A Transsistah's Secret-Facial Hair Removal

One of the things that annoys any phase of transwoman to no end, be she pre, post or non op is plucking stray facial hairs or picking up a razor to closely shave her face.

You not only have to do it so that you leave no traces of hair stubble on your face, you have to use extreme caution in doing so to avoid nicking and cutting yourself in the process.

It's a cruel irony of male to female transition and taking estrogen that while body hair growth slows to a crawl, if you've started male pattern balding, your hair in the area that's shedding hair won't regenerate. The other cruel irony is that facial hair is a more stubborn beast impervious to anything but its permanent removal, and nothing gets you read faster than five o'clock beard shadow.

Depilatory creams and waxing help, but they are only temporary solutions. To permanently remove it, you have two choices, either electrolysis or laser.

I was fortunate because I had a lower than normal testosterone count so my facial hair growth was relatively light. Even so, I was tired of shaving what hair I did get and starting in 1997 I spent three years back home undergoing electrolysis with my electrologist Marie Asmar.

Basically what happens in this 100 year old method of hair removal is a needle is inserted into the hair follicle bulb at the base of the hair shaft and an electric current shoots into the base of the hair follicle to kill it.

It is a meticulous, time consuming process and as I mentioned earlier, facial hair is a stubborn beast. It will sometimes take multiple applications to kill that follicle for good with varying levels of pain as you undergo it while the cash meter is running as you do so.

As I sat in Marie's office, as she worked on my face I'd listen to her tell fascinating stories about the Houston Arab community and her girlhood in Lebanon. In the meantime the buzz in the local and national transgender community was all about Dallas' Electrology 2000.

Electrology 2000 was founded in 1986 by Ruthann and Bren Piranio. At the time I transitioned in 1994 they'd been in business for almost a decade and had some loyal customers in my TATS group who positively raved about it.

E2000 was doing a booming business with the transgender community inside and outside Texas because it was reputed to be relatively pain free. E2000 and its adherents claimed that it took less time to clear your face over traditional electrolysis techniques, which could only clear small sections of your face in one sitting.

Even though I was a one hour plane ride from Dallas due to my then airline job, as I investigated it, the drawback was its cost. It required large cash outlays up front while you pay many electrologists an hourly rate or can negotiate for blocks of time at a flexible rate.

E2000's large cash upfront business model unfortunately locks out most transpeeps of color. It's ironic because the E2000 technique was purported to be effective at clearing African-American facial hair and stopping pseudofolliculitis barbae, aka razor bumps.

Just like the hairs on African-American heads, the natural curl in it means that when you cut it with the razor, it grows back in a curled pattern. The now sharpened end of recently cut hair penetrates the skin, which interprets it as a foreign body attacking it and causes an inflamed skin bump.

So as usual, most of the folks taking advantage of it had money and jobs that allowed them to take time off from work to fly to the Dallas metro area to do so.

E2000's sensitivity to the transgender community not only contributed to its success, but also meant long waiting times jockeying with transpeeps all over the country just to get an appointment. If you didn't have relatives in Dallas like I did (and at the time they weren't aware of my transition) then you have to add the additional expense of hotel rooms and auto to get around since it's in the 'burbs in Carrollton.

It's been around for 22 years and is now under new management as Electrology 3000. So even though my then airline job paid me well enough to afford it, I said thanks but no thanks to E2000. Marie was also treating other transgender clients at the time and I liked her, the fact she was up the street from my apartment, I was happy with her work and her rate was reasonable.

The other method used is laser. At the time I was starting to undergo electrolysis and ruled out E2000, the first lasers were coming out. However, the early lasers were useless for African-American or darker skinned people and it took several years before the third generation long pulse YAG lasers were developed that actually works for African-Americans.

Laser has the advantage of being faster time wise, less painful than traditional electrolysis and being able to treat larger expanses of skin in one treatment, but shares the same problem of repeated applications until the hair follicle ceases production. It's also more resistant to certain colors of hair such as gray, red or blonde.

But for those of us who wish to look our gender best, in order to permanently get rid of our facial hair, laser and electrolysis are options that we have to consider and decide whether to factor it into or out of our transition budgets.

Rochelle Evans Video

Back in May I posted the Dallas Voice story that answered the question of how transteen Rochelle Evans was doing since winning her battle to be herself.

Hopefully things have gotten better for her and her mother since that story was published and I hope Rochelle realizes her dream of attending college at TCU.

In the meantime, here's the video of Rochelle telling her story. Merry Christmas sis and good luck in your quest to get the diploma and the TCU degree.

A Transsistah's Secret-Tucking

If you've ever attended or watched video of a transgender pageant or ball, you've probably watched contestants strut their stuff in skimpy bathing suits or wear tight jeans and look good doing it.

You also probably wondered as you watched them strut back and forth across the stage how do pre-op transwomen and female illusionists hide the neoclitoris?

Well, it's a technique that we call tucking. The methods to accomplish 'hiding the candy' as the Lady Chablis called it are as varied as the transpeople who use them.

One which sounds painful is basically pushing the family jewels into the cavity they descended from. The testicles shrink as you keep swallowing estrogen or taking the shots, so it's not as hard as it sounds.

