The Shut Up Fool! Awards

I'm initiating a new feature on TransGriot today to add to your blogging pleasure.

Every Friday I'll pass out the 'Shut Up Fool! Award. They will go to the person or persons that say the stupidest, most asinine crap during the previous week.

There were many worthy honorees I could have chosen for this week's award, and I know you're anxious to find out who won, so let's get to the nominees for this week inaugural award.

Rush Limbaugh must be swallowing the OxyContin again and drinking Republican red hateraid from 55 gallon drums. He's said he 'hopes Obama fails', and after getting slammed by fellow conservatives and others, has been trying to spin the comment ever since.



There's the ongoing soap opera with Rod Blagojevich, and please Illinois legislature, impeach the idiot, remove him from office and get him the help he needs because his 15 minutes of fame was up a long time ago.



Ann Coulter for her latest waste of trees and the asinine comments she made on The View that single mothers were 'raising criminals'. She forgot that she was saying it in front of single mother Whoopi Goldberg, who ripped her a new anus.



But this week's winner is Faux News sellout Juan Williams, who called First Lady Michelle Obama 'Stokely Carmichael in a dress'.



This meme of trying to paint the First Lady as the second coming of Angela Davis is getting old from you conservatives.


That's who I chose this week. Any comments? Were there other peeps you think should have won it? Discuss.

Baby Sis In 2009 Australian Open Final

New year, new tennis season, and the first Grand Slam tournament is being played Down Under.

Y'all know I have much love for my my favorite tennis playing siblings and was hoping to see another all-Williams final. I was horrified to watch Venus just stop doing what worked in the first set and get unceremoniously bounced from the Australian Open women's singles in the second round by Carla Suarez Navarro 6-2, 3-6, 5-7.

But no worries mates and sheilas. Baby Sis upheld Williams family honor and made it all the way to Saturday night's (Melbourne time) final at Rod Laver Arena while battling the oppressive summer heat. (Yes peeps, it's summer south of the Equator)

Serena will be playing in her fourth Australian Open final versus Russia's Dinara Safina after taking only 99 minutes to beat Russia's Elena Dementieva 6-3, 6-4.

Serena interestingly enough has won the Australian Open in 2003, 2005 and 2007 and since this is an odd numbered year, let's hope the pattern continues.

Thanks For Being A Friend And Standing With Us

One of the things that my transsisters and transbrothers around the world are cognizant of is that we are involved in a worldwide struggle for respect and recognition of our human rights. It has been great getting to know some of my overseas transfamily and I'm looking forward to the day when we finally meet face to face.

One important facet of this human rights struggle is having biosisters in our corner. Some of my biosisters have taken it a step further and made it their mission in life to embrace what we're fighting for as well. Sometimes they speak just as loudly and eloquently about our issues than some of my own transsisters who accept the indignities and cower in their closets.

Some have taken it a step further, surround us with love and extend the hands of friendship as well.

I have been blessed throughout my transition to have biowomen at various stages of it who have and still are unflinchingly proud to call me their friend.

I have been taught at those various stages of my transition important life lessons by the various biowomen in my life in those periods. I continue to learn, grow and benefit from those friendships even as I worry that my biosisters who do that will catch flack or be stigmatized as 'weird' by their fellow biosisters or whatever other epithet is thrown at them just for daring to include me in their circle of sistahfriends.

At the same time, I hope that I've been able to show them and help them understand what I and other transwomen go through just to live our lives.

I also consider it an honor that they have made me part of their lives as well, knowing some of the bullshit sometimes that they go though just to do that.

Ladies, if you haven't heard this from your transsisters, I'm gonna say it now and keep repeating it as frequently as I can. Thank you for being a friend, standing with us and sharing with us the things we need to know in order to live quality lives as the women we were born to be in spirit but not quite body.

Know that you are loved and deeply appreciated by me and my transsisters as well for making us a part of your lives.

The Prez Is Headed To Canada

When President Obama makes his first international trip on February 19 the destination will be Canada.

Typically the first international trip most US presidents take is to Canada because of the special relationship and it's our largest trading partner.

The itinerary has yet to be finalized, but Ottawa is definitely one of the stops. The Canadian Parliament won't be sitting during the week of the visit, so it's unlikely that President Obama will get to address them as 50 other world leaders have done unless something changes.

PM Harper stated on Wednesday, "This is a testament, not just to the size of our trading relationship and the closeness of our alliance, but also the strength of our friendship,"

The expected topics to be discussed during this visit are in addition to the economy, plans for a North American climate-change policy, energy, trade, border issues and Afghanistan.

