yet subsided.

“After four months of being married, the pain from those memories has not faded,” says Heasley. “Andrew describes his hurt as though feeling like someone has completely robbed him of what would have turned out to be nothing short of a brilliant wedding.”

It’s why they’ve gone the legal route, they say, noting, “Our goal is to hold Vistaprint accountable for the harm they have caused, to give a voice to others who may have been similarly victimized, to help prevent this from happening to someone else, and to send a message that there will be consequences for acts of hate perpetrated against others.”

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In June, Florida teenager Drew Adams filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against his high school, claiming he was denied entry to the boys’ bathroom because he is transgender.

On Thursday, his case, filed on his behalf by Lambda Legal, was dealt both a setback and some hope in one fell swoop at a two-hour-plus hearing, according to the Florida Times-Union: First, a judge denied a preliminary injunction against the school which would have granted Adams access to the boys’ room prior to a trial.

Second, that same federal judge, Timothy Corrigan, vowed to expedite the trial to as soon as December, telling Adams, “I do take your case seriously,” according to the report, and adding that the young man` was “entitled to prompt consideration.”

Adams, 16, of Jacksonville, Fla., a student at Allen D. Nease High School, filed a lawsuit against the St. Johns County School Board, claiming anti-transgender discrimination “on a daily basis,” according to the complaint.

“Although Drew is a hard-working, high-achieving student, the school has discriminated against him by refusing him access to the boys’ restrooms,” it continues. “This conduct has a negative and harmful impact on Drew, branding him as unfit to share the communal restrooms that all other boys use simply because he is transgender. Drew brings this suit because he has a simple request: to be treated like other boys who can use the restroom so that he too can focus on school, rather than the humiliation of being denied access to the facilities all others use for one of life’s most basic functions.”

Adams’ lawsuit argues that the school’s requiring him to use a different bathroom than other boys — he has been relegated to use one of three gender-neutral restrooms — is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in education. Adams began identifying as male in 2015.

Lead counsel Tara Borelli of Lambda was not immediately available for comment. But she told the Times-Union that Adams and his mom, Erica Adams Kasper, filed the lawsuit only after their efforts to work with the district directly got them nowhere.

School board attorney Terry Harmon told the paper said the school board restricts usage of boys’ and girls’ rooms to students based on biological sex, not according to a student’s gender identity. He added that while schools are not going to check sex at the door, it must respond if a complaint is raised by a student or parent of a student, and said that the school board only recognizes Adams as a female “for purposes of bathroom use only.”

The Adams case is one of many in which a transgender student is suing his or her school for discrimination. Such lawsuits — including those fought by students and their families in Maine, Colorado, and Wisconsin — typically revolve around bathroom access, making it an issue that has been politicized by both parties and has even made its way to the Supreme Court. One such federal lawsuit, by three transgender students against a school district in Pittsburgh was recently settled, with the district now allowing students to use restrooms that correspond to their “consistently and uniformly asserted gender identity.”

A suit filed earlier this month by the family of an 8-year-old in California goes further, citing discrimination not only by bathroom restriction but by the school allegedly refusing to use her female pronoun or to allow her to wear the girls’ school uniform.

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:

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The family of an 8-year-old transgender girl is suing the child’s private school for “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” among other charges, after it allegedly refused to use her female name and pronoun and also barred her from using the girls’ restroom and from wearing a girls’ school uniform.

“When any adult says to a child, ‘You may not live according to your gender identity,’ that is serious emotional distress,” Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer for plaintiff Nicole Brar and her parents Priya Shah and Jaspret Brar, tells Yahoo Beauty. “There isn’t anything more heartless in the world than telling a child ‘do not follow your heart.’”

The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of California, Orange County, on Aug. 2, seeks appropriate compensatory damages yet to be determined as well as a policy change regarding gender at the Heritage Oak Private Education in Yorba Linda, where Nicole was withdrawn halfway through the most recent school year in favor of homeschooling; she will be enrolled in public school this fall, and is also under the care of a therapist, says Rosenbaum.

