Why Don't You Do More Transgender Posts?

Every now and then while I'm out and about in Da Ville I run into peeps who when they find out I'm the TransGriot, rave about my column or the blog.

One of the questions I got asked recently was why I don't have more content on transgender issues.

While transsexuality is a subject that I could literally find tons of angles to discuss, being a transperson is only one aspect of all the things that make up me. There are transgender bloggers, but not many of them focus on the issues of being TWB (transgender while Black).

As you TransGriot readers have discovered, I had (and still have) a relatively interesting life prior to transition that I've barely scratched the surface of. I have interests beyond just talking about being trans. I have sistafriends I hang out with, talk to on a regular basis and help sort out their drama. I'm keeping abreast of the news. I'm reading various books and listening to my massive CD collection. I'm also working 40 plus hours a week while squeezing time in to work on my novels.

I deeply appreciate the fact that many of you enjoy your time on TransGriot and keep coming back. As any writer will tell you, we love it when the work and sometimes late hours we put into compiling interesting and quality blog content is acknowledged by the comments you leave on the various posts. (hint, hint)

But as one of the few African-American peeps who talk about transgender issues, some of the stuff I relay to you is personal. My own family is struggling with a lot of the issues as well, so I have to balance what I can personally talk about versus a desire to not have too many details of their lives exposed to millions of people. I chose to do that in the name of educating peeps on transgender issues, they didn't.

Then there's simply writer's block. There are days or nights I sit in front of this computer and have a wonderful idea for a post, then I start typing, don't like the first, second or third draft and set it aside for a few hours. Sometimes I just hold the idea for a later time. Sometimes I end up just sitting there staring at the computer screen until I give up, shut it down and do something else for a while.

Rest assured, there will always be transgender content in this blog. It isn't called TransGriot for nothing. But the 'griot' in the blog name also means that I'm living up to the West African griot tradition of kicking knowledge to you on a wide variety of subjects as well.

Black Radio Days

A post on the Mes Deaux Cents blog was the inspiration for this one. She talked about her love of radio and working in the business. It's generated a lot of comments from people like myself who fondly remember the pioneering deejays in their hometowns and got me thinking once again about that part of my childhood.

Radio, especially Black radio has a special place not only for me but in the hearts of our people. As someone who grew up around radio stations, cut a promo commercial for my dad's AM drive time show when I was in the first grade and another one years later, I saw that love firsthand.

Black radio entertained us, informed us, raised money, helped us get organized and gave us a voice. It's rightfully credited by no less than Dr. King and others with being the engine that powered the 50's and 60's Civil Rights Movement.

Because the deejay has an exalted place in our community. they were considered leaders and opinion makers. The movie Talk To Me, in which Don Cheadle depicted the life of legendary jock Ralph Waldo 'Petey' Greene who was on Washington DC's WOL-AM during the 60's and 70's, illustrates the ability of Black deejays to shape community public opinions. It was a power that J. Edgar Hoover and others were so afraid of they actually monitored many Black deejays from the late 60's through the mid 70's.

It's no accident that when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, the first victims of the rush to buy stations in many markets were Black ones. They were part of small radio station networks or had individual owners. When the Clear Channels with their megabucks started calling, they cashed out. If it weren't for Cathy Hughes and Radio One Inc, Black radio as we know it wouldn't exist.

The history of Black Radio is thankfully preserved on the Indiana University campus in its Archives of African-American Music & Culture. There is a section of it that covers Black radio that has not only my dad's memorabilia, but a collection of the late Jack Gibson's Mello Yello magazines and other legendary deejays as well. I'm planning on taking a trip up the road to the IU-Bloomington campus soon and checking out all that radio history.

But it was interesting having a ringside seat for all of that. I got to meet various peeps ranging from politicians to music business people. I got to see some really cool concerts, collect a vast array of promo tee-shirts and have a cutting edge record collection. One of the first concerts I was allowed to attend by myself was a Parliament-Funkadelic one in which Bootsy was part of the tour. I also kept up with the news and happenings in the business by reading my dad's Mello Yello's when he was done with them.