Creating Change 2009

The Creating Change Conference is taking place this weekend in Denver starting today through February 1. While it's one of my favorite GLBT conferences, I attended my first one in 1999 when it was held in Oakland and I met some wonderful people at it, the one thing I don't like is the recent change to conduct it in the winter.

Last year they held it in Detroit, and now Denver. I understand and like the idea of moving it around so that it gets held in different regions of the country, but if you're going to hold it in January-February, can we put it in a warm weather city?

But the change to winter dates is the only complaint I have about Creating Change. It's a must attend event if you even want to think about activism in the GLBT community. It's not only a diverse event, the seminars are plentiful, informative cover a wide range of topics and are top notch.

The best part about Creating Change is that you have the opportunity to meet a cross section of national GLBT activists and leaders from the vets to emerging voices. I love the fact that it's affordable and accessible enough for college students to attend.


During the 1999 one I not only got to renew acquaintances with then Task Force leader Kerry Lobel, but met now California state senator Mark Leno, author and transkids activist Just Evelyn, Jane Fee, Stephan Thorne and the late Alexander John Goodrum. I also got to spend that conference rooming at a San Francisco hotel with Dawn as we checked out the various sights, sounds and tastes of the city when we weren't bouncing back and forth across the Bay on BART.

I'm still mildly ticked that I missed the protest that happened at the 1999 Creating Change that was triggered by an African-American transwoman being disrespected by an Oakland Po-Po.

She reported an assault to the officer that happened to her near the convention center where the conference was being held. When she reported the crime, the officer told her, "I am tired of having to do all this paperwork. You guys have been told not to be on the corner of 14th and Broadway. I am tired of your shit..."

The next day 1500 people were marching on the Oakland Police Department headquarters while I was on an airplane headed back to Houston.

Note to GLBT haters-if you're going to mess with or disrespect us, don't do it when a GLBT conference is in town. There will be swift, sure and immediate reaction to it.

The sponsor of this event, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, has been the antithesis of HRC for over a decade. They are enthusiastic allies of transgender people and not only talk the talk, they walk the walk. Unlike HRC, whose leaders have never shown up at an IFGE conference, Kerry Lobel, the then head of the Task Force graced us with a keynote speech in 2000 and was at the 1997 ICTLEP Conference in Houston. The Task Force is part of the United ENDA coalition that seeks to pass a transgender inclusive ENDA, and they have unflinchingly tackled race, class and social issues within the GLBT community.

As much as I love Denver and would love to be there for this event to see some of my old and the new friends I met at the Transcending Gender Conference, complications won't permit me to go this time.

I'm mildly upset I'm missing it because Bishop Yvette Flunder is going to be there for this one. I've wanted to meet her ever since Louis Mitchell raved about her at the 2005 TSTB.

Will be thinking about all you peeps who are at Creating Change this weekend while I'm shoveling snow.

Ice Ice Baby

As if it weren't bad enough we had the snow here, we're now dealing with a nasty ice storm as well.

We've had rain falling with temps at the freezing mark for almost 24 hours and it's already starting to cause problems with our local power grid. According to the roomies, we briefly lost power in the crib, so I have to reset the clocks in my room.

It could be worse. We have sections of town, and southern Kentucky dealing with no power at all as I type this.

The city crews have been on the job. They've gone through almost 500 tons of salt so far and have done a bang up job keeping the roads clear.

I also live in a section of town that has lots of trees. Pretty to look at, but not when they're coated with ice and we just had the remnants of Ike blow through here a few months ago. Whatever branches on those trees that were weakened by Ike's 70 mph winds back in September but didn't fall will probably snap under the weight of a few inches of ice.

Oops, right on cue just heard a large branch snap on my next door neighbor's tree.

Hmm, may need ice skates to get to work tomorrow.

Hate The Snow, Hate Winter Period

When I was growing up in Houston, falling snow was a cause for civic celebration. Living here in Louisville, I've leaned to despise snow if it falls in amounts of more than three inches.

As many of you know who watch the Weather Channel, we got whacked by a nasty winter storm last night and Round Two is hitting us later this evening. The kids are enjoying another day off from school, most businesses are closed and there aren't many cars on the roads either. I've got to trudge off to work later and hopefully I'll be back in the house before the next wave hits.

