My Memories of September 11, 2001

As many of you know, today is the sixth anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC.

Like people who remember what they were doing in my parents generation when they heard about JFK and Dr. King being assassinated, or people like myself who remember what they were doing when the Challenger exploded after liftoff in 1986, that moment in time is frozen in everyone's memories.

I was back home in Houston preparing to fly to Louisville the next day for interviews I had set up. But that morning I couldn't sleep. I kept tossing an turning to the point I finally gave up and got out of bed about 6:30 AM CDT. I flipped on the TV to Good Morning America and used it as the backdrop for checking my e-mail and typing a few chapters of my first novel I was working on.

I was alerted to the first inklings of the tragedy to unfold when Charles Gibson broke with the story of a fire being reported at the World Trade Center. That piqued my curiosity enough to make me walk into my living room, angle the TV where I could see it and go back to my bedroom to resume what I was doing on the computer.

I called my homegirl Carol Lee who lives in Yonkers to find out what she'd heard and as the story kept unfolding I gave up trying to rework that chapter in Capital Gains.

I was watching the live feed when the second plane crashed into the other tower. I knew from my airline industry time that it was a commercial bird by recognizing the profile of a 767 and that it was no accident. There are no-fly zones around mega skyscrapers like the World Trade Center set up to specifically avoid repeats of planes colliding with buildings like a plane did in 1945 with the Empire State Building.

Well, I was on the phone wih Carol for the next several hours as the rest of that terrible morning unfolded before hanging up. I thought about my last vacation visit to New York in May 2000 and how my wish to go up to the observation deck on the 110th floor would go unfulfilled. I was planning to do that during my trip but weather wouldn't permit it. The first two days I hung out with Carol it was rainy and cloudy before the skies cleared to have brilliant sunshine that Saturday. I was also waiting for a piece of my luggage to get delivered to her place that didn't arrive with me as well. I decided to blow off the trip to the WTC until my next visit.

I haven't been near the NY area since.

After confirming that the other peeps I knew in the area were safe, I thought about those previous trips to New York. No matter what part of town you were in, the imposing view of the Towers let you know you're in New York.

It's weird now when I watch movies that are set in New York and see the Towers in those shots. It's just as weird NOT seeing the Towers in the New York skyline.

God bless all the people who lost their lives in those heinous attacks, their families who are still struggling without them in their lives, and the folks who are suffering medically because they selflessly went to help their fellow human beings in a time of need.

My Day At The Clinton Presidential Center

As a history junkie I've always loved presidential libraries. The Carter Center is on my must see list next time I drive down to the ATL. Next time I go back home I'm thinking about making the run up to Aggieland and checking out the George HW Bush one on the Texas A&M campus.

My grandmother Tama took me and my brother during the summer of 1977 on a bus trip with her church group to see the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, TX and the LBJ Presidential Library 30 miles to the east in Austin on the University of Texas campus. It was an all day excursion that I enjoyed, especially when the shuttle took us over a hill that gave us an awe inspiring view of the Texas Hill Country. I remember saying to my grandmother at the time, "No wonder LBJ loved this place."

I was even happier when we arrived at the library and I got a chance to check out the memorabilia from the LBJ presidency, take pictures on the museum grounds and see the nearby state capitol dome before we boarded the bus for the two hour run back to Houston.

In November 2006 I drove the 800 plus miles from Da Ville to Dallas so that I could attend my cousin William's November 11 wedding. My route took me through Little Rock and past the Clinton Presidential Center all lit up in its nighttime splendor and I resolved to check it out on the way back.

On the return trip as soon as I crossed the Arkansas-Texas border I stopped at the welcome center just outside of Texarkana. You pick up a red 'William J. Clinton Passport' that you get stamped at the various places you visit on the presidential tour. Three of the locations, his birthplace in Hope, the boyhood and teen home in Hot Springs and the museum in Little Rock were on or close to I-30. Fayetteville, (or as we called it when I was at UH in the old Southwest Conference days 'Fayettenam') was in the upper northwest corner of the state close to the Missouri line and not on the agenda.

Twenty five miles later I was exiting I-30 and heading toward downtown Hope, President Clinton's birthplace. There's an old Missouri Pacific railroad station that has been renovated into a museum. It has some memorabilia from the time he grew up there, the '92 and '96 presidential campaigns and his time as governor of Arkansas. It even has pictures of a concert that Elvis Presley did in Hope before he made it big and a large collection of railroad memorabilia.

After you see a short film on their favorite son's life, you start a self guided driving tour that takes you past his birth home on South Hervey Street, Brookwood Elementary school on South Spruce Street that he attended in 1952-1953, the home he lived in on East 13th Street until his family moved to Hot Springs in 1953 and the Rosehill Cemetery where his mother is buried. I spent an hour and a half taking pictures, spending time at the various tour stops and meandering through Hope before I pointed the car back in the direction of I-30 and headed toward Little Rock. I burned so much time in Hope that in order to get to the museum before it closed at 5 PM I reluctantly had to bypass Hot Springs.

