Trans Actors Can Be In The Building And Still Get Ignored

Like a lot of Trans World peeps I was more than a little heated when the women of POSE were once again snubbed for Emmy consideration despite stepping up their acting games and putting in some Emmy worthy performances.

Tell me you didn't cry watching Candy's funeral?  Or laugh your azz off when Elektra read that Karen for filth in that Hamptons seafood restaurant scene.



Billy Porter was nominated for and won an Emmy last year for his Pray Tell performance and is now only lacking an Oscar to become only the 15th person ever to complete the EGOT.

What's the EGOT you ask?  An EGOT is when an entertainer during their career wins an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. 

So yeah, he's mad talented.    He also said this when being interviewed last year for his historic Emmy win.   The part I'm salty about starts at the 2:51 mark of this video



That video with his 'we in the building' comment is heightening my irritation with that comment a year later.  While Porter received a second consecutive nomination for playing Pray Tell,  the POSE women got snubbed for a second consecutive year.

You can still be in the building and still be ignored.  You Mr. Porter and your fellow cis people all need to recognize that despite the 2020 Emmy nominations for Rain Valdez and Laverne Cox (and congrats to both those amazing women) the #EmmysSoCis.

Brian Michael Smith and Scott Turner Schofield are talented trans masculine actors who were not given 2020 Emmy consideration, either.   

Yes, trans actors are in the building.  But they still have to fight tooth and nail for the few roles in which trans women play trans feminine characters.  Hell, trans women have had to fight just to play a cis feminine character in Hollywood. 

Trans masculine actors have to fight just as hard to play a trans masculine character.   It took a major outcry from our community to get Halle Berry to reconsider a role in which she would be playing a trans masculine person.   Same with getting Scarlett Johansson to change her mind about playing Dante 'Tex' Ritter in the Rub and Tug movie.

Trans women actors have a problem getting trans feminine roles because studio execs and casting directors are still fixated on putting cis male actors in drag to play those roles.

And to our trans community's horror, those cis men (and a cis woman in Hilary Swank) have gallingly gone on to win the awards trans actors get routinely snubbed for by telling our trans stories..

So no, trans people aren't even close to having equity or seeing the change you claimed had come in that 2019 interview.  Your Emmy interview to our ears sounded like the dismissive 'wait your turn' crap we've been hearing from Black gay men with clout for over 50 years.

The way Black trans women are being genocidally murdered also adds a fierce urgency of now element to not only this situation, but everything we do.

POSE is one of the few productions in Hollywood in which we not only get to tell our stories, we have trans people in front of and behind the camera writing and directing them like Janet Mock and Our Lady J.  That makes it a unique and beloved show in our trans community, and we want to see MJ Rodriguez, Dominique Jackson, Angelica Ross, Hailie Sahar and Indya Moore succeed.

That means if these women's POSE performances merit Emmy recognition, we want to see them nominated for those performances.  If those nominations then turn into trans historic Emmy wins, we're good with that.

That is also the case for the trans folks working behind their camera.  If they are doing award worthy work, they need to be recognized for that.

Frankly, I love seeing all my Hollywood trans family succeed whether you are in front of the camera or behind it.  The measuring stick for how successful you are in Hollywood is winning or being nominated for major awards like Emmys, Oscars, or Golden Globes.

But to have a shot an winning an Emmy or any of those awards I mentioned, you have to be nominated for it.   This is the flaw in Billy Porter's 2019 'we in the building' speech.

You can be in the building all you want.  But if you're in the building, doing exemplary work, and are still getting ignored for unspecified reasons up to and including Hollywood transphobia and anti-Blackness, that's a problem that needs to be called out and addressed.

Steve Schmidt Rips Trump A New One

MSNBC commentator Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 presidential run, spent two minutes discussing the Trump mispresidency.   This is what he had to say.

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.” 

"When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.” 

"It's just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he's the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he's brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale." 

"And, let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.

So all you folks considering petulantly sitting out the 2020 election because your preferred candidate didn't get the nomination, I have one word for you.

