Mississippi Today
Mississippi lawmaker cited trans teen surgeries that never actually happened
Mississippi lawmaker cited trans teen surgeries that never actually happened
Sen. Joey Fillingane, defending a controversial bill that would ban gender-affirming care for trans minors, said on the Senate floor Tuesday he’d recently spoken with a Hattiesburg-based plastic surgeon who told him he’d performed gender-confirmation surgery on 17-year-old trans kids.
That plastic surgeon, contacted Wednesday by Mississippi Today, says he didn’t tell Fillingane that and wants the senator to recant his statement.
Though lawmakers this session have fast-tracked House Bill 1125 – which would ban gender-affirming care including hormone therapy, puberty blockers and gender-confirmation surgery for minors – they had been unable to identify any in-state surgeons that have operated on trans youth.
That is, until this past Tuesday, when Fillingane presented the bill to the Senate. He took many by surprise when he said he’d talked to “plastic surgeons in Hattiesburg” who told him they had “on occasion” performed gender-confirmation surgeries on 17-year-olds with parental consent.
“I don’t think it’s often,” Fillingane, R-Sumrall, said on the Senate floor. “I don’t want to make it sound like it’s rampant or it happens a lot, but with one plastic surgeon friend of mine that I’ve spoken with in Hattiesburg just this weekend, he confirmed that, ‘Yeah, I can’t give you specifics, but yeah, I’ve done this.’”
Paul Talbot, who founded the Plastic Surgery Center of Hattiesburg in 1998, told Mississippi Today he is the surgeon Fillingane talked to. He recalled the recent conversation with Fillingane — which took place after the men ran into each other at Revolution Fitness in Hattiesburg — differently.
“It was a two-minute conversation,” Talbot said. “I was on one elliptical, he was on the other.”
While they were exercising, Talbot said he told Fillingane he has taken on trans adults as clients but has never performed surgery on trans kids.
“I’ve never done anybody (trans) under the age of 18,” Talbot told Mississippi Today. “He must’ve misheard that because no, we’ve never done that. Never had someone ask me under 18 to do it.”
Talbot said he may have told Fillingane he might consider performing surgery on a trans teenager under certain circumstances, but he probably would not do it. (International organizations that set standards for gender-affirming care say surgery is appropriate for trans youth in some cases.)
“If I’m gonna do it for you, one is you gotta be 18,” he said. “Two, I need a letter from your psychiatrist that says you’re stable enough and you know what you’re doing before I’ll even consider it.”
It wasn’t a big deal to talk to Fillingane about HB 1125, Talbot said, because the two have been friends for more than 10 years, and it seemed like the senator was curious about his experience as a surgeon.
He doesn’t want Fillingane to feel called out but said that it is a shame this misunderstanding is now “part of the record” of the bill.
“For the political climate in Mississippi, it’s probably a good thing for him,” Talbot said. “But for trans people, it’s probably a bad thing for them.”
Speaking to Mississippi Today in his office Thursday, Fillingane wouldn’t say that he spoke with Talbot over the weekend, but he said he only spoke to one plastic surgeon who he knows “from the gym.”
“I’m not gonna confirm or deny the person, but I heard what I heard, obviously,” Fillingane said. “I was speaking on that bill, so to whomever I was speaking with, I don’t know how one could mishear something. You’re talking about a specific bill that deals with this specific issue of surgeries related to folks who are trying to transition from one sex to the other.”
Fillingane added that he’s had “a bunch” of other conversations about HB 1125, including one with the Mississippi State Medical Association’s government relations staffer, who said the organization has no position on the bill.
“One conversation, whether it was misheard or not, certainly does not comprise the entirety of my due diligence on this bill,” Fillingane said.
After Mississippi Today spoke with Fillingane, he sent Talbot a text apologizing “for any unwanted attention you may have received from the HB 1125 coverage.”
“I wanted you to know that I never told them press your name but it seems they have figured it out because I was ambushed by a reporter from MS Today earlier today because I had said I had spoken with a plastic surgeon friend of mine from Hattiesburg about the bill,” he wrote. “They apparently pieced it together but I would never confirm nor deny who it was that I had spoken with but I apologize anyway.”
It’s likely that HB 1125, which passed the Senate on Tuesday along party lines, would have been headed to the governor’s desk whether or not Fillingane had claimed to find a surgeon in Mississippi who has performed gender-confirmation surgery on trans minors.
Regardless of the outcome of his conversation at the gym, Fillingane said he would have supported the bill.
“Even if you were to accept for the sake of argument that these particular surgeries don’t happen at all or certainly very often in this state, so therefore we don’t need this bill, I think (that) misses the larger point,” he said. “There are other parts of this bill, i.e. the prescription of puberty blocking drugs and the prescribing of cross hormone therapies, that I think we all can admit is in fact happening in Mississippi.”
Other powerful elected officials, like Gov. Tate Reeves, have claimed with no proof that gender-confirmation surgery is harming Mississippi children.
“While some in our country push surgical mutilation onto 11 year olds, even here in Mississippi, even liberal darlings like Finland and Denmark and Sweden don’t allow these surgeries to be performed on kids who are under the age of 18,” Reeves said in his State of the State address.
Similar claims misrepresent just how difficult it is for trans kids in Mississippi to access gender-affirming care, advocates and in-state providers say.
There is just one clinic in the state — Spectrum: The Other Clinic in Hattiesburg — that currently prescribes puberty blockers and hormones to teenagers 16 years or older. Younger trans kids and their families must go out of state to access these medications, which often aren’t covered by insurance and can be costly, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Rob Hill, the state director of the Human Rights Campaign Mississippi, said he is angry that Fillingane, Reeves and other lawmakers have spread misinformation this session about gender-affirming care because it endangers already vulnerable trans kids. Gender-affirming care is evidence-based and multiple studies have shown it significantly reduces suicidality among trans kids who receive it.
