You Really Tried To Whitewash Stonewall Again, Roland Emmerich?

You would think that director Roland Emmerich, with the sequel to Independence Day coming out on Friday, would have learned his lesson last year to not piss me, the blogosphere, the Net and other TBLG people of color off.

Elizabeth Rivera e-mailed me the link to his interview in The Guardian, and was shocked when Emmerich's behind tried to go down the whitewashing route again.  When he was asked about his 2015 whitewashed Stonewall flop, he went there and said in the interview that 'Stonewall was a white event'.

"My movie was exactly what they said it wasn't it was politically correct.  It had black, transgender people in there.  We just got killed by one voice on the Internet who saw a trailer and said this is whitewashing Stonewall. Stonewall was a white event, let's be honest.  But nobody wanted to hear that any more."

Really?  During Pride Weekend you try this?   That waste of digital film was whitewashing the history of the 1969 Stonewall riots, and I'm proud of being one of many voices on the Net who called your ass out for trying to go there in the first place.

Stonewall was kicked off by people of color, and there's ample photographic evidence and interviews confirming the participation of trans and other people of color in that June 28, 1969.  You then compounded the mistake of relegating major Stonewall historical figures Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P/ Johnson to minor character status in your whitewashed Stonewall movie fantasy by adding a fictional white main character that you admitted was written into the story to appeal to a straight white audience.

So yeah boo boo kitty, not sorry I called that Stonewall movie whitewashing out in my TransGriot post that went megaviral.  I'm an unapologetic equal opportunity truth teller with a widely read blog and it would have been a crime against history for me to not do so.

If by doing so I may have been the spark that jumped off the backlash and protests that were the catalysts to the movie tanking, then that's all good.

The critics spotted the same whitewashing I noted, Mr Emmerich, so let's not go there trying to minimize the vocal opposition to your movie even though you already tried to.  Next time you do one of those movies based on a documented historical event, try grounding it in some historical truth and going from there.  You'll find it may be better for your box office receipts.

I see it has become necessary to school you again until you get it that the Stonewall Inn was the hangout for TBLG people of color and low income LGBT people in New York, not Fire Island closeted gays.  When faced with more NYPD oppression and harassment, those TBLG people of color, who had nothing to lose and were tired of being oppressed, jumped off a rebellion that subsequently led to the start of the modern TBLG rights movement.

And I got that info from not only reading the historical accounts of it, but people who were actually there like Miss Major and a Houston based Big Five gay leader i cross path with on a regular basis in Ray Hill.

I was going to move on from last year and spend some of my T-bills at my local multiplex to check out the Independence Day Resurgence sequel since I loved the original movie, but now I think I'll spend that money on something else like vendors at my local pride event.

You know, the weekend we have those parades and festivals around the country and the world to celebrate the 1969 riot jumped off by BTLG people of color that started the modern TBLG movement.

Told Y'all Papi Edwards Was A #GirlLikeUs

"In my two decades of lived experience as a Black trans woman, I have seen more than a few young gay males who liked doing drag, claimed it was 'a hobby', only did it for pageants or gay nightclub talent nights and swore up and down they were gay men and had no intention to transition.

But a year or two later after having that gender epiphany, those same gay males were declaring they were trans, swallowing hormones, answering to feminine names and transitioning to live full time as female."
-TransGriot, February 2, 2015,, The Case For Edwards Being A Trans Murder Victim"

Well, as this Dominic Holden March 6 BuzzFeed article points out, Moni was right.

A trans woman who knew Ms. Edwards and was also at the January 9 murder scene named Tiffany, came forward and publicly confirmed what I was hearing from multiple Louisville contacts.

“Papi got shot because she was a transgender female,” Tiffany told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview this month. “That is exactly why she was killed — because of gender identity.”

The photo in this post is a surveillance camera still shot of Ms. Edwards moments before she was killed.  And she is clearly presenting as female moments before she was killed. 

Henry Gleaves, the alleged shooter who prematurely ended Papi's young life, just had another court hearing March 26, with the trial due to start in Da Ville on October 27.