DON'T

#FireTrump
#FireTheGOP

Moni's Post Houston Municipal Runoff Election Thoughts

It's been 72 hours since it because clear Houstonians took out the political trash by massively rejecting Tony Trump Buzbee and giving Sylvester Turner a second four year term as our mayor. 

Mayor Turner garnered 56% of the vote in sending Buzbee to the loss he so richly deserved after trying to inject transphobia in this race at the last minute.  A last minute robocall from Trump didn't help and had the opposite effect of boosting turnout

Buzbee spent $12 million to get that butt kicked, and has refused at this writing to concede. 

Typical.   But hey Tony, I did tell you back in August when you disrespectfully stepped to me you would never be elected to the mayor's chair in my hometown.

Don't forget it was you who said on FOX26 that you didn't need to be mayor.   Well, the wise citizens of Houston made your wish to NOT be the mayor of Houston come true for the holidays.

We also sent transphobe Dave Wilson packing from the Houston Community College (HCC) Board of Trustees by electing Monica Flores Richart.   Wilson abruptly resigned from his Position 2 seat he deceptively won six years ago by 24 votes when Rhonda Skillern-Jones filed to run against him and jumped into the Position 1 race.

Flores Richart did the Lordt's work and trounced that homohating behind twice.  She got 48% of the vote back on November 5, just missing the 51% threshold she needed to beat him outright. 

She handled her business in the runoff and spanked that transphobic behind.  Congrats Madame Trustee-elect.   Rhonda Skillern-Jones also won handily in the HCC Position 2 race.

Now that the transphobic Wilson has been bounced from the HCC board and has more free time on his hands, we Houston liberal-progressive peeps need to make sure he doesn't spend it trying to mess with Houston area trans people.

The embattled HISD board also added two more Black women on its board of trustees in Kathy Bluefield Daniels in District 2 and Patricia Allen in District 4. 

As for the Houston City Council elections, we had some problematic people running for city council in this cycle as well.   The 180 people that filed to run meant that while we stopped some of the bad ones, others got through like conservative incumbents Mike Knox and Michael Kubosh.

One that didn't get through was White supremacist Anthony Dolcefino.  He made it to a runoff for the At Large 4 seat in large part because the Houston media tried to softpedal his white supremacist activities at UT 

Thank goodness Dr. Letitia Plummer won that seat and blocked him from getting a nice leather chair in The Horseshoe.    But we will have to worry about Dolcefino running for a future office.

This transphobe, Edward Pollard, also slipped through and got elected to City Council in District J, beating Sandra Rodriguez.    Pollard, a so called 'conservative Democrat', AKA a Republican ashamed to claim the label, opposed the HERO ordinance back in 2014, and is an on the record transphobe.   Unfortunately I have to look at his azz in The Horseshoe for the next four years.

I also wasn't happy to hear about some of Rodriguez's signs mysteriously disappearing in this southwest side district during this race.

Many Houston Black women are not happy Abbie Kamin won her District C race against Shelley Kennedy, especially after a photo surfaced of her wearing an antebellum dress at a Kappa Alpha collegiate frat function.

Kamin never really came clean about it or offered a substantive explanation as to why she's in Confederate garb, but she's going to have to do it sooner or later.   Progressive sisters have long memories, and until she clears this up with them, if Kamin  has aspirations for higher office, she may have problems getting support from the Harris County Democratic Party base (Black women) if she doesn't deal with it ASAP.

And in this election cycle's concrete example of why every vote matters, in District H challenger Isabel Longoria is trailing incumbent CM Karla Cisneros by a razor thin 12 votes.

Looks like this District H race will be going to a recount, and they will be counting every ballot cast in this one, including provisional and overseas mail in ballots before we have a declared winner in this race. 

Then there's the mess in District B, which has gone to court.

There were 13 candidates running in the race to replace term limited CM Jerry Davis, and the top two vote getters were Tarsha Jackson (right) and former North Forest ISD board member Cynthia Bailey,

Renee Jefferson Smith, the candidate who finished third in the District B race, filed suit, alleging that since Bailey was an ex-offender, she wasn't eligible to run for city council.   Jackson, the frontrunner on November 5 and who is favored to win the seat, believes Bailey is eligible to run.