“Nikki,” as Nicole is called, is a “courageous” child, notes the lawsuit, “who told her family what she has long known to be true: that although she was assigned to the male gender at birth, her true gender identity is that of a girl. Her loving parents and sister supported her in this affirmation of her core identity and sense of self; her older sister’s first question was: what pronoun do you want us to use?”

But Heritage Oak, the claim continues, in consultation with its parent company Nobel Learning Communities, Inc. “unlawfully discriminated against Nikki.” The suit alleges that the school “repudiated Nikki’s core identity. It refused to use the name, pronoun, and gender corresponding to Nikki’s gender identity, required Nikki to wear the boy’s uniform and use the boy’s restroom, and failed to address the bullying that Nikki was subjected to because of her gender identity and gender expression. Heritage Oak engaged in this intentional discrimination despite its express and prominently publicized policies of non-discrimination, diversity, and teaching the ‘whole child,’ and despite the fact that Nikki’s parents repeatedly asked the school to respect her identity and repeatedly offered to help educate the school about the needs of transgender children.”

Heritage Oak has responded to the allegations with the following statement:

“We strive to meet the needs and wellbeing of all children in our schools, and have been able to accommodate the needs of other transgender students in older grades at Nobel Learning Community schools without incident.

“We were mindful in this instance of the need to support not just this 7-year-old [now 8], but other young children. We believed it was extremely important to respond, not hastily, but with deliberate care, to decide when and how to inform and educate our entire elementary school community of students, staff and parents about the mid-year change of gender identity expression of a young child. Due to the sensitivity of the issue and age of the child, we believed we needed expert guidance regarding timing (such as, preparing children for a change they would see in spring semester of second grade and fall semester of third grade), process and age-appropriate communication.

“We told the family we had decided to retain an outside consultant to assist us, and we were communicating with the family on a consistent basis to discuss potential experts and specific accommodations (in addition to the other accommodations we had already offered, such as use of the single-unit staff bathroom, specific options as to girl’s uniform clothing and girl’s hairstyle, as well as ceasing to use gender groupings in physical education activities). Unfortunately, these accommodations were rejected and the parents withdrew their child.”

Rosenbaum dismisses the statement’s claims as “completely inaccurate.”

The Brar case is just the latest in which a transgender student is suing his or her school for discrimination, though such lawsuits — including those fought by students and their families in Florida, Maine, Colorado, and Wisconsin — typically revolve around bathroom access, making it an issue that has been politicized by both parties and has even made its way to the Supreme Court. One such federal lawsuit, by three transgender students against a school district in Pittsburgh, Penn., was recently settled, with the district now allowing students to use restrooms that correspond to their “consistently and uniformly asserted gender identity.”

In Nikki’s case, the lawsuit alleges, Heritage Oak, as a secular, for-profit school, is bound by the same anti-discrimination laws that apply to all business establishments. “In failing to treat Nikki in accordance with her gender identity,” it claims, “Heritage Oak and Nobel Learning Communities, Inc. violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California Civil Code section 51, which explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression.”

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:

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• Trans Star Candis Cayne on Beauty: ‘When I Started Doing Makeup, There Was No YouTube’

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A California woman who sued her obstetrician for assault and battery after a birth video that captured him giving her a forced episiotomy went viral has agreed to settled her case for an undisclosed amount.

Kimberly Turbin of Los Angeles gave birth to her son in 2013, having her perineum cut 12 times by her obstetrician during labor, despite her vocal protests. In 2015, with the help of both the national birth-advocacy organization Improving Birth and prominent a civil-rights attorney Mark Merin, Turbin sued the doctor, Alex Abbassi; months later, Abbassi surrendered his medical license with a claim of “age-related cognitive defects,” a move that Turbin’s team called “tactical.”

But now, with the legal settlement, Turbin, a single mom, can really put the ordeal behind her.

“None of us could blame her for wanting this to be over,” Dawn Thompson of Improving Birth said in a statement about Turbin, released on Tuesday, explaining that continuing to push the case forward could have taken another three years. “She’d done a damn good job and it was beyond time to move on.”