We have had eight trans women killed this year.  I expect there will be more before the calendar turns to January 1, 2016.   This Edwards case underscores the importance of police departments when they encounter trans murder victims, ACCURATELY identifying and publicizing the fact they are dealing with a trans murder case.

Because the sooner the trans community knows we are dealing with a trans murder case, the sooner we can spring into action to help you peeps in law enforcement solve them.

Gayjacking and Whitewashing Philadelphia Trans History?

When we talk about erasure and gayjacking of trans history, this is how it happens.  

The Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In that occurred in April-May 1965 was the first protest organized around specifically trans issues, and it was done so predominately by Black trans people.  There have been attempts to whitewash this FUBU protest organized around African-American Civil Rights Movement principles as a Clark Polak-Janus Society production.    

Cei Bell wrote this letter to the editor in the Philadelphia Gay News concerning a story that the city is considering naming a section of Locust Street between 12th and 13th Streets for Barbara Gittings, who is considered the mother of the gay and lesbian movement. 

Last week, PGN published an article about Locust Street between 12th and 13th being renamed Barbara Gittings Way [“‘Gittings Way’ in the works,” June 22-28]. Malcolm Lazin, who proposed the renaming, referred to Gittings as the mother of the LGBT movement.

Just because something (or someone) is lesbian and gay doesn’t make it LGBT.

In the ’60s, when Gittings was one of the organizers of the Annual Reminders protest at Independence Hall, the point of the men dressing in suits and the women wearing dresses and carrying pocketbooks was they did not want drag queens, effeminate males and butch dykes — the homosexual stereotypes — at the protest. The reason effeminate males, drag queens and butch dykes were the stereotype is because they were the only people who were out of the closet. Rock Hudson certainly wouldn’t turn from kissing Doris Day and say, “I really want to suck tonsils with Troy Donahue!” That may have been the official moment that the movement began intentionally excluding and harassing gender-variant people out of the movement.

On the other hand, the earlier successful May 1965 sit-in demonstration by drag queens at Dewey’s (a restaurant at 17th and Chancellor streets where Little Pete’s is located) allowed straight-appearing gay men such as Clark Polak from the Janus Society and lesbians to join them. Social class may be the reason why the Independence Hall demonstrations by Gittings and others are promoted as historic while the earlier sit-in demonstration by drag queens at Dewey’s to be served has been ignored.

Bell asserts that in the 60's and 70's, 13th and Locust streets were multicultural hangouts for Philadelphia drag queens and transsexuals and suggests that the more apropos sections of Philadelphia streets for honoring Gittings would be Spruce between 13th and Juniper where the William Way GLBT Center sits, not the ones they are considering.

Rani Found Not Guilty In 2010 Pakistan Marriage Case

Remember Rani, the Pakistani transwoman who was arrested during a raid of her northwest Pakistan birthday party and falsely accused of attempting to enter into a same gender marriage with Malik Iqbal two years ago?

I cited this as a example of the annoying pattern of 'gayjacking' trans lives by GL advocacy organizations, the gay media and the Gayosphere to advance the narrow policy agenda of the vanillacentric GL community.  

Yeah, yeah, I and 'errbody' else in the Transosphere and our enlightened allies know that a transwoman and cismale getting married is NOT a same gender marriage.  So do elements of the GL community who shadily try to co-opt and 'gayjack' these types of news stories for their benefit.  

But work with me people on this one and continue reading. 


Some good news has come out of Pakistan in the wake of that initial burst of international publicity and attention surrounding the case    Turns out the charges had to be dropped because prosecutors could find no evidence of Rani attempting to get married.   In addition, Iqbal already had two wives and wasn't looking to add a third.  He was simply at the party to help celebrate Rani's birthday. .

Iqbal told reporters he will file a defamation case against the former chief of the Faqirabad police station who had leveled the charges against him. 

But happiest of all for our Pakistani transsister Rani whose name has been cleared in this jacked up case as well that should have never happened in the first place.