MediaTakeOut Unleashes Transphobic Slurs At Mia Ryan

Why am I not surprised to hear about transphobic crap coming not only from Black gossip blogs, but the Black gay people who run them?

They flap their lips to say 'they're not transphobic' while gleefully trafficking in the transphobia running rampant on their sites.

Thanks to The G-List Society, was made aware of the transphobia outbreak that happened recently on MediaTakeOut aimed at Mia Ryan.

For those of you who watched the OWN reality series Houston Beauty, Mia was one of the breakout stars of the show.  Her storyline in which she was trying to complete her beauty school education at Houston's iconic Franklin Beauty School while trying to leave the escorting world and conquer her personal demons was at times fascinating and painful to watch.

MediaTakeOut claims in an April 15, 2013 commentary it has the 'utmost respect for all people regardless of sexuality'.  

But that respect sure doesn't extend to transpeople.

For starters, you transphobic idiots, if you're going to insult us with the t-word that we've more than made clear across Trans World and beyond is a slur, learn how to spell it properly. 

Frankly, I'm more than sick and tired of the repeated pattern of transphobic hate being spread by Black gossip blogs like yours, Bossip, Sandra Rose and The Skorpion Show .  I'm fed up with the rampant transphobia that runs like sewage in your comment threads.  

I'm also sick and tired of being sick and tired of the fact that you Black SGL peeps, who should know better and be intimately aware of how hurtful that crap is, would stoop to that level in the first place.  

We get enough transphobic microaggressive and macroaggressive bull feces aimed at us as Black trans women from society, the media, our families, white trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERF's), the Religious Right, the Republican Party and Fox Noise.. 

We don't need you transphobic idiots at MediaTakeOut gleefully pouring gasoline on the flame of anti-trans hatred in the Black community that results in us getting burned with it, and leads to far too many Black trans women getting murdered.  

Cheryl Calls Out Some Trans Haters

My trans elder Cheryl Courtney-Evans was forwarded a link to the Anti-Intellect blog post about the Chad Johnson-Amiyah Scott photo that decried the rampant transphobia in the comments and blog posts about it that is sadly a staple of the Black gossip blogosphere.

Cheryl took it a step further in her abitchforjustice post entitled 'Whites AREN'T The ONLY People Who Can Be Bigots!' and put some of the more egregious transphobic offenders on blast.  

Here's a taste of it:

Example: "...it's not that people are Homophobic. IT'S THAT A LOT OF THIS [THESE] TRANNYS take pictures with celebrity men then go on the blogs and radio and say they are fucking, Chingy for example, he took a couple of pics with a tranny and she said they were dating. And people started calling Chingy gay and his career was over. IT'S NOT THE PEOPLE, IT'S THE TRANNYS TRYING TO PLAY GAMES. THEY DID THE SAME THING TO JOJO Simmons. They said he was trying to fuck on Twitter, and come to find out he didn't know it wasn't a woman. this [these] trannys are shady as fuck...". 

This gay man's rant first of all separates transgenders from humanity ("...it's not the people, it's the trannys..." as if transgenders aren't 'people'). Then he's automatically assuming that it has to be a falsehood that the celebs mentioned actually were romantically involved with the transgender women. BUT I'd be willing to BET if it were a gay person "outing" [NOT that it's right in either case] a celeb, he'd be licking his lips at the juicy details...and of course, the gay person didn't "trick" the guy (how easily they forget the defendants who use the "panic" defense when they've murdered or assaulted a gay man)...

And some of the women who posted were especially hateful. It was even interesting how some posts started off innocent [positive] enough, to deliver a "zinger" (example: "I think everyone should be respected. Playing dress up and getting your dick cut off does not make you a woman." To this, I say, "WTF??") Even posters who were expressing like 'allies' were guilty of erroneous pronoun usage in other replies.

You can check out the rest of Cheryl's post by clicking this link.

The Trans Conclusion Jump Strikes Again

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.      TransGriot July 5, 2007

The London Olympic Games unfortunately closed without an open trans athlete participating in that fortnight of competition.  But I can guarantee if the conclusion jump were an Olympic event some peeps in my community would take the gold medal for it. 

I wrote about this tendency of elements of our community to engage in this behavior during a situation in 2007 in which liberal-progressive talk show host Randi Rhodes called Ann Coulter a transwoman and transpeople justifiably called her on it.  

But a few conclusion jumped to the point where one person jawdroppingly equated her to transphobic right wing talker Michael Savage and another called her a transphobe when Rhodes clearly was neither.