The worst snow we've gotten since I moved here was the 10 inches we got whacked with last March that I fortunately missed because I was rolling up I-65 with Dawn to Chicago for a fencing tournament. We also received 9 inches of snow from that 2004 Christmas eve storm that dropped snow along the Gulf Coast from the Texas-Mexico border to New Orleans and points north.

It's times like these I really miss home and walking around in 70-90 degree weather in January with shorts on. But cold weather has its purposes in the great scheme of things, and as long as it means I won't be swatting at hordes of mosquitoes this spring and summer, then I'll deal with it.

TransGriot Panel Discussion Series Input

Back in May 2007 I wrote a newspaper column entitled Genetic Women and Transwomen-Can We Be Friends? that generated an interesting and thought provoking discussion on the issue of friendship between transsistahs and our biosistahs that I had to continue on this blog.

I and the panelists had so much fun doing it, I'm thinking about initiating on TransGriot a regular feature in which I gather a panel of transwomen and our biosisters together on a monthly basis to discuss various issues.

Sometimes they will be predominately bloggers, sometimes not. Sometimes it may be a discussion that's WOC only so that we can talk about some issues unique to the community, sometimes it will be a broad cross section of panelists across our diverse rainbow of humanity.

It's part of my New Year's resolution to not only open this blog up to other voices, but continue to break down any potential barriers between us and our biosisters that hinder communication and allow us to build mutually beneficial friendships with each other.

This is where you TransGriot readers come in. When I begin this ongoing series of panel discussions, what topics would you like to see discussed by my esteemed panelists?

What's Facial Feminization Surgery?

I mentioned in a post last month that one of the pioneers of facial feminization surgery, Dr. Douglas Ousterhout is planning to retire in 2011. But what I didn't do was explain what facial feminization surgery is.

There are some of my sisters who were fortunate enough to get the genetic luck of the draw and all we needed was hormones and attitude to pass successfully. Others of us started early enough in our lives to avoid the ravages of demon testosterone on our bodies.

But for those peeps who either transition late in life or need help to feminize their appearance from the neck up, they resort to facial feminization surgery to do so.

Basically, facial feminization surgery (or FFS for short) is a wide array of surgical techniques employed to make a masculine face resemble a more feminine one.

If you watched the MTV show 'I Want A Famous Face' and remember Jessica, that's basically what she was doing.

Facial feminization surgery involves facial plastic surgery, maxillofacial surgery and reconstructive surgery. While those surgery skills and disciplines are well known, there are not many surgeons that specialize in FFS techniques worldwide. Those that are skilled at it are highly sought after.

While transwomen are major customers of the surgeons who specialize in this area, there are biowomen who do avail themselves of their services as well because of dissatisfaction with what they may consider masculine facial features.

Some of the techniques are forehead contouring, in which the bony ridge just above the eyes is removed and shaped to create a more feminine appearance. Scalp advancements, brow lifts are also done to enhance the new smooth forehead.

Sometimes, chin and cheek implants may be necessary or chin reshaping, in which the old squared male chin is given a more rounded feminine appearance.

There's also the tracheal shave, in which the cartilage bulge on the neck is shaved down as much as possible without touching the vocal cords.

Some people undergo rhinoplasty to get more feminine appearing noses, face lifts and lip augmentations as well.

The procedures, when completed and the post-surgical pain and swelling subsides, result in remarkable results, but it ain't cheap. FFS can cost anywhere from $10-40K depending on what procedures you get, which surgeon is doing them and where you get it done.

Bu for some transwomen, the positive effects on their self esteem and peace of mind because they blend in better with society are worth every penny they spent on it.

Happy 50th Birthday Denise Matthews

Some of you may not recognize the name, but probably recognize that beautiful face. You may also recognize who she is if I say the name Vanity 6 as well.

January 4 marked her milestone birthday, and if you listen to the Niagara Falls, ON native tell her story or read her autobiography Blame It On Vanity, she'll probably tell you she's thankful she made it.

If Evangelist Denise K. Matthews is doing any touring these days, it's basically to spread the gospel. But back in the day she fronted Prince's girl group Vanity 6, was the crush of just about every Black male growing up during that era and admired by many in the entertainment world and beyond.

She overcame a less than pleasant childhood, drug addition, a turbulent romantic relationship, losing a kidney, suffering a stroke and heart attack. being rendered temporarily deaf and blinded by that stroke and nearly dying in 1994.

She survived all of that and is still standing. Denise is still as beautiful as ever, but her focus these days is spreading the Word from her Fremont, CA based ministry and making the inner Denise match the beautiful person we see on the outside.

And your fans still love you, Denise. Happy birthday.

