Precious and Myles Are Having A Baby!

Y'all know I have mad love for Myles and Precious Brady-Davis, and the last time I spent any quality time with the both of them was back during #CC16 in Chicago.

We jjokingly call them in the community the 'Trans Obamas' because this amazing Chicago based trans power couple are both doing trailblazing advocacy work.   He's the communications director for Equality Illinois, while Precious is communications manager for the Sierra Club.

You may also remember Precious' apperance on the show Say Yes To The Dress in the runup to her and Myles' wedding.

While Myles has always wanted to have children, Precious initially wasn't feeeling parenthood but got onboard with the idea after being convinced by Myles.

It was a two year journey for them to get to this point.   Their initial attempt at IVF failed, and both had to go off their respecttive masculinizing and feminizing hormone regimens in order to give themselves the best possible chance for parenthood to happen.   It did, and now they are on a countdown to their child's December due date.

Congratulations Precious and Myles, and may your child be healthy, happy and surrounded with love!. .

Soldier Accepts His Trans Daughter Video

Every now and then you get to see a video that tugs on your heart and reminds you what you are fighting for. 

I constantly say in any interview I do that the trans rights work I'm getting recognized for is about the kids behind me and leaving a better world for them.

This video short illustrates that better world I and other trans advocates are working to make a reality.   This video is about a teen trans girl who has a father in the military and transitions while he is deployed. 

You'll have to watch it and see what happens when he finds out his child has transitioned while he's away. 

Donahue Show: Trans People and Their Families

Another Donahue trans show, circa 1987 in which he interviews a trans woman and her supportive sister.

Enjoy the video

Happy Father's Day, TransGriot Readers!

Today is Father's Day, and I wanted to take a few moments of your blog surfing time to give a shout to all the people who are dads, or who are father figures to some youngling in their lives.

It's a role that's vitally important in shaping the adults we grow up to be.

Happy Father's Day!

If You Don't Have Family In Your Life, Create Your Own

One of the things I was thinking about as I was enjoying the company of my family and my cousin's friends at her birthday party two weeks ago is how blessed I was to be in this situation.

I'm fortunate to have educated people embedded in my family who not only are aware of the issues, but are people of faith who live and practice their values. 

I know I'm indeed blessed to have blood family members who actually think it's cool I have a blog and are proud of the fact I am an internationally recognized trans activist.  

But I am quite painfully aware of the fact there are others who aren't quite so fortunate.   They've been kicked to the blood family curb for daring to be their true selves, and that stinks.

But there is a solution to that problem.    If your blood family won't embrace you and give you the unconditional love you need to thrive, create your own family by surrounding yourself with people who do love and care about you unconditionally.

When I was having issues with that at the beginning of my transition in 1994, I surrounded myself with chosen family and friends who enveloped me with unconditional love until my blood family came around to the fact this wasn't a phase in my life but a permanent reality .  

So yeah, when I say create your own family to get through this time period, I'm not selllin' you woof tickets on it.  I've put into practice what I'm advising you in this post to do because it works.

And yes, that created family is still around and part of my life today. 

Transpeeps Need Family Love During The Holidays, Too

The holiday season is cranking up once again and for the next month we'll be inundated with holiday specials showing people with their families. 

We'll have commercials trying to sell us stuff with the same returning home for the holidays theme.  We'll be inundated with Christmas music on heavy rotation on our favorite radio stations heavy on the home and family message and all the other trappings of the Festival of Conspicuous Consumption and its peace on earth and good will to all message.

I'm blessed to be one of those transpeople that can not only pick up the phone and call my parents and other family members on a regular basis, I get to hang out with them during the holiday season and beyond in the New Year at reunions and other events.

However, there are some people in the trans community that aren't so blessed.  Because they are living their lives as their true selves, their families have rejected them   Add to it the everyday slights, discrimination, outright disrespect and denial of our humanity aimed at transpeople combined with the relentless drumbeat of happy family life depicted in the media, you have a perfect storm of events that can depress a person in that situation.

If it is not checked in time that can and has led to people in the trans community taking their lives.

