World AIDS Day 2008

Today is the 20th Anniversary celebration of World AIDS Day. One of the little known facts about HIV/AIDS is that transwomen, and disproportionately transwomen of color are one of the fastest growing categories of people who are infected by it as this PSA from the Banyan Tree Project reminds us.



It's also a problem in Black America as well as the Black AIDS Institute and the National Minority AIDS Council will tell you.

Houston was one of the early Ground Zero's of the initial HIV/AIDS wave in the early 80's. I had friends and a 24 year old cousin die during that stage as it decimated the Houston GLBT community.

So to my younglings and 'errbody' who reads TransGriot on a regular basis, be safe out there. Don't take it for granted your potential sex partner is not infected. If you're not sure of a person's HIV status you're about to get busy with, use protection until you both get tested.

Transgender Job Fair

As a reminder to you GLB peeps that we ain't forgot about ENDA and how serious having a job is for transgender people (especially transgender peeps of color), here's a San Francisco TV news story about a transgender job fair they conducted there recently.



The new session of the 110th Congress starts January 3. In light of the way y'all felt about being treated like second class citizens, we expect that if a new ENDA bill is introduced in this session, you'll remember how you felt after Prop 8 and trust that the new ENDA bill will not only be transgender inclusive, but you will do your part as our allies to help it pass.

Does The Transgender Porn World Celebrate The TDOR?

TransGriot Note: Transgender adult actress Vaniity at an event in Las Vegas.

In the wake of my commentary last week calling for HRC to leave our TDOR alone, one of the comments that was posted to it came for a person calling themselves Eddy.

I agree! Very well-written post, as usual. I wonder if trans porn industry observes this day. Does anyone know?

As the USS Monica went to Defcon 2 alert status and spooled up her rhetorical Tomahawks in preparation for launch, my thoughts ranged from immediately deleting the comment to rhetorically blasting it to smithereens.

My initial anger over the comment was fueled by the fact that once again, the negative perception of transgender peeps had wormed its way into a day that was meant for us to remember our fallen sisters.

But with my finger ready to hit DELETE, I stepped away from my pissivity over Eddy's comments to ponder why he felt comfortable enough to ask it on this blog in the first place.

One of the things that I and other transpeople of color have long complained about is the lack of balance with our images as transwomen. The adult entertainment world has played a major part in that combined with lack of positive role models of transwomen of color due to stealth status and other reasons to counteract it.

And far too often in the adult entertainment industry the images of African-American, Latina, and Asian transwomen are the ones disproportionately pushed and advertised to the point whee it negatively affects even the positive things we try to do.

Since some peeps make tons of money off pre-op transgender images with their adult films, magazines and various websites, and transgender people of color are the ones disproportionately bearing the brunt of the anti-transgender violence, when you ask Eddy's question in that context, somehow it doesn't seem as insulting as it did at first knee-jerk glance.

So did shemalewhatever.com and its like minded cousins black out their website for the day?

Did they stop filming the latest epic adult transgender film for release?

Did they cancel that trip to Thailand or Brazil looking for poor or young transpeople to take pictures of?

Did any of the adult transgender stars or the young transwomen participating in the destruction of our images show up at the TDOR events in West Hollywood, New York or elsewhere?

Did they even stop to care?

Come to think of it, Eddy's question is one that we all deserves an answer to.

November 2008 Black Blog Rankings

Electronic Villager finally got the opportunity to update the BBR's for this month. This month there were 1497 blogs ranked, 57 more than last month, with the Number One BBR blog still being Pam's House Blend.

You can check out the BBR's for the rest of the Top 10 and beyond and see how your blog stacked up.

And congrats Renee, Womanist Musings is at Number 23 while the Electronic Village rounds out the Top 25.

I deeply appreciate as all of us in the Blackosphere do the Villager taking the time out of his busy schedule to compile these ranking so that we have this important tool to measure our growth and progress.

As you know, for several months now I've been posting my goals for TransGriot. I want to be breaking the BBR Top 50 blogs and hitting a 150 Technorati ranking by January 1, 2009. You also get to witness in these BBR posts how I'm doing in terms of realizing that goal.

The BBR rankings usually get posted the first weekend of the month, but I totally understood why it didn't happen this month. There was some historic presidential election we (and the world) were all breathlessly following, and I know the Villager has been busy with real world concerns that have cut into his allotted blogging time.

