African And Transgender

One of the things I want to do a better job of this year on TransGriot is get the stories of continental trans Africans out there.

Stumbled across this video from a YouTube video blogger who was born here in New York but whose parents are from the Mother Continent.   He discusses being African and trans.

BBC Documentary- Ladyboys

The Land of Smiles best looking girls it is said are the ones that were born as boys.  This BBC documentary follows some of the girls like us who live their lives there and a behind the scenes look at last year's miss International Queen Pageant in Episode 2.. 



Episode 1




Episode 2




Episode 3



Episode 4



Episode 5



Episode 6

Trans Models-Been Here, Still Doing That

Since there are some peeps who have the misguided thought that trans models are a second decade of the 21st century phenomenon, just though it was time to drive home the point that trans models have been around since the 60's.

April Ashley

Tracy Africa Norman

Caroline Cossey

Choi Han Bit

Lauren Foster

Roberta Close

Chamila Askansa

The Long Stylish Line Of Trans Models

Right now trans models are getting more attention and media exposure.   From my homegirl Isis King to Dutch model Valentijn de Hingh to the Brazilian trio of Lea T, Felipa Tavares and Carol Marra, our transisters are not only doing it for themselves and getting their turns in the spotlight, so are gender blenders such as Serbian born Australian model Andrej Pejic and Israel's Stav Strashko.

But the history of trans models sashaying down the world's catwalks actually goes back to the 60's starting with Great Britain's April Ashley.

Ashley not long after her SRS in Casablanca on May 12,1960 and her subsequent return to England became a successful fashion model.  She appeared in Vogue magazine and also garnered a small role in the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movie The Road To Hong Kong.

But unfortunately the transition protocols of the time period advised transwomen to never let anyone know  their trans status, and that left them being vulnerable to being outed.  In 1961 Ashley was outed by a so-called friend who sold her story to a British tabloid.   In the resulting media storm that followed her film credit in that movie was dropped and her modeling career was affected.

That pattern would plague the early pioneering trans models and serve as a major incentive for them to maintain stealth status in order to avoid Ashley's fate.

France's Amanda Lear was another model of the time who has vehemently denied she was trans. 

In 1965 Lear was studying art and was spotted by Catherine Harlé, the head of a modelling agency and offered a contract. 

Seeing this as a way to finance her art studies Lear accepted it and her first modelling assignment was walking for rising star Paco Rabanne.  Harlé had predicted Lear's looks would be in demand and she was on target with her prescient assessment. 

Soon after her debut walking Rabanne's show Lear was photographed by Helmut Newton, Charles Paul Wilp and Antoine Giacomoni for magazines like Elle, Marie France and Vogue. She modelled for fashion designers including Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel in Paris and Mary Quant, Ossie Clark and Antony Price in London.

Lear eventually dropped out of art school to model full-time and become a fixture London's swinging sixties nightlife, hanging out with her fellow model Twiggy, the Beatles, and Spanish painter Salvador Dali.     

But the rumors soon started flying about Lear being a transwoman, and her status as a girl like us was alleged by none other than April Ashley.   Ashley claimed that she worked with Lear at the famed Le Carousel trans cabaret in Paris, which Lear denies.  The conflicting stories about where Lear was born and her year of birth have led people to conclude Ashley is correct. 

It would take us until the 70's before the next trans model appeared and once again she was from Great Britain.  

Caroline Cossey burst into international consciousness under her stage name Tula.  Her modeling career included appearances in Australian Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, extensive glamor modeling work, an appearance as a Page Three Girl in the British tabloid The Sun, and  a 1981 one in Playboy.

In 1978 she received a scare after winning a place on the British game show 3-2-1.  A tabloid journalist contacted Cossey and informed her he'd discovered she was trans and intended to write about it.  Other British journalists attempted to interview her family members.  She dropped out of the television show and for a period tried to keep a lower public profile by accepting smaller modeling assignments. 

Not long after her appearance as a extra in the 1981 James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, the tabloid story she feared would out her dropped in the News of the World.   She responded to it by continuing her modeling career, appearing in The Power Station's "Some Like It Hot" video, Playboy again in September 1991, print ads, writing two autobiographical books and engaging in activism on behalf of the trans community and herself.

Ballroom legend Tracy Africa Norman was also quietly beginning her modeling career about the time that Cossey was taking the world by storm. 

Norman resembled the hot African-American model of the time period in Beverly Johnson, and from the 70's through the 80's she not only walked the runways of New York and Paris, she was represented by the third largest modeling agency in New York. 

