Women Come In All Shapes, Body Sizes, Hairstyles and Genitalia Configurations

One of the silver linings in this jacked up Caster Semenya situation is that it's fostering a serious discussion around the planet about the parameters of femininity.

Trans and intersex people can already tell you that gender is not an either/or immutable proposition. Just as there is a continuum of sexuality, there is one for gender as well.

Anyone who remembers their reality based science classes knows that you get half your genetic material from mommy and half your genetic material from daddy.

That leads to some very interesting variations and combinations of traits alleged to belong to the 'opposite' gender that can be mixed and matched in a masculine or feminine bodied person.

There are masculine bodied persons who are short with small hands and feet. Conversely, there are feminine bodied people who are tall, have large hands and wear double digit shoe sizes.

Then you have those peeps that Mother Nature got creative with and did the mixing and matching of various traits and chromosome patterns.

One of the things we have to realize in this evolving femininity discussion is that for centuries, the standard of beauty is a narrow Eurocentric one that by default 'others' women of color.

Black women have particularly suffered because of this beauty standard. Thanks to slavery, for centuries myths and falsehoods peddled as 'scientific facts' were used along with religious dogma to justify denying the humanity of African descended people.

Contrary to what some people believe, the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's didn't magically make that negative history disappear. Those centuries old ideas and myths are still stubbornly part of our culture today.

As philosopher Simone de Beauvoir observed, 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.'

On the way to womanhood, some of us were fortunate to be born in feminine bodies at birth. Others of us had to work at morphing into our feminine bodies as fast as we could later in life.

But it's past time to recognize that women come in all shapes, body sizes, hairstyles, hair colors, and genitalia configurations.

Reclaiming My Inner Diva

Many times we women become so wrapped up in doing things for others that we sometimes forget to take time out to do something for ourselves.

One of the things I love to do is hit my local nail shop for a manicure and pedicure at least once a month.

Because of the recession and hour cutbacks at work it was one of the first things I did to cut the fat out of my personal budget.

But what I failed to realize in doing so was that the nail and hair salon trips were a little noticed but important part of the psychological maintenance of my femininity.

When I step out of that nail shop (and the beauty shop), it's a piece of the myriad things I do as part of projecting my feminine image to the world and a part of maintaining healthy self esteem.

Granted after 15 years of toil and struggle and having the slings and arrows of numerous haters hurled at me, you have to have a diva's attitude and serious intestinal fortitude just to survive transition and operating in the world as a transperson.

But cultivating your inner diva is an important part of maintaining your femininity in a marginalized body.

In a world in which whiteness thrives and the beauty ideal for women is a petite, thin, hourglass waisted, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slim buttocked and narrow hipped body, women of color, and especially Black women are constantly positioned as the unwomen.

You see it when Black female athletes who dominate their sports such as the late Florence Griffith-Joyner and the Williams sisters have their femininity questioned at international events or are challenged to take gender tests to 'prove' their femininity.

Sometimes the shade is cattily thrown by other women who lost because of their own piss poor sporting performances or failures to work as hard as the person who defeated them.

If they are tall and excel in their sport, they have 'that's a man' shade derisively spat at them.

In many cases as a Black woman, you don't even have to be an athlete or an entertainer to have your gender identity questioned.

If you are a Black transwoman, you get even more negativity hurled at you by society as well both inside and outside the race. That negativity can make it challenging at times to have a positive attitude about being the best person you can be.


So because of that heightened negativity, it's important for me as a transwoman of African descent to remind myself at regular intervals that I love me some Monica, I'm a Phenomenal Woman, a proud Transwoman and I'm a beautiful, spiritual person both inside and out.

When I apply my makeup, do my hair, put on my clothes, slip on my heels, and after checking myself out in my full length mirror, I have to feel and believe that I'm the sexiest woman alive.

I have to have the attitude as I interact with the world at large that I can hang with the best supermodels in the world and blow them off the catwalk.

I have to develop and have the self confidence to believe that I could walk onto a Miss Universe pageant stage and walk away with the crown.