It didn't help that when Bailey filed, on the affidavit you must sign in order to run to declare whether or not you have a felony conviction, she said no. 

A judge will need to sort the murky legal question out before they can hold a special election for the seat, which was tentatively scheduled for January 28. 

I also lost a lot of respect for the firefighters in this election cycle.   Their union leadership backed Dolcefino, Dick and Pollard and two failed candidates for mayor in Sue Lovell and Dwight Boykins.  May be time for y'all to stop rejecting the 7% raise Mayor Turner offered y'all and take it. 

I also see the possibility of a garbage fee being passed to fund the Solid Waste Department for much needed new garbage trucks and salary bumps.

So to wrap this up, while there are some developments I'm happy about in terms of the new council will be a female majority body with five Black women sitting on it, there are others that I'm not thrilled about.

Just means that I'll be making a lot of trips to Houston City Hall to ensure I'm doing my part to hold our local elected officials accountable.

We Are Not Being Sensitive, You're Being Obtuse .

TransGriot Note:  I like to from time to time signal boost commentary from other thought leaders in the community  in this space.   I liked this one from my Chicago based sis Channyn Parker, and believe that it is a message y'all needed to see, read and hear. 

Guest Post by Channyn Lynne Parker

I don’t really know where to begin, except to say for those of you who champion, defend, and continue to support trans women, thank you.

Honestly, I don’t think any trans person here expects a cis-person to understand what it’s like to have a body that expresses itself incongruently to one’s internal reality. However, what you can understand is the importance and recognition of our humanity.

None of us are blind to the fact there are fractures, rifts and subgrouping within our community along feigned notions of superiority.   But know this, there would be no community unless we trans women had not stood up first.

I hear the word “sensitive” being thrown around a lot, as if to gaslight us into believing that we  somehow are at fault for not recognizing the humor you find in our pain.

I wouldn’t be so quick to call a trans woman sensitive.  Remember, due to our daily existence, we trans women in fact have very tough skins.   What you are witnessing however, is heartbreak.

You can’t be sensitive while screaming in the face of a politician, to give you your right to be legally wed.

You can’t be sensitive while holding the hands of your dying, and burying your dead, and still muster up the strength to stand in the front lines demanding an end to the epidemic.

You can’t be sensitive when sitting in front of the young man who is hungry and tired with no place to go, and all you have to offer him is a little bit of comfort and something warm to fill his belly.

So, if to call us “sensitive” is your way of averting the need for or somehow directing at us a coded non-apology apology, it’s an apology that we do not accept.

We trans women were the wet nurses to this movement when “Gay Rights” was in its infancy. So again, what you’re your seeing and hearing from us is not sensitivity, it is a mother's grief. It is a daughter's abandonment, and a sister's rejection from her very own sons and brothers.

I feel no need to tarry any further as I have made myself abundantly clear with this soliloquy.

Again, I love you all with a love that is divinely mandated, and that love, is the love of respect.

Don Lemon Is Right- We Need A Conversation In Black America About TBLGQ Issues

“Because apologizing and moving on doesn’t make the world a better place for people who are gay or people who are transgender. Being an ally does.”-Don Lemon 

From time to time I have put Don Lemon on blast on these electronic pages for fumbling on trans issues.  But since the Orange Fool has been in power, he has been on fire in terms of calling crap out on a wide range of subjects. 

Now, he is taking on Kevin Hart's recent appearance on Ellen and Hart's comments that he wasn't to move on from the conversation. 

Naw player, those of us in Black Trans, Bi and SGL World would submit that we have yet to even have this family discussion about transphobia and homophobia in Black World, and it needs to happen now. 

Black trans people definitely wish to have this family conversation because toxic masculinity and toxic transphobia are killing us. |

Here's Don Lemon's on point CNN commentary

Miss Major's Comment About The Trump Trans Madness

As y'all know, I had something to say about the Trump misadministration making another renewed attempt to enact anti-trans policy to 'protect the nation'.

Really, conservafool?  Is that the lie you're going with this time, Dear Orange Misleader? 