There was one summer I got to tag along for a Jackson 5 concert and actually meet the Jacksons. I have an autographed picture from that encounter of me and Michael Jackson that won me much cash in junior high and high school. ;)

During my sophomore year there was a KYOK Night at the Ice Capades at the Summit in which my brother and I were added to an ice skating race with KYOK's deejays. I spent a lot of weekends on the Galleria's ice rink and in the process learned how to ice skate quite well. I won, but my main concern during the whole thing was not only beating my brother, but not falling in front of 17,000 people because I would have definitely heard about it at school the next morning.

Thanks to Cathy Hughes and others, the traditions and proud history of Black radio have been preserved for the 21st Century. It's cool to know that the kids now growing up will get the same joys out of flipping on their radio and listening to broadcast content that reflects their culture as we did.

It's also comforting to know that Black radio will still be around to help us mobilize our people to fight for justice, as was proven by Thursday's events in Jena, LA as well.

Jena 6 Protest

I am so proud of our people this morning. I caught parts of the Jena 6 protest yesterday on CNN and took time to fire off comments to the CNN website.

As I saw our people gather in Jena, assemble in front of the LaSalle Parish Courthouse, visit Jena High School and watched 'the Revs' and others speak I found myself wishing I could have been part of this history making event. We had a bus full of people that left from Louisville to go there, but I had to work last night.

It was beautiful to see 50,000 people peacefully assembling to march for justice. The best part of it was seeing all the young people that were involved. It brought tears to my eyes.

This is an opportunity for parents to have a teachable moment for their kids about our history in this country and the civil rights movement.



We must constantly remind our kids (and some whites as well) that 400 years of racism did not magically disappear in the 60's and 70's. The Forces of Intolerance are always at work and there are Jena's everywhere along with the attitudes that created them.

My hope and prayer is that our young people's involvement in social justice issues doesn't stop with this case. I hope that our youth and the participants realized that our fight for justice as African-Americans is an ongoing battle and that they must do their part to continue 'Fighting the Power' to the best of their abilities until Dr. King's dream is an unalterable reality.

Transparent

I just finished reading Transparent by Cris Beam. It's an interesting nonfiction book about several Los Angeles Latina and African-American transkids covering a period from 1998 to 2005.

One of the people featured in the book, Foxxjazell was familiar to me. I just wrote a blog post last month on her increasing popularity in California's rap scene as a transgender rapper. It was interesting to read her background story.

Some of it was sad, some triumphant. Some of their stories hit home and triggered some emotional memories concerning some things I was dealing with in my own childhood.

Cris Beam also weaves transgender history, science, and knowledge throughout the book. If you want to get some insight on some of the issues we deal with and how they affect these transkids, you may want to pick this book up and add it to your collection.

I'm Not Surprised

During the time I was working for Continental Airlines, Houston hosted the 1992 GOP convention. Many of those delegates went through IAH to get to the convention and return to their homes scattered across the country. I met some of the GOP leadership like now Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), other George HW Bush cabinet peeps, and convention delegates from various states as I worked flights during this period.

The day after it ended, I had a Seattle flight I was working. I was killing time until a short air traffic control delay was lifted before I could board the plane. In the lobby there was a group of teenaged kids who had just attended the convention. They had their GOP t-shirts on and were energized about working for George HW Bush's reeelection. Three girls approached the podium and engaged me in a discussion about joining their party and voting for Bush senior.

After politely listening to them for a few moments I replied, "No thanks, I'm voting for Clinton."

"But why?" one of the eager young white females replied.

"Your party has engaged in practices and behaviors over the years that have led me to conclude that people who look like me aren't wanted. Until your party gets serious about competing for my people's votes and doing the things necessary to get those votes beyond symbolic measures, I'll continue to be a Democrat."

I'm recounting this conversation because of the news that GOP frontrunners John McCain, Rudy Guiliani, and Mitt Romney all declined invitations to the All American Presidential Forum to be held on September 27 at Morgan State University for the GOP candidates. A similar forum was held on June 28th for the Democrats and all eight contenders showed up at Howard University for it.

I'm not surprised that Guiliani isn't gonna show up. He's 'scurred' about the questions that will pop up about his contentious relationship in NYC with the African-American community and the Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo NYPD incidents that happened under his tenure.

McCain has 'F' grades on his NAACP Civil Rights report cards and Romney is probably afraid he'll get hit with questions about the Mormon Church's negative beliefs about African-Americans. Only one of the GOP candidates, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) even bothered to show up for the presidential forum during the recent NAACP convention in Detroit.