Yes, there are times like any woman I feel 'unpretty'. But as long I as do the hard solid thinking about the type of woman I want to project to the word, pray about it, spend the time and effort into reclaiming my inner diva and making it happen, those unpretty days don't seem to last long.

Not Feeling 'Ze' and 'Hir'

There are some people in the trans community who use alternate gender neutral pronouns to describe themselves such as 'ze' and 'hir'.

While that may work fine for them it doesn't for the Phenomenal Transwoman. I'd be willing to bet more than a few of my transsistahs and transbrothas share my sentiments as well.

My beef with the alternate pronouns is fundamentally simple. We transpersons have a tough enough battle just getting people in general to use 'he' and 'she' property in our presence.

I and other African-American transpeople have a battle with fundamentalist elements of our community just to recognize we transpeople exist. My transpeeps are focused on getting our own community ejumacated' to use the proper pronouns.

Besides, I've spent a lot of time, treasure and effort to make body and gender identity match. I've worked hard for that 'she' pronoun and I'm not willing or ready to give it up just yet for 'ze', 'hir' or whatever comes up next.

Nope, I'm not feeling the alternate pronouns. She, ma'am, Miss, Ms. or madame works just fine for me.

Cisgender Isn't An Insult

It's been a hot topic lately on some transgender blogs, so it's time for me to weigh in with my thoughts on the word 'cisgender'.

So what is 'cisgender'?

It's a term coined around 1994 by Dutch transman Carl Buijs that refers to the alignment of gender identity with your physical body.

In other words, it is the opposite of transgender, in which there is a mismatch between your body and the gender identity housed in your brain.

So why do some peeps have a problem with it?

I believe the people having a problem with the word are wallowing in unacknowledged cisgender privilege. They are taken aback that there is a trans community term coined by trans people to describe them.

That throws them for a loop and they get upset because in their minds, they are the 'normal' people and as such, are the only people who get to define 'others', not the other way around.


Shoot, all you have to do is look at the comment fields on my Bilerico posts and elsewhere around the Net to see how many peeps get upset and call me 'racist' over the 'vanilla flavored privileged' term I used to describe white privilege.

Come to think of it, they call me 'racist' anytime I criticize the underlying structural assumptions that buttress whiteness.

But getting back to our current discussion.

Cisgender is a neutral term that doesn't have the negative accumulated baggage of being used to 'other' or used as a rallying cry by the Forces of Intolerance to oppress someone's human rights rights like trans has.

There are no people being made the butt of societal jokes because they are cisgender. There's no 'cisgender panic defense'. There's no one being denied a job because they are cisgender. There's no one being killed because of folks hating on you for being cisgender. There's no Cisgender Day Of Remembrance.

I repeat, cisgender means your body and the gender identity housed between your ears is comfortably aligned, nothing more, nothing less.

It means that from the time you were born until this point today in your lives, you were not only comfortable in your gender identity-body matchup, you are comfortable with the societal gender role you perform based on that body to the point that you hardly ever think about it.

If we're going to make the point that being transgender is an everyday biological/medical/social condition, we had to have some word in the vocabulary that describes most of the people walking Planet Earth who are not trans.

It's the same concept that underpins why gay people call non-gays 'straight'.

So why are y'all tripping, cisgender people? Cisgender isn't an insult.

Under Construction

I get in deep thought mode when I'm not at the wheel on these long road trips me and my cohorts frequently embark upon.

When me and Polar were south of Morgantown, WV we passed through a construction zone on I-79 as we zipped south toward Charleston. When my turn at the wheel was done, I thought about the orange signs announcing the presence of the construction zone and thought about it in another context.

A highway is always a work in progress. It takes maintenance to keep it in travel worthy shape. Over time they get improved, get rebuilt, repaved or reconstructed.

Like our highways, trans people also are never finished products, but are works in progress. We are always looking to perfect our gender presentations, improve things about ourselves either through surgical or other means, or striving to be better specimens of human beings to paraphrase the title of transwoman Sharon Davis' book.

In a sense, we are always under construction as well. You work toward and hope for continued positive evolution as you enter two, five, ten, twenty or however many years its been since the easy part of the body morphing started. What you hope for is that when it's all said and done, you end up being a better person today than when you first started down the transition highway.

