Kylan Steps On The Miss California USA Stage Today!

Kylan Wenzel makes history today when she steps onto the Pasadena Convention Center stage along with 229 other contestants vying for the Miss California USA title.

She's the first ever out trans person in the United States to compete in the Miss Universe pageant system and has the goal of attempting to become the first trans Miss USA and trans Miss Universe. 

But the first and hardest leg of the journey happens today as she tries to become one of the 20 women left standing for Sunday's semifinals.

She was interviewed on Anderson Cooper's talk show yesterday, and here's the video from it.



Good luck, Kylan!

Trans Teen, Beauty Queen

I posted in the wake of Jenna Talackova's attempt to win Miss Canada Universe and make it to Miss Universe 2012 the story of Jackie Green's attempt to win Miss England. 

Documentary cameras were following her quest to do so, and here it is.

Christine Jorgensen-Sixty Years Later

While Christine Jorgensen was quietly convalescing in a Danish hospital after the second of her genital surgeries on November 20, the news about her being the first post World War II transwoman was about to explode literally into New York's and eventually the world's consciousness.

Dr Magnus Hirschfeld and his Berlin institute had already done the first trans surgeries with Lili Elbe and 'Dorchen' back in 1930-31.  Christine was the first post World War II to do so after undergoing hormone replacement therapy under Dr. Christian Hamburger and his team.. 

On December 1, 1952 the headline for the New York Daily News blared 'EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY', thus triggering the ongoing fascination of America and the world with us transpeople.

That December 1952 headline knocked a nuclear test at Eniwetok Atoll off the front pages and also created a news feeding frenzy that only became more pronounced when then 27 year old Christine  returned home to New York on February 13, 1953.

It is a sixty year period that has seen surgery for transwomen evolve through the efforts of people such as Georges Bourou, Roberto Granato, Stanley Biber, Yvon Menard, Sanguan Kunaporn, and a girl like us in Marci Bowers.

It is also a period that has seen the knowledge of the medical and social side of transsexualty grow through the efforts of Harry Benjamin, organizations such as WPATH and in many cases, transpeople themselves.


Christine Jorgensen as our pioneering American transwoman would be followed by legions of other transwomen and transmen not only here, but around the world such as Great Britain's April Ashley and France's Coccinelle.   There were countless others who eventually had surgery and under the protocols of the time faded into society never to reveal their status as transwomen while other picked up the advocacy torch to fight for the human rights of people like themselves. 

Christine was the first to deal with trans celebrity status.  She navigated the media onslaught that greeted her upon her return to the States.  She wrote her life story in an autobiography that sits on my bookshelf now and became a movie.  She had a career in entertainment and Hollywood. She did the education at university campuses as a lecturer in the 1970's and 1980's.   She did the television interviews on the shows of the day such as Donahue and Dick Cavett .  She worked with the medical professionals of her time such as Dr. Harry Benjamin while living her life to best of her ability until she passed away in May 1989 of lung and bladder cancer the day before my 27th birthday. 

Christine also dealt with the societal frustrations that many transpeople still deal with today.   She was denied the opportunity to get married in 1959 because her birth certificte still had 'male' on it.  She was loved by some and vilified by others.  But she was happy and never regretted what she'd gone through to become a pioneering #girllikeus.

She also gave a name and a face to what people were suffering with and was the trans icon of many of my trans elders who were kids during that time period.  When Jorgensen passed away on May 3, 1989 in San Clemente, CA I was well into gathering information and making the moves to get hormones to facilitate my own transition that would happen for me in 1994.

Some people consider Christine Jorgensen's arrival in New York and her stylishly stepping off that SAS airplane from Copenhagen at what is now JFK airport the opening moments of the sexual revolution in the United States and there's a plausible argument that could be made for that.   

As she said in the film that was made several years before her death in which she returned to Denmark to reunite with the medical team that made her transition possible, "We didn't start the sexual revolution but I think we gave it a good kick in the pants!"

But Christine Jorgensen is also the starting point for our public fascination with and at times sixty year contentious discussion of transsexality on many levels   It's also the beginnings of a worldwide journey of discovery and evolution for those of us who are gender variant.   It also jump started the still evolving medical and societal thinking concerning gender identity and the causes and treatment of transsexuality.

And we transpeople owe a lot to her sixty years later for being courageous enough to start that journey.

Trans History-Roberta Close

Contrary to this article implying that trans models like Lea T, Felipa Torres and Carol Marra are some 21st century twist to the Brazilian modeling scene, that isn't the case.  There was a trans woman strutting the catwalks in Brazil and elsewhere in the world back in the 80's.

This latest group of twentysomething Brazilian models need to bow down and recognize their trans sister who paved the way for them to be able to strut those catwalks in Rio, New York, Milan and Paris.

The pioneering transwoman in question is Roberta Gambine Moreira, who was born on this date in 1964 in Rio de Janiero.  

Known professionally as Roberta Close, she started surreptitiously taking hormones in her teens and began her modeling and film career at age 17.

The 5'10 1/2" beauty won the Miss Gay Brazil pageant at age 20, appeared in a popular Brazilian soap opera and print ads. 