Thompson added, “Kimberly accomplished so much just by speaking out and sharing her story. The video has been viewed more than half a million times. Millions of people read her story in the many news articles written about the case. The doctor gave up his medical license and is no longer able to practice. Kimberly’s story has been shared with mothers, fathers, nurses, midwives, physicians, and more, even discussed during meetings of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. [She’s] done exactly what she’d set out to do — leave a mark.”

While details of the settlement, including the dollar amount, must remain private due to a non-disclosure agreement, Thompson said Turbin received enough to both “put a little away for her son’s education” and seek out the emotional support and counseling “she needs to heal.”

The video footage, filmed by Turbin’s sister in labor and delivery at Providence Tarzana Medical Center in California, captured Abbassi condescending to Turbin, a two-time sexual-assault survivor, while she labored on her back. Abbassi then made 12 audible snips to her perineum after Turbin could be heard telling him, “No, don’t cut me. No!” It prompted a huge outcry after it was posted to YouTube.

At the time that the lawsuit was filed, Merin told Yahoo, “The physician acted in total disregard of the patient’s interest — either because he practices backward medicine…or because it was just heartless for some other reason.”

Turbin had called the lawsuit “a big step for women who have been silenced,” adding, “Every time I hear one of these stories about women being ignored when they complained about how they were treated in the hospital, it reminds me of why I’m doing this. It took a lot of people to get this far, but this is the proof that you can do something.”

In sharing the news about Turbin’s settlement on Tuesday, Thompson noted, “Her strength and courage in speaking out and pursuing action against her doctor will continue to make a difference for birthing people in the United States. We can’t wait to see what this strong, brave woman will do next.”

Read more in Yahoo Style + Beauty:

• Trouble for Doctor Who Battled Mom Over Episiotomy
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A relaxer marketed as a product that would make hair “instantly thicker and fuller, reversing damage from day one,” has allegedly done just the opposite, according to two women who tried it and are now suing the manufacturer, L’Oréal, for their subsequent scalp burns and hair loss.

The product in question, Softsheen Carson Optimum Amla Legend Relaxer Kit, which touts itself as being “no-lye” and containing “Amla oil from India,” allegedly changed the lives of the plaintiffs.

“When Dorothy Riles used the product as intended … it left her with bald spots, as well as burns and then scabs on her scalp,” notes the class-action suit, filed Sept. 14 in U.S. District Court by the Los Angeles firm Geragos & Geragos. Riles was then “forced to wear a wig for the first time in her life to cover her injuries,” the suit contends. “To date, she continues to struggle with thin, unhealthy, and damaged hair as a result of her use of the product.”

Another plaintiff, Sharon Manier, claims she experienced scalp irritation from the relaxer, followed by hair loss, and that she now wears hairpieces and takes costly vitamins to help foster regrowth.

The suit alleges false advertising, fraud, negligence, and other claims of misrepresentation against L’Oréal. And it seeks damages of an amount to be determined by the court — which, when looking at past cases, could easily be in excess of $100 million, attorney Ben Meiselas of Geragos & Geragos tells Yahoo Beauty.

Meiselas adds that his office has been “bombarded” with “literally hundreds of phone calls” from other women who have experienced product reactions similar to those of Riles and Manier. They began coming forward as soon as the lawsuit was filed, Meiselas notes, adding, “That data tells us we’ll be in the range of several thousand others coming forward.”

A L’Oréal spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Beauty, but told BuzzFeed, “We do not believe the allegations in this lawsuit have merit. For more than 100 years, L’Oréal has been committed to the safety of its consumers.”

But the litigation — reminiscent of the recent class-action lawsuit against Wen’s low-lather conditioners — further claims that L’Oréal “has known for years that its product is dangerous and defective,” both because of its many toxic ingredients and the “host of consumer complaints on the Internet, including L’Oréal’s own web pages,” which report that the relaxer has caused reactions “including hair loss and breakage, as well as scalp irritation, blisters, and burns.”

On Amazon, consumer reviews were mixed, with some noting it worked well and many others complaining of hair loss, intense burning, “continual breakage,” and even being “traumatized.” In 2013, one reviewer noted, “I would love to sue this company!!!”