ABC 20/20 Feature on AIS

Contrary to the BS the scientifically ignorant Reichers put out there, humans are a lot more complex than their simplistic line of thinking would have you believe.

Back in August 2008 ABC's 20/20 did a segment on AIS, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

In a nutshell, Androgen insensitivity syndrome is a condition that affects sexual development before birth and during puberty. People with this condition are genetically male, with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome in each cell. Because their bodies are unable to respond to certain male sex hormones (called androgens), they may have mostly female sex characteristics or signs of both male and female sexual development.

Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome occurs when the body cannot use androgens at all. People with this form of the condition have the external sex characteristics of females, but do not have a uterus and therefore do not menstruate and are unable to conceive a child (infertile). They are typically raised as females and have a female gender identity. Affected individuals have male internal sex organs (testes) that are undescended, which means they are abnormally located in the pelvis or abdomen.

Undescended testes can become cancerous later in life if they are not surgically removed. People with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome also have sparse or absent hair in the pubic area and under the arms.

Juju Chang interviewed Eden, and told her story.

How's Your T-Dar?

One of the issues that goes hand in hand with how well we are blending in with society is the concept similar to our gay and lesbian cousins of 'gaydar'.

We call it T-dar, and it's our alleged ability to pick out a transperson as they're out and about in the world based on our insider knowledge to transgender issues and other myriad characteristics.

There was one day several years ago I was visiting a transgender friend in New York and she challenged me to a test of my T-dar abilities by screening one of the Maury Povich 'Can You Tell' shows he does during sweeps month.



I got nine out of ten. I also didn't tell my friend I was 90% percent because many of those transwomen on that particular show I'd seen in various places on the Net, or were transgender porn world celebs like Allanah Starr.

Just like 'gaydar', it's an inexact science. Sometimes you're dead on target in terms of picking out transpeeps, and other times you are so far off base it can lead to some very embarrassing moments.

It can also lead to moments that can put you in danger, whether you are a cisgender or transgender woman.

A few years ago in Louisville we had an incident in which a six foot tall broad shouldered white woman with a short haircut was accosted by several inebriated white males, peppered with accusatory derogatory insults of either being a transwoman or a lesbian and nearly attacked before a bystander came to her rescue.

The ironic thing was that she was attending the Southern Baptist Theological seminary at the time, a place and a religious denomination which has pimped anti-GLBT hatred for right wing political reasons.

T-dar basically speaks to the point that I've noted over and over again that we are a blend of characteristics from mommy and daddy. I know 5'4" girls that wear double digit shoe sizes and men who have faces and hand sizes in what would be considered the feminine range.

We all have something about us that is assumed to be part of the other gender, and cultural obsessing over it needs to cease and desist.

Who Died And Made Y'all The Femininity Police?

While doing the research and searching through YouTube video for the Brittney Griner post, especially the one in which she's being interviewed, I noted that far too many comments from the haters ensued which questioned her femininity and made snide references to the movie Juwanna Mann in doing so.



In light of that I have to ask the question, who died and made y'all the femininity police? Are you little boys feeling jealous because some of you are Brittney's height or shorter and don't have her hoops skills?

You haters need to take some remedial science classes. The bottom line is that you get half your genetic material from mommy and half your genetic material from daddy. In addition to that, all human life at conception is female. You don't come out as boys on the other end of that nine month developmental journey inside mommy's womb until certain things happen during the eight to twelfth weeks of pregnancy that put the fetus firmly on the male development path.

That means, for the scientifically illiterate, if the hormone wash doesn't happen, you haters would have feminine names, be wearing heels and hose and wouldn't have the Almighty Phallus to grab at regular intervals.

It also means that you get a blend of physical characteristics from mommy and daddy and some interesting combinations as well. I know women who have deeper voices than Brittney does, and have you ever heard Toni Braxton sing certain notes? I also know men with feminine facial features and body builds, and women with big hands, long arms and big feet.