You basically spread your legs and carefully push the the testicles toward the cavity. Once you get them in the cavity the scrotal sac will be empty, and you can wrap that loose skin around the penile shaft and then pull it all back between your legs using either tape or an extra set of panties to hold everything in place. Gravity will get them back into their natural position when you free the penis.

Yes, peeps do shave the area to make sure that they don't give themselves an impromptu Brazilian wax. Most people also use surgical tape these days instead of duct tape since duct tape can pull skin off as you remove it.

Others will use a gaff to tuck the neoclit away while others just simply pull it back as far as it will go and wear a girdle or an extra pair of panties to ensure that everything stays in place.

Sometimes it doesn't always stay in place and the neoclit wiggles free. With the interior testicular method you have to be very careful when you sit down, otherwise you get the sensation of someone kicking you in the groin.

Feminine fashions are designed to accentuate the body. Jeans are designed to be form fitting and tight, and the last thing you want is a frontal bulge while wearing them, especially if you are in certain social situations. Tucking will continue to be a necessary evil for pre-ops until they can get to the point they can afford either SRS or an orchiectomy to remove the family jewels.

Isis' Tyra Banks Show Appearance

Just finished watching an hour ago the Tyra show featuring our sis Isis on it. She's looking fly and it was interesting hearing her thoughts about ANTM, sharing some of her pics from the old days and getting her mother's take on things.

I can also see where she got those good looks from. She's just like her mom, a beautiful and classy lady as well.

The fun part for me was Isis finally getting the opportunity to confront Clark over her hateful statements. Clark tried to use her 'growing up in the South' and her Southern Baptist religion as excuses for her comments on ANTM.

Naw chick, you just got called out on your BS. Let's roll that beautiful YouTube footage shall we?



Clark, did your narrow young little 'c' 'christian' mind consider that the reason you don't see transgender peeps openly living their lives in your South Carolina town is because some of the denizens of that town openly express the same negative attitudes you obviously felt comfortable enough to utter for posterity?

Shoot, that's another post.

But I do have one question to ask Clark. Why aren't you in the Final Three for ANTM's Cycle 11? Seems like Isis is more of a woman than you are. She has the one thing you seem to lack:

Class.

Anyway, back to the show. It was also cool seeing her reaction when Dr. Bowers walked on set as well. I've bumped into Dr. Bowers at SCC and IFGE and she's a class act as well.

So check out the show, and Oxygen usually broadcasts it if you miss the syndicated broadcast of it. You also may wish to head to the Tyra show website and show some love to our girl. The haters are already crawling out of the woodpile.

Isis' Early Christmas Present

Christmas is about five weeks away, but if you tune into today's Tyra Banks Show you'll not only get the pleasure of seeing her on the screen again, Tyra has a surprise for her.

I'm also looking forward to seeing Isis set Clark's sanctimonious (and non-ANTM Cycle 11 winning behind) straight.

Oh well, might as well tell y'all since the word is already out there on the Net. Isis is going to get her sex reassignment surgery.

Dr. Marci Bowers will be performing the surgery. Dr. Bowers is a transwoman herself and in 2003 was picked by the legendary Dr. Stanley Biber to take over his practice in Trinidad, CO when he decided to retire.

Congrats sis! I know you've wanted this and I couldn't be happier for you.

Enjoy the trip to Colorado.

A Transsistah's Secret-Makeup

One of the things I've gotten a lot of compliments about over the years and I take pride in is how I apply my makeup. Sometimes I get asked how I do it.

Well, a lot of it was simply practice. I've been playing with it since I was 15, and most times all I would do is just put it on and try different looks. By doing that I learned what eye shadow and lipstick colors worked for me and which ones didn't. I learned how to apply the right amount of blush to my cheekbones without looking like a cartoon character.

I paid closer attention to how biowomen who wore makeup looked while they were out and about in the world. I emulated the women (and my transgender sisters in Montrose) whose looks I liked and used as cautionary tales the looks I didn't like. (using black eyeliner pencil to line lips, for example)

I learned how to use a steady hand to apply eyeliner pencils because I personally don't like the look of liquid eyeliners.

That was difficult for me because in junior high I got hit in the left eye with a balled up piece of pottery clay in my 7th grade art class. I still have a reflexive motion as a result of that incident that causes my left eyelid to rapidly shut and water anytime some foreign object gets near it.

The involuntary eye shutting reflex caused me major problems during baseball season the following spring because for a right handed hitter, you are using your left eye to spot the ball. For most of the early part of that season, anytime a pitcher threw me a curve ball, my eye and brain perceived it as a 'Danger' moment, the eyelid fluttered shut and I missed badly while swinging at the pitch.

But back to the subject at hand. The funny thing about it was that I used to shut both eyes while applying my eyeliner pencils, and what that did was allow me to develop a technique in which I can place it where I need it to go without staring in the mirror. Eventually my brain stopped interpreting my eyeliner pencil as a threat and I could open and close an eye to apply it as normal.

I fought to get over the shame and guilt of actually walking up to the makeup counter and buying what I needed for my forays into Montrose. In addition to that, I went through a trial and error period before I finally hit upon the right combination of products that work for this Phenomenal Transwoman.