The journalists who will be asking the questions for the five confirmed Republican presidential candidates showing up in Baltimore as I write this are Ray Suarez of The NewsHour, columnist Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal Constitution and NPR's Juan Williams. Tavis will once again be moderator for the event which will air on PBS starting at 9 PM EDT.

I read Tavis' comments on the snub and he's not a happy camper.

"The word frontrunner has taken a whole new meaning for me," said Smiley in an interview with Lee Bailey. "I didn't know it meant being out front and running from people of color."

"The frontrunners, specifically Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain and Mr. Guiliani, have said to us they will not be on stage at Morgan State University on September 27th. All the Democrats showed up in June, but the front running Republicans have said they will not be there. They have also told Univision that they will not be there for the Hispanic debate. So, collectively, what the Republican frontrunners have told both black and brown Americans is that we don't appreciate you, don't value your issues and you're not a priority to us."

"You can't go through an entire primary process and refuse to talk to black and brown voters," he continued. "It's unconscionable, it's untenable, it's unthinkable and no one should be elected president in 2008, in the most multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial America ever and, in the process, ignore and ditch those voters. If you're not going to talk to all of America then you don't deserve to be president of all of America."

That's been the GOP game plan since Nixon concocted the 'Southern Strategy'. Like Tavis, I'm sick of Black conservatives spouting that bullshit 'you need to get off the Democrat plantation line'. You Black conservative clowns continue to apologize and make excuses for your GOP massas. These GOP peeps say they want to compete for our votes, but don't have the cojones to show up at our conventions, our events or give interviews to our media peeps to address our issues.

You black conservatives have shown the African-American community repeatedly over the years where your loyalties lie.

In 2004 the negro Ken Blackwell led the charge to suppress our people's votes in Ohio (he doesn't deserve to be called Black). Ward Connerly is the point negro in trying to get affirmative action programs killed. Don't even get me started on Uncle Thomas, the 'honorary white man' as conservative commentators call him on the Supreme Court.

And all you Black conservative bloggers and GOP butt-kissing preachers have been deafingly silent about how your vaunted GOP showed the world how much they cared about New Orleans and its African-American residents, but can flap your gums ad nauseum when it comes to same-sex marriage and hatin' on GLBT people.

And you want to know why reality based African-Americans vote at a 90% clip for Democratic candidates?

Thanks to the naked racism that's spewing out of your base over the immigration issue, you're driving Latinos away from your party as well at a record clip. 'Bout time they woke up to the true nature of the Republican Party.

Can't wait for September 27 to get here. I'm gonna make sure I have plenty of popcorn on hand to munch on for what promises to be an entertaining evening.

NAACP And The Jena 6 Case

TransGriot Note: For those of you who question whether the NAACP is relevant, this is an e-mail blast I received yesterday about the Jena 6 case.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


It's an American outrage that demonstrates the continuing shame of racism in our country.


Six black teenagers in a small Louisiana town are facing some of the most overly aggressive prosecution we've seen - all over a schoolyard fight with white students. The group has come to be known in the media as the Jena 6, in reference to the small town where a series of racial incidents escalated after three nooses were hung from a tree at a local high school.


Click here to add your name to the Justice for Jena petition now!


The events led to the arrest of the young men - all being charged with serious criminal offenses that could lead to decades in jail. But, the white students involved were not initially prosecuted; they received a three-day in school suspension for hanging the nooses.


In a trial that lasted only two days, an all-white jury convicted Mychal Bell, the first of the group to be tried. The public defender presented no rebuttal or witnesses, and the jury deliberated for less than two hours.


On Friday, the Louisiana Court of Appeals took an important step towards justice for the Jena 6. They tossed out Bell's conviction for aggravated battery, stating that he should not have been tried and convicted as an adult. But, Mychal Bell remains in jail awaiting a new trial. The legal fight is far from over for him and his co-defendants.


Donate to the NAACP Justice for Jena Fund.


How the NAACP is Advocating For Justice

The NAACP is mobilized to secure justice and equity for these young men.

* The NAACP, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Southern University Law Center, has provided some additional legal support and resources to the defendants' attorneys and remains committed to the defense of the remaining young men.