At the root of the suit’s claim of fraud, Meiselas explains, is the way the company targeted consumers who were likely seeking a healthy, natural way to relax their hair. “What was really striking about this case is that L’Oréal is trying to co-opt the mysticism of the gooseberry [Amla] oil, which many beauty bloggers say is great,” he says. “They use it to hook and lure unsuspecting consumers, when it contains only trace amounts and is listed as the last ingredient.” It’s mixed in with “a dangerous cocktail of ingredients,” he adds, including hexylene glycol and butylene glycol, known to cause skin and lung irritation, plus the relaxing agent, sodium hydroxide — also known as lye.

“These chemicals cause serious damage to the hair itself by making it weak and prone to breakage,” according to the relaxers (“creamy crack”) section of a green product guide published by the organization Black Women for Wellness. “However, these chemicals don’t stop there; they can cause serious burns around the face and scalp (and any other body part the chemicals come in contact with), permanent scarring and blindness. Also, these chemicals serve as a gateway chemical: a chemical that makes it easier for other chemicals to get inside our body through burns and sores. Furthermore, recent studies linked long-term use of relaxers to early puberty in girls and fibroids in African American women.”

Popular blogger Curly Nikki recently took the Amla oil itself to task, noting that it’s typically derived by soaking the dried fruit in another oil, such as coconut or sesame seed, creating more of a “botanical infusion,” and that because it’s high in vitamin C it can dry out hair.

Adding insult to injury, the suit notes, is how L’Oréal has gotten celebrities including Tracee Ellis Ross and even Michelle Obama to promote the Amla Legend line.

“The actual effects of the product present a sad contrast to L’Oréal’s claimed expertise ‘[a]s a leader of the multiethnic hair care industry,’” the suit says, “as well as to its brand imagery, featuring celebrities such as Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland.”

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Kendall Oliver, a transgender individual who was denied a haircut in March by a California barber who cited religious scripture as his reasoning, has officially filed a lawsuit against the barbershop for discrimination.

“All Kendall wanted was a short haircut like any other paying customer,” writes attorney Peter Renn of Lambda Legal in a statement. The LGBT-rights organization is representing Oliver, along with private law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson. “Kendall’s sex shouldn’t have mattered. California’s civil rights laws give all of us the right to be served by businesses no matter what our sex, race, or religion. A business has no right to impose its gender stereotypes on its customers, and trying to justify those beliefs with religion does not excuse unlawful discrimination. The fact that discrimination may be religiously motivated doesn’t make it any less harmful to the person on its receiving end.”

Related: Woman Harassed in Bathroom for Appearing Transgender — and She’s Not Alone

This is the second gender-discrimination lawsuit to be filed against a barbershop since March. That’s when Rose Trevis, who identifies as male, sued Hawyleywood’s Barber Shop in Long Beach, Calif., after he was refused service with a simple, “We don’t cut women’s hair.”

Both situations appear to be clear violations of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which explicitly outlaws businesses from discriminating based on sex as well as gender identity. Examples of potential violations of the law include “establishing a ‘women only’ or ‘men only’ business establishment which would otherwise be completely open to the public” and covers businesses including bars, theaters, retail shops, hotels, hospitals, and “barber shops and beauty salons.” The law is at the heart of both suits.

Related: The Complex Relationship Between Transgender Women and Makeup

Also worth noting is that in cases like this one, the discrimination is two-pronged. “For one thing, the California civil rights law prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sex — there’s no question at all that keeping women out of barbershops is against the law — so that’s one half of this,” Ilona Turner, legal director of the Transgender Law Center in Oakland told Yahoo Beauty regarding the Trevis case when it was filed. “The law also prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and says an individual must be treated in accordance with their gender identity.”