Norman had major commercial contracts with Clairol, Ultra Sheen and Avon Cosmetics in addition to doing five ESSENCE magazine shoots

She was working on her sixth ESSENCE magazine cover, a booking for the magazine's holiday issue when a shady character from her old neighborhood who happened to be on that set recognized her and outed her to ESSENCE magazine editor Susan L. Taylor 

In the wake of that outing Norman moved to Paris and did runway work there until moving back to New York and becoming an iconic fixture in the New York balloom community.  

In the 80's we have several to talk about including the first open trans model.

South African born model Lauren Foster was born on December 4, 1957.  She grew up in Durban and realizing her gender issues at age 9, transitioned as a teen and adopted the name Lauren Shipton in 1974.

After having SRS she left Durban and began working as a model in Johannesburg and Paris.  

Her big break came when she was hired by Vogue magazine in 1980 to do a six page fashion editorial and her career took off after that.  

It was temporarily derailed by a model she'd worked with in Paris who sold her story to the tabloid SCOPE after Foster was disqualified from competing in the Miss South Africa pageant..  

As was the infuriating pattern during those days, she was hounded by the press and her career suffered until another trans model came on the New York fashion horizon in Teri Toye.  Foster's career was revived and lasted until 1988.

Lauren is currently working on her autobiography Danse Sauvage and you can see her on this season's episodes of the reality TV show The Real Housewives of Miami

Teri Toye, who I mentioned while discussing Lauren Foster, was the first open trans model.     

Teri originally traveled to New York City from Iowa to become a fashion designer and was enrolled as a student at the famed Parsons School of Design in 1984.   She transitioned while there and became a fixture of New York's eclectic nightlife scene. 

After a chance meeting with designer Stephen Sprouse, Teri opened his runway show and became an instant modeling sensation in New York and Paris.

Toye eventually walked the runways for Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garçons, and Chanel, and posed on the pages of German Vogue. She worked with supermodel Janice Dickinson, was represented by the major modeling agencies Click Models in New York and City in Paris, was considered as a muse by photographers Steven Meisel and Nan Goldin and designer David Armstrong.  Her good looks also kept her consistently in demand.

But as quickly as Teri's modeling star rose, she disappeared from the fashion world and returned to Des Moines, IA   

Meanwhile as Teri Toye was getting attention, Roberta Close was breaking barriers in Brazil.   She began her modeling and film career at age 17  She appeared in a popular Brazilian soap opera and print ads, was the first trans woman to appear on the cover of Brazilian Playboy (while preoperative), and hosted a late night talk show in her homeland. 

She eventually had SRS in Britain in 1989, appeared in a post-operative photo spread in the Brazilian mens magazine Sexy and was voted the 'Most Beautiful Woman In Brazil'. 

There's also the interesting story of Barbara Diop.  She is a Senegalese model who was working in Italy and South Africa, appeared in Italian Vogue and who was unfortunately outed during the 2003 Cricket World Cup tournament that was hosted in South Africa.

Diop has a look that reminds me of supermodel Alek Wek and during the Olympic style parade of nations they used during the opening ceremony for it in Cape Town to kick off the multi week competition,  Diop was the only African model hired to hold the national placards as the team from Zimbabwe marched into the stadium behind her

Six days into the competition the rumors started flying that Diop was trans. .She initially denied it, but the international media sharks began to circle and kept investigating to the point where Diop eventually admitted her trans status. It trigged outrage from homobigot Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe who threatened to yank his team out of the competition.  Zimbabwe's sorry performance in it took care of that for him before he could follow through on his bombastic rhetoric.

But unfortunately we haven't heard much about Barbara Diop's life post Cricket World Cup.   She is alleged to have undergone SRS in the wake of that event and is presumed to still have a modeling career, but that has been unconfirmed for now.   My inquiring mind would sure like to know what happened to her.  

Harisu in South Korea garnered international attention at the dawn of the 21st century.  She was born in Seoul on February 17, 1975, transitioned as a teen, had SRS, studied and lived in Japan for several years before returning to South Korea in 2000   


After being featured in a 2001 commercial for DoDo cosmetics Harisu quickly became a media sensation as the first open transsexual media personality in Korea.   She branched out into other entertainment areas such as music and acting in addition to her modeling career.

She also became in 2002 the second transperson in Korea to legally change her gender on her identity documents and eventually got married to her longtime boyfriend Micky Jung in 2007.
  