I hit Little Rock around 1:15 PM and after jumping off Exit 140 parked on the large parklike site of the Clinton Presidential Center. It's a three story building right next to the Arkansas River that looks like a futuristic unfinished bridge, a play on the 'Bridge to the 21st Century' theme of his presidency. On the site is a renovated railroad station that serves as the repository for his presidential papers. The gift shop is a free shuttle trolley ride just up President Clinton Avenue in downtown Little Rock.

I noticed when I parked the car there was a convoy of TV trucks in the lot and parked close to the building along with two black limos. I found out why about thirty minutes later. The museum was packed with tour groups. Many of us there that day were still in post-2006 election euphoria. I gave a shout out to a group of my mom and sister's sorors who were touring that day along with other groups of African-Americans.

I spent most of my visit happily perusing the various interactive exhibits, the memorabilia and reflecting on just how jacked up this Bush presidency was compared to the Clinton one. I was on the third floor looking at a temporary exhibit of cowboy movie posters and a hand drawn picture of the 'High Noon' gunfight scene by a young Bill Clinton when a young woman excitedly shouted, "He's here!"
"Who's here?" I asked.
"The president is here!"

That news traveled through the museum with lightning speed and triggered a rush of museum patrons to the lower levels of the building. It was the reason the TV trucks were there. I discovered after I quickly ambled from the third floor of the building to standing outside the Great Hall and talking to one of the museum employees that Salon.com was having a luncheon event that day (November 13) in which Brother Bill was speaking. I stood outside along with the other museum patrons hoping that we'd get a chance to see him and shake his hand when he was done, but the Secret Service had other ideas.

After hopping the trolley and grabbing some souvenirs at the gift shop I headed back to Louisville. The next time I'm in the area I'm definitely stopping by there again. The museum was definitely worth the $7 I paid to get in and was a positive, uplifting way to spend a day. Many of the conversations I had with folks from all over the country that day expressed our common desire and resolve to bring that type of forward thinking leadership back to the White House and our country.

I can only hope and pray that next year the rest of the country is hungry for that type of leadership as well.

God Has A Sense of Humor

God has a sense of humor.

When I say that, I'm talking about the observation I made that while my prayers were being answered on God's time to become the woman I needed to be, I was being put in all these interesting ironic situations during the time I was struggling with the gender issue.

Some of those situations weren't so humorous or funny at the time they occured, but with the accumulation of wisdom and as the years go by I've learned to laugh at them.
It seems like during that time period in the late 70's and 80's the more I fought the gender issue during my 'imitation of a male life phase', the more I got hit with a situation where I was confronted with it.

One of my favorite cousins I grew up with is transgender. It was a fact that was kept away from me by my parents (that I'm still a little upset about). What they didn't know is that I found out anyway that something was up.

I got confronted during my junior year in a health class by a female sophomore student who'd gone to Johnston Jr. High with my cuz. When Dena asked me in class if John was my cousin and I acknowledged that he was, she called him the 'f' word that rhymes with maggot. I ripped her a new anus for dissing my cousin.

A few weeks later I dozed off in my chemistry class because I wasn't feeling well and I awoke just in time to avert an impromptu makeover about to be conducted by Brenda Hayes and Virginia Tucker. They and many of my female classmates had noted my long eyelashes and fairly androgynous features of my face. Many have told me since that they felt I was on the wrong team as well.

I kept running into transwomen when I was hitting the various clubs I was partying at in H-town during the 80's. There was one night that me and two friends were at Georgi-O's in 1984 and I was talking to a UH classmate working the door entrance. Two beautiful transsistahs walked in while I was standing there and showed their ID's to my friend to verify they were of legal drinking age. I noticed both ID's had 'M' in the gender code areas. Later that evening one of my friends decides to hit on one of the girls and disses me in the process, so I didn't bother telling him what I learned at the door. I was calmly eating my breakfast at Denny's with his cousin when he discovered her secret during his attempted romantic interlude at the nearby Mitchell Inn with her.

I had girls constantly remarking that talking to me was like talking to their homegirls. A few even slipped up during those phone conversations and used, "Girl, let me...."

Even distance from Houston couldn't keep me from bumping into transwomen. I spent July 1988 doing corporate training in Denver when I worked for CAL. Three days after I arrived I was in the hotel restaurant about to grab some breakfast before heading to class when I observed a guy and a transsistah walk into the restaurant holding hands.

I kept running into them at my various jobs. When I was working at the Dome, during a high school football doubleheader in 1981 I had three sistah drag queens strut by the concession stand I managed with a crowd of kids behind them. I noticed that two of them were on hormones. Just after they passed me and wandered toward the Dome's West exit one of those kids snatched the wig off one of the girls heads.

The business next door to the check cashing place I briefly worked at employed a transsistah for a while. I had a DJ party gig in which two drop dead gorgeous transsistahs came in the venue to enjoy the ambiance and house music me and my DJ partner Eric were throwing down. I had various flights over the years where I ran into various female illusionists, peeps on their way to compete in pageants, do out of town gigs or just traveling.

It took me a while, but I finally got the message. ;)

The Only 'F' I Ever Want

Back when I was in school the 'F' was something to avoid and be ashamed of. It was a source of negativity and a graphic representation of failure. I wanted to avoid seeing it on any report card I handed to my parents, any test that I took or any paper I wrote.