* We presented a petition of over 62,000 signatures (gathered on the NAACP website; signatures now exceed 92,000) to the Governor of Louisiana on Sept. 17 as a symbol of the thousands of citizens concerned with the unequal treatment of the defendants and the pubic acknowledgement that the hanging of the three nooses is a serious hate crime offense.

* We have demanded that the Attorney General's office investigate the prosecution and monitor the trials.

* We organized activities, including a rally and town hall, in Jena on Sept. 20 in the spirit of justice and equality. The town hall will focus on racial disparities in the education and criminal justice systems.

* We are actively monitoring the situation and remain committed to the defense of the six young men to ensure proper treatment by the court system and protection of their rights under the law.

If you can't come to Jena, you can participate in our efforts via the NAACP website by signing the Justice for Jena petition, donating to the cause, or by viewing our live webcast of the rally and town hall meeting on Sept. 20. Forward this email to your family and friends and ask them to sign the petition.
We cannot afford to be silent when so much is at stake.


Sincerely,

Dennis Courtland Hayes
Interim President & CEO
NAACP

First Brotha In Space

Today is the 26th anniversary of the launch of the first brotha in space. And no, it wasn't Guy Bluford. His launch into space on the NASA STS-8 mission didn't occur until August 30, 1983.

That honor goes to Cuban cosmonaut Colonel Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez. On September 18, 1980 he was launched into space as part of the Soyuz 38 mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Cuban Air Force pilot was selected on March 1, 1978 as part of the Intercosmos program the Russian (then Soviet) space program was conducting to allow fellow Eastern Bloc nations to take part in space exploration.

After docking with the Salyut 6 space station, Tamayo and his Russian counterpart Yuri Romanenko remained on board to conduct experiments into what causes a form of motion sickness in some space travelers called SAS or space adaptation sickness.

After 120 orbits of the earth covering a total of 7 days, 20 hours and 43 minutes, Tamayo and Romamenko executed a risky night landing. They returned safely to earth 180 kilometers from the city of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on September 26, 1980.

The Guantanamo born (January 29, 1942) Tamayo-Mendez was not only the first person of African descent into space, he was also the first Hispanic and the first person from a Western Hemisphere nation other than the United States to fly a space mission.

After his cosmonaut career he was promoted to brigadier general in the Cuban Air Force and settled into married life with his wife and two sons.

In The Spirit

Over the weekend I was checking out the seminar topics that were presented during the just concluded Southern Comfort Conference when this one caught my eye.

Fractal Femininity (Masculinity); Changing Gender a Better Way; from the Inside Out that was taught by Dr. John O'Dea. I chuckled to myself as I read that.

One of the things that African-American transpeeps have known for years is that transition is an inside-out process. Anybody can acquire the body if you have enough cash to do so. But since we only earn .70 for every dollar a white person earns, we by necessity had to focus on the internal process first.

I'm a voracious reader, and one of the first things I did after I started transition was subscribe to Essence magazine. It has a wonderful column called In The Spirit by Susan L. Taylor that focuses on many of the spiritual, emotional and other issues that African-American women deal with in their daily lives. She also published a book by the same name that deals with the spiritual side of womanhood.

By listening to the advice that was given to me by my sistafriends, doing tons of reading, having Dr. Cole tell me the same thing and simple observation, I learned that femininity is internal and between your ears, not the genitalia configuration between your legs.

It's a lesson that was reinforced by observing the way some white transpeople approach transition. I noted there was way too much emphasis on SRS and and not enough time focused on dealing with the emotional aspects of femininity. One of the reasons that WPATH calls for the one year Real Life Test is to give you time to get the mind and your new body configuration in sync and get comfortable with it. It's also getting you prepared for dealing with the reality of living as a woman in a male-dominated society.

Too many times I saw peeps blitz through the process, then get upset or wonder why they were still not accepted as women even though they had gotten surgery. It's because while they may have the bodies, the thoughts and actions are still consistent with the masculine behavior patterns they grew up with and didn't address before hopping that flight to Thailand or wherever they had the snip-and-tuck done.

One of the keys is a basic one. Loving yourself. You have to not only feel comfortable in your own skin, but look in the mirror and love the reflection staring back at you. Sometimes that's a tough job with all the negativity that can get hurled at us on a regular basis, but if you have enough self love, you can deal with almost anything the world throws at you.