But this speaks to some of the larger issues I've talked about. The fact that Black women's images have been under attack for several centuries and we are considered less than beautiful and feminine. Too many times Black men, who are supposed to be our swords and shields in standing up for us and calling out the haters have aided and abetted in that image destruction. If you are a woman above 5'7" tall and have what are considered 'masculine' features, you're automatically assumed to be a transwoman or insultingly called one as Ciara and a depressingly long list of Black women have been.

Even the so called 'proof' of bearing children doesn't end that negativity hurled at them. Just ask our 5'11" First Lady, who was disrespectfully called 'Stokely Carmichael in a dress' by Faux News conservaidiot Juan Williams.

There was even a scene in one of my fave movies Love & Basketball that illustrates this. Sanaa Lathan's character Monica Wright is a high school superstar baller in this movie who could really care less about the feminine pursuits like her mother and sister until other women start chasing her love interest, her longtime next door neighbor and basketball prodigy Quincy McCall.

At her high school spring dance during her senior year she reluctantly gets glammed up for the event after losing the city championship game earlier in the day. She's enjoying herself, and while taking a dance break she's comfortably leaning forward in her chair with her legs spread instead of sitting ruler straight on the back of the chair with her knees together while wearing her dress. Two boys walk by and you hear them say loud enough for her to hear it "I'm a man" as they chuckle to themselves. Monica then instantly snaps into 'feminine' seating position.

It ain't just 'the menz' who are guilty of femininity policing. Women can be just as bad or even worse in some cases. Be a girl who is interested in sports or who isn't in their judgment 'feminine enough' for their tastes and watch the catty remarks come flying off their tongues.

The point is that it's arrogantly ignorant of men to think that they can and have the power to make that judgment call on who is and isn't feminine based on your exposure to the Jet Beauty of the Week, rap videos or Playboy and King magazine photo spreads and it needs to stop.

Waah! Nigeria Loses To Equatorial Guinea

Ever since the African Women's Championship tourney was launched in 1998, the Nigerian national women's team has dominated women's soccer on the Mother Continent.

They've won this tournament five times, but the defending champion Super Falcons suffered a shocking 1-0 loss on Tuesday in the tournament semifinals to the hosts from Equatorial Guinea. It set off a wild celebration in the capital city of Malabo and denied the Super Falcons a chance to take home their sixth title.

Instead, for the first time in the ten year history of the African Women's Championship, the Nigerians will be playing for third place on November 28 versus Cameroon while the hosts head to the title match versus South Africa on Saturday.

The reason I'm mentioning it is because gender issues reared their ugly heads in the pre-match gamesmanship and the whining from the losing team after the match.

One of the tired recurring themes in women's sports is the fear that in order to gain a competitive advantage, men will either dress up as women in order to win individual sports glory, be ordered to do so and be placed on those teams by higher level political (or sports) officials hungry for prestige, or feed their female athletes testosterone as the East Germans did all in the name of garnering international sporting glory and prestige.

Despite the fact that rumors the USSR's medal winning Press sisters Irina and Tamara were males that interestingly enough both retired from international competition prior to the institution by the IOC of gender testing before the 1968 Olympic cycle, the only nation (so far) busted for actually doing so is Nazi Germany in the 1936 Olympics.

They forced Hermann Ratjen, who had ambiguous genitalia, to live as Dora for three years and compete in the Olympic women's high jump as Dora. There was also the same 'that's a man' shade thrown in the 1936 Berlin Games 100m final at Helen Stephens after she upset defending Olympic champ Stella Walsh in then world record time.

The Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) spent several days before the semifinal match with Equatorial Guinea grousing about two players in general, Binguisa Simpore and Salimata Simpore. They demanded that the CAF (Confederation of African Football) do gender tests on them prior to the match and when the CAF deferred action on the protest until next month, threatened to boycott the match.

Super Falcon Lillian Cole stated in a Guardian (Nigeria) interview," I am not trying to give excuses for our inability to make it to the final, but sincerely speaking, it would be difficult for a team made of female players to beat those Equatorial Guinean team. We played against men and it is so unfortunate for CAF to allow 'men' to be playing in a nations cup meant for women.