I was an obsessive perfectionist about my look in my early transition days. I wanted to make sure I didn't step outside the crib looking drag queenish. My goal when I put my other face on was to look like the average biowoman on the street.

I'm a firm believer that you can learn something about any subject from reading books, and makeup application wasn't any different. As a matter of fact, two books that had (and still do) occupy prominent places on my bookshelf are Sam Fine's Fine Beauty and Reggie Wells' Face Painting.

They are both renowned celebrity makeup artists who dealt predominately with African-American celebrities. Reggie Wells was Oprah's Emmy Award winning makeup artist while Sam Fine was Tyra's and a few other sistah supermodels makeup man of choice during the 90's.

Tyra's book Tyra's Beauty Inside and Out was also helpful in not only talking about makeup application, it also focused on working on the inner you as well. One of the lessons I got from her book, in Tyra's typical 'keepin' it real' style is that all makeup does is enhance the exterior.

To emphasize that point, she took a photo of herself without makeup and highlighted all her imperfections, then showed a picture of her with makeup on.

The book's message was something I already knew before I transitioned, but it bears repeating. It's what's going on inside personality wise that makes you beautiful.

But the makeup tips was what i bought the books for, and I surmised if I was going to learn the basics, short of getting help from a biowoman about it, what better teachers than those two men and a supermodel?

I mentioned the trial and error part of my makeup search. When it came to my foundation, it was definitely that. I started off using the Posner that you can easily get in most beauty supply stores and drugstores. The shade was slightly off and I had to spend time correcting it with a darker powder to make it match my skin tone.

I finally decided to try the two makeup giants for African-American women at the time I transitioned, Flori Roberts and Fashion Fair. I started with the Flori Roberts because it was slightly less expensive than the Fashion Fair, and struck paydirt with a cream foundation shade that matched my skin tone perfectly. For several years I bought it until Flori Roberts counters started disappearing from department store makeup areas in the wake of the department store merger and acquisition wave of the 80's and 90's.

Eventually I moved on to Fashion Fair. It took me two tries before I discovered that their Pure Brown Glo shade was my match, and I've used it faithfully ever since. It also has the advantage of being a thick cream foundation, so before I started my electrolysis in the late 90's, that was a major advantage in hiding any five o'clock shadow growth that would occur no matter how closely you shaved.

I use Coty's airspun loose translucent powder that I get from any drugstore, and it's the same place I get my pencils, my lip gloss and my Maybelline mascara. I only do mascara if I'm going out since I have naturally long eyelashes already.

I do like Fashion Fair's lipsticks and eyeshadow palettes as well, although MAC has some nice stuff for women of color, too.

If you're a t-sistah on a budget, Posner's still out there along with the Cover Girl Queen line. Haven't tried any of their stuff yet to see if there's a shade hat works for me just in case they run out of my fave Fashion Fair one. It seems like half of Louisville wears my shade, and I have to make sure I have a backup when Derby and Christmas are approaching.

Oh yeah budding t-girls, don't forget that if you put it on, you have to take it off as well. I'm blessed with smooth even toned skin and I take care of it. I'm armed with facial cleansers, soaps, astringents, and facial masques to make sure I get whatever residual makeup is on my face off of it.

On that note, it's time for me to do my facial. Later peeps.

Vietnamese Transgender Journey

TransGriot Note: As I and others continue to point out, being transgender cuts across all economic, class, and ethnic lines. We can also be found all over the globe and represented on almost every continent. Here's the story of Vietnam's most famous transgender person, Cindy Thai Tai

Transgender Journey

From Thanh Niem News.com

After years of living in shame and torment, Cindy Thai Tai underwent sex reassignment surgery and says she’s never felt happier.

Cindy Thai Tai is ecstatic with her new life, she says. After undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 2005, Tai became one of just a few Vietnamese to speak publicly about her transsexuality.

“I make no secret about my gender transformation as I want people to accept me and others like me as we are,” says Tai. “There are those who are not brave enough to make their sexual orientation known in order not to be treated as social outcasts. I don’t want to be like them.”

Tai, whose full name is Nguyen Thai Tai, always felt different, even as a little boy.

He preferred girls’ clothes and games and felt he simply wasn’t meant to be a male.

As he grew up, Tai increasingly yearned to be a woman but was tortured by thoughts of becoming a social outcast if he were to reveal his true feelings.

Unlike countries such as Thailand, where transsexuality is more widely accepted, Vietnam remains conservative and transgendered individuals are commonly stigmatized. Yet the ' harder Tai struggled to engage in “normal” life, the more mental torment he suffered.

His family had wanted him to become a tailor, but Tai secretly had his heart set on becoming a dancer or make-up artist.

Eventually, Tai came out and told his friends and family he was considering sex reassignment surgery.

Over the next two years, Tai underwent four major operations costing more than US$30,000 at the Yanhee Hospital in Thailand – famous for specializing in gender reassignment surgery.

Tai says she is very pleased with the results and would rather have 20 years taken from her life than live unhappily as a man.