TransGriot was also nominated in two categories for the 2008 Weblog Awards. 'Best LGBT Blog' and 'Best Small Minor Blog'.

The nominations have closed and they are now in the process of whittling it the nominations in each category to the 15 blogs that will be voted on starting December 8 to determine the winner. Pam's House Blend took the 'Best LGBT Blog' Award in 2005-2006 and I'd love to be in that company.

So now I've caught y'all up on some housekeeping stuff, let's get to what y'all want to know: What's my BBR this month?

The October BBR's were good news, bad news. I lost ground and slipped to number 70 after several months of major progress, but my Technorati ranking went up to 136. My Technorati rating actually bottomed out at 130 probably due to my Ike hiatus and some old links rolling off before it started its current climb to where it is now.

According to the posted rankings as of November 26, TransGriot was at number 63 with a 132 Technorati ranking.

Only one problem. My Technorati ranking on November 26 was 144.

While that's seven spots up from last month's ranking, based on my Technorati ranking on that date, I should be much higher in the BBR's than number 63. (it's at 143 as I compile this post)

My 144 (or even my 143) ranking would put me just two spots away from the BBR Top 50 at number 52 and put me tantalizingly close to reaching and surpassing my goals with a month to go.

But I'll leave that up to the founding genius of the BBR's to sort that out. In the meantime, I'll just continue to focus on as we all do in producing quality blog posts for you to peruse, and worry about the rest of the small stuff later.

Black Doctors-Where Y'all At?

One of the things that I've noted about the helping professionals assisting us in becoming the men and women we are is the lack of melanin in the group at the national level.

While we are blessed in the transgender community with helping professionals that are compassionate, skilled and caring to all their patients no matter what their ethnicity is, I've had the pleasure over the years of meeting many of them, and they go beyond the call of duty to fight tooth and nail for us, I'm still struck by the lack of African-American doctors involved in the gender identity medical world.

It's a concern because I know we have young African-Americans attending medical school. When I was a TATS member I used to be part of the Transgender 101 panel discussions we had at Baylor College of Medicine and talked to them.

One of my doctors early in my transition in between visits to the gender clinic was a Latino one on Houston's north side by the name of Dr. Mendoza. He unfortunately has passed away, but his basic philosophy when he was sometimes asked why he treated us was 'transgender people need medical care, too.'

Maybe there are African-American doctors involved in other cities on a local level that I'm not aware of yet that have the same basic philosophy and take their oath seriously, but who aren't disclosing that part of their practice in fear that it will drive other patients away.

But in light of a medical establishment that still is met with cautious skepticism by many African-Americans because of the fallout from the 40 year Tuskegee Syphilis Study that commenced in 1932, I believe that one reason that some African-American transpeople are reluctant to access the health care system besides cost or seek dangerous alternate methods such as silicone pumping to accomplish the body morphing we need to have happen is lingering trust issues as a result of that study.

The fact that some transpeople of color have experienced overt negative transphobic behavior and denial of service doesn't help either. It's also never far from our minds as African-American transgender people that Tyra Hunter died in 1995 because of lack of timely medical assistance in an emergency situation, and the EMT involved shared our cultural heritage.

And let's face it, it sometimes helps to have someone who has shared your cultural background understand when you're talking to them about transition as a person of color and some of the issues unique to that.

It would be nice when they have these WPATH conferences that the experiences of people of color are injected into the overall discussion of transgender health matters as well by their African-American medical peers. It would carry more weight than just moi speaking to them.

It would be also be nice for example, if you desire to do or need facial feminization surgery, to have a plastic surgery doctor that understands that we have cultural issues about our noses being messed with, there are certain nuances about ethnic beauty, and we don't want to look like Lil Kim or Michael Jackson when they finish.

So where are the African-American doctors that support us? For those of us who do have that option of surgical enhancement, do they even want our business?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

Battle of Houston

Rice and UH have always fought each other tooth and nail regardless of records or the sport we're playing. It's why I'm going to be on pins and needles today while awaiting the outcome of the UH-Rice game at Rice Stadium.

Today's battle for the Bayou Bucket not only symbolizes who wins football bragging rights in H-town for the year, it also has C-USA championship and bowl implications as well.