She 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.  Even though she was comfortable with her pre-op status during that time period, 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'.

In 1993 she married her Swiss manager, Roland Granacher, in Europe since in Roman Catholic Brazil she wasn't able to do so.



She also fought a lengthy legal battle in the Brazilian court system to challenge the laws that refused to recognize her femininity in her documentation.  She lost an initial round in 1997 and another in 2003, but eventually won her case to have her birth documentation changed.

On March 4, 2005, Roberta Close acquired legal status as a female in Brazil after Judge Leise Rodrigues de Lima Espiritu Santo of the 9th Family Court of Rio de Janeiro legally recognized her as a woman.

Roberta Close is the reason that the current crop of Brazilian trans models have their opportunities to make it in the fashion world today, and hope these 21st century ladies appreciate the barriers Roberta broke down for them.


   

Young Trans Women, Y'all Inspire Me, Too

Someone sent me the link to the KOKUMO interview she'd recently done in which she gave me a shout out.  

As I read it I drifted back to the comments I consistently heard while I was at OUT on the Hill, the Trans Faith In Color Conference in Charlotte and the ones I get via private e-mail as to how I'm considered by you as an inspiration to yourselves. 

But truth be told, you young trans women inspire me just as much or even more than y'all have told me I inspire you to be out and proud about yourselves as women with trans history.

You are the smartest, best educated, most tech savvy generation our people have ever produced.  I have no doubt that your accomplishments when you reach my age will far exceed mine and you''ll have the opportunity to achieve things I could only have dreamed about when I started as an activist in 1998.

Keeping up with you younglings inspires me to constantly work on my activist 'A' game.  I'm keeping up with the latest developments in our community news wise, medically and philosophically.   I'm in contact with a wide variety of thought leaders, and that's why some of you have my home phone number.   I have no problems taking time out of my day to talk to you, listen to your concerns, giving you advice when you ask for it, shutting up and listening when you have something to present I need to be 'ejumacated' on and proudly acting as your mentor.  

And yeah, I have to lay off the Blue Bell half gallons and stay in shape because some of you girls have serious curves and have a killer sense of style to go with that beauty and brains. 

I do so because I wish I'd had more people willing or in the position to do the same for me when I was transitioning or getting into activism.  I wish I'd had somebody who could have broken down the history of our community to us, passed it along and all we would have had to do is build on their progress.  

But all I can do is deal with the trans community's situation as it exists for us in October 2012 and try to give you something to build on to take to the next level.

Yes, you beautiful #girlslikeus are making strides that make me cry tears of joy at times when I think about it.  I see you in movies, standing on red carpets at awards shows, organizing events, running organizations, and doing television interviews and panel discussions with effortless ease.  I hope to see you running for and winning political office and leading our people into the second half of the 21st century while serving as inspirations for the transkids that are matriculating in elementary. middle and high school now.  

Young transwomen, I want you to know that y'all inspire me just like you tell me that I serve as an inspiration to you.   And y'all do so with style, grace, beauty and class.

And that is a win-win situation for the entire trans community

Vietnamese Trans Woman Comes Out On National Telecast.

People tell me they thought it was brave for me to come out in the middle of an international airport terminal back in 1993.   But what I was doing wasn't brave.  It was a necessary step in the evolution towards becoming the phenomenal person I am now.  

It's never easy to out yourself to the world as a transwoman, much less do so in front of a national television audience.  So I have much love, respect and admiration for what 25 year old Vietnamese transwoman Huong Giang did recently as a finalist in the Vietnam Idol competition that was broadcast on September 6.

After being praised by the judges When asked if she'd ever auditioned for Vietnam Idol before she hesitated for a moment before she revealed she'd previously attempted to do so under her old name.

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After some discussion, she did move on in the Vietnam Idol competition.   Best of luck to her and hope she wins it..

Happy Mother's Day To Trans Moms

I do know of and I'm aware of the existence of trans women who are doing the tough job of raising kids.

I'm also aware of the fact we have transwomen who are serving in the role of a mother figure for trans youth either by being a house mother or just lending a sympathetic and non judgmental ear when one of our younglings needs to chat and get some things off their chests.  

Thank you for stepping out there and being you.   Thank you for standing and delivering for our youth and you get my utmost love and respect for doing so. 

So yes, Happy Mother's Day to you as well.

Message To The Men Who Want To Love Us

It takes balls pardon the pun to be a transwoman. We go through a lot of crap just to be the women we are and any cisgender man who steps to us romantically needs to recognize that fact first and foremost.

No insecure men or playa-playas need apply when it comes to the job of being our mates because you are going to get a lot of bull feces from society for dating a transwoman, be she pre, post or non-op.

You are going to need to be more man than you usually are in a relationship with a transwoman. She has to fight so many battles just to exist in this world and have her femininity respected and will need a little extra TLC to get past that.

Despite the shade thrown at us from our detractors we are not 'men' despite the time we spent on the other side of the gender fence. She doesn't need additional drama in her romantic life from the man that claims to love her.   She doesn't need to come home to a man who lies to her, cheats on her, or in the middle of an argument slips up and calls her a 'man' or some other misgendering epithet in the middle of said argument.