'Tell It WOC Speak' Blog Carnival Coming Soon

Renee at Womanist Musings is organizing a Blog Carnival entitled 'Tell It WOC Speak.

She's currently looking for submissions for the upcoming carnival slated for February 15. Her goal is to build this into an ongoing event that takes place on the 15th of every month.

The submissions can be previous work or new pieces that intersect with race and involve issues of class, gender, sexuality, ability, et cetera.

She says, 'It is time that we tackle the isms and bring them crashing down."

If you're interested in participating, click on this link to submit your article.

I will be submitting an article as part of this blog carnival and hope that others women of color bloggers will consent to do so as well.

Taysia Elzy Dissed By 'Brother' Reporter

Bil from the Bilerico Project, the blog I'm a contributing writer to sent me an update on the piss poor reporting on the Taysia Elzy case. The local Indy GLBT community was not happy about the coverage of Taysia's December 28 murder (and neither was I) and have been working with GLAAD to ensure that what happened in this case isn't repeated in the future.

In addition to praising the reporters that did get it right, they are doing training session to familiarize the Indy media as to how to respectfully cover the GLBT community, and especially transgender people.

However, it has come to my attention that there are still a few hardheads that refuse to get with the program.

One of them is Steve Jefferson, the crime reporter for WTHR-13, the NBC TV affiliate in Indianapolis. He was highlighted by GLAAD on their 'Worst of the National News' part of their website for December 2008 as an example of how NOT to cover transgender people. To make it even more galling for me personally, he shares my ethnic background.

It's being reported that Jefferson is bristling at the attention he's received from GLAAD about it and his station has been glacially slow to change the story.

According to GLAAD, when it was pointed out to Jefferson what the AP Stylebook rules clearly state about covering transgender people, he is reported to have fired back in an e-mail, “I did not do this story based on lifestyle.” Jefferson furthered, “Our goal is to catch the killer- NOT promote your cause.” He also said he did not use female pronouns because he said the transgender victim “was NOT post-op.”

Yo Steve, it's not about an agenda, it's about respecting a community that watches your newscasts. Once again, this is what the AP Stylebook says about covering transgender people and has since 2001:

Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly

It does not say anywhere that pronoun usage in a story you compose on a transgender person is based on or determined by genitalia.

If we mere bloggers get that, why can't you media professionals?

The story was supposedly corrected on January 23, but you're still in violation of the AP Stylebook rules by not only using her old male name, but putting Taysia's name in quotation marks.

Here's a story that was done in JET magazine two decades before the AP Stylebook rules on covering transpersons were penned, and they got it right.

Then again, maybe the problem here is that you DON'T want to get it right.


So once again TransGriot readers, be nice and write the wonderful peeps at WTHR-TV.

GLAAD urges you to contact WTHR Crime Reporter, Steve Jefferson and WTHR News Director, Carolyn Williams and voice your concerns. Tell them to make the necessary corrections to this story, cover the transgender community with accuracy and respect and in line with standard language usage.

CONTACT:
Steve Jefferson
SJefferson@wthr.com

Carolyn Williams
CWilliams@wthr.com

My Sisters Are Beautiful, Too!

Take a look at these beautiful women. Since the beauty conversation doesn't include or ignores black transwomen, it's time we jump start our own.













Thanks to Frank Leon Roberts, aka Frank Mizrahi for graciously allowing me to use his photos. Check out his wonderful blog that not only chronicles the ballroom community, but gives you some sharp commentary on a wide array of subjects from this learned brother. And I'm looking forward to the day when I finally get a chance to chat with him and we try to figure out whether we're related or not.

I'll Trade You Alberta For Minnesota

One of the frequent themes that pops up in any conversation between me and my Canadian friends besides waxing poetic about all things 'Timmys' is them dissing Alberta.

As some of you may or may not know, Alberta is frequently compared to my home state of Texas because of the wealth, the oil industry ties, the rampant conservatism on steroids both there and my birth state, and conservative national leaders from Alberta and Texas despised by the rest of the nation's citizens.

One of the jokes I frequently hear from Canadians living in the eastern end of the country is 'we'll trade you Alberta for Minnesota' (or whatever deal they can get for it).

Sorry, we ain't giving up Minnesota. What would I do without Prince, the Minnesota Vikings, the Minnesota Twins, and when I'm griping about what passes for cold weather here in Da Ville, thanking my lucky stars I'm not there or in Palin-run Alaska?