So for those transgirls who are dreaming of walking the international fashion runways and the current crop of trans models working towards achieving supermodel status and other goals, note that you have a proud history to look up to.

Note these people who walked in your pumps and broke down the barriers so you would have a less stressful time in doing so and you can just focus on being the best model you can be.

Know that you are part of a long stylish line of #girlslikeus who happen to excel at sashaying down those fashion catwalks and use it as a way to get their foot in the doors of other careers.  

In many cases, as they advanced their careers, those trans models also helped advance the human rights, visibility and humanity of transpeople around the world.

Happy Veterans Day 2012 Trans Vets!

Today is Veterans Day in the US in which we remember the service of all our men and women who served or are currently serving in our nations military

I wanted to particularly remember a segment of the tran population that doesn't get much love shown their way, but will always get it on the TransGriot pages in terms of our trans vets.

The trans vets I have had the pleasure of meeting in the years I've been involved in the trans human rights fight have served in every conflict from the Korean and Vietnam Wars to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Many has moved on from their military service to become leaders in our trans human rights movement and our communities such as Monica Helms and Angela Brightfeather of TAVA, Dionne Stallworth, Dawn Wilson, Angelica Ross, Autumn Sandeen, Phyllis Frye and now Allyson Robinson as the Executive Director of the newly merged Out Serve-SLDN.

Trans veterans not only served our nation, they have and continue to provide principled and solid leadership for our community.   They have not only helped to fight for human rights laws for all Americans, but things that help make the lives of the trans community and veterans like themselves better. 

Trans veterans are also front and center in the fight to ensure that the DADT repeal that they worked for but didn't include us will be expanded.   They want transpeople who wish to openly serve our country to have the ability to do so.

If it's not acceptable for LGB military personnel to have to hide who they are to serve our nation's military, it damned sure isn't acceptable for transpeople to have to hide to serve in the military either.  Neither is it okay for those transpeople who wish to join our nation's military to automatically be excluded from doing so when they walk into an armed forces recruiting center to do so. 

It's why I not only have much love for trans vets, but support their fight to openly serve our country. like transpeople in eight nations including Canada can do right now. 

Happy Veterans Day transvets!   Thank you for you service to our nation and our community.  

Miss Transsexual Brazil 2012 Pageant

Brazil has been a good news, bad news place for our transsisters living there.   While this emerging South American economic power nation has free SRS coverage in their national health plan, is the home of trans supermodel Lea T and has had transwomen openly walking the runways at Rio's fashion week since Roberta Close first did so in the 1980's, at the same time it has seen a horrific spike in anti-trans violence and murders aimed at our Brazilian trans sisters.

Back on October 30 the first ever Miss Transsexual Brazil 2012 pageant happened in Rio de Janeiro, and here's some video from AFP documenting what happened during that first ever pageant  

Mia Nikasimo: Transgender Community As An African In The Diaspora

One of the things I love to highlight is trans voices of the African Diaspora, and one of those voices from the Mother Continent speaking eloquently for people on the second largest continent on the planet has been Nigerian Mia Nikasimo..

Not only do I enjoy reading their words and wanting to learn about their perspectives of being a transperson in various nations on the African continent,  as a child of the African Diaspora I extend an open invitation to my Diaspora trans brothers and trans sisters there, the Caribbean and elsewhere to guest post here if you feel the need to do so. 

But here's a taste of what Mia had to say about the subject.

When I think of the plight of the transgender community as an African in the Diaspora I’m reminded of all those little murders that happen daily in the name of propriety or why most of them happen in the western world. In Africa most transgender people are underground so nobody knows any better but as a friend argues it is no surprise. “If African transgender people were out they’d suffer the same plight as their sistren and brethren in the west,” and don’t we know it?

This post she wrote at Black Looks definitely needs to be signal boosted.

Happy Trans National Holiday 2012!

I call Halloween the 'Trans National Holiday' because its one of the times besides Mardi Gras when we could walk the streets as ourselves and not get hateraid directed at us.

While some people take the opportunity to dress up as their favorite horror movie character or whatever idea comes to their mind, many people in the trans community take the time to dress en femme or as drag kings.  

It's also the night that back in the day the elaborate drag balls would happen like the Finnies Ball on the South Side of Chicago, the events at Webster Hall and other venues in New York that had their roots in the Harlem Renaissance, and elsewhere in the country.   









