Alysia Yeoh Gets Married!

Many of you comic book fans are aware that the rebooted DC Comics Batgirl series has a reality based trans character in the person of Alysia Yeoh, the bi community activist and onetime roommate of Barbara Gordon.  

She revealed to Barbara in issue #19 she was a girl like us at the same moment Barbara told her much of her personal background including the fact she was Batgirl to her roommate from Singapore.

She has been a recurring character since then

The marriage story arc for Alysia started with issue #42 in the rebooted series in which she announced to Barbara that she was engaged to Jo, who she started dating last year and Barbara would be her maid of honor.

We're now up to issue #45 in this story arc which is available at your fave comic book retailer, and another milestone as Alysia finally walks down the aisle with Jo as Barbara efficiently executes her duties as maid of honor.

This is just another example of our media being ahead of and driving the social acceptance curve.  It's also important because popular culture can drive acceptance of marginalized groups.

It will be interesting to see what happens going forward not only for the happy couple, but for their maid of honor Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl,

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Happy Bisexual Awareness Week 2015!

Unfortunately I had to come back to Houston before the White House Bisexual Policy Briefing happened on Monday. but if you weren't aware of it. this is the second annual Bisexual Awareness Week.

It started on Sunday and #biweek is running through September 26.  Bisexual Awareness Week is a series of events around the country and online designed for the bi community and its allies to get to know the 'B' in LGBTQ better and realize there is a reason it's in the alphabet soup designation that covers our entire community.  

"Despite comprising more than half of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual population, bisexual people are only about one third as likely to be out to their close friends and family," said Heron Greenesmith, LGBT Movement and Policy Analyst at the Movement Advancement Project. "As shown in our new infographic, two-thirds of bisexual people report hearing negative comments at work and bisexual people are more likely to report negative health outcomes."

And FYI, some bi peeps are proud Black folks, too.

It's a natural outgrowth of Celebrate Bisexuality Day, that is celebrated annually on September 23 and was created in 1999 by activists Gigi Raven Wilbur, Wendy Curry and Michael Page as a way to combat the invisibility our bisexual brothers and sisters have to grapple with.

On September 23, 2013 the first ever White House bisexuality issues roundtable was held, and the 2015 roundtable as I mentioned earlier, took place on Monday.

Said BiNet USA president Faith Cheltenham, "In a world increasingly acknowledging the complexity of human sexuality, including bisexuality and sexual fluidity, BiNet USA is thrilled to support a national conversation that accelerates the cultural acceptance of our community," said Faith Cheltenham, President of BiNet USA. "This year's awareness week has garnered unprecedented support from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations who are committed to amplifying the voices of bisexual people, who are often rendered invisible in the media and public spheres."

Happy Bisexual Awareness Week!  Here's hoping that it is one which continues to grow, does its job in ending bisexual media invisibility, educates us about the bisexual community and contributes mightily to the reduction and eventual elimination of the issues that bi people face.

Educating Us About Us Forum

One of the things the fight to pass the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance exposed is just how much education needs to be done about the various letters in our own chocolate Houston SGL trans and bi ranks.

Trans 101 is particularly needed, especially when we discovered in the repeal petition checking process some of our own LGBT people signed them or swallowed the lies Max Miller and company repetitively at the behest of their puppet master Dave Welch told about the trans community due to lack of knowledge about us. 

Now that we not facing in Houston the imminent threat of a referendum this November, are awaiting the January 19, 2015 trial date, and have some time to do some 'ejumacation', we are dong just that and holding community conversations that we'll eventually expand to the straight African-American community. 

Last Sunday (August 24) I took part in a forum held at the Montrose Center moderated by Austin D. Williams entitled Educating Us about Us.

 It started at 3:30 PM and featured some real talk about the HERO by Ashton Woods.    He talked about the fifteen categories it covers, busted the lies the faith-based haters have been saying about it, and it was a nice segue into my portion of the event  discussing Trans 101 and some of the historical background.

We spent about an hour and a half in spirited discussion talking about the trans community since that's where much of the educating needed to be done.  We eventually moved from talking about the 'T' and busting myths to the portions of the facilitated discussion about the other letters in our SGL community.   We broke down some of the myths about lesbians, gay Republicans, gay Christians, gay men and finally the DL peeps that cause dissension and drama.. 

6:30 PM came way too soon, and a group of us decided to take the discussion to the Midtown Grill, a nearby Montrose area restaurant on West Gray where that SGL community centered discussion continued over a meal and spilled out into the parking lot for a little while longer.

But it was clear to many of the passionate and intelligent folks in that room that more of these H-town community building conversations need to (and will) happen.   And when the next one is scheduled, I'll let you know on these TransGriot electronic pages when it does.