The Oil Sands, Edmonton, Banff National Park and Calgary make it a tempting offer, but until we can turn Texas back to its progressive roots, we can't risk having Stephen Harper and his conservafriends in Wild Rose Country linking up with the Republican idiots they admire.

We just got a Democratic president in the White House who is quite busy cleaning up the Chernobylesque mess that Bushie boy left behind.

So, in the words of the latest game show craze south of the border, No Deal!

Ain't Feeling Feminism

Feminism, according to a popular bumper sticker is the radical notion that women are people, too. Many feminists have forgotten over the years that the word 'people' also includes their Black, Latina, Asian and native sisters as well as their transgender ones.

While I wholeheartedly agree and support as a transwoman equality for women, I also noted the gulf between the predominately white feminist movement and women of color. I noted how they loudly and zealously rallied to the defense of Hillary Clinton for perceived sexist comments during last year's primary, but were deafeningly silent when Michelle Obama was attacked.

I also remembered the radical feminist anti-transgender BS from their patron saints Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer and follow on books by transphobe feminists Mary Daly, Catherine MacKinnon, Robin Morgan and Sheila Jeffreys.

Raymond once stated that 'transsexuality must be morally mandated out of existence' and it didn't get much better in her 1979 book The Transsexual Empire-The Making of The She-Male.

"All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive." (Raymond, 1979)

In fact, Janice Raymond for transwomen that transitioned during the 70s and 80's along with the ones who grew up in my era was the most hated person in the transgender community until HRC's Elizabeth Birch took away her title in the late 90's with her anti-transgender inclusion rhetoric.

Germaine Greer isn't liked by some transwomen either, and cosigned with Raymond when she made this comment comparing transwomen to the character Norman Bates in the movie Psycho:

The transsexual is identified as such solely on his/her own script, which can be as learned as any sex-typed behaviour and as editorialized as autobiographies usually are. The lack of insight that MTF transsexuals usually show about the extent of their acceptance as females should be an indication that their behaviour is less rational than it seems. There is a witness to the transsexual’s script, a witness who is never consulted. She is the person who built the transsexual’s body of her own flesh and brought it up as her son or daughter, the transsexual’s worst enemy, his/her mother.

Whatever else it is gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother. When a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho) it is as if he murders her and gets away with it, proving at a stroke that there was nothing to her. His intentions are no more honourable than any female impersonator’s; his achievement is to gag all those who would call his bluff. When he forces his way into the few private spaces women may enjoy and shouts down their objections, and bombards the women who will not accept him with threats and hate mail, he does as rapists have always done.”

The injection of transphobic hatred and the logic defying justifications of it across the first and second waves of feminist thought was passed on to the new school of feminists who continue to eagerly drink the 'hate on transwomen' Kool Aid.

While we transwomen have had a contentious thirty-six years of drama with the feminist community, it pales in comparison with the ongoing parallel struggle that women of color have with them. They have fought the ongoing silencing of their voices in the feminist movement, got tired of being dissed, ignored and being accused of or being labeled as 'crazy' or 'racist' anytime they critiqued their treatment.

Black women finally said to hell with them and began calling themselves womanists, a term which was coined by author Alice Walker and comes from her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. Womanists focus on issues that are broader based that what feminism focuses on, and include issues of race and class that feminism shies away from.

Over the last few years I've gotten to know a few womanists, become friends with them and discovered to my great pleasure that they are light years more enlightened on transgender issues and are serious about supporting their transsisters.

So if you wonder why myself and some transwomen aren't feeling feminism or have a detached ambivalence to it, now you know.

Better Late Than Never-UK Transmurderer Convicted

It took almost 12 years to bring him to justice, but James Hopkins was sentenced to life on January 6 for the 1997 murder of transwoman Robyn Browne.

23 year old Robyn Browne's body was discovered in her Central London apartment by her roommate Natasha Brentwood on February 28, 1997 with multiple stab wounds to her neck, chest, heart and torso. At the time she was undergoing gender transition and was doing sex work to pay the bills with a local agency.

Brentwood had been out on a dinner date with her boyfriend and discovered the apartment door was locked, she climbed through the window and discovered Robyn's body on the bed covered in blood. There were no sighs of forced entry, but a drawer had been pulled out and pages torn from Robyn's personal organizer.

Reportedly her client list had some high profile people on it and some of those people when the trial started were concerned they would have to testify.

In June 2007 Hopkins was arrested in Leeds after his palm print matched the bloodstained palm prints found on the bedroom door of Browne's apartment and on two newspapers found there dated February 28. When arrested Hopkins denied killing her, but admitted that he was paid £500 to steal an address book.