Oliver, an Army reserve sergeant who served in Afghanistan, was born female but identifies as being “more male than female,” and prefers to use gender-neutral pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their” instead of “him” or “her.” The plaintiff had recently moved to California from Colorado on the day of the alleged discriminatory incident in March. That’s when Oliver went into The Barbershop in Rancho Cucamonga for an appointment. But when barber Richard Hernandez perceived Oliver to be female, he said that he did not cut women’s hair and therefore could not carry out the haircut. Oliver later called the barbershop to explain a gender identity that was “more male than female,” but Hernandez still refused to provide his services.

Hernandez later said to reporters, “God teaches a very clear distinction between the genders,” that people should not “go against what God has created” and that “it’s a shame for a man to have long hair, but if a woman has long hair, it’s her glory.”

As Oliver noted in the Lambda Legal press release, “I was hurt and humiliated to be unable to get something as basic as a haircut, based on assumptions about who I am and expectations about who I should be. When you go for a haircut, you don’t expect your barber to police your gender. A business may think I’m going against God’s will by having short hair, but that doesn’t give it the right to act on that belief and to deny me the same service that it provides to others.”

The fact that Oliver’s gender identity may not be clear-cut or fall neatly within a male-female binary may be confusing to some, but that’s beside the point in this case, Renn tells Yahoo Beauty. “It is the case that Kendall doesn’t identify on the binary, and there are plenty of people in the same boat, as choosing one doesn’t capture who they are,” he explains. “Kendall simply said, ‘I’m here for a haircut,’ and the owner said no without any information beyond looking at Kendall. That would be harmful even if he had accurately perceived [a non-transgender woman’s] gender, in other words if Kendall were not transgender. But it’s incredibly demeaning to be told you are not what feels correct to you on the inside. So I think this case captures the different layers of harm.”

The bottom line? “Some people may not understand Kendall’s gender identity, but there’s no confusion about the fact that Kendall was discriminated against on the basis of sex,” Renn says, “no matter how you slice it.”

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Can yoga studios double as cults? (Photo: Gallery Stock)

In what’s shaping up to the be latest in a long line of alleged yoga-guru scandals, a woman has targeted popular New York City yoga studio Jivamukti with a $1.6 million sexual harassment lawsuit, saying it was “more akin to a cult.” Slate dove into those claims on Tuesday, finding an environment “where the lines between workplace and ashram were blurred and where supervisors doubled as gurus,” according to current and former teachers there.

“Now that I’m out of it, I’m like, yep, that’s a cult,” a teacher who left Jivamukti last year told Slate. She’s now digging herself out of the debt she amassed by following the tribe to yoga gatherings. “Everybody follows it so blindly,” she said.

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The case, filed in February, hinges on the claims of Holly Faurot, who started a teacher-training program at Jivamukti in 2007. She was 27 at the time, recovering from an eating disorder and an abusive childhood, and felt that the yoga program would save her. “Jivamukti gives you this antidote. You have something now. You’ve been in therapy, you’ve done all these things, but you’re still not healed,” she said. “You feel like you want a way to move forward with your life and transform, and they give you something. They give you something you can dedicate your whole life to.”

Russell Simmons at Jivamukti in 2010, with Ruth Lauer-Manenti right behind him. (Photo: Jason Andrew/Getty Images)

Faurot wound up studying under Ruth Lauer-Manenti, aka Lady Ruth, and, soon thereafter, worshiping her, along with a tight circle of women who had been her apprentices. “You kind of felt like if you became her closer student, you would be further along the spiritual path,” she said. “The fact that she liked me so much, and I was her favorite, — somehow I felt so special. I really had never felt that way in my entire life, to feel that kind of love from an authority figure.”

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But Faurot now believes that Lauer-Manenti took advantage of her devotion to sexually abuse her — sleeping in her bed, spooning and caressing her, and allegedly manipulating her into posing for nude photos that made her uncomfortable.

A statement on Jivamukti’s website disputes her claims: “We adamantly reject the very serious accusations against Ruth Lauer-Manenti and the New York City Jivamukti Yoga School that have recently appeared in the press. This negative campaign is being waged against our satsang, our principals and competency. These allegations are wrong and misguided, moving outside the realm of critical dialogue. There has been no proof to substantiate any of the allegations.”

