Janet On Colbert Report

I usually don't watch the Colbert Report, but I had a reason to do so last night because Janet Mock
was on.

Here's the video from the show.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

Honing My Game At The 2014 LGBT Media Journalists Convening

I'm leaving the 70 degree warmth of H-town on Friday to head to a much colder Washington DC and hone my game this weekend at the fifth annual LGBT Media Journalists Convening.

It's my second consecutive time attending this invitation only event which was previously held in New York, San Francisco, Houston and Philadelphia.   

And yeah, still mildly pissed off about missing the one that took place in my Houston backyard.

The theme for the 2014 edition of the LGBT Media Journalists Convening is 'Honing Our Game', so yes, this a basically a business trip for me. 

I will get to have some fun, reunite with my fellow TBLG journalists and bloggers from around the nation and meet others who are here for the first time or couldn't make it last year.  And if I'm lucky, may actually get a chance to spend some quality time with some of my friends who live in DC.   

At the last two Convenings in Houston and Philadelphia we've had the honor and pleasure of having Mayor Annise Parker and Mayor Michael Nutter come and speak to us for a few moments.  Wonder if the trend will continue and we'll see Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray?  

The Convening is sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association (NGLJA) and the Haas, Jr Fund.   Many of us will be tweeting what's going on this weekend via the #LGBTMedia14 hashtag and have already started the Twitter party in advance of the weekend.  


There is also an LGBT Media14 Facebook page that you can peruse to that will have event news post from many of the journalists and bloggers in attendance.   And just like in Phlly, there will be trans masculine and transfeminine representation in the #LGBTMedia14 house.     

The whirlwind weekend starts off with a Friday reception in which MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell is slated to be our keynote speaker.   Then after a Saturday morning tour of the White House, we dive into our all day seminars and training sessions.

There's also a meet up event scheduled at the Green Lantern on Saturday night March 1 starting at 9:30 PM in which the public and our fans and supporters are encouraged to hang out with us . The Green Lantern is located at 1335 Green Court NW, Washington, D.C. 20005. 
 
The event concludes with a Sunday morning bus tour of Washington DC's monuments.  I've been to DC a few times on other trips and have seen some of those monuments including the MLK Jr one, but I'm looking forward to that tour as well before heading back home to Houston.

I'm making sure I'm getting my beauty sleep, because I have a feeling I won't be doing much of that this weekend except on the plane rides up and back.  

CNN Ending Piers Morgan's Show

As I like to say, Karma is not only a you know what, but wears a dress and stiletto heels.

I am posting my remix of the saying about karma to giddily post the news that CNN is pulling the plug on Piers Morgan's consistently low rated show that was facing the double whammy competing in that time slot against Megyn Kelly on FOX Noise and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

And after the jacked up interview with Janet Mock and his continued attacks on her and other trans activists, I care even less about him and his show. 

CNN is planning on keeping his around the network in some other capacity (why?) but as far as I'm concerned, Piers Morgan needs to have a Georgia Dome full of seats and a nice tall glass of STFU.

Don Lemon Remembers He's Black Again.

CNN commentator Don Lemon can be exasperating to me at times.  

One minute he sounds like a cookie chomping sellout when he teams up with negro conservafool Niger Innis to attack North Carolina NAACP President the Rev. Dr.. William Barber for correctly calling Sen. Tim Scott (Teabagger-SC) a 'ventriloquist' dummy for the Tea Party or hypocritically siding with the New York City po-po's and former mayor Michael Bloomberg  over the jacked up stop and frisk policy. 

And don't even get me started discussing his interviewing trans fails.

But there.are times he gets it right and I have to give him his props for it like when he schooled CNN conservafool Ben Ferguson on his privilege in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict     

Here's another one of those moments.   Lemon and Keli Goff call out conservafool Emily Miller for parting her lips to say that 'white guilt' got President Obama elected.   Naw Emily,  it was 69,486,516 votes from a multicultural and multigenerational coalition and a 365-173 electoral buttkicking of McCain that got him elected.   And just for grins, while facing Massive Resistance 2.0 from the GOP,   President Obama garnered 65 million votes while winning another decisive 332-206 electoral vote win over Mittbot.  