"Those two players (Binguisa Simpore and Salimata Simpore) are men no matter how somebody will try to convince me. Even their captain, Anonma Genoveva is more of a man than a woman. I expected CAF to act on the protest filed by Nigeria before the match."

Maureen Eke echoed her teammate, asserting that the presence of those two 'men' in the Guinean squad stopped the Falcons from operating smoothly.

"We did everything within our limit to break into their defense but you saw how the 'boy' in their defense was using his power to block every move we made. He didn't give us any space at all because he has the power of a man and it was very wrong'

Meow, ladies. You lost, get over it.

Equatorial Guinea team captain Genoveva, one of the targets of Cole's sour graping, showed more class than her vanquished opponents did. She tearfully called it a dream come true at the post match press conference.

"Nigeria is a big country filled with experienced players. But for this tournament, we prepared extremely hard and I am happy it is coming in my time."

Bottom line, if Precious Dede stops Genoveva's free kick in the 58th minute from going into the net, y'all might have been playing in the finals despite the fact you've only scored two goals in this entire tournament.

The Nigerian women need to look in the mirror in terms of who lost this tournament. As I can tell you firsthand from being a fan of the USA basketball dynasty, it doesn't last forever.

While you're coasting on past glory and feeling it's your birthright to win international titles, the teams you beat up on in those international competitions will eventually get tired of taking sports beatdowns from you. They stop being 'scurred' and in awe of being on the same field with you, get mad and begin working smarter and harder to dethrone you. Sooner or later their hard work is rewarded and they begin getting the lucky bounces in games that eventually lead to just what happened to the Super Falcons on Tuesday.

So just like the Team USA men's b-ballers had to reorganize the way they did things after the embarrassing losses in the 2002 FIBA Championships (on home soil no less) and the 2004 Athens Games, stop making excuses, roll up their sleeves and start working, looks like the same thing needs to happen in Nigeria with the women's soccer team.

And to Lillian Cole, Maureen Eke and all the other Nigeria Super Falcon women, I'd be careful who you disrespectfully call men because you're mad you lost. Some of y'all don't exactly look like Nigerian supermodel Oluchi Onweagba or Nollywood starlets.

And stop the whining, excuse making and denigrating your opponents. It's the first step to getting your international championship groove back.


TransGriot Note: Update peeps- Equatorial Guinea went on to win the AWC by defeating South Africa 2-1. The Nigerians took home the bronze medal after a 1-1 draw with Cameroon was settled on penalty kicks.

Genevova, one of the players the Nigerians were hatin' on, scored the game winning goal. In fact she personally scored more goals (six) than the Super Falcons collectively did in the entire tournament.

Evolving Into Black Womanhood

A part of being intrinsically human is our imperative to evolve. To become better, stronger, faster, smarter and healthier.

Transpeople are no different. We just think about an element of it that most people don't, gender identity.

One of the subjects I spend a lot of time thinking about now that I'm on the other side of the gender fence is my continuing evolution towards being the best woman and the best person I can be, despite spending twenty plus years in a male body.

Whether women want to acknowledge it or not, like their transsisters, all girls do not come into the world from birth knowing everything there is to know about femininity and womanhood. The only advantages you have over transwomen is that you possess the body-brain gender map match at birth, you have a head start in learning it, were encouraged by your families and society to do so and have time in your teen years to make your mistakes as you grow into your gender role.

It's been often said that there's nothing harder than being a Black man or a Black woman. I'd like to introduce you to the Monica Roberts remix of that comment.

There's nothing harder than being a Black man or a Black woman in a mismatched body.

But it was the hand I was dealt, and all I can do now that I'm finally on the evolutionary path to womanhoood is deal with and move on. But how do you do that?

First order of business is to decide what is the image of Black womanhood that you want to personally project to the world? Once you get that part figured out, then you take the time to observe the fine examples of Black womanhood around you.

One thing we transwomen share with you is that we also get to watch and (hopefully) learn from the mistakes the biowomen and transwomen surrounding us made. You pick and choose the qualities you like that's close to the target feminine image in your mind in terms of fashion tips, style, traits and personality. You toss out the stuff you don't like or doesn't work for you as you evolve to match on the outside the unique person that's on the inside.