Since transition however, the 'F' has taken on a new connotation for me and other transwomen. It represents validation and official acceptance of our lives.

The gender marker code on our official documents is another war that we must fight just to validate our personhood. Back in 2000 I was determined to vote in that upcoming presidential election under my new name and have my voter registration reflect it. You don't know how happy I felt when I left the Harris County courthouse an hour later with a brand new voter registration card with my new name and an 'F' in the gender code box. I felt eight feet tall when I handed my new voter registration card to the precinct judge during early voting and affixed my signature to the line on the computer printout of registered voters that had Monica on it.

Gender codes reflecting our reality are vitally important to us. In a society in which we have to present identification every day for mundane things, it's a source of embarrassment, shame and anger when we are required to produce an ID that has a femme name on it but a big fat 'M' in the gender code box. A gender code that you know deep down is based on your genitalia's configuration at birth.

My old Texas driver's license had some gender memories attached to it. Back in 1978, when HISD was still offering driver's ed I took it in summer school, which was being hosted by Jones. For the road driving portion of it we were put in groups of four. I ended up in a car with three other women. One was my Thomas Jr. High homeroom classmate Rita Roy who now attended Lamar. The second sistah was a girl named Yvonne Sibley who attended Sterling and the third was a sista named Berlye Magee that went to Yates.

It was bad enough I was in a car with three gorgeous sistahs. I had a crush on Rita back in fifth grade and she'd become even more beautiful since we left Thomas. It was another aggravating reminder that I was on the wrong side of the gender fence.

The Real ID Act, passed in the wake of 9-11 is an aggravation for all transgender people. One of the other things I lobbied for back in May in addition to passage of hate crimes was the repeal of Title II of the Real ID Act. It makes it harder for us to change the gender marker on our identity documents. Those markers should reflect who we are in 2007, not what our genitalia was thirty to forty plus years ago.

The wrong gender marker also opens us up to discrimination. You don't have to be a MIT grad to figure out what's going on if a person standing in front of you in a female body hands you an ID with an 'M' in the gender marker portion of it.

If you think I'm exaggerating about this, check out this August 2 Dallas Voice story about transwoman Jodi Pleasant, who was denied entry into a Bossier City, LA casino because the gender marker didn't match her presentation.

We transpeeps are also having problems with the Social Security Administration. Your Social Security number is permanent and you aren't allowed to change it but you can change the name. What the SSA has been doing since 2002 is sending employer's letters if a SSN doesn't match with the name in the SSA database. That has the effect of outing transpeople to their employers. If those employers are transphobic, then that letter has the effect of potentially costing them their jobs.

Transpeople shouldn't have to jump through hoops to change gender codes on any identity documents. Neither should we be required to produce letters proving that we've had SRS. Not everyone will be able to have SRS for fiscal or medical reasons. For transmen their surgeries aren't even close to being satisfactory for them and they often forgo them. Simple proof that the person has been living in their new gender for an extended period of time should be enough to do that.

We need to strike a compromise that balances the needs of society to accurately ID a person and balance it with the desire of transpeople to have that ID accurately reflect their new reality.

Stealth vs. Out

photos-Halle Berry and Lonette McKee from the miniseries Queen, Ellen Craft, the ladies of the MBU pageant system, Iman

Besides telling family and friends that you are beginning the process of gender transition, the next biggest decision in a transperson's life is whether to do is openly or as we call it in the transgender community 'stealth mode'.

Basically stealth mode is a 21st century twist on what our ancestors used to do back in the bad old days of slavery and Jim Crow racism: Passing.

There are some African-American peeps who back in the day took advantage of their vanilla creme complexions and 'good hair' and basically faded into white society for various reasons. For example, some of Sally Hemings' children that she bore for Thomas Jefferson did so.

There's the fascinating story of Ellen Craft, the daughter of a white slave master and his slave mistress who executed a daring escape from bondage by passing for white. She and her husband, who posed as her slave, traveled for four days by train, boat and carriage from Macon, GA to Philadelphia. During one part of the journey Ellen even passed as a white man. There are other cases of Black people passing for white for employment or other reasons as late as the 50's and 60's.

From the early days of gender transition to about the mid-80's people were advised by the HBIGDA/WPATH orthodoxy at the time to blend into society and never let anyone know your transgender status. But by the time the 90's rolled around that paradigm was giving way to the 'out and proud' model of the gay and lesbian community.

By the time I transitioned in the mid 1990s transwomen had a choice. If they possessed naturally feminine features that didn't require extensive surgery, some went the stealth route while others of us went down the out and proud path.

For African-American transwomen, who tend to transition earlier and avoid the ravages of extended testosterone exposure on our bodies, our experiences are different from our white counterparts.

Because we transition earlier, the estrogen we take has less testosterone to fight and helps feminize us to the point where we are almost indistinguishable from our genetic sisters. Even if that African-American transwoman is tall like I am, the fact that we have many biosisters that are 5'10" or taller with various body builds helps us blend into society more effortlessly. I can't tell you how many times over the years I've been asked if I was a fashion model or a WNBA ballplayer.