If the Coogs win, we are the C-USA West Division champs and host a rematch with East Carolina in the C-USA title game December 6 at Robertson Stadium. If Rice wins, they give Tulsa a chance to win the West title with a win over Marshall.

Rice wins the West title if they beat the Coogs and Tulsa loses to Marshall.

Got it?

So our little brothers at Rice will have an extra incentive beside the usual dislike of all things red and white to knock us off.

If my Coogs beat the Owls and take out East Carolina again, they get to play in Memphis against an SEC representative. Rumor is that the opponent might be UK.

Talk about fun in this house,you know that Dawn and I will be verbally jousting from now until New Year's Day if that happens.

Change.gov

Just in case you're counting the days until January 20 and President-elect Obama's inauguration, you can check out the official website of the transition team, change.gov

You can check out the discussions going on about various policy initiatives, apply for a job in the administration, and other assorted tidbits and announcements.


Hey, I'm just happy he won!

Waah! Nigeria Loses To Equatorial Guinea

Ever since the African Women's Championship tourney was launched in 1998, the Nigerian national women's team has dominated women's soccer on the Mother Continent.

They've won this tournament five times, but the defending champion Super Falcons suffered a shocking 1-0 loss on Tuesday in the tournament semifinals to the hosts from Equatorial Guinea. It set off a wild celebration in the capital city of Malabo and denied the Super Falcons a chance to take home their sixth title.

Instead, for the first time in the ten year history of the African Women's Championship, the Nigerians will be playing for third place on November 28 versus Cameroon while the hosts head to the title match versus South Africa on Saturday.

The reason I'm mentioning it is because gender issues reared their ugly heads in the pre-match gamesmanship and the whining from the losing team after the match.

One of the tired recurring themes in women's sports is the fear that in order to gain a competitive advantage, men will either dress up as women in order to win individual sports glory, be ordered to do so and be placed on those teams by higher level political (or sports) officials hungry for prestige, or feed their female athletes testosterone as the East Germans did all in the name of garnering international sporting glory and prestige.

Despite the fact that rumors the USSR's medal winning Press sisters Irina and Tamara were males that interestingly enough both retired from international competition prior to the institution by the IOC of gender testing before the 1968 Olympic cycle, the only nation (so far) busted for actually doing so is Nazi Germany in the 1936 Olympics.

They forced Hermann Ratjen, who had ambiguous genitalia, to live as Dora for three years and compete in the Olympic women's high jump as Dora. There was also the same 'that's a man' shade thrown in the 1936 Berlin Games 100m final at Helen Stephens after she upset defending Olympic champ Stella Walsh in then world record time.

The Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) spent several days before the semifinal match with Equatorial Guinea grousing about two players in general, Binguisa Simpore and Salimata Simpore. They demanded that the CAF (Confederation of African Football) do gender tests on them prior to the match and when the CAF deferred action on the protest until next month, threatened to boycott the match.

Super Falcon Lillian Cole stated in a Guardian (Nigeria) interview," I am not trying to give excuses for our inability to make it to the final, but sincerely speaking, it would be difficult for a team made of female players to beat those Equatorial Guinean team. We played against men and it is so unfortunate for CAF to allow 'men' to be playing in a nations cup meant for women.

"Those two players (Binguisa Simpore and Salimata Simpore) are men no matter how somebody will try to convince me. Even their captain, Anonma Genoveva is more of a man than a woman. I expected CAF to act on the protest filed by Nigeria before the match."

Maureen Eke echoed her teammate, asserting that the presence of those two 'men' in the Guinean squad stopped the Falcons from operating smoothly.

"We did everything within our limit to break into their defense but you saw how the 'boy' in their defense was using his power to block every move we made. He didn't give us any space at all because he has the power of a man and it was very wrong'

Meow, ladies. You lost, get over it.

Equatorial Guinea team captain Genoveva, one of the targets of Cole's sour graping, showed more class than her vanquished opponents did. She tearfully called it a dream come true at the post match press conference.

"Nigeria is a big country filled with experienced players. But for this tournament, we prepared extremely hard and I am happy it is coming in my time."

Bottom line, if Precious Dede stops Genoveva's free kick in the 58th minute from going into the net, y'all might have been playing in the finals despite the fact you've only scored two goals in this entire tournament.