Deal with that reality Emily Miller.   Oh yeah, forgot you conservatives can't hanlde reality well

Enjoy this Don Lemon Blackness sighting.   I have a feeling it won't be long before I'm blasting his azz again.

Moni Ain't Happy About The Bigoted White Trans Feminine Attack On Janet

It's been 48 hours since that second hideous attack interview Piers Morgan unleashed upon Janet Mock followed by that jacked up panel, and I'm more than a little pissed off about it along with supporters in the Black trans, cis and SGL community.

But I've been surprised and disappointed by the reaction of elements of the white trans community to it. 

I'm tired of the white trans community ignoring the fact that Janet was attacked in this Morgan interview, and frankly some of you are doing so because you are jealous of the media attention she's received over the last two years.

It has the appearance to me and other people in the Black trans community and our allies that elements of the white trans community are secretly happy the 'uppity Black transwoman' got taken down a few notches by your cis White masculine 'ally' Piers Morgan and you're now using Morgan as a human shield excuse to unleash your own attacks of her.

It would be a good idea for you vanillacentric privilege wielding peeps to back the hell up off Janet right now, because the more shade you level at her, the more pissed off we get in Black Trans world about it along with our allies.

And FYI John Aravosis and 'errbody' else that thinks it was a pro-trans interview, this is what a pro-trans   interview with a real trans ally looks like.   This Marc Lamont Hill one is another example.   



Now it's time for a reality check.  I submit that if Janet Mock looked like this trans Hawaiian (Candis Cayne) instead of being a Hawaiian of African descent, the reaction to Piers Morgan's media bull feces would have been substantially different. 

Outrage would be filling up every white trans blog on the Net and you'd probably already have a Change.org petition up calling for Piers Morgan to apologize.

Bottom line is that for the last six decades, the transfeminine perspective, the people interviewed in the media about it, and the transfeminine discourse has disproportionately been centered on, spoken and written about by a long list of white transwomen.

Some of those who have done so I have had profound philosophical disagreements with like Riki Wilchins. Some of Kate Bornstein's writing I don't agree with either but I respected their right to say it.

For the first time in the trans community's modern history, we have Black trans women like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox and my GLAAD Award nominated self stepping up, getting the media spotlight and broadening the conversation. The appearances of Mock and Cox on the scene in the last two years and countless other African-American trans people have done more to advance the conversation and understanding about about trans issues in the Black cis and SGL community and amongst our intelligentsia than those discussions on trans issues in the last six decades

And some of you trans peeps have a problem with that and the masters degree wielding author of Redefining Realness who has SRO book events and has played a major role in making that happen? 

Buy a vowel and get a clue that transwomen come in all shades and ethnic backgrounds.  If we say we want to get trans human rights legislation passed in a near future that sees America getting more diverse, we are going to need a wide variety of spokespeople besides white transmasculine or white transfeminine ones to get people motivated to join our human rights cause and accomplish that task.

Dyssonance Comments On The Piers Morgan Interview

Been a while since one of Antonia D'orsay's posts has graced my blog. 

But since Piers Morgan had the balls to call Toni's name in vain on his show, I thought it only fair to give The Empress of the Known Universe a chance to respond to his ish and have it signal boosted for the benefit of her loyal subjects courtesy of my GLAAD Award nominated blog. 

The firestorm is still raging inside and outside Transworld over the jacked up second interview that incredibly people with vanillacentric privilege are attacking Janet Mock for and applauding Morgan for putting the 'uppity' Black trans woman in her place.   (sarcasm meter on maximum)

Toni wrote a post on her Dyssonance blog critiquing the interview and subsequent online firestorm and here's a taste of it.