I had wonderful role models and examples in terms of my mother, aunts, my sisters various cousins and friends. I had other women I came in contact with from school, my church, work, and just being out and about in the world that had admirable qualities as well.

The other ingredient that's part of an evolution into Black womanhood is pride. Pride in yourself and pride in our people. The pride in yourself is sometimes hard to come by as a transwoman because of the daily slings and arrows you suffer from society as you transition. There are the shame and guilt issues we're plagued with from time to time that we all have to work through no matter how long we've been transitioning in addition to all the traditional issues Black women in society grapple with.

But having that pride translates into making sure that you not only look good, but your behavior is on point and you carry yourself with class and dignity. Once you do that, then the inner beauty begins to shine through and you begin to feel more comfortable and at ease with yourself.

You also have to be on guard as a transwoman into not having your evolving Black womanhood based solely on your body. You also have to be on guard against believing the negative hype and feeling that the only thing that values you is how many 'husbands' you have showering you with attention, how many you sleep with, or your femininty is tied up in how big your butt or breasts are.

Beauty fades over time, and that tight body you had in your twenties and thirties will eventually fall victim to gravity and a slowing metabolism. You should be developing your mind in conjunction with your body development.

The body is also the easy part of the transition as well. But as the initial awkward phase of a body transition fades and you have staring back at you the face and body of a chocolate (or all the other shades from vanilla creme to dark ebony) Nubian goddess standing before you, it's hard not to be proud of that and proud of the many accomplishments of our people despite tremendous odds.

That brings me to another ingredient in the evolutionary path, knowing our history. You have to look at the fact that we are descended from people that survived the Middle Passage. A gender transition is nothing compared to what Black women endured during slavery, emancipation and still endure even today, but still found ways to uplift our race, this country and themselves. Once you put a gender transition in that context, it makes me feel sometimes that I have to step up my game and be on point just to be worthy of Black womanhood.

My being the Phenomenal Transwoman also stands on the shoulders and the work of the people that proceeded me. From Avon Wilson, the first African-American transwoman to go through the now shuttered Johns Hopkins gender program in the mid 60's, the kids at Dewey's Lunch Counter and the sisters at Stonewall standing up for their rights, to Justina Williams, the late Roberta Angela Dee and all those transwomen who either lived their lives not letting anyone know their secret or who were out and proud before it was cool to be out and proud..

Don't let biowomen make you feel less than female because you can't bear children. There are more than a few biowomen who are in the non childbearing boat with their transsisters, and I don't see any mad rush to call them 'men' because of it.

The final ingredient is spirituality. Faith in God, or whatever you call the higher power that's greater than yourself. Nurturing a faith that will sustain you through the rough times and allow you to appreciate the blessings. And while I complain about it at times, being transgender is one of those blessings.

I and many of my sisters take our evolution into Black womanhood that seriously. But unfortunately there are others who aren't that conscious of what they're stepping up to when they swallow their first hormones or took their first shot to jump start the transition, or have a Toni Childsesque attitude toward it.

I and many of my transsisters aren't wanting to be seen as a detriment to Black womanhood. We wish to be seen as a compliment to it as we follow our evolutionary destinies and make body and feminine gender mapped minds mesh together.

For all the African-American transwomen past, present and future, I owe it to them to not only live my life open and honestly as an African-American transwoman and share my truths, but to do it in a manner that honors them and our biosisters as well.

You Can't Judge A Transwoman By Her Shoe Size

One of the more amusing conversations I recently eavesdropped on while I was out and about was two brothers trading their 'how to spot a transsexual' tips. In addition to the usual stereotypes about height, broad shoulders, and 'masculine' facial looks, the one that made me chuckle was about shoe size.

"I can spot a transsexual from ten miles away because of them big feet." the so-called tranny-spotting expert proclaimed.

Yeah, right. If that was the case, how'd you miss spotting my elegantly dressed 6'2" behind wearing the hell out of my black Timothy Hitsman pumps, size 12? I have a size 13 navy pair of the same shoes in my wannabe Imelda Marcos sized shoe collection sitting in my closet.

