Lana Lawless (born in 1953) is a professional golfer.
Lawless is a transgender woman and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2005 before playing golf professionally. She became a professional title-holding golfer and received recognition for filing a lawsuit against the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in 2010 for her right to compete as a woman in the women's long-drive championship. [1]
Before transitioning to female and changing her name to Lana Lawless, she was a gang unit cop for the City of Rialto in Southern California. Before transitioning, she played golf for 21 years at a private golf club; in 2006, after her gender reassignment, she decided to compete professionally. [2] In 2007, Lawless competed in her first world championship, and returned in 2008 where she won the championship in long-drive golf.[4]
In 2010, Lawless filed a lawsuit against the LPGA for her right to compete as a woman in the world championship. The LPGA had a requirement that athletes must be "female at birth" in order to compete. As a transgender athlete, this meant she would have been ineligible to compete. Lawless argued that this requirement violated California's civil rights law and that transsexual competitors should be allowed to compete as the gender that they identify with. [1] She not only sued the LPGA but also sued Long Drivers of America, two of their sponsors and LPGA's sponsors. [3] Ultimately, Lawless won the lawsuit, and as a result the LPGA reviewed its requirement of having to be born female in order to compete and removed it.
Although Lawless is open about being male-to-female transgender, she chooses not to discuss her former name. She explains that she has always been Lana Lawless deep inside. Before her gender reassignment, Lawless had been married but did not have biological children. [2]
The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) is an American organization for female golfers. The organization is headquartered at the LPGA International in Daytona Beach, Florida, and is best known for running the LPGA Tour, a series of weekly golf tournaments for elite women professional golfers from around the world.
Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias was an American athlete who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball, and track and field. She won two gold medals and a silver in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships.
Mianne Bagger is a professional golfer from Denmark. In 2004, by playing in the Women's Australian Open, she became the first openly transitioned woman to play in a professional golf tournament. She also became the first trans woman to qualify for the Ladies European Tour in 2004, and the first high-profile transitioned woman to qualify for a professional sports tour since Renee Richards joined the Women's Tennis Association tour during the 1970s.
A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men undergo medical and social transition to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with their gender identity or alleviates gender dysphoria.
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Lorena Ochoa Reyes is a Mexican former professional golfer who played on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour from 2003 to 2010. She was the top-ranked female golfer in the world for 158 consecutive and total weeks, from 23 April 2007 to her retirement on 2 May 2010, at the age of 28 years old. As the first Mexican golfer of either gender to be ranked number one in the world, she is considered the best Mexican golfer and the best Latin American female golfer of all time. Ochoa was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2017.
Renée Richards is an American ophthalmologist and former tennis player who competed on the professional circuit in the 1970s, and became widely known following male-to-female sex reassignment surgery, when she fought to compete as a woman in the 1976 US Open.
The history and subculture surrounding transgender people in Singapore is substantial. As with LGBT rights in the country in general, transgender rights in Singapore have also evolved significantly over time, including various laws and public attitudes in regards to identity documents, as well as anti-discrimination measures used by or pertaining to transgender people, in the areas of employment, education, housing and social services, amongst others.
Amanda Blumenherst is an American professional golfer who plays on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour. She was a three-time National Player of the Year at Duke University and won the U.S. Women's Amateur title in 2008. In 2013, she announced that she would take a leave from professional golf to spend more time with her husband, major league baseball player Nate Freiman.
Littleton v. Prange, 9 S.W.3d 223 (1999), is a 1999 lawsuit that voided a marriage where one of the individuals was a transgender woman, Christie Lee Littleton. The Fourth Court of Appeals of Texas ruled that, for purposes of Texas law, Littleton is male, and that her marriage to a man was therefore invalid. Texas law did not recognize same-sex marriage at the time of the ruling.
In the United States, the rights of transgender people vary considerably by jurisdiction. In recent decades, there has been an expansion of federal, state, and local laws and rulings to protect transgender Americans; however, many rights remain unprotected, and some rights are being eroded. Since 2020, there has been a national movement by conservative/right-wing politicians and organizations to target transgender rights. There has been a steady increase in the number of anti-transgender bills introduced each year, especially in Republican-led states.
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The participation of transgender people in competitive sports, a traditionally sex-segregated institution, is a controversial issue, particularly the inclusion of transgender women and girls in women's sports.
Bobbi Lancaster is a family physician, champion golfer, author, human rights advocate and motivational speaker. She is also a transgender woman, and underwent undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 2010. She attempted to qualify for the LPGA Tour in 2013 and her efforts garnered international media attention.
This article addresses the legal and regulatory history of transgender and transsexual people in the United States including case law and governmental regulatory action affecting their legal status and privileges, at the federal, state, municipal, and local level, and including military justice as well.
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Rose Zhang is an American professional golfer. She won the 2020 U.S. Women's Amateur, and both the 2022 and 2023 NCAA Division I Championships, becoming the first woman to win the individual title twice. She competed in the 2019 U.S. Women's Open and was on the gold medal team at the 2019 Pan American Games. Less than two weeks after turning pro, she became the first player to win in her professional debut on the LPGA Tour since 1951.