“The operation was a miraculous rebirth for me and I’m very happy to be the person I’ve long aspired to be. I regret not doing this earlier,” she says.

“Many think I underwent this major transformation to draw attention to myself or to please the men I love, but I did this totally for my own sake,” she adds.

“I know I’ll never cease to be an object of ridicule among gossip lovers… but I’m used to others’ inquisitive looks and malicious remarks and are no longer hurt by them.”

Tai is now a well-known make-up artist and has even taken up singing.

She captivates audiences with her mellifluous voice and contemplative songs, drawing inspiration from her painful past and journey to inner freedom.

“People probably come to my performances out of curiosity first, but they’re soon mesmerized by my songs,” she says. Tai released her debut album, Noi long co don (Loneliness) in late 2006, which won lavish praise from audiences.

In 2007, she released her second album, Tinh yeu da mat (The Lost Love), a selection of famous Vietnamese oldies mixed with dance, hip-hop and house – also a commercial success.

Tai is set to make another album featuring songs written by famed local composers. She has also acted in films including Saigon tinh ca (Saigon Love Story) and Trai nhay (Bar men) in which she was cast as a transsexual singer.

Earlier this year, Tai was involved in a sex blog scandal when a pornographic entry appeared on her blog.

She said the blog was opened and run by her former manager, and maintains she had nothing to do with the entry.

Tai is currently in a relationship with a German businessman who says she is more attractive and feminine than any woman he has ever dated.

The singer also plans to publish her biography, revealing her life’s journey and detailing the suffering and anguish she has endured.

“I don’t want to improve my image through my biography as many think. I simply hope that through my book people will understand more about transsexuals, empathize with us, and accept us as we really are,” says Tai.

Reported by Nhu Lich

Girl, Interrupted

One of the things that bothers me from time to time is the fact that I didn't get to experience growing up female.

Sometimes it's triggered when I see a little girl walking hand in hand with her mother. Other times it may be a group of teenage girls walking through the mall laughing, giggling and talking as they wear their tight jeans and discreetly ogle the boys walking by. Sometimes it's seeing as prom season approaches girls with their dates or getting made up for the first time at the department store makeup counter. Sometimes it's a reaction to the depressing news of another transwoman found dead or the madness of ignorant people who haven't picked up science textbooks or read the Constitution in a while.

To paraphrase Houston's legendary crusading consumer affairs reporter, the late Marvin Zindler, 'It's hell to be transgender.'

Well, sometimes it is, depending on what part of the planet you live in.

But from time to time I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd come out of the womb with female genitalia. And yeah, sometimes I honestly do feel cheated that I didn't get to experience life growing up as a young African-American woman inside and outside.

I'll never know what it was like to run for prom or homecoming queen, be a cheerleader, have mom and my grandmother run a hot comb through my hair, do a pajama party/sleepover, pick out a prom dress, have 'The Talk' from the feminine side or all the other assorted myriad experiences that mark a young girl's maturation into womanhood. I can imagine the tug-of war that would have happened between my godmother and my mom both subtly (and not so subtly) lobbying teen Monica to join their respective Divine Nine sororities once I hit college.

But at the same time, I have to consider the fact that spending 20 plus years on the male side of the gender fence has not only been an education into the drama that Black men face on an everyday basis, but for me led to a greater appreciation of my femininity. I had to go through so much time, work, money, prayerful contemplation and drama just to become the Phenomenal Transwoman proudly standing before you.

As my biosisters and sistafriends constantly remind me, they consider me the lucky one because I don't have periods. But ladies, I have a doubled risk for breast cancer now and have to do mammograms.

Had I been born a biowoman, would I be the passionate advocate I am today if I personally hadn't gone through so much just to get to this point? Would I have the deep appreciation of all things feminine and the sensitivity to women's issues and causes if I myself hadn't felt frustrated growing up that I was on the wrong team and on the outside looking in? Would I have the same level of compassion for the drama Black men go through, the transgender community and other oppressed peoples?

In some cases certain things about my personality wouldn't change. I'm a fashionista thanks to mom. I'd still be political, curious about what's going on in the broader world and down with my people's history thanks to my parents and my extended family.

As the child and godchild of historians, there was no way I was going to be allowed to grow up without knowing it, especially in the context of me growing up in the 60's and 70's. I'd still have my crazy sense of humor, my love of R&B and jazz music and the faith that has kept me grounded and centered throughout this long gender journey. Having gay and transgender cousins in my family would have ensured that I not only stayed sensitive to their plight, but the desire I have to see GLBT rights codified into civil rights law wouldn't have lessened one bit.

What has led me to a gradual acceptance of the hand I was dealt since I transitioned is the knowledge that femininity is a constantly evolving, spiritual process. A genetic female doesn't know everything there is to womanhood seconds after she emerges from the birth canal either. I get reminded of that when I'm pulled aside for private chats by various biowomen and I'm asked if I can teach them how to do makeup, walk in heels, decipher the male mind or be more assertive in asking for what they want.

I am also cognizant of the fact that for every biowoman I admire or I'm slightly jealous of for various reasons, she still has her own drama and issues that she's dealing with. Those issues sometimes pale in comparison to my grousing about not being born with the genitalia that matches my gender identity or having to spend $6K and lie down for several hours with my legs spread on a surgical table to get it.