I had stayed out of it, and raised an eyebrow at the way he and his followers were saying that he hadn’t been given the benefit of the doubt. Yet he had been given such: that was how Janet Mock went on his show the first time, and then it was why he was given a second chance the second time. That isn’t merely the benefit if the doubt, that is being willing to stick your hand n a fire twice.

Which is just one example, by itself, of why the entire second show was an act of violence and abuse, and it was intentional because he not only threatened her the night before, but he is so ignorant, he cannot help but be part of the system that intentionally causes harm.

So in that, we can see that what he did not only meets the World Health Organizations definition of violence based on scientific consensus, but that it was an immoral and unethical series of actions as a whole, meant to put her into her place and allow him to stand atop his prize and bleat triumphantly.
I saw it, livestreamed via a friend.

You can read the rest of Toni's post by clicking on the link.

Piers Morgan Is STILL Tripping

The BS continues from Piers Morgan, who let his vanillacentric cisprivilege take over and continue his attacks in the wake of his first jacked up CNN interview with Janet Mock.  She called him out about it, and he then went on the counterattack on Twitter.

Hell, if this is an example of you being an ally, I damned sure wasn't feeling the love (and neither was much of the trans community and our true allies) after watching the two train wreck interviews that I can confidently say probably won't be nominated for GLAAD Media Awards.  .

And frankly, Piers Morgan claiming that trans people are 'cisphobic' is as laughable as the right wing conservatives polluting his network and elsewhere who claim that people of color calling them on their bull feces is 'reverse racism.'

The thing that has pissed the trans community off about both these interviews is that Piers not only didn't listen, he kept interrupting Janet. Then to add insult to injury, Morgan had the nerve in his vanilla scented privileged arrogance to claim that he was not only an ally, but we should be grateful for the TV interview time.

It's the optics of this interview that set many of us off, and especially those of us in the trans POC community.

And once again, what sets us off is that far too many people, especially in the media, focus and obsess on that past prior to our body morphing and use it to erase the people we have evolved to become now.
  
If you claim that you respect and admire the person that Janet (or any transperson) is now, what her birth name was or what genitalia she's packing in her panties shouldn't matter to you unless you want to date her, and she already has a man who loves her.  

All that should matter is the content of our characters, how we treat you as a fellow human being in 2014 and beyond, not when we came out of the birth canal decades ago.

Piers Morgan Starts Tripping After Janet Calls Him Out Over Interview

After Janet Mock called Piers Morgan out for sensationalizing her CNN interview with her, Piers Morgan took to Twitter to strike back and call her 'ungrateful'.

For what Oh Mighty Media Whitey?   You mad and got your vanillacentric privileged fee fees hurt because the Black trans woman called your azz out for disrespecting her on your show and she and the trans community are pushing back?

The chyron your peeps used was problematic to start with. But as Janet said in her BuzzFeed interview:  

“This is my first mainstream television show, was that moment, with Piers Morgan, and you see what they did to my story. Compared to a moment if I’m on Melissa Harris-Perry, which is slightly different, a more sensitive and safe space. But I go onto Piers Morgan, and all of my followers and everyone are like, ‘What is this?’” she said. But, she noted, “It’s also more representative of the ignorance that there is about trans people’s lives. We’re out of the safe bubble of social justice.”


Frankly, we in the trans community are beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired of the six decade old focus on our genitalia in the media.  If you didn't get that fracking message last month after the Katie Couric interview with Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera, here's the wakeup call once again.  

As a matter of fact, watch the Melissa Harris-Perry show and check out the proper way to do an interview with a trans woman.

Janet's Latest MHP Appearance

Y'all know how much I love my little sis Janet Mock and already have my copy of Redefining Realness.   The rest of y'all can preorder it or buy it when it comes out February 4.

While I was busy at Creating Change, she made another #nerdland appearance on the Melissa Harris-Perry show to chat about the new book and other subjects.

 

Janet Mock On CNN Tomorrow

Our trans TV appearances runneth over lately.  It was Tiq and Christina today, and will be Janet Mock tomorrow on CNN. 

She'll be on Piers Morgan's show st 8 PM CST to talk about her book Redefining Realness which will be released February 4. 