Fillingane is “somebody that touts his faith very often, and I would say that this is not a faithful act,” Hill said. “What the lieutenant governor did, what the speaker did and what the governor’s ultimately going to do — and those who voted for this legislation — is not faithful … it was harmful.”
The misinformation and lack of research by lawmakers is typical for bills that take on “culture war” issues in Mississippi. In 2021, lawmakers could not identify any complaints about trans athletes in Mississippi despite banning their participation on sports teams that align with their gender identity. Last year, many lawmakers were repeatedly asked to correctly define “critical race theory” and could not.
But this session, Fillingane sought to do what no other Republican lawmaker had done so far in the debate around HB 1125: Talk to actual providers of gender-affirming care in Mississippi. On Monday, he invited Stacie and Lee Pace, the owners of Spectrum: The Other Clinic, to meet with him in his office about the care they provide.
At the gym, Talbot recalled a more casual conversation.
“This was no big formal thing where you’re taking notes or anything like that,” he said, noting that Fillingane’s questions were about what he does and how many trans people he’s operated “as far as, is it a big number.”
Talbot estimated he has performed chest surgery on five trans adults roughly the ages of 24 or 25 who had psychiatric letters, which is what he says he told Fillingane.
In general, Talbot said he doesn’t operate on people under 18 because that’s what he believes is moral. He said most surgeons in Mississippi do the same.
“I wouldn’t bend that rule just because we’re doing a gender transition,” he said.
There’s only a few instances in which Talbot would, like a congential condition that results in substantially uneven breasts. Talbot also gave this example: “She’s gonna be 18 in a month or two, and so you’re going to college, where, you know, before you go to college, every body knows your body image before you get there. Mom’s on board, and it seems like a reasonable thing. Yes, yeah, I’ve done that. But again, that’s rare.”
The gender binary is not as clear-cut as some Mississippians might think, Talbot said. He thinks of cosmetic procedures for cis people as on the same spectrum as those for trans people.
“Typically once you have them draped out in the operating room ready to do surgery, I couldn’t tell if it’s a boy or girl lying on the table,” he said.
There’s no difference, he said, when it comes to the actual procedure: A mastectomy for a cis woman is performed exactly the same way as “top surgery” on a trans man. Still, in Mississippi and across the country, trans people face more barriers in obtaining the same procedures that cis people can get with little questions asked.
“I don’t put a big weight on transitioning,” Talbot said. “I mean, we screen them, I think, better. … We probably find out a lot more information. When it comes down to doing the surgery, it’s just another operation I’ve done 15,000 times, and this one’s no different from the last 15,000.”
All Mississippians should be able to get plastic surgery if they can pay for it, Talbot said. That’s why he doesn’t take insurance.
“There’s lots of girls, thank goodness, walking around with small breasts that want big breasts,” he said. “You don’t get them just because you’ve got small breasts. It’s the same thing to me.”
As the two were exercising, Talbot said he told Fillingane that he doesn’t think House Bill 1125 is a good idea.
“I don’t like them reducing what people can do or limiting what people can do – for anybody, for any group,” Talbot said. “It doesn’t seem right.”
The next time he sees Fillingane at the gym, Talbot said he’ll ask him to take back his comments.
“When I see Joey, I’ll have to say to him, ‘Hey, you need to recant that or whatever because no I’ve never done that,’” Talbot said. “Again, he was on the (elliptical), I was on the (elliptical). It could easily have been misunderstood, I would think.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
New Stage’s ‘Little Women’ musical opens aptly in Women’s History Month
Ties that bind, not lines that divide, at the heart of “Little Women” are what make Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel such an enduring classic. More than a century and a half since its 1868 publication, the March sisters’ coming-of-age tale continues to resonate in fresh approaches, say cast and crew in a musical version opening this week at New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi.
“Little Women, The Broadway Musical” adds songs to Alcott’s story of the four distinct March sisters — traditional, lovely Meg, spirited tomboy and writer Jo, quiet and gentle Beth, and artistic, pampered Amy. They are growing into young women under the watchful eye of mother Marmee as their father serves as an Army chaplain in the Civil War. “Little Women, The Broadway Musical” performances run March 25 through April 6 at New Stage Theatre.
In a serendipitous move, the production coincides with Women’s History Month in March, and has a female director at the helm — Malaika Quarterman, in her New Stage Theatre directing debut. Logistics and scheduling preferences landed the musical in March, to catch school matinees with the American classic.
The novel has inspired myriad adaptations in film, TV, stage and opera, plus literary retellings by other authors. This musical version debuted on Broadway in 2005, with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein and book (script) by Allan Knee.
“The music in this show brings out the heart of the characters in a way that a movie or a straight play, or even the book, can’t do,” said Cameron Vipperman, whose play-within-a-play role helps illustrate the writer Jo’s growth in the story. She read the book at age 10, and now embraces how the musical dramatizes, speeds up and reconstructs the timeline for more interest and engagement.
“What a great way to introduce kids that haven’t read the book,” director Quarterman said, hitting the highlights and sending them to the pages for a deeper dive on characters they fell in love with over the two-and-a-half-hour run time.