One of the things that never fails to make my day is when I get a check in call from Miss Major.

As my trans elder, she has been through more crap that I have yet to experience, and she's #stillfuckinghere to tell us about it.   She also has been there to call our butt out on crap when we needed it, and give us encouragement  to handle our trans business as well.

So you know Miss major was down for Dolt 45's latest anti trans mess.   Here's what she posted on her Twitter feed about it.

After 70 years I am here to tell you the system has always tried to break us. All us trans girls know we got to depend on each other and when enough of us bitches come together we can it down and use the ashes to build the motherfucking mansions we deserve! #stillfuckinghere

Gotta love her.   Looking forward to the next opportunity to spend quality time with you.

This Is Why Liberals Think You Trumpettes Are Stupid

This is from a Facebook friend's page.   I wish I'd come up with this.   But then again I tossed the Trumpettes off my page eons ago and purged them from my life.

Not going to have someone in my life that supports a government that wants to oppress me.

The person was asked by a Trump supporting friend why we liberal progressive peeps thought they were stupid for supporting  Dolt 45, and that person's answer is not only mic drop worthy, it is a must read and must share with the world.

And yes, this post gets the TransGriot seal of approval

***

Stolen from a friend... but another must read; Taken from a friend's wall...

This came across in my feed, thought some people here might enjoy it more than some others in my life:

An anguished question from a Trump supporter: "Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?"

The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don't.

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."

That when he made up stories about seeing muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you chirped, "He sure knows me."

That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, "That's cool!"

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.

That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids. has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “well, ok then.”

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.

What you don't get, Trump supporters in 2018, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.

Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are *less* flattering.

***

Other explanations for example, like  you are a mean spirited fascist.

2018 TransGriot Endorsement Posts Starting Soon

Early voting in Texas starts on October 22, and you Texas residents have until October 9 to get registered so that you can participate in what is probably the most important midterm election of our country's history

If you don't live in Texas, you need to do the same.  Find out when your election registration deadline is happening so if you aren't registered to vote, you can get it done so you can handle your electoral business on November 6 or sooner if you're in a state hat does early voting like I am. .

Uncle Sam needs you to participate in flipping this country and your states blue and firing the GOP at all levels of government, since they have made it clear they only wish to do so for heterosexual conservative white males only .

I've been asked by several readers if I was going to do any TransGriot endorsements in this 2018 election cycle, and the answer is an emphatic yes.   Those posts will be flagged in the title with a 2018 TransGriot Endorsement header so that you can easily find them 

While many of my TransGriot endorsement posts over the next 60 plus days will be Texas centric, and I will do endorsements in selected races in other states, the goal of them is to arm you with the information you need to cast an informed vote for the people and the issues impacting this election.

Trans Peeps, We Gotta Put In The Work To Get Elected

While I am happy to see this explosion of trans candidates running for office, and the TransGriot 2018 endorsement post is coming soon, bear in mind that just because you're trans doesn't mean I'm automatically going to endorse you. 

I not only look at your platform, I'm also looking at the viability of your campaign.   What's your fundraising look like?   Have you been doing the nuts and bolts stuff like talking to the various constituency group in your area?   Have you been participating in the local debates?  Who is (or isn't)  endorsing you?  Will you be able to translate the platform you campaigned on into concrete policy if you are elected?   

Deciding on whether to run for office is a challenging proposition that requires hard solid thinking before you enter the race and an ironclad commitment to doing the hard work necessary to run a credible campaign.   There's also the possibility that no matter how hard you work on a high quality campaign, the voters may choose someone else on Election Day.

And as trans people who are stepping up to run for office, we need to take those decisions seriously.  It's an undeniable fact we need trans folks sitting at the governing tables at every level of government. 

We're in a time period in which being trans is considered a positive in the political world, and there are so few trans folks in office on a national level that when a trans person runs, it's not only newsworthy, there is a potential if they are elected of making history and becoming a possibility model for our trans kids watching their race.

Make no mistake about it,  running for office means that you are applying for a job in which your bosses are your constituents.   But running for office means that we have some things we have to do on our end. 