Bikram Choudhury balancing on a woman’s pelvis. (Photo: Getty Images)

Whether her assertions are ultimately substantiated or not, Faurot was certainly not the first person to at first feel swept up in the hope of yoga, its deepest tenets, and one charismatic leader — and then later believe she had been manipulated and abused.

Parallel situations over the past decades are striking in number. They include: the 2013 sexual harassment, assault, and rape charges against Bikram yoga founder and guru Bikram Choudhury by six former students; the resignation of yogi Amrit Desai, Kripalu Yoga Center founder and celibacy advocate, after news broke in the 1990s that he’d had affairs with several students; accusations of sexual abuse by students against yoga superstar Swami Satchidananda (who famously gave the invocation at Woodstock), Swami Muktananda (another preacher of celibacy), and Swami Rama, who was sued by a devotee for allegedly abusing her when she was 19 — a charge that persuaded a jury to award her nearly $2 million in damages just after Rama’s death. Then there was Yogi Bhajan, known for introducing Kundalini yoga to the U.S. but eventually being sued for sexual abuse, and Anusara yoga founder John Friend, whose massive empire was rocked by his admittance of many inappropriate sexual relationships with students. Oh, and Jivamukti was under fire in 2014, when instructor Dechen Thurman (bro of Uma) was alleged to have had affairs with students.

This checkered past has given rise to the California Yoga Teachers Association Ethics Code, which dictates, in part: “While acknowledging the complexity of some yoga relationships, we avoid exploiting the trust and dependency of students. … We do not engage in harassment, abusive words or actions, or exploitative coercion of students or former students …” and, “All forms of sexual behavior or harassment with students are unethical, even when a student invites or consents to such behavior involvement.”

Hippie favorite Swami Satchinanda. (Photo: Getty Images)

So what went wrong, if anything, at Jivamukti — one of the world’s most famous yoga studios, put on the map in the 1990s by the likes of Madonna and Christy Turlington? Leslie Kaminoff, a widely renowned yoga instructor who taught at Jivamukti in the 1990s, told Slate he had an idea. “As spiritually advanced as people like to believe [founders David Life and Sharon Gannon] are, there’s some very fundamental psychological dynamics going on that are completely opaque to the people involved,” he said. “There’s not a single spiritual organization I know of that has escaped [leaders being worshiped], if they had a charismatic leader sitting at the top of it. And Jivamukti has two charismatic leaders, and other teachers have become charismatic leaders in their wake.”

Whether or not Jivamukti is an actual cult is still an open question. Rick Ross, founder of the Cult Education Institute and author of Cults Inside Out, tells Yahoo Beauty that while “the overwhelming majority of yoga studios are benign and do no harm and arguably are beneficial to people’s health and well-being,” there are exceptions that can exhibit cultish features — which is not all that surprising, considering the roots of yoga. “It goes back to the ‘guru-swami syndrome’ — ‘I am sitting at the feet of my swami, my guru, my yogi,’” he says. 

Ross explains that to qualify as a “destructive cult” — as opposed to a “benign cult,” which has a charismatic leader (such as Steve Jobs) and adherence to a non-harmful ideology — an organization must exhibit three core characteristics. They are, as originally noted by the writer Robert J. Lifton in 1981: an absolute, authoritative leader who becomes the object of worship; evidence of thought reform or coercive persuasion to manipulate members, and  lastly, exploitation — financial, emotional, or otherwise.

Anusara yoga founder John Friend, before his fall from grace. (Photo: Getty Images)

“At problematic yoga studios,” says Ross (who has no direct knowledge of the inner workings at Jivamukti), “people say their yoga ‘is the only yoga,’ and that ‘there is no other yoga.’” Other warning signs will have “everyone rhapsodizing about the leader, fawning over the leader,” he says. “So you realize [the yoga] is personality-driven and not just about exercise and getting healthy. Also, a photo of the leader on the wall is a red flag, along with no one questioning the leader. The leader must always be right. Ask: Can the leader ever be wrong? Is there transparency?” Other cultish qualities: not being encouraged to think independently, and, upon leaving the organization, finding that you’re shunned by those still involved.