Now the ballroom community ha picked up that torch, carried it into the 21st century and the legacy of those early balls lives on with them.

Lana Talks

Director Lana Wachowski has finally come out as a #girllikeus and we couldn't be happier about it.

She recently received an award from HRC on October 20 and in her acceptance speech talked about her painful adolescence and other issues germane to her transition.

PC Air Hits Some Business Turbulence

The ten month old Thai airline PC Air that garnered international attention and publicity when it hired trans flight attendants for its crews, has hit some business turbulence since its maiden December 2011 flight.

The fledgling carrier's lone Airbus 310-222 was stuck at Seoul's Incheon airport because the company has not paid its overdue airport charges and fuel fees and South Korean authorities wouldn't allow it to take off last Tuesday.  . 

That left a total of 400 people stranded- 200 at Incheon and another 200 people waiting for the aircraft arrival in Bangkok to take them to South Korea. 

The stranded charter flight passengers were put on three Thai Airways flights and another flight arranged by PC Air management as their CEO Peter Chan jetted to South Korea to resolve the issues.  

PC Air cited unspecified problems and a dispute with their South Korean agent Skyjet that caused the airline to fall behind on the fuel and airport fee payments and put the airline in jeopardy of losing its operating license which is valid until 2015.   

PC Air continues to operate its scheduled flights between its Bangkok hub to Incheon and Hong Kong and reportedly plans to add two used Boeing 767s capable of carrying more than 200 passengers to its fleet starting in December. 

While the Thai Transport Ministry is unlikely to strip PC Air of its operating license despite loud calls to do so, the charter license under Thai aviation law is on a monthly renewal basis and will expire on October 31.  The Thai Transportation Ministry will not renew th charter license until PC Air proves to their satisfaction that what occurred at Incheon will not happen again.  

The controversial Transportation Ministry decision was based on its desire to see PC Air work out their business problems and compensate the passengers inconvenienced by the grounding of their aircraft.

Lets hope for the sake of our trans sisters working for PC Air that their former flight attendant CEO gets their airline business end straightened out.  I and transpeople around the world would like them to continue flying the friendly skies from the Land of Smiles and have a solvent and prosperous PC Air be around to hire more of their sisters.

Coming Out Is Different For A Trans Person

With today being  National Coming Out Day, you'll see ceremonies and events all over the country that will be primarily focused on the LGB end of the community rainbow.  For the trans end of the spectrum, coming out has a different twist to it. 

When people come out as lesbian, bi or gay, they are still the son or daughter that their parents brought home from the hospital that day.   But when you come out as trans, it means that's akin to a death in the family.

The child they once knew will eventually be morphing into an outward gender presentation different from the one they brought home from the hospital.  Those parents will have to get used to that morphed body over time just as it took the trans person involved a certain amount of years to come to grips with the reality they are trans.

From the moment of that declaration that we are trans, we are going from zero to femininity or masculinity and begin the process of having to navigate all the societal baggage that particular desired gender role comes with while unlearning it from the birth gender role. 

We trans people are the only part of the rainbow community that have to pay for the privilege of being ourselves. In addition to having to go through medical and surgical intervention, there's also wading through the paper trail we have piled up and changing those identity documents to reflect who we are now.

I don't want to underestimate how liberating it is for a trans person to come out to family, friends and allies.  It does wonders to lift the burden of carrying that tremendous secret off our psyches so we can begin to openly and honestly live our lives. 

But a dose of reality as you make this life changing decision, especially if you're planning to do so under the euphoric environment of National Coming Out Day.    

If you're a trans person of color, it's even tougher to come out and I understand that reticence to do so.  When we average two transwomen of color killed every month, 70% of the names we read during every  Transgender Day of Remembrance are Black and Latina, and we have the unwoman meme and disrespect hurled at us on a regular basis, it's enough to make you pause. 

Unlike our white counterparts, we transpeople of color don't have the long established support groups or organizations that are fluent in our culture, backgrounds and needs.

We've only started getting the attention we deserved in the tail end of the last decade.  The Trans Persons of Color Coalition was founded in 2010, and we still have to fight tooth and nail just to get any kind of positive visibility or media attention for our role models and our issues.

Coming out for trans people of all ethnicities is tempered with the knowledge that we still have a long way to go to achieve trans human rights in this country   We still have a lot of education we have to do even with recalcitrant hardheads in our rainbow family and within trans circles about what being trans is.