We have to raise funds to pay for the campaign.  We have to seek out endorsements and interview with multiple screening committees for them.  We have to interview with newspaper editorial boards.  We have to talk to our potential constituents to find out what their issues are in order to serve them better if elected. 

And like it or not, because we have more scrutiny on us as trans candidates, we must run our campaigns foe whatever office we run for with the utmost integrity and once we're elected, serve in a way which will make our community and our supporters proud of us 

Before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the number of Black elected officials nationwide at all levels of government was miniscule.   By 1970, the first year those numbers began to get tracked, there were 1,463 of them up to the congressional level.  That had ballooned by 2011 to 10,763 Black elected officials that included President Barack Obama (D) and Massachusetts Gov Deval Patrick (D) 

Rep. Shirley Chisholm ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972, and was fought by the political boys club at the time every step of the way.  Nothing was handed to her on a silver platter

Just because we're trans and have a demonstrated need for representation at all levels of government as an oppressed class of people,  and we have a leg up on the trust issue because of the unapologetic way we live our lives,  doesn't mean that people should just hand us an endorsement when we show up.  We have to earn it. 

We also have to earn people's votes,  Bur in order to be sworn in to serve  in whatever office we run for in January, we gotta put in the work from February to November to get elected.

CNN's Don Lemon Puts Dolt 45 On Blast

You long time TransGriot reader know that over the history of this blog I've had my issues at times with CNN's Don Lemon.   But since Trump's election he has been calling out Dolt 45 on the regular and tellin' it like it T-I-S is.

After Dolt 45 made more racist tweets attacking him and Lebron James, Lemon took some time on his CNN show to put Dumb Donald on blast.



.

Sunny Hostin Makes Conservafools Look Bad On 'The View'

I was one of the peeps calling for Raven Symone to be replaced on The View by a thinking sister, and was happy to hear that former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Sunny Hostin got that chair.

Newt Gingrich and Meghan McCain must have forgotten that part of Sunny's background when they tried to peddle their kill the investigation talking points to the audience of The View and got royally embarrassed by her.

Then again, what Gingrich and McCain did was commit an all too common mistake of the conservative movement.  They misunderestimate the intellect of Black women until it's too late, and end up looking foolish or worse in the process. 



Bet they'll think twice before they try that on another sister again.
  

No Justice, No 2018 NFL Prognostication

You longtime TransGriot readers know I am such a huge NFL football fan that since 2010 on this blog I have been doing NFL prognostication posts that morphed into a season long competition with Michael Watts as to who is the best at doing so. 

Mr Watts after me winning back to back titles, finally won the 2017 season prognostication title and I was looking forward to the kickoff of this 2018 NFL season to take it back. 

But after the NFL owners went full idiot and caved to Trump and their white supremacist fanbase by creating an unconstitutional rule that threatens to fine and penalize NFL players and team personnel for not standing for the national anthem, I have no choice but to take a stand on that.

Prognostication is something I enjoy.  But last season was a slog for me in large part because I was conflicted about doing the prognostication while the NFL owners showed their white supremacist azzes, especially Bob McNair, the owner of my hometown NFL franchise,

Far from explaining to your fans that NFL players are protesting injustice against American Americans and they are exercising their free speech rights, you are cowardly peddling the right wing lie that they are attacking veterans, the flag and whatever conservalie of the week you come up.

Why?  Because you wish to avoid having the uncomfortable conversation, and acknowledge that by you NFL owners dropping obscene amounts of money into Republican campaigns, you are accomplices in the persecution of Black people your players are protesting.

If you don't rescind this obviously unconstitutuional rule designed to do nothing but muzzle the abilities of your players to express their constitutional right to protest, I'll have no choice but to sit out the 2018 NFL season in solidarity with the players you're racistly attempting to muzzle.

And I wouldn't be surprised to see a lawsuit hitting the courts soon on what is now a First Amendment free speech issue.

Even people who cover the league see this for what it is.   A straight up admission that you NFLowners don't care about the Black players who make up the members of your teams or are truly listening to what these players to say about this social justice issue.