I laugh sometimes when I hear biomen and some biowomen spout that fallacy. While there's a grain of truth to the fact there are some transwomen who have to shop at Payless or online at various websites to get fashionably stylish heels in double digit sizes, we are increasingly jostling with biowomen to grab the limited pairs of size 11s, 12s and 13s that are made available on store shelves.

Take note, alleged tranny spotters. Americans are not only getting fatter, we're getting bigger and taller as well. Feet are keeping evolutionary pace with that reality.

According to podiactric historian William Rossi, the foot enlarging trend for women has been occuring for about 150 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the average American woman wore a size 3.5 or a 4. That climbed to a size 5.5 by the 1940s.

According to the Professional Shoe Fitting Manual, the average American adult female's shoe size in the 1960s was a size 5.5 to a 6. By the '70s it climbed to a 7.5 and in the '80s it had reached a size 8 or 8.5. As of yet stats haven't been compiled for the 90's, but you can do the logical progression and presume that the average American woman's shoe size will have climbed to a size 9.

In addition, thanks to regular wear and tear, pregnancy, and the stretching of foot ligaments and joints, over the course of a lifetime a woman's shoe size tends to increase by about a half to one full shoe size.

My homegirl Tracy discovered that fact to her horror after she gave birth to her daughter a few years ago. She's six feet tall and before her pregnancy wore a size 10. Her foot grew an inch during her pregnancy and she now wears a size 11. She used to mildly tease me when I'd whine about how hard it was for me to find fashionable shoes. Now she feels my pain.

And bioboys, don't be so quick to diss the sistahs about expanding shoe sizes either. This phenomenon isn't just limited to the feminine half of the US population. According to US Army records, the average shoe size worn by male recruits has gone up from about a 6 to about a 9.5 since the American Revolution.

But back to my regularly scheduled post. Transwomen come in all shapes, sizes and shoe sizes. I had a roommate back in Houston who was 5'6" and wore a size 7. My homegirl Lexi is 5'7", is a size 0 dress size and wears a size 9 shoe.

I know more than a few transsistahs that wear anywhere from size 7.5-to 11. Dawn needles me about the fact that she wears an 11, which is the largest size that most women's shoe catalogs display.

Conversely, I not only personally know more than a few biowomen who wear double-digit shoe sizes like my homegirl, but I'm aware that some celebrity women such as Paris Hilton (size 11), Tyra Banks (10), assorted supermodels, and most of the WNBA wear double digit sizes as well. There are some women's college and WNBA basketball team players that have bigger feet than mine. I remember the day I quit griping about my shoe size when I read that Chamique Holdsclaw wears a size 14.

So bioboys, better check your pseudoscience at the door. You may be missing out on a wonderful woman because you're either mistaking her for a transwoman based on her shoe size, or not taking the time to get to know a transwoman who has character, class and substance because of her size 12 pumps.

A Little Girl's Christmas

As much as I love the Christmas season, I have to admit that sometimes I do get a little down during the run up to that magic December 25 day.

Part of it is because I miss my family back home. I get homesick during the holidays, and it seems as though the 1000 miles between Houston and here are measured in light-years instead of interstate highway markers.

But that's not the only reason I feel down. One of the regrets I have in terms of transition pops up during this period. Just as I will never get to experience my high school prom as a female, I'll never know what it's like to experience a little girl's Christmas for myself.

Because I have two sisters, I did get a sample of what I missed out on as part of the Santa's Helpers Corps. I ended up losing sleep assembling their Barbie Dream Houses, their bicycles, hunting through multiple toy stores for African-American Cabbage Patch dolls or Barbies, and driving Mom to various Houston area malls in search of additional gender specific gifts and clothes for them.

And feeling envious and jealous at the same time,

I got my fair share of Christmas goodies back in the day, so I'm not complaining about that. It's just when I look back on it I wasn't feeling being a 'boy' at the time. I was simply playing one for public consumption.

On one of the nights it was my turn in the rotation to do KPFT-FM's 'After Hours' with Jimmy and Sarah, she mentioned on-air what her sweetie had done for her one Christmas.

