Thanks To My Trans Sistas, Too

Tomorrow will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1994 day I began the very public coming out phase of my gender transition.   I wrote a post thanking the cis women in my sistahcircle who were there at various points along the way cheering me on and helping me evolve to become the Phenomenal Transwoman you see before you today.

I could have said it in the April 1 post, but as I wrote that post I took it out because I felt the influence of the trans community on my development needed more than just a paragraph or two, but needed to be in a separate post of its own. 

It wasn't just my cis sisters that had a hand in pushing me to become the best woman of trans experience I could be, trans women of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and nationalities had a hand in it as well. 

Transwomen were also during these last 20 years teaching me the good, bad, and ugly lessons I needed to learn at various point in my transfeminine journey.  From those first TATS meetings I attended in various locales around Houston from 1994 until I moved in 2001 to Da Ville, the first group of trans women who had active influence in shaping the person I am today were the ones who came in and out of TATS during that period.  

There are others here and elsewhere who I can't name who have chosen to non-disclose, but who had wisdom to pass on to me as well about life, love and generally dealing with many of the issues that only another transwoman would be able to break down.  

There were my activist mentors and possibility models like Phyllis Frye, Dainna Cicotello, Sarah DePalma, Vanessa Edwards Foster, Josephine Tittsworth, Dawn Wilson, A. Dionne Stallworth and Dr. Marisa Richmond who not only reawakened my interest in politics, but reminded me that as someone who has been blessed with great talents, leadership skills and the ability to have been able to transition, we needed to give something back to our community.  

There were trans women in the Louisville area I have much love for as well who helped me feel at home during my Texan in exile years and also had more lessons to teach.

There are international trans women who not only helped 'ejumacate' me about how trans issues are evolving in their parts of the planet, they have also become wonderful friends and colleagues in the trans human rights struggle.  

The new kids on the trans block, the Generation X, Generation Y and Millennials who even though I'm old enough to be their mom or Big Sis in some cases, have qualities that I admire and inspire me to step up my game.  Some of them at times like my little sisters Jordana LeSesne and Tona Brown have not hesitated to give Big Sis a much needed motivational kick in the butt when necessary. 

My trans elders are also part of the equation.   They are kicking that trans herstory to me along with their hard earned and won wisdom.  They are also giving me and everyone else in the transfeminine community examples of how to age regally and gracefully.

I have much love for the transkids like Jazz, Natalie Maines, Tracey Wilson and countless others who are fighting these inspirational battles to be themselves at the elementary, middle and high school levels.   I not only envy and admire them for being able to do so at such young ages with the help of supportive families, they remind me and my generation that the primary goal of the activism we do in our time on the planet is so that when the younglings get to our ages, they'll hopefully have less societal drama.

There are my trans sisters in the pageant and drag worlds who while on their own evolutionary journeys, made time in their busy lives to help straighten a sistah's presentation out and look her gender best..  

The transbrothers have had their input from the late Alexander John Goodrum to the men of BTMI.  They have reminded me that I have been just as much an inspiration to them as they have been to me.     

Just like the cis sisters who have been or still are a part of my evolving feminine journey,  some have been here with me the entire two decades. 

Some were only here for certain parts of it to teach me lessons I needed to know at that time and have moved on to live their own lives, while others came in a bit later but are hanging with me now. 

And sadly, there are the people who I met along the way like Lois Bates, Dee McKellar, Christie Lee Littleton Van de Putte, Michelle Myers, Roberta Angela Dee, Sylvia Rivera, Dana Turner,  Jaci Adams, Tracy Bumpus and Nakhia Williams who have passed on. 

So to the girls and guys like us out ther who had a hand over the last 20 years in helping me become the best Moni I can be and own my power while doing so, thank you. 

Evolving Into Black Womanhood

A part of being intrinsically human is our imperative to evolve. To become better, stronger, faster, smarter and healthier.

Transpeople are no different. We just think about an element of it that most people don't, gender identity.

One of the subjects I spend a lot of time thinking about now that I'm on the other side of the gender fence is my continuing evolution towards being the best woman and the best person I can be, despite spending twenty plus years in a male body.