The advantage a biowoman has over a transwoman in terms of travelling the road to womanhood in addition to the body, is that she has a head start and time on her side in learning it. If she doesn't stray too far from the 'traditional' feminine path, she doesn't have religious, societal and familial forces opposing her as she evolves as a woman in our society.

The biowoman also doesn't have the task of negotiating a femininity learning curve that jumps from zero to twentysomething, thirtysomething, fortysomething or fiftysomething woman in a year while going through body morphing and seismic emotional changes in her life.

But in the end, I'm a blend of masculine and feminine qualities as all human beings are. Being transgender gives me expanded insights into male-female situations that a person that's only lived in one gender role since birth can only guess at. As a transwoman I have to fight to have my femininity acknowledged and validated and don't take it for granted. I look at it as the blessing that it is.

But it still doesn't keep me from wondering what it would be like if my body and brain gender ID were congruent at birth.

'Angry' Black Transwoman?

One of the things I constantly tell my African-American biosisters is that your transsisters have far more in common with you than the minor differences that separate us.

Some of the things that we have in common with you in addition to our shared cultural heritage is facing a heightened awareness that we are now targets for sexaul assault and murder, job discrimination, sexual harassment, and denigration of our beauty,

Another is being slapped with the 'angry' label when we are honestly saying what we think in mixed company.

I can't tell you how many times in GLBT Internet discussion groups, GLBT spaces, or in answers to comments I've posted to threads in discussion groups or blogs how someone will whip out the 'angry' tag when I'm expressing my opinion on various subjects that doesn't dovetail with theirs.

News flash to those people: If I'm pissed off, you and the whole world will know it.

But like all intelligent, thinking Black women, I'm a little sick of being told by people that don't share our ethnic heritage or conservaidiots such as Cal Thomas and Pat Buchanan that we're 'angry' when we candidly express what's on our minds.

Michelle Obama has been not only slimed with racist comments, she's been whacked with the 'angry' tag already and we aren't even at the party conventions yet.

Interesting is the deafening silence coming from the white feminist ranks now that Michelle's the one being attacked with racist and sexist remarks. During the Democratic primary you couldn't pry 'angry white women' away from a camera when Hillary was being slammed with them by conservapundits.

As Sojourner Truth said over a century ago, Ain't I a woman, too?

Yeah, but Ms. Obama is the wrong color one to warrant a massive public PR defense from the white-dominated feminist ranks.

But back to the GLBT ranks. I've often said that the GLBT community is a microcosm of society at large. Whatever ills and isms are part of the parent society manifest themselves in our little subset of it.

And two of those 'isms' happen to be racism and sexism.

Like my biosisters I find that sometimes when I try to express my viewpoints in meetings I get stepped over by male voices in the room and have to fight to have my viewpoint heard.

That's before we even get to the race based part.

If I express a viewpoint counter to GLBT groupthink or I point out something blatantly obvious such as last week's melanin free hearing for example, I'm called 'angry', 'miltant', 'obsessed about race', 'competing in the Oppression Olympics', challenged to come up with verifiable proof of what I'm commenting on or whatever suppression language du jour they use in mixed GLBT spaces.

I'm just supposed to be the 'happy darkie' or noncontroversial Negro just pleased that Massa is letting me sit at the Big House GLBT Civil Rights table and smile for the cameras when they wanna show the world how 'diverse' they are. I'm supposed to keep it quiet that the GLBT community can be just as bigoted, racist and sexist as the fundamentalists who are oppressing them and don't want to be reminded of that.

As Maya Wilkes, my fave character from the dearly departed show Girlfriends says, 'Oh, Hell No!'

Let's keep it real for a moment. If some peeps and organizations in the GLBT community didn't constantly repeat the negative behaviors, I wouldn't have to constantly remind you of how much work you have to do to eradicate them.

As I warned y'all in my first TransGriot post, there will be times when I piss you off. While I strive when I write post commentary to do it in a thoughful, rational, reasoned and balanced manner, it would be disengenuos to not point out that as a person of African descent I look at issues through that prism. My thoughts, writngs, musings and opinions don't always neatly line up with the prevailing wisdom in the overall GLBT community.

In addition, I'm blunt at times and call it as I see it. In the spirit of one of my sheroes, the late Rep. Barbara Jordan, I believe in morally ethical leadership and work diligently to apply those principles in my own life and leadership style. Staying true to those principles sometimes puts me in the awkward position of having to call out people and organizations I consider friends as well.

But my goal has always been to make you think and expose you to some of the drama that African-American transpeeps and transpeople in general deal with. I want to remind my African-American brothers and sisters (and the GLBT community) that just because I transitioned doesn't mean I gave up my Black Like Me card. I'm proud of my heritage, proud of my history, still share the desire to do my part to uplift the race and be considered a valued member of our African-American family.

And if that in your eyes makes me 'angry', you need to wake up and check the alarm clock.

What's In A Transperson's Name?

When a mother is pregnant with her child, one of the things that they think long and hard about during their pregnancy as soon as they have a general idea of the presumed gender of the child is the name.