After a major knockdown drag out argument with her father, she was depressed for a few days. C-Day arrives and Sarah is urged to get out of bed by her partner. She grumpily complies, and after turning the corner into the living room is blown away by the surprise that was unleashed on her.

The tree was decorated with ballerina and Barbie ornaments, pink ribbons and other feminine trimmings. She opens one of her gifts and its a Barbie doll. All her gifts had a feminine theme to them and after she hugged her partner she started crying. Needless to say Sarah forgot about whatever drama she'd had with her father a few days earlier.

For the most part I muddle through my day to day life as a Phenomenal Transwoman okay despite the occasional slings, arrows and shade. But every now and then I long for and am envious of my genetic sistahs who got to experience things in their childhoods or young adult periods that I unfortunately never will.

Christmas is a not-so-subtle reminder of that as well.

The Only 'F' I Ever Want

Back when I was in school the 'F' was something to avoid and be ashamed of. It was a source of negativity and a graphic representation of failure. I wanted to avoid seeing it on any report card I handed to my parents, any test that I took or any paper I wrote.

Since transition however, the 'F' has taken on a new connotation for me and other transwomen. It represents validation and official acceptance of our lives.

The gender marker code on our official documents is another war that we must fight just to validate our personhood. Back in 2000 I was determined to vote in that upcoming presidential election under my new name and have my voter registration reflect it. You don't know how happy I felt when I left the Harris County courthouse an hour later with a brand new voter registration card with my new name and an 'F' in the gender code box. I felt eight feet tall when I handed my new voter registration card to the precinct judge during early voting and affixed my signature to the line on the computer printout of registered voters that had Monica on it.

Gender codes reflecting our reality are vitally important to us. In a society in which we have to present identification every day for mundane things, it's a source of embarrassment, shame and anger when we are required to produce an ID that has a femme name on it but a big fat 'M' in the gender code box. A gender code that you know deep down is based on your genitalia's configuration at birth.

My old Texas driver's license had some gender memories attached to it. Back in 1978, when HISD was still offering driver's ed I took it in summer school, which was being hosted by Jones. For the road driving portion of it we were put in groups of four. I ended up in a car with three other women. One was my Thomas Jr. High homeroom classmate Rita Roy who now attended Lamar. The second sistah was a girl named Yvonne Sibley who attended Sterling and the third was a sista named Berlye Magee that went to Yates.

It was bad enough I was in a car with three gorgeous sistahs. I had a crush on Rita back in fifth grade and she'd become even more beautiful since we left Thomas. It was another aggravating reminder that I was on the wrong side of the gender fence.

The Real ID Act, passed in the wake of 9-11 is an aggravation for all transgender people. One of the other things I lobbied for back in May in addition to passage of hate crimes was the repeal of Title II of the Real ID Act. It makes it harder for us to change the gender marker on our identity documents. Those markers should reflect who we are in 2007, not what our genitalia was thirty to forty plus years ago.

The wrong gender marker also opens us up to discrimination. You don't have to be a MIT grad to figure out what's going on if a person standing in front of you in a female body hands you an ID with an 'M' in the gender marker portion of it.

If you think I'm exaggerating about this, check out this August 2 Dallas Voice story about transwoman Jodi Pleasant, who was denied entry into a Bossier City, LA casino because the gender marker didn't match her presentation.

We transpeeps are also having problems with the Social Security Administration. Your Social Security number is permanent and you aren't allowed to change it but you can change the name. What the SSA has been doing since 2002 is sending employer's letters if a SSN doesn't match with the name in the SSA database. That has the effect of outing transpeople to their employers. If those employers are transphobic, then that letter has the effect of potentially costing them their jobs.

Transpeople shouldn't have to jump through hoops to change gender codes on any identity documents. Neither should we be required to produce letters proving that we've had SRS. Not everyone will be able to have SRS for fiscal or medical reasons. For transmen their surgeries aren't even close to being satisfactory for them and they often forgo them. Simple proof that the person has been living in their new gender for an extended period of time should be enough to do that.

We need to strike a compromise that balances the needs of society to accurately ID a person and balance it with the desire of transpeople to have that ID accurately reflect their new reality.