I'm so looking forward to reading her book and hope that you folks will show her some love when she shows up in your neck of the woods during her book tour. 

Let's also do our part to make this book a New York Times best Seller.

Looking forward to hearing what Janet has to say on Piers' show, and yes, as soon as the video is available, I'll post it to my blog.


TransGriot Update:  Janet's appearance has now been postponed until Wednesday night.

Tiq and Christina's CNN Appearance

I mentioned that GLAAD"s Tiq Milan and ESPN sportswriter and GLAAD board member Christina Kahrl appeared on the CNN show Reliable Sources this morning to discuss the reporting fails, the outing and the salacious article that may have played a role in the suicide of Dr Essay Anne Vanderbilt..

Here's the video from their show this morning for those of you who missed it.

Tiq Milan On Today's CNN"s 'Reliable Sources'

So yeah media peeps, how about trying harder in the 2K14 to broaden the transmasculine discussion to include transmen of color?  --TransGriot, 'When Are Transbrothers of Color Going To Get Their TV Closeups?  January 8, 2014  

I've been complaining for a few months that transmen of color also need their media face time to discuss not only transmasculine issues from their perspective, but trans issues in general.

Guess somebody was paying attention.

In addition to my sportswriting sis Christina Kahrl appearing on today's Reliable Sources episode on CNN, we will also get to witness Tiq Milan representing the community in his capacity as GLAAD's Senior Media Strategist on our cable TV screens at 10 AM CST. 

Congrats Tiq.  I couldn't be happier to see my fellow GLAAD POC Media Institute classmate doing his thing on my TV screen in a few hours.

I just hope this isn't the only time I see a transman of color on my TV screen discussing trans issues this year.

Christina Kahrl On CNN's 'Reliable Sources'

Haven't been watching much CNN lately because I'm still pissed off about the far too conservative butt kissing lean they have taken over the last few months.  I'm also not happy with the ethnic cleansing that has taken place at CNN and not renewing the contracts of my Houston homeboy Roland S, Martin and Soledad O'Brien for doing her job and asking tough question of politicians.

But I will put my pissivity at the network aside for a few moments and check out our ESPN sports writing homegirl Christina Kahrl on the CNN Show Reliable Sources tomorrow morning at 10 AM CST. 

She'll be on to discuss the issues of covering trans folk in the media that have been in the national spotlight since Katie Couric's jacked up interview with Carmen Carrera and Laverne Cox and the outing of t a transperson that may have been a contributing factor to her subsequent suicide.

She wrote a brilliant piece in Grantland about what they got wrong in covering the Ms V. story. 

Fallon Fox and Kye Allums, who have also been on the receiving end of less than enlightened reporting themselves have also had outstanding articles published recently that need to be read in TIME by Fallon and in The Nation by Kye.. 

But definitely will be looking forward to seeing Christina tomorrow and seeing how CNN handles this discussion.
 

White America Is Still Hatin' On Black Athletes

I watched the NFC Championship game on Sunday between the Seahawks and 49ers and saw the post game interview Erin Andrews conducted with him after he made the game saving play to send his team to the Super Bowl.

I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.  I saw it simply as an athlete who was talking smack to his just vanquished opponent that he has a history with after a hard fought NFC title game 

So imagine my shock to see White America losing its collective minds over the post game interview, calling a man who graduated from Stanford a 'thug' and releasing a torrent of racist commentary afterwards.

Then again I shouldn't have been surprised by White America's nearly instantaneous racist reaction to it.

Something that is not being talked about is the same thing happening to Serena Williams last weekend after her loss in the Australian Open quarterfinals to Ana Ivanovic.  

She is also getting called a 'thug', being compared to simians and on the receiving end of post-match racist slurs aimed at her.

Only difference between her and Sherman is because Williams is a Black female athlete, the commenters are tossing in misgendering and transmisogynist slurs into the hateful stew of insults they aim at her.