African-American mothers, as descendants of Africans, realize that there's great importance to the name you choose for your child. It says a lot about the individual, their family and their connection to the community at large.

They spend a lot of time carefully putting together combinations of names, poring through various baby name books, and considering various factors in consultation with the father and sometimes the soon to be grandparents before coming up with that combination of three names that gets entered onto your birth certificate soon after you exit the birth canal and enter the world.

Names carry a lot of weight in our binary gendered society, and transpeople know this reality all too well. It's why one of the first things we do when we finally start making those moves to transition is choosing a name that accurately represents who we are. It's one reason why our fundamentalist enemies spend so much time making it hard for us to legally change our names and the gender markers to go with those names.

I believe that some of the negative friction that happens between transpeople and their mothers is fueled in one small way by the fact that many of us unilaterally choose our new names as part of the process.

Granted, some of that friction is caused by the parents rejecting their child in the early wake of the child's announcement of their wish to transition. But sometimes when we logically paint the worst-case scenario for transition and presume that we're going to get cut off from our immediate family's love and it doesn't happen, then I submit that one way to facilitate bonding of our families into the transition process is to allow them that input in the name change decision.

One of the things I would do differently in my own transition if I got the chance to start it over again would be to give my mother and my baby sister some input in choosing my new name. My brother and I got some input in choosing my baby sister's name, so I should have done the same and allowed sis some input in choosing my new one just to be fair.

One mild issue with my intersex roommate and her mother was that when it was time to choose a name that matched her new femme presentation, she went a different direction than choosing the feminine derivative of her old male name she was given at birth by mom. As V's mother saw it and told me in a phone conversation we'd had, she was hurt that her daughter didn't go that route. Some mothers see it rightly or wrongly as a rejection of them.

When I was going through the process of choosing my new femme name, I definitely wanted to keep my MKR initials, since they were my link not only to my family, but mom as well. I also decided to choose a feminine name which would have been popular during the decade I was born. I'd been to far too many gender conferences and attended gender group meetings in which 20-something, 30-something, 40-something, 50-something, and 60-something year old transwomen were running around with or had changed them to currently popular names of the 80's, 90's and 2K's that really didn't fit the person that was standing before me.

I knew too many people in the transgender community back home that had the feminine derivative of my old name and wanted to find another feminine name starting with M. I'd already settled on my middle name starting with K, which was a combination of the first and middle names of a female cousin who is more like a sister to me and I spent a lot of time in her and her two sisters lives on one level or another.

I then thought about the qualities I associated with various feminine names, and the name that I thought best fit the woman I was evolving into and wanted to project to the world while sticking to my 'it had to start with M' prerequisite.

One name that popped into my head as I was trying out various 'M' names with the femme middle name I'd chosen for myself was Monica. Most of the Monica's I'd grown up with or gotten to know were classy, smart, talented and beautiful women. I liked the name even more when I read one definition for it.

Possibly (Greek) "solitary" or (Latin) "to advise; nun". Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, prayed for her son and saved him from self-destruction. As a result, Saint Augustine became one of the greatest saints in history. The name is popular with Catholics.

As an activist, writer and blogger I definitely do a lot of advising. Writing tends to be a solitary activity along with my tendency to engage in a lot of solitary thinking. Some of the work I'm trying to do is along the lines of getting transwomen to avoid self-destructive things and behaviors. My spirituality is a major component of who I am as a person. I'm happiest when I'm either writing or curled up with a good book, and I'm a Phenomenal Transwoman to boot.


That's how I arrived at my new name. It not only seems to fit quite well with who I am, who the people that meet me see and the woman I'm continually evolving to be, I'm comfortable with it as well.

If you sat ten different transpeople down and asked them how and why they chose their name, you'd get ten different answers as to how they conducted the thought processes or the myriad reasons that eventually led to their new name. It's why we transpeople go off on the media so much when they disrespect us by putting our new names in quotation marks or parentheses or don't use the proper pronouns in describing us in various news stories.

We go through a lot just to get to the point where we not only evolve to become the persons we are, but thinking about the various ancillary aspects of manhood and womanhood.

So what's in a transperson's name? Plenty of hard, solid thinking, blood, toil, drama, sweat, tears, hope, history, roller coaster emotions and prayerful consideration that it will lead to the respect that we demand for ourselves and from others in the world around us.



TransGrior Note: women in photos are actress Monica Calhoun and singer Monica Arnold

Feeling Left Out

Don't get me wrong, I was just as happy as many of you when the California Supreme Court came down on the side of justice Thursday. You have every right to be happy, excited, proud, party hearty or whatever emotion you're feeling as the reality of this historic day and historic decision sinks in.

But the emotions I'm feeling are akin to someone who's not part of the cool kids clique getting to watch from their bedroom window a cool kid clique member neighbor throwing a slammin' party that the non-cool kid outsider can see and hear boisterously blaring next door.

My mood is tempered because I'm thinking about Christie Lee Littleton. She's a Latina transwoman who in 1999 had her 1989 marriage to Mark Littleton tragically invalidated thanks to a retroactive application of DOMA to it by insurance company attorneys. Her name and gender change was invalidated as well.