The fact that we don't have at present a large organized community like our white counterparts and face more negativity if we openly transition, we gravitate more toward the stealth path.

But in the fifty plus years since Christine Jorgensen's very public transition, we African-American transpeople have come to painfully realize that having a history to pass down and role models are important elements of the process as well. Our images have been negatively distorted by too many transwomen taking the escort and female illusionist path in the mistaken belief it's the only way they can make money as a transperson. We have African American transwomen succeeding in various fields such as IT, teaching, modeling and various other fields just to name a few that I'm aware of. The problem is that because these people are stealth transwomen the WORLD, our people and our fellow transpeeps don't kmow that.

It's one major reason why one of the things we are doing in terms of taking our image back is having more of us boldly proclaim that we are not only proud African-Americans but transgender as well. You will see more of us organizing and getting involved in fighting for transgender issues as well.

The Stealth vs. Out debate can evoke intense and passionate emotions on both sides when transpeeps discuss it. I was reminded of that thanks to a discussion thread we've had going in Transistahs-Transbrothas since Thursday about the issue.

Both paths have their pros and cons. If you go stealth, the benefits are that you blend in with society. Stealth transpeople are in positions to hear what people really think about transpeople that they won't say in front of us. Those who continue to stay in contact with the transgender community are then able to pass that information back to the out activists. They can also do education on the inside as well. The cons are isolation from your fellow transpeeps and the necessity of constant vigilance to ensure your transsecret doesn't get out.

Out peeps don't have that problem. The people they interact with may or may not know and they don't worry about it. We out transwomen concentrate on living our lives. One of the cons of out status is that it does open you up to more discrimination, drama and the possibility of being targeted for a hate crime.

The stealth vs. out debate will continue to be an ongoing discussion in the transgender community into the forseeable future, even with the Internet and the erosion of the right to privary as factors.

The most important point to make concerning the issue is this: We're all on the same team with the same goals. We have the ongoing mission of getting African-American peeps to embrace their transgender brothers and sisters, 'ejumacating' them along the way, and getting them to recognize that helping transpeeps get full citizenship rights helps expand civil rights coverage for all of us.

I AM A Role Model

Many of us remember the famous 1984 Nike commercial in which Charles Barkley stated that 'he wasn't a role model'. It saddens me when I hear stories about transwomen who decline opportunities to act as mentors for young tranpeople.

Well, just as Charles clarified it later in the commercial by stating that parents and teachers are role models, that's true. But role models also extend to ministers, neighbors, people who have qualities that you admire and people who have demonstrated a commitment to being the best they can be while helping others.

One of the things I constantly talk about is the period in the early 80's when I was trying to transition. I sought out a mentor only to be rebuffed, ignored or dissed. The other problem was that in Montrose the girls I observed were either doing the drag thang, the drug thang or working the streets, and I wanted better for my life since I was in school at the time. The other sistahs who transitioned at the time were living stealth lives. That left a gaping positivity gap as AIDS devastated Houston. I swore to myself that if I ever got in the position to mentor someone, they would have my help if they asked. I created the Transistahs-Transbrothers discussion list in 2004 as part of my mentoring efforts.

It's funny, but one of the things I discovered is that mentoring is a two way street. Just as I became a role model for some transpeople, some dear friends have also become role models for me as well. There are various qualities my role models have such as their political savvy, sense of style, intelligence, emphasis on getting and keeping the financial house in order, outspokenness, deep faith in God, determination, willingness to move in search of a better life, musical talents, relentless pursuit of dreams, and surviving challenging life circumstances and thriving.

Those are qualities that I can look up to and incorporate into my own daily life in order to make me a better person.

I AM a role model. It's not like I eagerly sought out that position, it just evolved over time. My big mouth was the one on a 100,000 watt FM radio station talking about transgender and other issues. Since I was one of the few Black trans folks lobbying on Capitol Hill, I became the de facto representative of the African-American transgender community when I did that. I am thought of as a role model and diligently try to conduct myself in that manner, so now I must live up to it.

I must be on point in terms of my personal behavior, sense of style, and integrity. I not only represent myself, I represent all of you. I must be well read and well versed on many subjects because our enemies, the general public and other transpeople discount our intelligence. Some of them think that all we want to do is party, screw, and expose ourselves on shemalewhaever.com. We're far more complex than that simplistic box they try to put us in.

Keep sleeping on me, a Phenomenal Transwoman. A proud card carrying member of the Transgender Talented Tenth. I and every other transsistah and transbrotha is a living embodiment of the power of what is possible in our community, and I relish the challenge of making positive thangs happen.

Hope you do, too.

Think, Think! It Ain't Illegal Yet!

We used to chant this line during Parliament-Funkadelic concerts back in the day. I use it as my signature line on e-mails that I send.

Little did I suspect that the intellectual laziness of some Americans would become so pronounced over the years that there would be a need to actually remind people to do just that.

As the eldest child of a retired educator and a media personality I abhor ignorance. I also abhor disinformation in all forms whether it's inadvertent or deliberate. I have watched in horror over the last 20 years as reason and logic seems to have vacated national policy making, general discourse and politics. In its place we now have a dysfunctional Alice in Wonderland culture.