The Nigerian women need to look in the mirror in terms of who lost this tournament. As I can tell you firsthand from being a fan of the USA basketball dynasty, it doesn't last forever.

While you're coasting on past glory and feeling it's your birthright to win international titles, the teams you beat up on in those international competitions will eventually get tired of taking sports beatdowns from you. They stop being 'scurred' and in awe of being on the same field with you, get mad and begin working smarter and harder to dethrone you. Sooner or later their hard work is rewarded and they begin getting the lucky bounces in games that eventually lead to just what happened to the Super Falcons on Tuesday.

So just like the Team USA men's b-ballers had to reorganize the way they did things after the embarrassing losses in the 2002 FIBA Championships (on home soil no less) and the 2004 Athens Games, stop making excuses, roll up their sleeves and start working, looks like the same thing needs to happen in Nigeria with the women's soccer team.

And to Lillian Cole, Maureen Eke and all the other Nigeria Super Falcon women, I'd be careful who you disrespectfully call men because you're mad you lost. Some of y'all don't exactly look like Nigerian supermodel Oluchi Onweagba or Nollywood starlets.

And stop the whining, excuse making and denigrating your opponents. It's the first step to getting your international championship groove back.


TransGriot Note: Update peeps- Equatorial Guinea went on to win the AWC by defeating South Africa 2-1. The Nigerians took home the bronze medal after a 1-1 draw with Cameroon was settled on penalty kicks.

Genevova, one of the players the Nigerians were hatin' on, scored the game winning goal. In fact she personally scored more goals (six) than the Super Falcons collectively did in the entire tournament.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all you TransGriot readers in the States. You Canadian ones got y'all grub on last month ;).

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. In a few weeks our turkey of a president will be headed back to that pseudo ranch in Crawford and intelligence will reign in the White House once again.

I'm also relatively happy, healthy and gainfully employed.

A shout out to my favorite twins from my high school days Joslyn and Roslyn, who are celebrating the anniversaries of their 29th birthday today.

While I can't be with my family back home today, I do have my chosen family here in Da Ville I'll be breaking bread with and trying to call others as time and the Turkey Day festivities permit.

And, no, I'm not going anywhere near any mall or strip center on the Louisville metro area on Friday. Five years of working retail and getting up at 3 AM for those madhouse sales was enough.

Happy Thanksgiving TransGriot readers! Now go get your grub on and watch some football.

The Hippest Trip In America

Don Cornelius getting busted last Friday in LA triggered memories about my favorite way in my teens to enjoy a Saturday besides watching my favorite cartoons.

The show was Soul Train and to me and every other African-American kid growing up in the 70's, 80's, 90's and part of the 2K's, it was Must See TV.

It was our version of American Bandstand and Don Cornelius was our Dick Clark. I tuned in to KHTV 39 at noon to see the latest dances, the latest fashions and hear the latest music.

And because I was on the wrong side of the gender fence at the time, I was also jealously envious of the sistahs on that show.




You also got to see the Soul Train Dancers forming that world famous Soul Train Line and either coolly or in some cases acrobatically moving and grooving their way down the end of it.







Some of the peeps who danced on Soul Train over the years included Rosie Perez, Carmen Electra, Nick Cannon, MC Hammer, Jermaine Stewart, Fred "Rerun" Berry, Pebbles, and NFL legend Walter Payton. Jody Watley and Jeffery Daniel danced on the show before becoming (along with Howard Hewitt) two-thirds of the group Shalamar.

It was also the place where we tuned in to see our artists (even if some of them were lip-synching to the songs).


The Commodores 1974



Chic 1978



Teena Marie 1980



Morris Day and The Time 1982



Vanity 6 1984



After a 35 year run, 1117 episodes and several guest hosts after Don Cornelius stepped down in 1993, Soul Train ended its historic run in 2006.



Wishing you love. peace and SOUL!

Oh, Deer!

Hey peeps, if you're hitting the roads in preparation for Turkey Day, be careful since deer are out looking for love in the wrong places.

Like the middle of a highway.

There was a front page article in the Courier-Journal yesterday warning folks that October-December is prime time for deer vs. car crashes since they're out looking to get their freak on. The female deer that aren't in heat and don't want to be bothered loiter around the highways to prevent a love connection.