Why did it happen? To keep her from winning a share of a $2.5 million wrongful death malpractice lawsuit she filed as her late spouse's widow.

I'm bringing this up to remind my GLB bretheren that this landmark victory has come at the cost of the marriage rights for transgender people. Our religious right friends started attacking our legal marriages once they realized that we transgender people blow a Mack truck sized hole in their bogus 'marriage equals a man and a woman' argument they use as a baton to beat up on marriage equality with.

The Law of Unintended Consequences effect of the push for marriage equality has been that some of the anti-marriage equality constitutional amendments that various states hurriedly passed during and after the 2004 election cycle contain prohibitions for transgender people to get married. It also has many transgender people who are in male-female marriages nervously wondering if their own marriages will be the next ones to be invalidated.

Many of us in the transgender community have noted that when it comes to marriage equality, some of you GLB peeps are not accepting 'incremental progress' when it comes to a civil rights issue you desire to have become a reality as expeditiously as possible, but you don't share our urgency to have the same thing happen for a transgender-inclusive ENDA.

In my time working for the passage of inclusive ENDA and hate crimes legislation, I've had the pleasure of meeting and observing many same gender couples. They have been together in loving, long term, stable relationships decades longer than some hetero couples I knew who were 'so in love' back in high school.

It's a travesty that those same gender couples don't have the equivalent access to the thousands of rights that married hetero couples have conferred upon them and take for granted. It's not fair to be penalized tax wise because you love and are spending the rest of your life (hopefully) with someone who just happens to share the same gender as you.

Don't get it twisted. Congratulations! I'm happy for the GLB community and I ain't mad at you. Thursday was a historic day for civil rights.

But I still feel left out of the celebration.

Confessions Of A GLBT Airline Employee

The recent Bilerico post concerning my GLBT airline brothers and sisters who've lost their jobs was a deja vu moment for me.

One of my nicknames in the transgender community is the Air Marshal because I worked for 14 years for CAL at IAH.

Oops, drifting into airline speak again.

I was the rapid response team for the transgender community during my early activist years. If we had a problem or needed someone representing us for a short notice protest or board meeting, I got called.

I miss it so much I wrote a novel in 2003 that weaves some of my airline experiences into the plot called On The Wings of Love

I started working for Continental in 1987 during the Frank Lorenzo regime. I remember telling friends after my grandfather passed away in 1984 and had worked 35 years for CAL that I wouldn't be caught dead there while he was running the place. I was upset that the 'Proud Bird with the Golden Tail's' quality reputation, as Continental's ad slogan was back in the day had been sullied by Lorenzo's union busting and heavy-handed diss the employees management style..

But since it was the Reagan years and jobs were scarce I reluctantly took it after resisting the suggestion from my dad for three years because I wanted to start in passenger service, not the ramp. I spent a miserable but fun year on the IAH ramp before I finally got the promotion to passenger service I wanted in June 1988 and subsequently ended up in Denver spending the month of July 1988 at old Stapleton Airport in training.

I loved the international and multicultural aspect of working for an airline. We had people from 40 countries and all 50 states and territories that worked at IAH. That multicultural aspect of our employee base also included GLBT peeps as well.

I also noted that it was consistent throughout the industry when I started non-revving all over the place once my pass privileges kicked in (I miss the Golden Handcuffs, too). As a gate agent and later a CSR and supervisor I got to interact with a lot of GLBT pilots, flight attendants, fellow gate emplyees and supervisors at mine and other carriers.

I also got to interact with GLBT customers, and I'll save those stories for another post.

Because I was the lone African-American on my gates for a few years with the exception of a few supervisors who became my airline mentors, I spent down time between flights in the flight attendant lounge hanging out.with my high school classmate Melanie and other Afriican-Americans. I got to meet some wonderful people and I still laugh about one visit to the company store which at that time before they moved the crew lounge to more spacious digs was down the hall.

I was grabbing snacks and was standing next to a 'family' flight attendant who was playing with a model of a DC-10. He held it in his hand like it was flying in straight level flight for a few seconds then nosedived it into a pile of t-shirts while singsonging the words "Death cruiser." It was a sarcastic nickname they had for the plane that referenced the DC-10's propensity to crash when they first entered airline fleets in the 70's before they fixed the problem. We used to call the A300 Airbus the 'Scarebus' because of the way it rattled like it was going to break apart when you revved the bird up for takeoff.

I saw the effects of the HIV/AIDS crisis reflected in the airline ranks as well. There were more than a few times I popped down in the crew lounge to say hello to some people and was greeted at the door of the crew lounge with a memorial photo and burning candle memorializing another co-worker who lost their battle with AIDS.

Before I transitioned I used to spend a lot of time in Montrose crossdressed . There were more than a few times I'd bounce into Charlie's, the gay-owned 24 hour restaurant and coffee shop in the heart of Houston's gayborhood and run into fellow employees there or at Studio 13, the Black gay hangout. There were also moments in which I had co-workers come out. Every time it happened, I had to ask myself when I was finally going to address my own gender issues and do the same thing they were doing.