It's one of the major reasons I hate it when Serena does lose a Grand Slam match and I rub it in when she wins those majors.   I'm beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired of the knuckle dragging racism and transmisogyny that comes out when she does unexpectedly lose a match.   

Serena is still going to go down in history as one of the greatest women's tennis players ever.  You vanillacentic privileged peeps slamming her also can't stand the fact she routinely beats your European tennis glamazons with almost boring regularity, draws viewers to those Grand Slam or any tennis matches and clocks more dollars than you people who have vanilla scented privileged hate for her ever will.

But back to talking about Richard Sherman.  He's absolutely on point when he notes that 'thug' is the new code word whiteness uses to denigrate Black folks since they can't openly use n----r anymore unless they simply don't care what other white peeps think about them. 

I find it mind numbingly head scratching that he even had to apologize in the first place.  For what?  Because white peeps fee-fees were offended that he called out another NFL player?  That he told the truth to a national audience about being the best cornerback in the NFL?   The stats and his play this season and cumulatively over the last three years back that up. 

I personally watched him singlehandedly change the course of the entire 2013 Texans NFL season with his Week 4 pick six that tied the game and eventually allowed the Seahawks to escape Reliant Stadium with a 23-20 overtime win.
 
Please spare me the 'Tom Brady and Peyton Manning don't do that' line.   They don't have to because the predominately white male dominated sports media does the bragging and belittling of their opponents for them.   And if Brady and Manning were trash talkers, the sports media and all these people hatin' on Richard Sherman for doing so would be calling it 'refreshingly candid' if those words were coming out of Manning's or Brady's mouths. 

So Black athletes, say what's on your minds.  Because no matter which direction you go, you're damned if you do or damned if you don't.

 

Today's MHP Show With CeCe And Laverne

For those of you who missed today's MHP show, you missed the first televised interview with CeCe since her release last week.  Here's the video.

About Time SNL You Addressed The Lack Of Diversity

This weekend I'm going to get a chance to see for the first time since Maya Rudolph left the show in 2007 something I've only seen four other times in SNL's 39 year history, and my watching the show goes back to its inaugural season in 1975.  

A Black woman as a cast member.

Sasheer Zamata will be joining the NBC Saturday Night Live cast this weekend in a long overdue move and congratulations to her for getting the nod after that secret audition they held last month to address their lack of diversity problem in the onscreen cast. 

What is even more important were the other hires made immediately after Zamata's. 

They addressed a problem that I made mention of at the end of my December 12 post.

By the way, may also help immensely if you diversify your team of SNL writers while you're at it.

Guess somebody was paying attention to the end of my post discussing the December audition.  Two African-American women, LeKendra Tookes and Leslie Jones were hired as part of the SNL writing team and started on Monday.

Tookes and Jones were also part of the December audition and caught the eye of SNL's producers.

They are starting as writers, but don't be surprised if you don't see them in front of the camera one day.   Tina Fey got her start as an SNL writer.  

And yeah, the white menz are hatin' already and flinging the affirmative action hire shade.   Hey, if comedy writing wasn't an exclusively white male dominated province, wouldn't be necessary for us to point that inconvenient for you fact out.  As far as I'm concerned, the more diverse the writing team, the better and anything that changes that vanillacentric dynamic is a good thing.  

One of the major reasons I stopped watching the show was the lack of cast diversity and it ceased being funny to me.  The November SNL show that Kerry Washington hosted was the first time since Maya Rudolph left I've even bothered to flip the TV to NBC to watch it. 

SNL shouldn't stop with just Black talent and writers.  There is a need to have more diversity reflected onscreen and behind the cameras.  Latinos are the largest minority group in this country, but there has never been a Latina cast member on Saturday Night Live in the nearly 40 year history of the program.  We could also use Asian cast members as well, because they are also woefully underrepresented in the show's cast.

So yes, time to get busy making that happen.  

Diversity will make SNL better, and hopefully return this iconic show to the glory days as America's preeminent comedic satire show and improve its ratings at the same time.