But as I've discovered ever since I began my own transition in 1993, my life not only began when I did so and got comfortable in my own skin, my family expanded.  We have a proud history that is still unfolding every day.  I have out and proud trans brothers and sisters all over the world now.  I have trans elders who are eager to pass down their hard won knowledge to me so I can do the same for you.   I love the fascinating journey of discovery I've been on.

And I'm proud to be an African descended #girllikeus.    That outweighs whatever negatives connected with our coming out decision.

But to get to the point where I, Janet Mock, Isis King, Kylar Broadus and countless other trans brothers and transsisters are, the first step is coming out and living your life openly and honestly.   You need to not only do so for yourself when you feel comfortable and confident in yourself to do so, frankly the trans community needs you to do so as well.

The rest of being trans we can deal with one day at a time..

Korea's Next Top Model Features Trans Woman

It took America's Next Top Model 11 seasons before Isis King broke ground as the first open trans woman to appear on the show.   Its Korean counterpart took only three seasons to do so.

I've talked about Choi Han-bit, the now 26 year old transwoman who came in second on the 2009 edition of the Open Hall show that is a televised model search competition.   She was one of 1,200 contestants who started but the aspiring model kept progressing through the competition all the way to the finals.

She transitioned back in 2006 and has been diligently working to crack the modeling ranks in South Korea but keeps getting turned down for modeling jobs.  

She's now appearing on the third season of Korea's Next Top Model and once again has the eyes of a nation and the international trans community on her.  

Her appearance on KNTM3 has been met with mixed reviews from viewers and contestants, but show officials pointed out she is considered legally female in South Korea and it would be a human rights violation if she is not allowed to do so.

So far she is five shows into the KNTM3 cycle and has been doing well so far.   She finished third in one episode and in episode five won the reward challenge.    Staying alive and avoiding elimination is the name of that the game on that show, and so far Choi Han-bit has managed to do so. 

Here's hoping she not only makes the final of KNTM3, but wins it. 

It's ICTLEP's 20th Anniversary!

Twenty years ago this month at a southwest Houston Hilton hotel in August 1992 a groundbreaking event occurred that not only laid the foundation for trans human rights law and employment policy, it sowed the seeds that resulted in a trans inclusive ENDA and the EEOC trans ruling.

The conference was called the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, and it was created by Judge Phyllis Frye, 'the grandmother of the trans rights national transgender legal and political movement' to bring activists together to discuss transgender equality legislation seriously needed in the areas of housing, insurance, probate, employment, healthcare, military service, as well as criminal and family law..     

The first of six annual ICTLEP conferences were held in Houston and I first became aware of it not long after I began my own transition in April 1994.  Unfortunately my work schedule at the time kept me from going to the 1995, 1996 and 1997 ICTLEP conferences as my desire to get more politically involved in fighting for trans human rights increased.

ICTLEP was born out of Phyllis' idea in 1991 to start a moveable transgender conference specifically targeting transgender law issues.   The Gulf Coast Transgender Community (GCTC) group of which Phyllis was vice president at the time was receptive to the idea when she presented it to the GCTC board in early 1992 and provided funding for it.  

Since this was the pre-Internet days, mailing lists and ads were the primary way to get the word out about events in the trans community and we were fortunate in the Lone Star State to have one of the then biggest trans themed events happening in San Antonio in the Texas T-Party 


The Texas T-Party was organized by Linda and Cynthia Phillips and was drawing upwards of 300 people from Texas and around the country to come to the San Antonio area based event.  Its mailing list was vital in publicizing the nascent ICTLEP conferences and the Phillpses made sure when Judge Frye attended the T-Party she always got T-Party workshop space, waived fees, and brochures placed in all of the Phillips mail-outs.

“Without the Texas T-Party, I would have only reached half of the people I reached,” says Frye in a recent OutSmart magazine interview..



The first ICTLEP conference was a success and led to five other events based in Houston as well. 

Out of those ICTLEP events came not only papers such as the International Bill of Gender Rights and countless others that are the basis for much of the legal principles and policies we fight for as trans activists today, it also provided the means to train the early activists who later passed on the lessons and training they learned at the six ICTLEP conferences to people like myself who came on board starting in 1998 and later.  ICTLEP also led to our inclusion in the National LGBT Bar Association and their trans inclusive stances. 

So yes, it's past time we recognize ICTLEP's critical role in providing the foundations for us to build the modern trans rights movement and salute the 20th anniversary of the first ICTLEP conference this month.