Joy, familial warmth, love, courage, loss, grief and resilience are all threads in a story that has captivated generations and continues to find new audiences and fresh acclaim (the 2019 film adaptation by Greta Gerwig earned six Academy Award nominations).
In current contentious times, when diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being ripped out or rolled back, the poignant, women-centered narrative maintains a power to reach deep and unite.
“Stories where females support each other, instead of rip each other apart to get to the finish line — which would be the goal of getting the man or something — are very few and far between sometimes,” Quarterman said. “It’s so special because it was written so long ago, with the writer being such a strong dreamer, and dreaming big for women.
“For us to actualize it, where a female artistic producer chooses this show and believes in a brand new female director and then this person gets to empower these great, local, awesome artists — It’s just really been special to see this story and its impact ripple through generations of dreamers.” For Quarterman, a 14-year drama teacher with Jackson Public Schools active in community theater and professional regional theater, “To be able to tell this story here, for New Stage, is pretty epic for me.”
Alcott’s story is often a touchstone for young girls, and this cast of grown women finds much in the source material that they still hold dear, and that resonates in new ways.

“I relate to Jo more than any other fictional character that exists,” Kristina Swearingen said of her character, the central figure Jo March. “At different parts of my life, I have related to her in different parts of hers.”
The Alabama native, more recently of New York, recalled her “energetic, crazy, running-around-having-a-grand-old-time” youth in high school and college, then a career-driven purpose that led her, like Jo, to move to New York.
Swearingen first did this show in college, before the loss of grandparents and a major move. Now, “I know what it’s like to grieve the loss of a loved one, and to live so far away from home, and wanting to go home and be with your family but also wanting to be in a place where your career can take off. .. It hits a lot closer to home.”
As one of four sisters in real life, Frannie Dean of Flora draws on a wealth of memories in playing Beth — including her own family position as next to the youngest of the girls. She and siblings read the story together in their homeschooled childhood, assigning each other roles.