Or should Orwellian culture be more like it?

How do you explain a man who erased a trillion dollar deficit, helped create a booming economy during the 90's, was respected and admired all over the world and presided over a decade at peace being impeached for lying about oral sex, but a guy who has us bogged down in a Vietnam-style war in Iraq, lied to get us there, outed a CIA operative to get back at her husband and thumbs his nose at the Constitution with aggravatingly annoying regularity isn't?

I don't get it.

Something else that defies logic is how in Hades demonizing gay people came to be called 'Christian' and why African-American ministers who once spoke truth to power now sit in the amen corner with the same white fundamentalist ministers who opposed our civil rights just 40 years ago.

I'm also distressed about some people celebrating ignorance in our culture. Let me 'keep it real' for you peeps. One of the defining values of African-American culture is our pursuit of excellence and education. We were so laser-beam focused on it after emancipation from slavery in 1865 that African-Americans went from a 10% literacy rate mainly concentrated among free Northern Blacks in 1850 to almost 80% by 1880.

But you have some people in our culture who ignorantly equate education and intelligence with 'acting white'. I remember one encounter with a girl in my old neighborhood. She remarked that in her opinion my Queen's English speech pattern was 'speaking white.' I replied to her that 'yo baby' and speaking ebonically, while that's fine when I'm talking trash with my friends in the 'hood wouldn't get me a job in white-dominated corporate America.

It's not just a Black thang either. I've noted the Culture of Ignorance is taking hold with our white brothers and sisters as well, especially those who profess to be fundamentalist Christians. Fundies are using the 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it' bumper sticker line to rationalize their Luddite-like rejection of science. They're homeschooling their kids because the public schools aren't teaching their younglings their 'christian values' of hate and intolerance.

I'm a Christian, but I refuse to turn off my brain when I enter the church sanctuary.

A $27 million dollar monument to ignorance just opened in Petersburg, KY called the Creation Museum. For $19.95 you can watch a high tech show explaining their 'intelligent design' concoction (a renaming of creation science) that the Earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs and man lived and worked side by side.

Hey, sounds like the Flintstones minus Fred, Wilma, Betty, Barney, Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles. Yabba dabba don't waste your time and money. I can get more laughs out of watching the Flintstones while saving some gas. If you really want to see a good museum in that area drive a few more miles up I-75 to Cincinnati and check out the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Okay, let me go back to talking about politics. It's time for our country to be run by the 'A' students again instead of the 'C' one who looks and acts like a 'D' one. I don't know about you, but one of the first things I look for in a president is not whether I can have a beer with them, but if they are smart enough and have enough broad based knowledge to handle the job. If they aren't I want them to be honest enough to recognize that they don't and get peeps who are to help him (or her) make those tough decisions in the areas where their knowledge is lacking.

But there I go again thinking logically.

Hurry up and get here November 4, 2008. There's a National Merit Scholar in the race and a Harvard Law grad who'd make an excellent president that I can't wait to vote for.

Intellectual laziness is dangerous in a democracy. It's the grease that provides the slippery descent to a dictatorship. So think people. Challenge the statements and ludicrous assertions that people make. Trust your intuition. Don't accept everything as the gospel truth that the media tells you. Filter it with logic and reason.

That also goes for what Reverend So-and-So tells you as well and be prepared to call out the TransGriot if I slip up. My voracious reading habits are a source of pride for me. I'm blessed with an intellectual curiosity that constantly thirsts to be satisfied with knowledge. It has me asking the who, what, when, where and why questions on a regular basis. My most admired people include intellectuals like Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Julianne Malveaux. I try to back up my posts with links for you to check out my comments but even I miss from time to time.

We all benefit from the free exchange of information and knowledge. It helps our country and democracy grow stronger. Reason and logic helps you do your patriotic duty as an American citizen and cast an informed vote.

So just do it. Think! Do it before it becomes illegal to do so.

Happy 4th?

Yesterday was the 4th of July. My attitude towards it sometimes mirrors the line in the 'Tuskegee Airmen' movie.

'How do I feel about my country? And how does my country feel about me?'

I've been pissed on one level or another about the pseudo-Texan Idiot-In-Thief since 1995, the various outrages of his misadministration, et cetera. Combine that with having to go to work as the house was barbecuing and it was not setting up to be a nice evening for me.

The post I have on Wednesday and Thursday nights is a construction site out in Fairdale just south of Louisville International Airport. A lot of those homes have been torn down to make room for airport expansion but you still have scattered holdouts here and there. Outside of the occasional KY Air National Guard airplane
passing over the area and the 12 midnight and 3 AM UPS arrival and departure flight banks it's pretty quiet.

To stave off boredom I'm armed with much of my CD collection and I keep a notepad for those times when I get an inspired writing idea for a novel, poem, short story blog post or need to work on a TransGriot column in between patrol rounds.

I'm writing a poem on the notepad close to sunset when I notice a flash. I look up in that direction and in the distance somebody is setting off fireworks. They are joined by more and more colorful ones across the neighborhood and the surrounding area.