We had another example of the trans conclusion jump at work last week when a transwoman had a not so pleasant flying experience in a Texas airport.    The incident as it turned out as more information became available got blown up way out of proportion to the facts of the case.

One thing you must do as a blogger (or on social media) is verify before posting. Your credibility as a blogger is important, especially when you represent a marginalized community and people are relying on you to help give them the facts they need to form their opinions on issues.  

You have to think like a reporter. Facts and accurate information should be first and foremost in a post. You can do point of view opinion style commentary in a later post if necessary.

Trusting your instincts is also paramount. I had questions about that incident, which is why you didn't see it posted on TransGriot when it first started appearing on the Net. 

Because I'm one of the biggest award winning bloggers of color, I have an international readership, I'm an award-winning activist, I talk about the African-American trans community in my writing, and what I write is highly valued,  I have to get it right.  It's more important in my mind to be accurate than to be the first to post it.
TransGriot will be seven years old on January 1.  I've put a lot of work into building its reputation as a go-to source for information on the African-American trans community and fearlessly and accurately discussing issues of importance to me and the trans community in general.  I take that responsibility seriously. 

The trans community and its hundreds of bloggers must consider the blogosphere as one of the vitally important tools in our civil rights toolkit.   It  has been one of the reasons that our trans human rights movement has made the remarkable progress it has over the last decade. 

Our trans bloggers from our A-list award winners to the folks just starting and building their blogging reps have raised our community's visibility along with bringing the trans community's issue concerns to the attention of the general public, politicians and civil rights organizations.  They have played a major role in pointing out transpeople are part of the diverse mosaic of human life.So chill with the conclusion jumping, okay?   It takes years to build up a solid reputation in the blogosphere for accuracy and being a go-to blog for commentary for our community, and one horribly incorrect post to screw it up.

TransGriot Note: Second picture is of Louisville television personality and Voice-Tribune editor Angie Fenton.  

Black Gossip Blogs Spouting Transphobic BS Again

I've never liked the Black gossip blogosphere for more than a few reasons, but the overriding one is the rampant transphobia in their ranks and the comment sections of those blogs.

There have been more than a few times I've called them out about their transphobic attacks aimed at their fave punching bag Wendy Williams, and went after Sandra Rose when she posted her ignorant comments concerning Kye Allums.

Now they are aiming their transphobic animus at Joseline Hernandez of the VH1 series Love and Hip-Hop Atlanta.   While it's not one of the shows I watch since I'm not a 'reality' show fan, what has gotten my attention is the loud 'that's a man' chatter being aimed at Joseline.

Dayum, here we go again.   Why am I not surprised Sandra Rose's trifling behind and Bossip are front and center in trafficking the transphobia? 

Not cool Sandra with the misgendering of Joseline, but then again you never exceed the low expectations I have for you.  Bossip used the anti-trans slur word 'shim' in the title of another post slamming Joseline.  


Here's the comment I left at one of the blogs in which the comment threads are gleefully engaging in transphobia.

SMH at the rampant transphobia and ignorance running amok here. A little more or less testosterone in vitro and many of you would be in the same situation as transpeople are.

News flash for you scientifically illiterate folks aiming transphobic shade at Ms. Hernandez.  Women come in all shapes, sizes, body combinations and configurations.   Just because a woman is over 5'7", has broad shoulders and other physical traits considered part of the masculine spectrum doesn't mean she's automatically trans. 

I have trans girlfriends who are petite, ultrafeminine looking size 7 shoe wearing divas and cis girlfriends of varying heights and combinations of traits who wear size 12 pumps.You are a blend of genetic material from mommy and daddy, and started your in vitro developmental phase as female, so you are inevitably going to get a blend of gender characteristics from both parents

The other aspect of this transphobic shade being hurled at Joseline I don't appreciate is because it's playing into the 'unwoman' meme deployed far too often against women of color, and especially women of color with non-stereotypical feminine personas or body configurations.

I'm also convinced that the transphobic shade being hurled at her is what prompted Hernandez to tweet the frontal nude photo of herself showing her genitalia in an attempt to 'prove' she was female.


One of the rules I have for TransGriot is that if a person has not publicly declared they are trans, until they do so, I don't publicly speculate about their gender identity or how they express it unless they are causing demonstrable harm to the trans community.  

Until Joseline has a press conference, I'in presuming out of respect for her that she's a cis female.

Too bad some of you in the Black gossip blogosphere have gone in the opposite nekulturny direction.