She also doesn't need you threatening to leave her for a 'real woman' because 'you can't have my child.'

Just like you expect us to accept you 'menz' being works in progress, so are we.  Transwomen are just like any other women on the planet in terms of our ongoing evolution and maturation into becoming the best persons we can be. 

So the first way to frack up with us is treat us like one of your homeboys.   Transwomen like flowers, candy, and being wined and dined just like any other estrogen based lifeform on the planet.  If you aren't fully committed to dealing with the fact that you are going to have to step up your romantic game to make a transwoman feel safe, secure, desired and wanted in this relationship so she feels comfortable enough to reciprocate, or you have a fetishistic attraction to transwomen, then don't step to her.

Bottom line, love us and step to us like you would a cis woman.   If you do that, you'll find you'll get major cool points from said transwomen for doing so.  

Kwamalicious Loves Her Some TransGriot

Even though I get about 3000 hits per day on TransGriot from people around the world, the ones that mean the most to me are from my young African descended transsisters (and African descended transbrothers) from across the Diaspora who tell me how much they are inspired by something that I or my guest posters have written.  

It was one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place back in 2006.  I wanted to be an inspiration to young African-American transwomen, let them know we have a proud history and people who represent us well.  

I also wanted them to know that their trans elders like me were proud of them and there are African American cis women who don't hate their guts but genuinely want to be their sisters.

There are also other transwomen of African descent who also seek to have genuine sisterhood with and form lasting friendships with other forward thinking African-American transwomen or all ages.    

I also wanted them to know that transition is not only serious business, but that we need to aspire to be better representations of Black trans womanhood, be proud of being Black transwomen and write a different narrative in the 2K10's and beyond of what it's all about.

And I wanted to role model it.  

Got an e-mail today from my fellow blogger Gina of Skip The Makeup blogging fame pointing me to a young African American collegiate transsister who talks about her life transitioning on the Trinity University campus.

I'm presuming it's the TU campus in San Antonio, where I spent some time on an interesting collegiate road trip in the spring of 1981 I'll have to tell y'all about on a slow news day.

But back to my transsister.   She's a senior art major with a sociology minor and turns out she loves her some TransGriot.  She critiqued a few of my posts at her Kwamalicious YouTube channel.









And yes Kay, looking forward to meeting you in realtime and having some serious conversations with you. 

Feel free to hit me up on Facebook..

Make Sure He Loves And Respects Your Azz

One of the reasons I love my Facebook page and the over 1300 people from all walks of life I have on it is because I'm exposed to a variety of viewpoints and commentary that sometimes triggers the posts that I write for this blog.  

I had one hit my FB page courtesy of courtesy of  Alicia Bree-Brimage that was humorous but full of truth about the subject of marriage and women being in too much of a hurry at times to get married.

For my single lady friends who are in a hurry to get married, here's a quick piece of Biblical advice: Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz. While waiting on YOUR Boaz, don't settle for ANY of his relatives: Brokeaz, Poaz, Lyinaz, Cheatinaz, Dumbaz, Drunkaz, Cheapaz, Lockedupaz, Goodfornothingaz, Lazyaz, or Marriedaz & especially his third cousin Beatinyoaz. Please, wait on your Boaz & make sure he respects Yoaz!

There's a lot of truth in that statement.   It's resonating with me because I'm also thinking about this in the context of chatting with my young transsisters who are in heterosexual relationships.  

Yeah, despite the pushback and drama we get from society opposing our rights to get married, I am still a romantic at heart and believe the laws of our various nations will one day allow us without interference to walk down the aisle and say "I do" to the person we love.  

I've observed a lot of relationships over the years between transwomen and cismen, and I'm always amazed at how some beautiful transwomen ended up with guys that fell into the categories that were described in that comment.   Sometimes it was the same transwomen falling into a pattern of repeatedly dating the same type of buster guys because they believed they couldn't do any better or were desperate to find a husband or boyfriend to 'prove' their femininity. 

Some of that is driven by the latent shame and guilt issue we struggle with at times.  Some of it is simply lack of self esteem and confidence that they are all that and four bags of chips and deserve a quality man.  

Just as our cissisters do, we transwomen need to think about on a regular basis the qualities that we are looking for in a life partner. We need to determine what are the qualities that are non negotiable relationship deal breakers and which ones are the qualities you can compromise on?. 

Transwomen shouldn't be grabbing on to any man just to validate their femininity because of a mistaken belief on our parts borne in low self-esteem and low expectations that we can't do any better.   Neither should it be based on a mistaken belief on his part that we'll take whatever crap they shovel at us and won't leave them for greener pastures.  

We need to be willing to look in the mirror, love the person we see and bet that we are such high quality women that we are prepared to live our lives alone rather that settle for a toxic relationship with a man that doesn't respect or value us.  

Yes we should, yes we can, and yes we will   

Never forget the most important factor in this relationship equation.  Not only should he love and respect your azz, you should love and respect your azz as well.