The article brought back memories not only what happened to Polar back in 2002 when he had an up close and personal encounter with a pregnant doe on I-77 in West Virginia, but some close encounters I've had with Bambis inside and outside the Louisville city limits.

In 2005 I was a passenger in a westbound van headed back to Louisville on I-64 from a meeting in Lexington. Near Waddy, KY I spotted the deer up ahead meandering blithely in the left lane and warned my friend Erica, who promptly changed lanes and fortunately passed the deer without incident. The 18 wheeler behind us probably turned it into deer burgers.

Last November I was headed home after I got off from work at 5 AM. I was four blocks from home when something told me to slow my butt down as I approached the curve near the back side of the Southern Baptist Seminary.

All of a sudden a deer jumped out in the road from the seminary twenty yards in front of my car and started running in the wrong lanes away from me. Fortunately for the deer, the TARC bus that's usually headed westbound hadn't approached my street yet otherwise me and the neighbors would have been feasting on deer sausage and venison.

While I'm making humorous cracks about it, deer vs. car crashes are serious business. Polar's encounter totaled his car, and people have been killed or seriously injured as a result of these types of car (and sometimes motorcycle) crashes.

When I drove to Dallas for my cousin's November 2006 wedding, I was concerned because most of the driving I was doing was going to be at night, when deer are most active. I made it a point to have 18 wheelers run interference for me on I-65, I-40 and I-30 while I was motoring through rural Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and northeast Texas enroute there and back to Da Ville. Better they hit Bambi than me.

But be careful, peeps. The car (and life) you save may be your own.

A Transsistah's Secret-Tucking

If you've ever attended or watched video of a transgender pageant or ball, you've probably watched contestants strut their stuff in skimpy bathing suits or wear tight jeans and look good doing it.

You also probably wondered as you watched them strut back and forth across the stage how do pre-op transwomen and female illusionists hide the neoclitoris?

Well, it's a technique that we call tucking. The methods to accomplish 'hiding the candy' as the Lady Chablis called it are as varied as the transpeople who use them.

One which sounds painful is basically pushing the family jewels into the cavity they descended from. The testicles shrink as you keep swallowing estrogen or taking the shots, so it's not as hard as it sounds.

You basically spread your legs and carefully push the the testicles toward the cavity. Once you get them in the cavity the scrotal sac will be empty, and you can wrap that loose skin around the penile shaft and then pull it all back between your legs using either tape or an extra set of panties to hold everything in place. Gravity will get them back into their natural position when you free the penis.

Yes, peeps do shave the area to make sure that they don't give themselves an impromptu Brazilian wax. Most people also use surgical tape these days instead of duct tape since duct tape can pull skin off as you remove it.

Others will use a gaff to tuck the neoclit away while others just simply pull it back as far as it will go and wear a girdle or an extra pair of panties to ensure that everything stays in place.

Sometimes it doesn't always stay in place and the neoclit wiggles free. With the interior testicular method you have to be very careful when you sit down, otherwise you get the sensation of someone kicking you in the groin.

Feminine fashions are designed to accentuate the body. Jeans are designed to be form fitting and tight, and the last thing you want is a frontal bulge while wearing them, especially if you are in certain social situations. Tucking will continue to be a necessary evil for pre-ops until they can get to the point they can afford either SRS or an orchiectomy to remove the family jewels.

Stepping Up To The No On 8 Plate

Lost in the noisily contentious post mortem of why No on 8 lost in 'Ca-lee-for-nia' is the fact that the transgender POC community stepped up to the plate and did their part to help drive the NO vote.

Here's Exhibits A and B:

Jazzmun speaking at Club Cobra on the issue.



Tita Aida



So I don't ever want to hear coming from a gay or lesbian person's mouth ever again that transpeople, and especially transgender people of color didn't have your back on an issue important to the gay and lesbian community.

Leave The TDOR Alone

As TDOR 2008 recedes into the rear view mirror of history I wish to comment on the efforts of some people in the transgender community to turn the Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremony into a happy-happy joy-joy event.

Leave the TDOR alone.

There are 365 days in a year (366 during leap years), which is probably why our presidential election campaigns seem so endless.