You also have to believe in a higher power. Be it God, Allah, Jah, Yahweh or whatever you call the higher power, you must acknowledge that there are forces at work that are greater than yourself. You must come to the realization that you are a child of God that is created in His image and that as a transperson, you are part of the divine plan as well despite what fundie 'christians' have to say.

Finally, dealing with the spiritual side of womanhood is an ongoing process. The paths we take toward that spiritual growth and enlightenment are varied. But in the end the goal is still the same. You want to continue evolving to be a better person than when you started your journey.

How 'Bout Those Texans?

Yeah, yeah I know we've only just completed the first two weekends of the 2007 NFL season, but my Texans are 2-0 for the first time in franchise history after beating KC 20-3 and Carolina 34-21 yesterday.

I'll get a better idea of just how good my Texans really are when they play Indianapolis in Reliant next week.

I was already enjoying this season before it started when they beat the Cowchips in the annual Governor's Cup preseason game. Will this be the year my team finally makes it to the NFL playoffs? Have they finally put the pieces together and built an NFL team that will not only consistently win, but be in the mix in postseason play?

We longsuffering Houston fans can only hope that our patience has finally been rewarded. We hope that this is the beginning of sustained success and we'll get to not only see our team in postseason play, but back on nationally televised games as well. Only time will tell if this Texans team has the right stuff to do that.

It would also be a nice story for the hometown boy (Gary Kubiak) and one of the African-American GM's in the NFL (Rick Smith) to have their hard work rewarded with a long playoff run.

I Miss Black Friday Night Lights

One of the things I miss about home as I mentioned in a previous post is high school football, Texas-style.

There's nothing like it anywhere else in the country. The book, movie and NBC TV show Friday Night Lights was based on the legendary Odessa Permian Panthers. I enjoyed watching them get beat down by Jack Yates 37-0 in the 1985 Class 5A championship game at Texas Stadium even though we lost to JY in the 1985 Region III-5A final 21-15 in the Dome that year.

Region III, as southeast Texas is referred to in UIL parlance (University Interscholastic League, the governing body for Texas high school athletic and academic competitions), is the Houston-Galveston-Golden Triangle area. It contains some of the best players in the Lone Star State. If you think I'm just bragging, check the birthplaces of many NFL Hall of Famers, current NCAA Division One ballplayers or current NFL players. Most of them have southeast Texas addresses.

Just in HISD alone at the time I was in high school, Mike Singletary was playing at Worthing High, Dexter Manley at Jack Yates and Darrell Green patrolled the secondary for my alma mater Jesse Jones. There was some kid by the name of Thurman Thomas who played for a brand new high school in Fort Bend county called Willowridge.

Wonder what happened to him?

I'm taking this trip down memory lane because they played the Madison-Yates game last night. Watching those highlights on Chron.com triggered a lot of fond memories. It was a must attend game. In the 1999 one a Madison Marlins quarterback by the name of Vince Young tore up the JY Lions.

Yep, the same Vince Young who now quarterbacks the Tennessee Traitors. (nope, I'm NEVER gonna let it go that Bud Adams moved my beloved Oilers to Nashville)

My dad was the play-by-play announcer not only for Texas Southern University games but HISD games when the station had the broadcast contract for them. As a result I got to see a lot of those big rivalry games such as Kashmere-Booker T. Washington, Houston Ross Sterling-Madison, Wheatley-Yates, Smiley-Forest Brook, and Yates versus 'errbody'. And since nearly all the majority Black schools in the area were performing in the same high-stepping style as TSU's famous 'Ocean of Soul' marching band, there were some great halftime marching band battles as well.

In fact, those high school band rivalries were so fierce that in 1978-79, thanks to the efforts of the late Artice 'C-Boy' Vaughn there was a contest initiated called 'The Battle of the Bands' to determine Houston's best. In 1979 it got moved from Delmar Stadium to Rice Stadium where it drew almost 30,000 fans just to watch the best high school bands in the area strut their stuff. The biggest shock to the crowd that night was Pasadena's J. Frank Dobie High taking the Superband Division of this predominately Black band competition.

In HISD we all hated JY, or "Burger King High" as we called them during my time at JJ. Burger King's uniforms in the 70's were in the same gold and red colors as Yates. They were not only our bitter rival, Yates is one of the original African-American schools in HISD along with Phillis Wheatley, Booker T. Washington, Kashmere and Evan E. Worthing.