“Omigosh, this is my life,” she said, chuckling. “We would play pretend all day. … ‘Little Women’ is really sweet in that aspect, to really be able to carry my own experience with my family and bring it into the show. … It’s timeless in its nature, its warmth and what it brings to people.”
Jennifer Smith of Clinton, as March family matriarch Marmee, found her way in through a song. First introduced to Marmee’s song “Here Alone” a decade ago when starting voice lessons as an adult, she made it her own. “It became an audition piece for me. It became a dream role for me. It’s been pivotal in opening up doors for me.”
She relishes aging into this role, countering a common fear of women in the entertainment field that they may “age out” of desirable parts. “It’s just a full-circle moment for me, and I’m grateful for it.”

Quarterman fell in love with the 1969 film version she watched with her sister when they were little, adoring the family’s playfulness and stability. Amid teenage angst, she identified with the inevitable growth and change that came with siblings growing up and moving on. Being a mom brings a whole different lens.
“Seeing these little people in your life just growing up, being their own unique versions, all going through their own arc — it’s just fun, and I think that’s why you can stay connected” to the story at any life juncture, she said.
Cast member Slade Haney pointed out the rarity of a story set on a Northeastern homestead during the Civil War.
“You’re getting to see what it was like for the women whose husbands were away at war — how moms struggled, how sisters struggled. You had to make your own means. … I think both men and women can see themselves in these characters, in wanting to be independent like Jo, or like Amy wanting to have something of value that belongs to you and not just just feel like you’re passed over all the time, and Meg, to be valuable to someone else, and in Beth, for everyone to be happy and content and love each other,” Haney said.
New Stage Theatre Artistic Director Francine Reynolds drew attention, too, to the rarity of an American classic for the stage offering an abundance of women’s roles that can showcase Jackson metro’s talent pool. “We just always have so many great women,” she said, and classics — “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Death of a Salesman,” for instance — often offer fewer parts for them, though contemporary dramas are more balanced.
Reynolds sees value in the musical’s timing and storyline. “Of course, we need to celebrate the contributions of women. This was a woman who was trying to be a writer in 1865, ’66, ’67. That’s, to me, a real trailblazing thing.
“It is important to show, this was a real person — Louisa May Alcott, personified as Jo. It’s important to hold these people up as role models for other young girls, to show that you can do this, too. You can dream your dream. You can strive to break boundaries.”
It is a key reminder of advancements that may be threatened. “We’ve made such strides,” Reynolds said, “and had so many great programs to open doors for people, that I feel like those doors are going to start closing, just because of things you are allowed to say and things you aren’t allowed.”
For tickets, $50 (discounts for seniors, students, military), visit www.newstagetheatre.com or the New Stage Theatre box office, or call 601-948-3533.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Rolling Fork – 2 Years Later

Tracy Harden stood outside her Chuck’s Dairy Bar in Rolling Fork, teary eyed, remembering not the EF-4 tornado that nearly wiped the town off the map two years before. Instead, she became emotional, “even after all this time,” she said, thinking of the overwhelming help people who’d come from all over selflessly offered.
“We’re back now, she said, smiling. “People have been so kind.”


“I stepped out of that cooler two years ago and saw everything, and I mean, everything was just… gone,” she said, her voice trailing off. “My God, I thought. What are we going to do now? But people came and were so giving. It’s remarkable, and such a blessing.”

“And to have another one come on almost the exact date the first came,” she said, shaking her head. “I got word from these young storm chasers I’d met. He told me they were tracking this one, and it looked like it was coming straight for us in Rolling Fork.”
“I got up and went outside.”
“And there it was!”
“I cannot tell you what went through me seeing that tornado form in the sky.”
The tornado that touched down in Rolling Fork last Sunday did minimal damage and claimed no lives.
Horns honk as people travel along U.S. 61. Harden smiles and waves.
She heads back into her restaurant after chatting with friends to resume grill duties as people, some local, some just passing through town, line up for burgers and ice cream treats.