If you wish to have an event that takes a happy-happy joy-joy approach to publicizing transgender issues, by all means organize it and promote the hell out of it. If it's a good one and has no connection whatsoever to the Homosexual Rights Corporation, I'll even post whatever press release you put together for this event on TransGriot.

Just pick some other calendar date to do it.

Just as Memorial Day and Veterans Day are two calendar days specifically set aside to memorialize veterans and anyone who has paid the ultimate price for us to have what freedoms we do enjoy here in the States, we transgender peeps need that same kind of day to memorialize the people we've lost as well.

The TDOR is a memorial service and as such is a serious, contemplative event. The core element of it is the reading of the names and lighting of candles for the dearly departed.

The TDOR in addition to us ensuring the names of our fallen brothers and sisters don't fade from our memories with the passage of time, is also a way for us to initiate teachable moments with our allies, do coalition building, talk to the general public about our issues, and sometimes get the bonus of media coverage as well.

The TDOR is also important to transgender people of color as well. We get precious little media coverage and people of color make up the disproportionate share of the 412 people (and counting) memorialized on the Remembering Our Dead site.

As a matter of fact, since the other thing we African American transgender peeps share with our non-transgender brothers and sisters besides our heritage is a near invisibility in the media, there was a proposal a few years ago by some peeps in the African-American transgender community to have our own event.

It would be centered on the August 7 date of Tyra Hunter's death due to the ignorant negligence of an African-American EMT in Washington DC.

The proposed day's mission would be to publicize the fact that many of the anti-transgender murders of African-American transgender people are committed by our own people. It would also seek to do some 'ejumacation' of our community around those and other issues affecting us and point out that 60% of the ROD list is transpeople of color.

But when it was pointed out that Rita Hester's murder was the impetus that led to the TDOR, and that day was now being celebrated around the world, the chatter about a separate day, even though it's a wonderful idea that probably needs to happen, went dormant.

If my fellow transpeeps of African descent realize the importance of the world pausing to contemplate anti-transgender violence, then what's the problem with the cognitive abilities of those of you trying to mess with the TDOR's simplistic perfection for specious reasons?

I will go Maya Wilkes on you quislings if what I'm hearing about this effort to change the 'morbid and depressing' TDOR's is true and the unstated purpose is to grease the skids for HRC to resume raising funds in our community on the bones of our fallen brothers and sisters.

Congratulations, Rebecca!

With all the various events going on in the last few weeks including the historic presidential election, I forgot to post my congratulations to our honorary transwoman Rebecca Romijn, who is expecting twins sometime this winter with her hubby Jerry McConnell.

As many of you TransGriot readers know, Rebecca plays transwoman Alexis Meade on one of my fave TV shows, Ugly Betty.

The way they've explained Alexis' hiatus on the show writing wise is that she fathered the French child originally thought to be Daniel's pre-transition (y'all are gonna have to get with the program and catch up) and has taken a leave of absence from Meade Communications to jet off to Paris and spend quality time with her son.

Her son's mother was a French model who died and left instructions in the event of her death to find the Meades.

I hope that she reconsiders leaving the show and whatever drama between her and the new writing staff gets squashed. I'd love to see more of our honorary transwoman strutting through the halls of the Mode building running thangs in future seasons.

I love watching her play Alexis almost as much as I enjoy watching Vanessa L. Williams play the deliciously wicked and always scheming Wilhelmina Slater, and Mark Indelicato playing Betty's Broadway loving fashionista nephew Justin Suarez.

Shoot, the entire cast on that show rocks.

And yes, I did say 'honorary transwoman'. She considers herself a friend of the community and backed up her words with her actions.

When a group of us protested last year's Washington DC HRC dinner in the wake of the ENDA backstabbing, Monica Helms passed a 'Transgender Pride' button to one of our allies who was going inside the convention center to attend it. That ally promised they would get the button to Rebecca, who along with Michael Urie was there that evening to accept an award on behalf of the show.

When they appeared onstage to accept it, Rebecca was wearing the button.

Rebecca has also made it clear that she wanted to portray this role as accurately as possible and even consulted her transgender girlfriends on how to do so. It clearly showed in the performances she gave during that first season that she (and the previous writing team) got it.

So congratulations, Rebecca. May you and Jerry's twins be born healthy and may life continue to bring you both much happiness and success.