I had the 'Whitney's Greatest Hits' CD in the car and it has her version of the 'Star Spangled Banner' she sung at the 1991 Super Bowl in Tampa. I pulled it out, advanced it to that track and pressed play.

I must have repeated it about 5 times while watching the fireworks burst all around the neighborhood before an advancing thunderstorm and Mother Nature's more awesome version of firewoks shut down all the fun.

I'm not a 'my country right or wrong love it or leave it' bumper sticker patriot. I believe our country CAN do better than it has over the last six years and have made a few lobby trips to Capitol Hill on my own dime over the last decade to prove it.

As one of my fellow Texans Barbara Jordan once stated, 'I believe in an America as good as its promise'.

Last night reminded me that no matter how disgusted or down I get about the current state of affairs, I have to continue believing it. I must continue fighting to make that kind of America happen. I'm comforted by the fact there are far more people in this country who share Barbara Jordan's vision of America than Ann Coulter's.

Hopefully yesterday inspired more of you to do the same and fight for a better America as well.

Randi Rhodes Is NOT Michael Savage

One of the things that annoys me about the transgender community is the conclusion jump.

It's a tendency to take a snippet of information and come up with a pessimistic scenario severely out of whack with the available evidence or presume that the jumped conclusion is true even though the weight of evidence doesn't support it.

We have that going on right now in the wake of Randi Rhodes' on-air comments slamming Ann Coulter.

…Y’know, one of my very, very gay women friends wrote me an email and said Honey, let me just explain something to you. When transsexual, when…when they’re going through the…the…the transgender op…they infuse the man with the female hormones, and they go wack-a-doodle on you. And, ah, Ann [Coulter] is obviously getting the hormones…big doses. That’s why she’s so bizarre right now.

Okay, I’m telling you, it was amazing to me to get that information.

This comment has one blogger comparing her to Michael Savage and another calling her a transphobe.

Hold up.

I agree that liberal/progressives have the potential to make negative statements about us and sometimes do. They have the potential to be transphobes. I have the knife wounds in my back from dealings and lobbying efforts with so-called allies over the last decade to prove it. Some of our progressive allies have done things that are just as nasty and neglectful of our community as anything the Reichers could throw at us.

While I don't like Randi's comment (but love her show), and have decried the tendency of genetic females and other peeps (straight and gay) to call women they don't like trannies, I like Ann Coulter even less and I've said nastier things about her in private conversation. Frankly, I think that we should smack Coulter around more frequently than we do now and feed her own words back to her.

But I think it's going a bit too far and it's a tad irresponsible when you assert that Randi Rhodes is a transphobe equivalent to Michael Savage and the evidence doesn't support it.

Michael Savage has a long history of making derogatory and racist comments on a wide range of people, including these winners about transgender peeps;

"The wages of sin are death. You're gonna cut off your willy, you're gonna wear women clothes, you're gonna hook, you're gonna wind up dead under a freeway, Johnson."

"You're never gonna make me respect the freak. I don't want to respect the freak. The freak ought to be glad they're allowed to walk around without begging for something."

One difference is that Michael Savage supports a political philosophy in which many of its adherents echo those statements. Some of them are in positions of power that enable them to carry out those wishes verbalized by him and convert them to public policy.

The other difference is that Randi is educable on transgender issues and Savage isn't.

Barry Bonds-Why All The Hateraid?

On the night of April 9, 1974 I was an 11 year old watching with hopeful anticipation NBC's live telecasr of the LA Dodgers-Atlanta Braves game. I was hoping I'd get to see Hank Aaron break Babe Ruth's home run record before I had to go to bed.

I really didn't need to worry about that because this was one night my parents weren't enforcing my 10 PM CST bedtime. I was watching history in the making so I was going to be allowed to stay up until it happened.

At 8:07 PM CST in the fourth inning, Al Downing threw the fastball that ended up being blasted by Aaron 385 feet over the fence at the old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium for the record breaking homer. After watching all the ensuing hoopla, celebrations and speeches I ended up crawling into bed right on schedule.

Hammerin' Hank eventually pushed that record to 755 before he retired at the end of the 1976 season as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers. At the time, there was debate on whether the new record would be broken. I knew that it would probably happen someday. I wasn't like the folks in Babe Ruth's era who thought that no one would break his record of 714 homers. I doubt that they even considered the possibility that it would be broken by an African-American.

Enter Barry Bonds. Son of a major league ballplayer and godson of legendary home run king Willie Mays. Would seem to be the perfect story for baseball history.

But since Bonds has had a tempestuous relationship with sportswriters over his career, he has been reviled and criticized by them for what seems like ages. And since many of those sportswriters are of a lighter pigmentation, the negative rhetoric coming from their mouths about him borders on racist Pavlovian foaming at the mouth.

He has the opposite reputation with his fellow major league ballplayers.

He's been accused of taking steroids, but his critics conveniently gloss over the fact that he's never failed a drug test. All they have are circumstantial accusations of use. Before I judge Barry Bonds, I want more than circumstantial evidence so that I can make a reasoned and thoughtfully logical decision on whether he did or didn't and then react accordingly. Until that evidence comes forth from the 'He Cheated' crowd, I'm going to continue to enjoy watching him blast home runs into McCovey Cove or out of whatever major league ballpark he happens to be playing in.