I remember when one of my fellow Latina CSR's transferred to Inflight. I used to good naturedly tease Gloria because every time I saw her cute, petite self, she was standing in front of one of the floor length mirrors we had in various breakrooms around the terminal. Her makeup bag was open, not a hair out of place and she'd be applying mascara to those long eyelashes of hers that framed her wide light gray eyes

We'd become good friends over time and she came out a few months later. I was one of the first people she told because I knew her partner as well and she was worried about losing my friendship, I told her I had my own issues and that we were friends for life as she hugged me. Gloria ended up being one of the first people I told about my own transition in 1994. It was interesting to note that when I finally did so, over the next few weeks several people in various departments came out as well.

Since I worked the gates my transition was a very public one. I felt like I was in a fishbowl with 30,000 passengers a day transiting Terminal C at the time, and my co-workers got to watch me morph in front of their very eyes into the Phenomenal Transwoman.

The GLBT ones in and out of the closet welcomed me into the family. There were varying reactions from my straight counterparts. One interesting reaction was the way the guys shunned me for a few weeks, then resumed conversing with me three months later. It was as if I was beig severed from the Masculine Borg collective. The women embraced me almost immediately, and there was one memorable conversation in which I ended up in the breakroom with several sistahs and they laid out the Sistah's Rules of Femininity to me during a 45 minute break between flights. The fundies just tried to proselytize me.

In those early transition days I did a Terminal C listening tour in which I made it clear that anybody who wanted to ask me questions could pull me aside on our breaks and as long as the question wasn't too personal, I'd answer it. I made that same offer to the pilots, Inflight, the mechanics and the ramp as well. It seems like during that first six weeks I had more honest one on one or group conversations with people than I'd had with folks in the previous six years I'd been employed there..

The funniest one was when I had one female co-worker trying to ascertain what my sexual orientation was and asked me if I asked me if I liked women. I brushed her question off by joking, "Yeah, I like women. I like women so much I want to be one." When that led to one of my gay male supervisors pulling me aside after a flight and asking it I was transitioning to become a lesbian, I quickly had to do damage control on that comment.

Another humorous moment was when the late Jerry Falwell made his infamous attack on Teletubbie Tinky-Winky. and every out GLBT pilot and flight attendant in the system responded by putting Tinky Winky key fobs on their roller bags.

There were also not so humorous moments. I flew to DCA in 1998 for my first lobby trip with Vanessa Edwards Foster traveling with me on a buddy pass. I was still in the process of getting my work records changed to reflect my new name and my company ID already had Monica on it. I was in a great mood because it was my first trip to DC and I was feeling good after being on the Hill for two days (before i found out we'd been sabotaged by HRC a year later).

The African-American gate agent I showed my ID to, when it was time for me to pick up our seats for the return trip to Houston embarrassed and angered me by using my old name on the PA in a crowded gate lounge, in effect outing me to the entire lobby. He ended up issuing a written apology to me a few days later when i wrote up the incident for my supervisor and his GM.

The same thing happened to me in LA in 1999. This one exposed me to some jerks on the flight walking by my aisle seat and repeatedly calling me 'faggot' as I was still fuming about not only being outed again, but this time being erroneously bumped off the 7 AM PDT LAX-IAH trip. I couldn't retaliate because I was in uniform and heading back to work when I arrived at IAH.

I also used my passes to check out GLBT venues in other cities. I hung out at Club Peanuts on Santa Monica Blvd at Club Peanuts one Tuesday night and ran into a few actors enjoying on the down low the company of the T-girls hanging out there. So I wasn't surprised by the news of a certain comedian being pulled over on that street with a T-girl in his vehicle.

There was one night I was in the Village with Dana Turner and we were talking about transgender related community business during a drag show at One Potato, Two Potato. The manager actually walked over to us and asked us to be quiet because we 'were disturbing the (lousy) drag performer on stage. Me and Dana did double takes, then she replied to the manager, "Since when did this become Lincoln mother----ing Center?"

One thing I do miss about my airline days besides the travel, the flexible schedule, the money and the other perks that go along with it is that every workday was different. One day you'd be checking in a celebrity or politician, the next some sweet senior citizen taking a trip to see her grandkids, a couple on their honeymoon.or a kid heading off to college or military boot camp.

We were a family, no matter if you worked in LAX, EWR, CLE, ORD, IAH or some outstation with four flights a day. You were also connected to other airline people internationally as well not only at your own carrier, but others worldwide. We had airlne specific softball, volleyball and basketball tournaments, 5 and 10K runs in various spots on the globe and picnics in various places. The world was basically your playground and with airline passes, you could see any concert, attend any sporting event and any conference no matter where it was held. All you had to do was trade for the days off.

Oh yeah, we also had some slammin' parties, too. Some airline peeps can drink and eat twice their weight in food and alcoholic beverages. I also noted the irony that as many hetero airline couples marriages were crumbling because of AIDS (Airline Induced Divorce Syndrome) the GLBT airline couples I knew had been together up to a decade or more.

But yeah, I do miss the airline industry and I'm saddened that it's going through another round of consolidation and contraction that's going to cost a lot of good people some very nice well paying jobs.

But mine was fun while it lasted.