“All groups are not equally as destructive or have a compound — which uses isolation for environmental control,” Ross says. “But even without it, day-to-day life may still be dominated or manipulated to the point where people fall into a sort of subculture lifestyle.”

Ross, who says he’s done 500 interventions over the years to help get folks out of cults, stresses that no individual is immune to being swayed. “I’ve worked with people regardless of education, social background, and family dynamics,” he says. “We are all susceptible to persuasion and influence techniques. If we weren’t, there would be no political ads or advertisements at all.” That said, there are certain types of baggage that could make people, like Faurot, prime targets.  

“If an individual is wounded and has cracks in their life, those wounds offer entry points, and they are more easily exposed, exploited, and susceptible than someone else,” he says. “So if someone is lonely, depressed, and frustrated, they’re more open to someone saying, ‘I have an answer.’” But none of that should be used to blame a victim, he stresses, adding, “Teachers, psychologists, and yoga instructors have a responsibility to not abuse their position.”

It can be easy to ignore safety warnings when it comes to our most coveted beauty products, including those soothing talc-based powders. But this week’s headline-grabbing verdict — that Johnson & Johnson was to pay $72 million in damages to the family of a woman whose death from ovarian cancer was linked to her use of the company’s body powders — has been a rousing wake-up call.

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“There’s been concerning evidence about talc — that it brings about a 30 percent increased risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers — for quite a while,” Sharima Rasanayagam, director of science at the Breast Cancer Fund and head of its Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, tells Yahoo Beauty, citing a number of studies. “It’s a small increase for a rare cancer — not like smoking and lung cancer — which may be one reason people haven’t taken notice of it. But we take a precautionary approach, especially because it’s not a product you need to be using. Why increase your risk for these cancers at all?”

Talc — a mineral substance that’s either mined or produced industrially — is used in various cosmetic and beauty products, from baby powders to eye shadows, in order to absorb moisture, or as a softening or anti-caking agent. It can sometimes be contaminated with asbestos. And it’s why an ever-increasing panoply of talc-free powders — from the Honest Company, Burt’s Bees, Crabtree & Evelyn, and even Johnson & Johnson itself — has been become available, typically with alternative ingredients such as cornstarch, silk powders, and finely milled oats.

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In the Johnson & Johnson verdict, announced Monday in the St. Louis circuit court, it was noted by jurors that the company failed for decades to warn consumers about the risks of talc in order to boost its sales. Damages were awarded to the family of Jacqueline Fox, who had used Johnson & Johnson baby powder and Shower to Shower powder for 50 years.

In its defense, the company released a statement noting that the verdict “goes against decades of sound science proving the safety of talc as a cosmetic ingredient in multiple products. …” And on its website, Johnson & Johnson notes that “the talc used in all our global products is carefully selected and processed to be asbestos-free, and we confirm this with regular testing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also tested and confirmed he purity of our talc.”

Photo: AP

Still, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), “studies by the National Toxicology Panel demonstrated that cosmetic-grade talc free of asbestos is a form of magnesium silicate that also can be toxic and carcinogenic.” Also, notes EWG, a March 1976 Food and Drug Administration memo obtained by Fair Warning under the Freedom of Information Act “charged that cosmetics makers had been lax in monitoring the safety of talc supplies.”

Many point out that while studies about talc risks may indeed have been observational rather than able to prove absolute cause-and-effect, they have not ruled out danger out either.

“While the contradictory findings do make it hard to say that talc exposure clearly causes ovarian cancer, they also make it impossible to come to the conclusion that talc exposure does not cause ovarian cancer,” Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research at Women’s Voices for the Earth, tells Yahoo Beauty. “The logical conclusion is that it might cause ovarian cancer. And therein lies the ethical decision. If you have an ingredient in your product that might cause ovarian cancer in thousands of women, how do you proceed? Johnson & Johnson clearly chose to take the chance on ‘maybe it doesn’t’ and leave their women customers to bear the consequences of that decision.”

Use of talc in cosmetic products is banned in the EU, and in Canada it’s restricted for use in baby products “based on data indicating potential hazards to infants and children.”