The pain of rejection hurts.  The pain gets more intense during the holiday season, and hence our heightened concern during the holiday season for our trans community members that are struggling emotionally to get through the holiday season.  

So with another holiday season upon us, let's be cognizant of the fact there are people in our community that can't go home for the holidays.  There are folks whose families will not invite them to sit at the family Thanksgiving table or get to eat Christmas dinner this year, much less even call them or drop them off a Christmas gift.

If you find yourself in that situation of not having contact with your blood family, combat the holiday blues by creating a family of your own and building holiday traditions with them.  If you know of people in the community who are going to be alone today or on Christmas Day, extend an invitation for them to have dinner at your holiday table.   They'll deeply appreciate having a destination to go to during this holiday season and you'll have somebody else to share that turkey with.


Failing that, there's always some organization in town who will need volunteers to help them serve Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners to the homeless or less fortunate among us. 

Consider doing that to take your mind off the fact you're not with your blood family on this day.   

Yes, transpeople need family love every day of the year, but that need is even more pronounced during the holiday season.     

And if other people won't give it to you, be tough minded enough to give that gift to yourself. 

The Great Banana Bread Conspiracy

TransGriot Note:Guest post from Renee, my fave mommy blogger and the editor of Womanist Musings  


I love to be in the kitchen when I am able, and I love to cook for my family.  I watch hours of the Food Network everyday as I write blog posts, looking for new ideas.  I like to continually introduce my family to different foods and new flavors.  Baking however, is something that I am not a fan of.  It could be because cooking is art and baking is a science.  Whether you are baking a cake or cookies, inevitably the measuring cups and measuring spoons have to be used, whereas; when you cook, you can add a bit of this and that, and alter the recipe to your particular palate.

My love and respect of food means that I cannot stand letting food go to waste.  The desire to ensure that everything we purchase gets consumed, means that at least once a week, I get into a battle with the kids about eating the leftovers. When I notice that the banana's have reached the point where they are singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot, inevitably I will bake a banana bread to ensure that they are consumed.  This is something that I used to hardly ever do, because my family loves bananas.  They are usually the very first fruit eaten, that is until recently.

The last three weeks, I have found 6-8 bananas well past their prime in the fruit bowl, and so I have made a double size banana bread, which was consumed in one day btw.  At first, I was really pleased that they ate the bread, but when it happened again the next week, I started to realize that something was most definitely up.

Last night, I couldn't sleep and so I decided to surprise them with peanut butter and jam muffins for breakfast.  The children love it when I bake, and I knew that this would be a wonderful breakfast surprise for them. As I mixed the peanut butter with oil, brown sugar, flour and eggs, I thought back to a few years ago when Destruction pointed out that other mommies bake far more often than I do.  At the time, I really saw it as him using my gender to get me to create culinary delights for them, and quickly pointed out that I would be happy to take him to the bakery. When that didn't work, he actually attempted to order me into the kitchen.  Though he was only four at the time, as you might well imagine, this did not have the result that he intended.

Each time I do get around to baking for my family, whatever I make gets consumed quickly.  They always ooh and aah about how good it is, and say that because I do it so infrequently, that they have to get their share as quickly as possible.  At any rate, while I was baking the muffins last night, I began to wonder if the sudden appearance of soft bananas, was to get me to bake for them more often.  How exactly do kids who are more than capable of eating 2-3 bananas a day, if I don't monitor them, suddenly stop eating bananas altogether?  Then I thought about the fact that the unhusband, and the kids have all taken turns mentioning to me that the bananas are getting soft, and that if we don't eat them soon, that something would have to be done. Uh huh.

There you have it folks.  The menfolk in my family are crafty, crafty, crafty.  I believe that they have avoided eating the bananas, because they knew that I would not let them go to waste.  I believe they have realized that if they could just forgo their desire for a little while, that the soft bananas would result in a warm and comforting banana bread.  Yes, if they stopped eating and then made a point of telling me how much they love the banana bread when I made it, I would be inspired to keep baking.  Readers, I am being exploited and manipulated.  It took me awhile to figure out what was going on, but now I am sure of it.