Rolling Fork is mending, slowly. Although there is evidence of some rebuilding such as new homes under construction, many buildings like the library and post office remain boarded up and closed. A brutal reminder of that fateful evening two years ago.


















This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Remembering Big George Foreman and a poor guy named Pedro
George Foreman, surely one of the world’s most intriguing and transformative sports figures of the 20th century, died over the weekend at the age of 76. Please indulge me a few memories.
This was back when professional boxing was in its heyday. Muhammad Ali was heavyweight champion of the world for a second time. The lower weight divisions featured such skilled champions and future champs as Alex Arugello, Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran, Tommy “Hit Man” Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Boxing was front page news all over the globe. Indeed, Ali was said to be the most famous person in the world and had stunned the boxing world by stopping the previously undefeated Foreman in an eighth round knockout in Kinshasa, Zaire, in October of 1974. Foreman, once an Olympic gold medalist at age 19, had won his previous 40 professional fights and few had lasted past the second round. Big George, as he was known, packed a fearsome punch.
My dealings with Foreman began in January of 1977, roughly 27 months after his Ali debacle with Foreman in the middle of a boxing comeback. At the time, I was the sports editor of my hometown newspaper in Hattiesburg when the news came that Foreman was going to fight a Puerto Rican professional named Pedro Agosto in Pensacola, just three hours away.
Right away, I applied for press credentials and was rewarded with a ringside seats at the Pensacola Civic Center. I thought I was going to cover a boxing match. It turned out more like an execution.
The mismatch was evident from the pre-fight introductions. Foreman towered over the 5-foot, 11-inch Agosto. Foreman had muscles on top of muscles, Agosto not so much. When they announced Agosto weighed 205 pounds, the New York sports writer next to me wise-cracked, “Yeah, well what is he going to weigh without his head?”
It looked entirely possible we might learn.
Foreman toyed with the smaller man for three rounds, almost like a full-grown German shepherd dealing with a tiny, yapping Shih Tzu. By the fourth round, Big George had tired of the yapping. With punches that landed like claps of thunder, Foreman knocked Agosto down three times. Twice, Agosto struggled to his feet after the referee counted to nine. Nearly half a century later I have no idea why Agosto got up. Nobody present– or the national TV audience – would have blamed him for playing possum. But, no, he got up the second time and stumbled over into the corner of the ring right in front of me. And that’s where he was when Foreman hit him with an evil right uppercut to the jaw that lifted the smaller man a foot off the canvas and sprayed me and everyone in the vicinity with Agosto’s blood, sweat and snot – thankfully, no brains. That’s when the ref ended it.
It remains the only time in my sports writing career I had to buy a T-shirt at the event to wear home.
So, now, let’s move ahead 18 years to July of 1995. Foreman had long since completed his comeback by winning back the heavyweight championship. He had become a preacher. He also had become a pitch man for a an indoor grill that bore his name and would sell more than 100 million units. He was a millionaire many times over. He made far more for hawking that grill than he ever made as a fighter. He had become a beloved figure, known for his warm smile and his soothing voice. And now he was coming to Jackson to sign his biography. His publishing company called my office to ask if I’d like an interview. I said I surely would.
One day at the office, I answered my phone and the familiar voice on the other end said, “This is George Foreman and I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
I told him I wanted to talk to him about his book but first I wanted to tell him he owed me a shirt.
“A shirt?” he said. “How’s that?”
I asked him if remembered a guy named Pedro Agosto. He said he did. “Man, I really hit that poor guy,” he said.
I thought you had killed him, I said, and I then told him about all the blood and snot that ruined my shirt.
“Man, I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I’d never hit a guy like that now. I was an angry, angry man back then.”
We had a nice conversation. He told me about finding his Lord. He told me about his 12 children, including five boys, all of whom he named George.
I asked him why he would give five boys the same name.
“I never met my father until late in his life,” Big George told me. “My father never gave me nothing. So I decided I was going to give all my boys something to remember me by. I gave them all my name.”
Yes, and he named one of his girls Georgette.
We did get around to talking about his book, and you will not be surprised by its title: “By George.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
://mississippitoday.org”>Mississippi Today.
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