In this country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists no physical or chemical dangers for talc but notes that inhalation should be avoided. And since the 1960s, the American Academy of Pediatrics has warned against using talc-containing baby powder because of aspiration risks. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, meanwhile, says that usage of talcum powders around genital areas is “possibly carcinogenic to humans” — something that makes sense, since, according to Rasanayagam, studies have found evidence of talc “in ovaries and pelvic lymph nodes.”

Still, oversight is limited: Unlike food items, it’s not required that cosmetics and body products undergo an FDA review, only that they be “properly labeled” and “safe under labeled or customary conditions of use.” But that’s not enough, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “We need to overhaul our cosmetics regulations, and campaigning around that is our whole raison d’être,” says Rasanayagam.

In the absence of an overhaul, consumers, in large part, will be left on their own to assess the potential dangers of products — which is a risky and burdensome proposition, Scranton notes. “Our opinion is that [Johnson & Johnson], and the cosmetics industry in general, chose unwisely decades ago to blindly defend the use of talc in the face of uncertain science, rather than take a precautionary approach for the sake of women’s health,” she says. “They have actively worked ever since to manufacture doubt about the links between talc and ovarian cancer, instead of investing in research to actually determine the risks, or to invest in inherently safer alternatives. … The unfortunate result is thousands of women suffering from ovarian cancers that may have been preventable.”

Top photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

Parents of the former Little League baseball champs (pictured above) who won national respect after their 2014 winning season, only to then be rocked with a high-profile residency scandal, have filed a lawsuit, alleging that their kids were exploited.  

“We brought this lawsuit for a number of reasons, but mainly to address the misconceptions, unfairness related to the parents, and the exploitive conduct of Little League and JRW, Inc.,” James Karamanis, the attorney for the 13 Jackie Robinson West players’ parents, said at a news conference attended by some of the families on Monday, according to the Chicago Tribune. “They feel their children were used.”

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The lawsuit, filed last week, named Little League International, the person who blew the whistle on possible residency issues, the team director, and ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith (for allegedly saying parents had falsified documents), according to the Tribune. 

Karamanis said the families believe that Little League International gained financially from the boys’ success story. Theirs was Chicago’s first all-black team to reach the World Series since Jackie Robinson West went 30 years earlier, and the first to win a national title. The World Championship game, in which the boys played against South Korea, was the most-watched Little League championship game since 2003.

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But Jackie Robinson West was eventually stripped of its 2014 Little League World Series title when a Little League investigation found that team officials had taken part in “fraud and cover up.” It found they had recruited players outside the team’s district, falsified boundary maps, and met with neighboring leagues after the championship “to attempt to persuade them to retroactively agree to boundary changes” so that players wouldn’t be declared ineligible, the Associated Press had reported.

Now the parents are seeking financial damages to cover expenses from the scandal’s fallout, Karamanis said, as they weren’t told about the residency issues until after the boys won the national championship, visited the White House, and captivated the nation. “At every stage of the process, from local qualifying to the championship game during the summer of 2014, the parents submitted appropriate documentation to JRW, Inc.,” he said. “It was the Little League’s responsibility to review and confirm the information provided.”

A spokesman for Little League International told the Chicago Tribune it had not seen the lawsuit, but that LLI stands by its decisions.

Karamanis said the scandal has been emotionally damaging for the boys and their families. “The children knew nothing about this,” he said. “The boundary maps, the eligibility documents were submitted to JRW, Inc., which submitted it to the Little League. There were no problems with the children being within those boundaries until much later.”

In August, Mets outfielder and Chicago-area native Curtis Granderson spoke with the Chicago Tribune about the fallout for the team. “It’s going to come out that [the kids] did something wrong, and it wasn’t them,” he said. “The people that have the power, the adults, are the ones who chose to do some of the things that weren’t right. I haven’t yet heard their names be put in [the media]. It’s just been ‘the Jackie Robinson West Little League,’ and obviously the association is going to be on the kids. And that’s not right.”

(Top photo: Rex Arbogast/AP Photo)

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