I am sure that they were much encouraged when the peanut butter muffins appeared this morning.  Yes, those crafty, crafty, crafty menfolk must have believed that had finally broken me.  Not only did I bake a banana bread this week, I baked them muffins.  Earlier in the week, I had even mentioned making an apple cake, because this time of the year, apples are plentiful and cheap.  If you look in my fruit bowl right now, you will see that the menfolk have consumed all of the pears, but the apples mysteriously are still in the bowl.  Uh huh. I now firmly believe that they are attempting to shift the great banana bread conspiracy to apples, to get me to produce an apple cake.

I cannot prove my suspicions conclusively, but I do believe that the sudden lack of consumption of fruit, combined with the occasional comments about the possibility of fruit going to waste, amounts to strong evidence that I have been played.  This weekend, I plan to present the menfolk with my findings.  I am certain that Destruction will be the one to cave first. He has never been good at keeping a secret, whereas; Mayhem and the unhusband are like a vault.  I am not sure what kind of penance I should sentence them to once their guilt and manipulation have been revealed, but there most certainly shall be justice.  I have always known that they have the potential to be crafty, but to have all three of them manipulating me this way, is something I never would have expected them to be capable of. This is actually worse than Sparky's Beloved hiding the bread maker, to get him to bake him fresh bread daily by hand. Yes, it's treachery

I think that the three of them need to spend time in kitchen baking me something.  Yes, yes, I most certainly do.  Now that I am on to them, I shall hence forth give them the side eye every time they mention any sort of baked good.  There will be no more baking on a weekly basis.

How Do You Identify As Trans On Your Family Tree?

One of the on again-off again projects I work on in my spare time is compiling family history.   Since my mom is the family historian it has devolved to me the eldest child and my sis Latoya in terms of keeping things and the stories straight as to who is related to who and how

Mom compiles the family reunion photo albums that travel with her when we attend our rotating annual late June family reunion that moves between the Texas branch of the family in Dallas and Houston, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi and Florida..

I've taken on the project of handling the family trees. When I was compiling the one for my father's side of the family in the late 90's, I was fortunate to stumble across detailed information that my great grandmother Jane wrote down in a family Bible my late grandmother Tama kept.  She was a schoolteacher and was diligent about accurately compiling a family tree that helped me trace that side back to just after the Civil War ended.  

I remember how emotional I got in 1999 when I was two hours into searching through 1910 Census records at Houston's Clayton Genealogical Library and I found her.  I cried for five minutes because she died in childbirth as a twentysomething woman and it felt like I was reaching out and touching her for that brief moment.   

Finding my great grandmother also revealed some then unknown to me info about my great-great grandmother being born in Kentucky.   I didn't know what county she was born in and that's still to be determined, but little did I know that familial information would come in handy. 

During my time I was living in the Bluegrass State I had someone who disagreed with me try to call me an 'outsider' during a 2003 community meeting and I verbally pimp slapped them with the fact my great-great grandmother was born in the state..    

Knowing how important family trees are to future generations and giving you a sense of knowing who you are, where your family has been and where you've come from, in the context of compiling mine I have an interesting conundrum to consider.

What do you do and how do you record it when a family member has transitioned?

I've looked on various genealogical websites trying to get an answer to that question, but have yet to see it addressed or even asked.   

So what did I do to handle it?  I listed myself under Monica, but put a 'born as' note with my old name and 'transitioned in 1994'.

A family tree is history, and you should treat it like you do when you disclose your medical history to your doctor.  Be honest and as accurate as possible. 

I'm proud of the person I've become, I'm still evolving to be, what I have and hopefully will continue to accomplish.  The reality is I spent a few years on the other side of the gender fence.  I'm not ashamed of being a transwoman and have no problem with future generations in my family knowing that.   

You never know.  75 to 80 years from now one of your great-great nieces or nephews or a great-great grandchild may one day be trying to sort through the data from the 1990, 2000 or 2010 census attempting to reconcile it against the family tree they have.

Don't deny future ancestors that joy of discovery  simply because you may have issues about the fact you were born on the other side of the gender fence and whether we like it or not, have a paper trail inside and outside the family that will reveal that point.