Yates alumns and students never let us peeps who went to schools like Jones, Madison, and Sterling that started out as predominately white schools (but became majority Black thanks to white flight) forget that fact. They also rubbed it in our faces that many history making and prominent Houstonians such as Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland and Debbie Allen once walked their campuses. We used to fight back at JJ by playing and singing the tune to the Burger King 'Have It Your Way' commercials and pointing to our academic prowess.

Jack Yates also won games with such nauseating regularity it became a big deal to the other Black schools to knock them off. We beat 'Burger King' during my sophomore year but lost a heartbreaker to Wheatley the next week that denied us a trip to the Dome for the opening round of the state playoffs.

There was also the historical and cultural angle of playing Yates. The Yates-Wheatley game back during the PVIL days (the Prairie View Interscholastic League, the African-American counterpart to the UIL during segregation) was played on Thanksgiving Day to sellout crowds at Jeppesen (now Robertson) Stadium on the UH campus. It was a major event in the Houston Black community. Anytime they played high school doubleheaders in the Astrodome Yates would be one of the featured teams.

My old school is in a slump right now since our all state running back Remus Nembhard moved on to the college ranks and JJ is in rebuilding mode. I also have to deal with the indignity of watching Ross Sterling, the school my neighborhood is zoned to become resurgent in football again at the same time. I'm getting teased about it by my family members who are Sterling alumni.

I'm also marveling at the new high school football landscape in the Houston area. Fort Bend ISD has grown from just Dulles High to enough high schools for their own ten team 5A district. I see new schools opening in the 'burbs every year because suburban districs such as Klein, Cy-Fair, Katy and Alief have experienced the same hypergrowth as FBISD. Even HISD has two new ones in Westside and Cesar Chavez. While some things have changed with Katy, Lamar and North Shore becoming powerhouse programs or once powerful 5A programs moving down to 4A, some have remained the same such as LaMarque's continued dominance of the 4A ranks.

While I remain a fan of Texas high school football in general and loving football is part of my DNA as a Texan, I just have mad love for the flavor of a Black high school football game. Oh how I'd love to be back sitting in the aluminum bleachers on a clear and cool fall night at Barnett Stadium (or any stadium complex in the Houston area) enjoying a high quality high school game again complete with high stepping bands.

Go Falcons!

Southern Comfort 2007

I'm a little bummed that I had to miss Southern Comfort this year mainly because of my work schedule. It's one of my favorite transgender events to attend since it's held in the ATL.

This year's version started on September 10 and is running through the 16th. The bulk of the convention will be transpiring today, Friday and Saturday with the start of the seminar tracks and the upcoming formal dinner on Saturday.

Southern Comfort, now in its 17th year, is the largest transgender event in the US. It's where we get together to transact our community business, have fun, get reacquainted with old friends, meet new ones, and learn a little something while were there. From humble beginnings it quickly became a must attend event during the 90's. It's even been featured in a documentary by the same name.

I first started attending SCC in 1999 and returned in 2000 for an NTAC board meeting we'd scheduled during the event. I skipped a few years letting my finances recover from my move to Louisville before I attended another one in 2004. The 2004 event was the first one I attended at the midtown Atlanta hotel they moved to after SCC outgrew the neighboring Buckhead area hotels that hosted it.

The 2000 Southern Comfort was the most memorable one for me. It was the year that SCC not only set their attendance record, but we had a record 26 African-American and Latino transpeeps attend SCC as well.

That attendance sadly has been the high water mark in terms of an African-American presence at SCC. One of the things that has been embarrassingly obvious to the SCC planners is that while they realize that they are sitting in the Black GLBT mecca, (a fact I and Dawn Wilson pointed out when we were participating in numerous SCC planning meetings over the years) the event has been shunned by the local community.

One of the major problems that contributed to the attendance gap at SCC is one that's common for many national transgender conferences. They are geared towards a middle to upper middle class clientele, in locations with little to no access to public transportation and hotels that aren't cheap or in suburban locations.

Even though SCC offers scholarships and 'sweat equity' programs to help defray costs, it's still in a hotel that's not cheap and the conference registration is separate from the hotel charges. The financial barrier helps to promote in the African-American community a perception that 'we're not wanted', and the end result is a convention that's 99% white.

