Meagan Taylor Is Free!

Received the wonderful news that Meagan Taylor, who was visiting Iowa with a trans friend and ended up in jail after being racially profiled because of a transphobic Drury Inn employee, is now free!

“I’m ecstatic to be released,” Meagan told the Transgender Law Center. “Words cannot express the way I feel to be out. I want to thank everyone who shared my story, and let people know that I am going to seek justice for what they did profiling me as a Black transgender woman.”

She spent over a week in isolated custody in the Polk County jail in Des Moines as local activists Kaija Carter, Tony Tyler and Mira Bellwheter , national organizations and San Francisco based Rev. Megan Rohrer teamed up to free Meagan.   Pastor Rohrer, who is also transgender, raised over $4400 thanks to 133 donors to help pay her bond as the Transgender Law Center worked to get the Illinois warrant vacated.

I thank Kaija for keeping me informed as to what was happening on the ground in Des Moines.

“We are relieved and thrilled that Meagan is finally free, but know that her story is all too common,” said Flor Bermudez, Esq., Director of the Detention Project at Transgender Law Center, which helped advocate for Meagan’s release. “Black transgender women are regularly viewed as criminals in public spaces, triggering unlawful arrests. In the vast majority of cases, transgender women are jailed in facilities that do not know how to house them safely and humanely.”

Ass for what happens now, that remains to be seen.  The Drury Inn has yet to issue an apology to Taylor, and may be facing action on a possible violation of the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

But the important part of this story is that  Meagan is free, and hope the next time she gets to take a trip it is drama free.

Laverne Cox Gets Historic Emmy Nomination

I'll have another reason to watch the August 25 Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast on NBC besides wondering if Kerry Washington and Joe Morton get the statues to go with their well deserved nominations for their respective Scandal acting roles

I'm still pissed off about Kerry getting screwed last year and y'all know how much I love her. 

But enough about Ms.Washington, this post is about another person I have mad love for in our fave possibility model Laverne Cox, who made more trailblazing history today.

When the nominations for the 2013-2014 Emmy's were announced today, Orange Is The New Black earned 12 Emmy nominations.  One of these nominations was for the Outstanding Guest Actress In A Comedy Series category, and Ms. Cox was nominated for her role as Sophia Burset on the smash hit series.

That nomination makes Laverne the first open transgender actress to be nominated for a primetime Emmy.

She's competing against two of her Orange Is The New Black castmates in Uzo Aduba (Suzanne 'Crazy Eyes' Warren) and Natasha Lyonne (Nicky Nichols) for this Emmy, but I'm hoping that it works out for her.  

Congratulations Laverne!  Well deserved nomination and I'll be tuned in at 7 PM CDT to see if you make more history and actually win it.    
  

Moni Ain't Happy About The Bigoted White Trans Feminine Attack On Janet

It's been 48 hours since that second hideous attack interview Piers Morgan unleashed upon Janet Mock followed by that jacked up panel, and I'm more than a little pissed off about it along with supporters in the Black trans, cis and SGL community.

But I've been surprised and disappointed by the reaction of elements of the white trans community to it. 

I'm tired of the white trans community ignoring the fact that Janet was attacked in this Morgan interview, and frankly some of you are doing so because you are jealous of the media attention she's received over the last two years.

It has the appearance to me and other people in the Black trans community and our allies that elements of the white trans community are secretly happy the 'uppity Black transwoman' got taken down a few notches by your cis White masculine 'ally' Piers Morgan and you're now using Morgan as a human shield excuse to unleash your own attacks of her.

It would be a good idea for you vanillacentric privilege wielding peeps to back the hell up off Janet right now, because the more shade you level at her, the more pissed off we get in Black Trans world about it along with our allies.

And FYI John Aravosis and 'errbody' else that thinks it was a pro-trans interview, this is what a pro-trans   interview with a real trans ally looks like.   This Marc Lamont Hill one is another example.   



Now it's time for a reality check.  I submit that if Janet Mock looked like this trans Hawaiian (Candis Cayne) instead of being a Hawaiian of African descent, the reaction to Piers Morgan's media bull feces would have been substantially different. 

Outrage would be filling up every white trans blog on the Net and you'd probably already have a Change.org petition up calling for Piers Morgan to apologize.

Bottom line is that for the last six decades, the transfeminine perspective, the people interviewed in the media about it, and the transfeminine discourse has disproportionately been centered on, spoken and written about by a long list of white transwomen.

Some of those who have done so I have had profound philosophical disagreements with like Riki Wilchins. Some of Kate Bornstein's writing I don't agree with either but I respected their right to say it.

For the first time in the trans community's modern history, we have Black trans women like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox and my GLAAD Award nominated self stepping up, getting the media spotlight and broadening the conversation. The appearances of Mock and Cox on the scene in the last two years and countless other African-American trans people have done more to advance the conversation and understanding about about trans issues in the Black cis and SGL community and amongst our intelligentsia than those discussions on trans issues in the last six decades

And some of you trans peeps have a problem with that and the masters degree wielding author of Redefining Realness who has SRO book events and has played a major role in making that happen? 

Buy a vowel and get a clue that transwomen come in all shades and ethnic backgrounds.  If we say we want to get trans human rights legislation passed in a near future that sees America getting more diverse, we are going to need a wide variety of spokespeople besides white transmasculine or white transfeminine ones to get people motivated to join our human rights cause and accomplish that task.