According to the Metropolitan Police, advancements in DNA and forensic techniques allowed them to bring this case to trial.

He'll have to serve a minimum of 17 years in jail.

In a statement to the court, Ms. Browne's sister Louise said in a statement to the court that "Now there can be some sort of closure. Her death impacts on those who knew her."

Too bad the family of Kellie Telesford won't get to feel the satisfied feeling of knowing their loved one's killer was brought to justice.

Kim Possible

One of my guilty television pleasures is watching Kim, Ron, Wade, and Monique negotiate the travails of high school life while jetting around the world to fight evildoers such as Dr. Drakken, Shego, Monkey Fist, Duff Killian, Senor Senior, Sr. and Senor Senior, Jr.

Oh yeah, and it does has a catchy theme song, too.

While I have a major beef with how it was heavily promoted by Disney vis a vis The Proud Family, I still like the cartoon.



Like 'errbody' else who watched it I was happy to see lifelong friends Kim and Ron kissing each other at the prom and becoming a couple. It's been interesting to see not only how their relationship develops, but how Kim deals with her twin brothers Jim and Tim, AKA 'the tweebs' being skipped to the 9th grade and now attending Middleton High during her and Ron's senior year.

It's also nice to see supergenius Wade get out of his room (voiced by Tahj Mowry). Wade is the youngest member of Team Possible and graduated from high school and college at age 10. He also creates much of the high-tech wizardry Kim and Ron use on their missions and keeps her up to date with a constant stream of intel filtered through the computer in his room.

Monique (voiced by Raven) is Kim's best female friend. She works at Club Banana, has become its assistant manager and even convinced Kim to work there.

Monique not only keeps the jet setting Kim cognizant of the Middleton High School happenings, she gives Kim sage advice when she's sorting out various problems in her non crime fighting life. She like Wade even helps Kim and Ron on an occasional crime fighting mission sometimes as well.

Kim Possible has garnered an international following and thanks to YouTube, yours truly gets the chance to catch up on whatever episodes she's missed.

Change Has Come To The White House Website

One little noticed event that happened while 'errbody' was focused on the inauguration was that the White House website switched over at 12:01 PM with the change of administrations.

If you needed another indicator that this isn't a dream and we are indeed a far different nation than we were on Monday and the last 8 years, check out this website.

Laughing At Ourselves

We transwomen on a daily basis face so many serious issues and threats to our simple right to exist. We have people that fear us, that refuse to understand what we deal with in our lives, hate us to the point that they want to kill us, keep us unemployed, or even deny us the opportunity to go to the gender appropriate bathroom.

But just as my peeps have learned over the centuries to take dire situations and turn them into humor, transwomen for the sake of our own sanity either have or will need to learn how to do the same thing.

Like the Playboy transgender themed cartoons that are part of this post, while they are examples of some serious moments in transgender people's lives, I look at them and take a moment to chuckle. It helps remind me to stand down just for a few moments from the Defcon 1 life-or-death game face I have to put on sometimes just to live my life in a world that can be hostile to transgender people.

At times I think back to some of the more embarrassing moments I went through early in my transition that make me laugh now, but were mortifying events at the time they happened. I forgot to lock the bathroom door while non revving home during a 1999 San Francisco-Houston flight and fortunately I was in a sitting position when the door popped open. I got teased about it at work for a month and Lisa Bronte, the first class flight attendant who witnessed it, needled me about it for a year.

I take time to find humor in my situation and allow it into my life because even though I'm committed to seeing transgender rights laws become a reality and do my small part to make it happen, it can be depression inducing and frustrating work. But even out of some of those journeys to lobby have come humorous moments that I treasure to this day.

There have been times when I've gone to conventions and been one of the few African-Americans in the room, but have observed or experienced things that made me double over in laughter.

I still have fond memories of the first time I showed up at a planning meeting for my 20th high school reunion. While some of my high school classmates had heard I'd transitioned, others hadn't. The joke I cracked for the next year and a half leading up to that October 2000 reunion weekend was, "Well, we know who has a lock on the 'Most Changed Award' for this reunion."

I know we are tackling some serious and seemingly intractable problems, especially as transpeople of color. But just as we need to stop, take a look around and thank God for the blessings that we have in our lives such as good friends, good health and allies who get it, we should at the same time try to find ways to inject more humor in our lives as well.


TransGriot Note: cartoons were transgender themed recaptions by Lorna Samuels