Despite that feeling from time to time of being the Lone Sistah, I sometimes took advantage of being in the ATL and just got away from the hotel to see Atlanta's sights and attractions. I strolled through Piedmont Park after the 2004 SCC barbecue. Me and several other African-American attendees bounced to a nearby restaurant and had fun getting to know each other,

Since SCC is a Who's Who of people in the transgender universe, I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of those well-known peeps as I was becoming one of them myself. In 2004 I had a wonderful conversation with Calpernia Addams. I had the pleasure of dancing with Jamison Green at the 2000 formal dinner and finally meeting TAVA founder Monica Helms. I got to meet and hang out with Dawn at the 1999 event. It's also fun to interact with the hotel staffs and guests as we're chillin' in the lobby or at the bars.

SCC is important on many levels. It's a event that transpeople plan and execute with military precision. It sends the message to the rest of the world that we aren't as invisible as some of you wish we would be, we aren't going away, and we aren't the ogres that your pastors tell you we are. It's a time and place where many transpeople first come out because it's an event where they feel safe, begin to build those support networks and gather the information that is crucial to a successful transition. It's one of the reasons why I came up with the idea of doing a similar conference for African-American transgender people that we made happen in 2005 and 2006. As a matter of fact, the job fair that SCC is promoting this year came from us coming up with the idea for our 2005 TSTBC conference.

And most importantly, SCC helps to instill pride in who we are as transgender people.

Transwoman Calls For Greater Tolerance Of Gender Diversity In Singapore

Trans woman calls for greater tolerance of gender diversity in Singapore
11th September 2007 16.50
by Gemma Pritchard
from Pink News, UK

A transsexual woman from Singapore has embarked on a mission to help turn around the "culture of shame" surrounding transsexuals in Singapore.

Unlike many other transsexuals in Asia who prefer to live privately because of the social stigma of sex change, British-educated Leona Lo has chosen to live a normal life, but in public.

Leona, a 32-year-old communications specialist who heads her own public relations company, told Agence France-Presse (AFP):

"Somewhere out there, not just in Singapore but throughout Asia, there are lots of young people who are suffering the way I suffered years ago."

These days, she draws on her experiences of gender identity crisis, rejection and discrimination to challenge social mores on behalf of the so-called silent community.

"It's this entire culture of shame that gets under your skin. It's not something that you can isolate and demolish because it is so much a part of our culture," she says.

While a few transsexuals are gaining prominence in Asia, notably China's Jin Xing, most continue to live in silence.

In May,a 32-year-old South Korean transsexual entertainer (Harisu), whose sex alteration led the country to change its family registry laws, married
her rapper boyfriend.

Parinya "Nong Toom" Charoenphol' s rags-to-riches story was made into a movie, Beautiful Boxer.

Former Chinese People's Liberation Army colonel and now woman Jin Xing is a prize-winning dancer and choreographer.

Discrimination is the biggest challenge faced by transsexuals, Leona says, recalling repeated rejection by prospective employers in Singapore despite her academic credentials.

"Singapore may be a cosmopolitan city, but many things are still swept under the carpet,"

No reliable figures on the number of transsexual men and women in Singapore, or the region, are available, mainly because those who feel they have been born in the wrong body prefer to endure their situation in silence rather than embarrass their families, Leona told AFP.

"It's because a lot of transsexual women face discrimination at work and experience failure of relationships that a lot end up in suicide, depression. They end up on the streets as prostitutes," she says.

This is why she has taken time away from her thriving public relations consultancy promoting beauty products to wage her campaign.

After much persuasion, one local university allowed her to speak to an audience of students but she is finding to find a way share her thoughts with the corporate world.

On September 14 she is to launch her autobiography, From Leonard to Leona: A Singapore Transsexual's Journey to Womanhood.

From Singapore, Leona plans to travel across Asia to bring her message for greater tolerance of gender diversity.

Leona says the association of transsexuals with prostitution in Singapore harks back to the 1960s when there was a flourishing culture of drag queens, including some transsexuals, on Singapore's Bugis Street.

As Singapore transformed rapidly into a modern Asian business centre, the government cracked down on Bugis Street. Transsexuals were lumped together with homosexuals, transvestites and prostitutes.

It was in this environment that Leona grew up.

"I did not think I was gay. I just felt that I was a woman trapped in a man's body," says Leona, who has a younger sister.