Katie Interview With Carmen Carrera

For some strange reason every time I tried to post the Carmen Carrera and Laverne Cox January 6 Katie  interviews in the same post, the code would get overwritten to where it was either showing carmen or Laverne's segments twice.  

So I'm just going to give the Carmen Carrera one this separate post of its own and link it to the original post.  Problem solved.

Here's Carmen's interview with Katie Couric.

Katie Interview with Laverne Cox

The Katie show that aired Monday featured Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera.   That was the good news. 

It's getting attention in a not so positive way because Katie Couric tried to go there on the genital surgery question with both Carmen and Laverne.

Pro Tip: Trans women are beyond tired of being asked about genitalia, and frankly that is in none of your damned business territory unless you want to date or get intimate with us.  Focus on what's between our ears, not what's between our legs.


Megakudos to Carmen and Laverne for gracefully deflecting and refocused those questions back toward general trans issue concerns.

For some reason when I tried to put the separate segments on the same page, the code in one would overwrite the other, so I had to put Carmen's interview in a separate post after trying four times to tweak the code so I wouldn't have to do that. 

Here's Laverne's interview

When Are Transbrothers of Color Going To Get Their TV Closeups?

While I'm very happy that my transsisters like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, Arianna Inurritegui Lint on the Spanish language side and Carmen Carrera are getting their television time and long overdue closeups, I'll have to admit one thing that is bothering me as I observe this positive trans media pattern in the first full week of 2014.

In the six decades since Christine Jorgensen stepped off her SAS flight in New York on February 13, 1953, when the media has deigned to turn the discussion of transsexuality towards transmasculine issues, far too often that discussion has centered on white transmen. 

That has been majorly frustrating to me as a Black trans woman and also Black and Latino transmen.   They don't get enough television time as is to discuss transmasculine issues, and what little there is has yet to realize they exist, ignores them altogether and the issues unique to being transmen of color. 

And frankly, transwomen of color for balance purposes in our communities need to have those stories told.

Our ethnicity trumps our transitions, and those transitions are affected by race, class and economic issues. That dynamic is no different in the transmasculine community.   We have yet to hear a discussion on how Black transmen have to deal with being considered suspects and hated for EWB (existing while Black).  

Latinos are the fastest growing minority group in this country.   It would nice to have Latino trans men talking about the cultural issues inside and outside the Latino community that affect their transitions.

To make you go hmm even more, how about Asian transmen?   What are the issues that affect them?   

It's not like it's hard to find transmen of color who are willing to chat about those issues all over the country.   Carter Brown, Dr Kortney Ryan Ziegler, Tiq Milan, Kye Allums and Kylar Broadus for starters can easily and eloquently hold it down on the Black trans masculine end of things.  

Mark Angelo Cummings, Diego Sanchez, Ignacio Rivera, Yosenio Lewis can do the same on the Latino transmasculine side.  Yosenio can also bring another dynamic into the trans Latino conversation by discussing those issues from the perspective of being a dark skinned Latino.     

So yeah media peeps, how about trying harder in the 2K14 to broaden the transmasculine discussion to include transmen of color?    

You'll not only broaden and bring about a long needed diversification of the transmasculine conversation, but get some fascinating and compelling stories out of it as well.

Carmen And Laverne On Katie Show Today

Looks like 2014 is going to get off to a fast, positive start for #girlslikeus media wise.

While the Katie show has already been cancelled after its two seasons on the air,  the shows that have already been taped still have to being broadcast.

One of the shows in the can and scheduled for broadcast will involve Carmen Carrera and Laverne Cox.

These two lovely ladies will be gracing our television screens today.   Katie will be discussing in Laverne's case of course her groundbreaking role in Orange Is The New Black and the realities that trans people have to face.   

Carmen will talk about her transition fears, her blossoming career as a model and the fan sponsored petition to have her walk the runway as a Victoria's Secret Angel.

If you wish you find what local station in your area broadcasts the show and at what time for your market (in Houston it's broadcast at 3:00 PM CST on KTRK-TV Channel 13), you can click on this station finder link to do so.