I've gotten to the point that I'm sick of the monotonous Barry bashing, the calls for stripping him of the record, the calls for Major League baseball Commissioner Bud Selig not to be there the night (or day) he hits home run 756, the inflated, biased opinions of (white) sportswriters that he's cheated, blah blah blah.

I'm a little angry and disappointed that after all the hate mail and death threats that Hank Aaron received in the run up to his breaking Babe Ruth's record 37 years ago, that he of all people would have empathy for Bonds' plight. It's gleefully being reported that Aaron says that he won't be in whatever major league stadium Barry breaks his record in, even if it's in Atlanta.

So why are y'all and much of the general public chomping on generous portions of Hater Tots when it comes to Barry Bonds? He hit homer number 751 last night in Cincinnati and is only five homers shy from breaking the record.

The bottom line is I don't hear any hue and cry from those same white sports writers and many white baseball fans to strip Mark McGwire of his 1998 single season season home run record of 70 homers (which Barry broke when he hit 73 dingers in 2001). He was evasive in front of Congress back in 2005 when called to testify on the issue along with Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro.

It's known McGwire used andro, which was LEGAL at the time but later banned. Palmeiro tested positive a few months AFTER stating he'd never used them during that March 2005 hearing.

Where's all your outrage about that? Where's your outrage at Major League Baseball and Commissioner Selig for allowing it to happen in the first place?

Barry Bonds is one of the greatest players of all time and it may be a few decades before you see another like him. Seven time NL MVP. Voted once again as a starter on the All-Star Team. 22 years in the majors.

You Barry bashers need to come clean on the fact that some of you are conveniently dumping all your frustrations on his doorstep for what's happened in baseball concerning the steroid issue and it's being aided and abetted by some peeps who have personal axes to grind with him.

The 'Hate on Barry' mantra isn't endearing to many African-American baseball fans like myself. In a time when major league baseball is frantically searching for ways to bring African-Americans back to the ballparks and get them interested in the game again, you're trashing an African-American superstar who's on the cusp of breaking a historic record.

I don't want to hear another negative word uttered from a sportswriter or a non African-American baseball fan about Barry Bonds. It's obvious when it comes to him y'all are about as 'fair and balanced' as Faux News on the subject.

TransGriot 'R' Rated? What The @*$#?

I read a post on Pam's House Blend this morning about a Blog Rating tool that gives a blog a rating similar to the movie classification system.

For some reason her blog was rated NC-17 and according to Matt Comer's post at InterstateQ.com Pam's wasn't the only GLBT blog that got slapped with 'NC-17 or 'R' ratings. Jasmyne Cannick's received an 'NC-17. My friend Jackie's THINGS According To Me received an 'R' rating, and AC's The Polar Bear Speaks picked up an NC-17 rating.

Just for fun I plugged in the TransGriot URL to see what rating my humble blog would come up with. This is what it spit back at me in response;



This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
gay (8x) lesbian (5x) death (4x) pain (2x) gays (1x)

It tripped me out when it was noted that racist websites such as Stormfront and many anti-GLBT websites got 'G' or 'PG' ratings along with anti-trans Exodus affiliate Reality Resources.

Hmm. Gotta promote that right-wing 'family value' of hatred, eh?

So my inquiring mind wants to know. What rating would other transgender-oriented blogs/websites get according to this 'tool'?

Transadvocate NC-17
Woman In Progress PG
Trans Media Watch PG
Trans Political NC-17
The View From (Ab)Normal Heights NC-17
TransNation NC-17
Stilettos and Sneakers NC-17
The Transsexual Revolution G
IFGE 'R'

Letter To My African-American Transgender Elders

Dear African-American Transelders,

I hope and pray your golden years find you in excellent health, a secure life situation, and satisfied with the way your lives turned out.

But there's a question I've been dying to ask those of you who walked before me.

Why didn't y'all work harder to build an African-American transgender community for mine and the generations to come?

Yeah, I realize that y'all had a lot of thangs on your plate back in the day. Fighting Jim Crow segregation, getting our voting rights, the Civil Rights Movement, dealing with HIV/AIDS and trying to make a living making 70 cents for every dollar a white person earns. That does have a much higher priority than what I'm talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally grateful for your contributions and sacrifices that helped make my life as a late 20th-early 21st century African-American better. I'm well aware that in addition to the other challenges you African-American transgender elders faced, I am cognizant of the fact that our community is somewhat conservative on gender issues and pursuing that may have opened you up to violent attacks and even death. I'm also aware of the fact that the HBIGDA/WPATH orthodoxy at the time you transitioned was to fade away and never let anyone know you're transgender.

But damn, I feel cheated.

By going stealth, I feel that my history as an African-American transperson has been hidden from me. I know HIV/AIDS took some of you away from us, but why didn't y'all do a better job of passing that history down to my generation? Where were y'all when I needed multiple transgender role models that share my cultural background to look up to back in the 70's? Why weren't more of you visionary enough like Justina Williams for example to build organizations on a local and eventually national scale that passed that knowledge down and build a networked national community at the same time? I know y'all had the skills to do so. You proved it time and time again during the Civil Rights era.