At age 15, Leonard discovered a book about transsexualism, which sowed the seeds of her eventual decision to undergo a sex-change operation in 1997.

"I discovered that book in the library and I said 'Oh my God! There are actually people like me!" she reminisces.

"That changed my life and I discovered that I could go for the sex change operation."

As an able-bodied man at the time, Leona entered Singapore's compulsory two-year military service at around 19.

Pressures of being forced to be "macho" during the training led to a nervous breakdown and drove her to attempt suicide by drug overdose, she says.

In 1996 Leona went to study in Britain, where a more tolerant university environment allowed her to cross-dress for a year as part of her preparation for sex-change surgery.

In 1997, she checked in to a Bangkok surgery for the operation.

"I was afraid. I could go in and I could die. But I knew at that point that I was going to change my life forever," she recalls.

"I had carried that burden within me for so long and I couldn't live anymore without doing it."

Leona endured a lot of pain during the procedure, which took 14 days, but the feeling of having a new identity was "wonderful, euphoric!" she told AFP.

She warns other transsexuals who might be considering sex change surgery that getting a new identity "is not a magic wand" and they will have to live under a culture of shame and discrimination.

Family support is crucial. Her mother was the first person she told after the operation, and her father had already learned to accept her for who she is. "By that time, they had already decided that they would rather have me as a woman than lose me as a child," she says.

She hopes now to become a wife and mother.

"I look forward to a fulfilling relationship with a loving man, getting married and adopting three children.

"I've also reached a critical juncture where I'm more self-assured and finally able to lay to rest the painful aspects of my past and move confidently as a woman."

Chill With The Anti-Texas Hateraid

One of the things I'm getting a little tired of as a proud native Texan and native Houstonian is the increasing level of anti-Texas hateraid.

Whether it's peeps chomping liberal portions of Hater Tots because of Beyonce's continued success, multitalented Jamie Foxx grabbing an Oscar and making noise in the music business, or Texans having prominent roles in sports, business and government, the hate is getting to noticeable levels.

I suspect that much of the root cause of it stems from the idiot we have in the White House. But news flash for y'all, George W. Bush was born in New Haven, CT. He is a Connecticut Yankee who resides at a pseudo ranch he bought just before the 2000 campaign started in a pitiful attempt to emulate LBJ. (He's not as smart as LBJ) The only Texans who claim his butt these days are right wing radical neo-cons and so-called Bible-thumping 'christians'.

That anti-Texas hate has even materialized in the transgender community. Last year I was about to do an appearance on Ethan's Internet radio show when the previous guest started bashing Texans. I had to spend a few minutes pointing out that much of the history of the 20th century in the United States and the world has Texans as major players in it or has Texas connections. The Roe v. Wade case has Texas roots, and so does the Lawrence v. Texas one that toppled sodomy laws in this country.

That pattern is especially true in the transgender community. Some of the early leaders like Phyllis Frye, Sarah DePalma, and Jane Ellen Fairfax were Texans. That continued into the new millennium with myself, the late Brenda Thomas and Vanessa Edwards Foster stepping up to leadership roles in various capacities. There are as of this writing five Texans including myself that have won IFGE Trinity Awards, and my win in 2006 capped a streak of three years in a row that a Texan had won it. (And for you folks from Dallas, all those wins have been by peeps residing in or from Houston.) Kat Rose, one of the transgender community's historians, writers and creative legal minds hails from the Lone Star State as well.

We Texans helped found GenderPac, It's Time America, ICTLEP (the International Center for Transgender Law and Employment Policy) and NTAC just for starters. One of the first early national transgender events was the Boulton and Park Society's Texas 'T' Party that was held in San Antonio before Southern Comfort grew to be the must attend mega convention it is today. One of the nation's best gender clinics is in Galveston and has been around since the 70's.

Texans Christie Lee Littleton and Michael Kantaras were involved in legal cases that affected our people. Fort Worth resident Rochelle Evans' fight to transition on her high school campus garnered nationwide attention earlier this year and has made other transkids aware along with Crystal Vera that they can follow in their pumps.

So the bottom line is that The Lone Star State, with three of the top ten cities in population in the US size wise inside its borders (Houston, Dallas and San Antonio) and being the second largest state in size and population, will continue to play a major role in shaping events in the transgender community and beyond for the foreseeable future.