#NoJusticeNoNFLPrognostication   #NFLRacism   #NoCoercedPatriotism

Patriotism should be a genuine expression of pride in your country and never forced on people.

That's a sign that you have a great country and a critical lesson you conservafools fail to understand. 

You also fail to understand that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.  Criticizing the ills of your country so it can correct problems is the duty of all who consider themselves patriots     

Let's be real, far too often in my life my patriotism is conditional based on current events affecting my people and the answers to two questions: 

How do I feel about my country?   How does my country feel about me?

And far too often I'm quite aware of the fact when I or any African American asks those questions, that a large percentage of my fellow Americans hate me and my people simply for existing, or daring to say why Black people feel the way we do about the USA.

No justice, no NFL prognostication..

Happy Valentine's Day 2018

Happy Valentine's Day people!

For those of you who are happily married, engaged, or booed up on this day for lovers I'm not mad at you.  I'll just be buying my own chocolate instead of having someone get it for me. 

I've seen many of my family, friends and acquaintances fall in love, and in some cases gotten married.  I've even been the bridesmaid in one friend;s weeding back in 2004. Some of those relationships are ongoing, others fell by the wayside for various reasons.

While I have a lot of talents in various areas, there are some things that have been difficult for me to have happen for me in my life.  One of those difficult things for me is being in a sustained long term relationship.   Maybe it was because I missed the signs early or the right person still hasn't come into my life yet, but I'm still single.  I envy you peeps who are happily coupled, with or without a marriage license.

I knew when I transitioned in 1994 that one of the things that could possibly happen is I could possibly be spending the rest of my life by myself and never be in a committed relationship again because it's hard for a trans women, and especially Black trans women to find love.

More often than not in the early years of my transition I saw marriages contentiously break up because one partner transitioned.

But over the last few years I've been seeing it happen for more than a few trans people who are either hooked up with a cis partner or what has been happening more frequently here and around the world, two trans people marrying each other.  .I'm even seeing it happen more often of people staying together and living up to the 'till death do us part' portion of their wedding vows when one person transitions.

I was also blessed to have a ringside seat as Nikki Loyd found love with Will while simultaneously fighting for and winning her landmark Araguz v. Delgado case that cemented the right for Texas trans people to get legally married   It's been fun to see how their fab life has transpired since that court victory, because it's obvious when I'm spending quality time around them they are still madly in love with each other.

But love in Trans, Bi and SGL World is not necessarily heteronormative.  There are bi couples, same gender loving couple and even polyamorous ones.  Some of them have lasted for decades, some till death do us part, while others broke apart because of drama.

To borrow the words of the comedian J. Anthony Brown, 'same sex marriage, same relationship drama'.

One of the things I also want to ponder on this Valentine's Day is what is happening in the ranks of trans attracted men   These are the cis men who see trans women as viable long term relationship and lifetime partners, but in many cases have to come to grips first with the idea they are attracted to trans women. 

Once they get past that hurdle, they then have to get past the genitalia issue and deal with the attacks on their masculinity for daring to love a transgender woman be she pre-op, post-op or non operative.

But those conversations are going to have to be had and led by trans attracted men. 

As much as we trans women would like that set of 'they unapologetically love trans women' epiphanies to happen like yesterday, just as we trans people have had to give people time to come to grips with our trans evolutionary process, we must do the same for trans attracted men. 

Once the trans attracted men evolve, one of the things that must happen in the wake of that is they will need to come out of the shadows and unequivocally state that they love us, there's nothing wrong with that, and society can kiss their azzes if they don't like it.

And that might take a celebrity doing that to break that psychic door down or our younger generations making that happen.

When will that day happen?   Damned good question.   But it does need to happen soon because we need to expeditiously erase the stigma surrounding trans relationships involving cisgender people, because that stigma I believe is a factor driving some of the anti-trans intimate partner violence that can lead to our deaths.

So to all of you peeps who are booed up on this day or well on your way to jumping the broom into the land of matrimony, congratulations.    I'll be on the sideline cheering you on and hoping for all of you to have long, healthy and happy relationships, no matter what it looks like to the outside world or what genitalia is concealed in your underwear.

.Happy Valentine's Day people!