Why did some of y'all hate us younger transpeeps so much that when we humbly asked you for the information as to the how to's of Transition 101 and longed to be mentored by you the response was stony silence, derisive laughter or derogatory self-esteem deflating comments?

My generation and others are paying for that lack of vision right now. Because you didn't think long term and pursue this in a more politically favorable environment we are now faced with the task of trying to build community and unite separate factions of dispirited peeps in a hostile conservative political environment. Our churches have been infected by a doctrine of hatred for GLBT peeps. It comes from the same white fundamentalist preachers that opposed y'all in your youth and distracts our churches from fulfilling their historic mission of seeking justice for ALL African-Americans.

But you know what? I and my generation can't wallow in what SHOULD have been done decades ago. We are faced with the daunting task of doing it now.

The transkids who are being born right now or who are are transitioning in elementary and middle school will need those resources to lean on. Shouldn't our kids have access to the same or equal resources similar to what our transbrothers and transsisters of European heritage have today that were painstakingly built up over the last twenty years? Shouldn't those resources also be geared toward their culture?

I'm not writing this letter to cast blame or start an inter generational war. That's not my intent. I'm approaching you in the spirit of Kingian love and respect for you as my elders. I wanted to convey to you the sense of loss and pain I and many African-American transpeople of my generation feel because we grew up feeling isolated and alone.

I am in the position now of being looked at as a leader and mentor to twenty something transkids. I don't want another African-American transkid on my watch to ever feel that kind of pain again and want to leave behind a world better than what I encountered. I and the current African-American transgender leadership need your help to achieve that modest goal. I would like to gain insight on what happened from your vantage point. We want and need to get your side of the story. We want to embrace the history you have to share with us so that we can pass it on. We've lost too much of our precious history already and our young people need to know about what you accomplished so that they can aspire to do something extraordinary with their lives.

Finally, we wish to lean on your hard won knowledge, be mentored by you in the time that God has granted you to remain with us on Planet Earth, learn from the mistakes as you see them through your generational prism and diligently work to ensure that we don't repeat them.

Respectfully yours,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot

Dem Debate at Howard University

I was stuck at work when it happened Thursday night, but I was happy to finally see for the first time in my life a presidential primary debate that tackled issues of importance to my community, even if I did have to catch the repeat on C-SPAN. I did get to see the post debate focus group made up of African-Americans on PBS last night in addition to the C-SPAN interview Tavis did Friday morning.

The 90 minute Democratic debate was organized and moderated by Tavis Smiley and televised on PBS Thursday night. It brought all eight current Democratic candidates for president to the Howard University campus in Washington DC to answer questions on issues that haven't been discussed in the other debates such as HIV-AIDS, criminal justice, education, taxes, outsourcing jobs, poverty, the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina and the hours old 5-4 Supreme Court conservative majority decision placing new limits on school desegregation plans.

The other unique feature was that it had African-American and Latino journalists Michel Martin, DeWayne Wickham and Ruben Navarrette asking those questions. The audience was also packed with African-American leadership ranging from entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, congresspersons Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Elijah Cummings (D-MD)and John Lewis (D-GA)to National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Children’s Defense Fund founder and president Marian Wright Edelman and noted scholar Cornel West.


As to who I'd like to see get the Democratic nomination as of June 2007, it's a toss up between Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with John Edwards running third. That still leaves much room for me to change my mind between now and when the primary elections actually start getting cranked up in February 2008. I'm not making my final choice until probably December 2007 or January 2008. But whoever ends up with the nomination by the time the convention occurs in Denver, I'm pleased with the quality of candidates we have in the Democratic primary and wouldn't be disappointed in the final outcome.

Sen. Clinton already according to some polls has 40% support in the African-American community and did plenty in this debate to ensure she not only holds on to it, but set herself up for the opportunity to build on it.

Sen. Clinton garnered the loudest applause of the night when she stated in a response to a question on HIV-AIDS, "Let me just put this in perspective: If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged, outcry in this country."


Sen Obama has a burden that the other candidates don't. He has to prove to many African-Americans that he's with us on our issues while not alienating his middle of the road predominately white support by not appearing 'too Black'.

African-Americans will be the decisive voting bloc in the Democratic primaries and the 2008 general election. While Hispanics outnumber us population wise, what many people forget is that they don't vote in the consistently high sustained numbers that African-Americans do and that some of that Hispanic population growth is made up of people who aren't eligible to vote yet. In 2004 African-Americans were one of of every ten voters in that election and that vote went 9-1 for Sen. John Kerry. In South Carolina, where an early primary test will be held February 5, African-Americans cast 30% of the votes in the 2004 election and were 50% of that state's 2004 Democratic primary voters.

In September there will be a similar Republican forum at Baltimore's Morgan State University for the Republican candidates. That will be the only debate featuring the GOP candidates I'll bother watching. It'll be fun to see them squirm while having to answer questions that address African-American concerns they've ignored.