Whether women want to acknowledge it or not, like their transsisters, all girls do not come into the world from birth knowing everything there is to know about femininity and womanhood. The only advantages you have over transwomen is that you possess the body-brain gender map match at birth, you have a head start in learning it, were encouraged by your families and society to do so and have time in your teen years to make your mistakes as you grow into your gender role.

It's been often said that there's nothing harder than being a Black man or a Black woman. I'd like to introduce you to the Monica Roberts remix of that comment.

There's nothing harder than being a Black man or a Black woman in a mismatched body.

But it was the hand I was dealt, and all I can do now that I'm finally on the evolutionary path to womanhoood is deal with and move on. But how do you do that?

First order of business is to decide what is the image of Black womanhood that you want to personally project to the world? Once you get that part figured out, then you take the time to observe the fine examples of Black womanhood around you.

One thing we transwomen share with you is that we also get to watch and (hopefully) learn from the mistakes the biowomen and transwomen surrounding us made. You pick and choose the qualities you like that's close to the target feminine image in your mind in terms of fashion tips, style, traits and personality. You toss out the stuff you don't like or doesn't work for you as you evolve to match on the outside the unique person that's on the inside.

I had wonderful role models and examples in terms of my mother, aunts, my sisters various cousins and friends. I had other women I came in contact with from school, my church, work, and just being out and about in the world that had admirable qualities as well.

The other ingredient that's part of an evolution into Black womanhood is pride. Pride in yourself and pride in our people. The pride in yourself is sometimes hard to come by as a transwoman because of the daily slings and arrows you suffer from society as you transition. There are the shame and guilt issues we're plagued with from time to time that we all have to work through no matter how long we've been transitioning in addition to all the traditional issues Black women in society grapple with.

But having that pride translates into making sure that you not only look good, but your behavior is on point and you carry yourself with class and dignity. Once you do that, then the inner beauty begins to shine through and you begin to feel more comfortable and at ease with yourself.

You also have to be on guard as a transwoman into not having your evolving Black womanhood based solely on your body. You also have to be on guard against believing the negative hype and feeling that the only thing that values you is how many 'husbands' you have showering you with attention, how many you sleep with, or your femininty is tied up in how big your butt or breasts are.

Beauty fades over time, and that tight body you had in your twenties and thirties will eventually fall victim to gravity and a slowing metabolism. You should be developing your mind in conjunction with your body development.

The body is also the easy part of the transition as well. But as the initial awkward phase of a body transition fades and you have staring back at you the face and body of a chocolate (or all the other shades from vanilla creme to dark ebony) Nubian goddess standing before you, it's hard not to be proud of that and proud of the many accomplishments of our people despite tremendous odds.

That brings me to another ingredient in the evolutionary path, knowing our history. You have to look at the fact that we are descended from people that survived the Middle Passage. A gender transition is nothing compared to what Black women endured during slavery, emancipation and still endure even today, but still found ways to uplift our race, this country and themselves. Once you put a gender transition in that context, it makes me feel sometimes that I have to step up my game and be on point just to be worthy of Black womanhood.

My being the Phenomenal Transwoman also stands on the shoulders and the work of the people that proceeded me. From Avon Wilson, the first African-American transwoman to go through the now shuttered Johns Hopkins gender program in the mid 60's, the kids at Dewey's Lunch Counter and the sisters at Stonewall standing up for their rights, to Justina Williams, the late Roberta Angela Dee and all those transwomen who either lived their lives not letting anyone know their secret or who were out and proud before it was cool to be out and proud..

Don't let biowomen make you feel less than female because you can't bear children. There are more than a few biowomen who are in the non childbearing boat with their transsisters, and I don't see any mad rush to call them 'men' because of it.

The final ingredient is spirituality. Faith in God, or whatever you call the higher power that's greater than yourself. Nurturing a faith that will sustain you through the rough times and allow you to appreciate the blessings. And while I complain about it at times, being transgender is one of those blessings.

I and many of my sisters take our evolution into Black womanhood that seriously. But unfortunately there are others who aren't that conscious of what they're stepping up to when they swallow their first hormones or took their first shot to jump start the transition, or have a Toni Childsesque attitude toward it.

I and many of my transsisters aren't wanting to be seen as a detriment to Black womanhood. We wish to be seen as a compliment to it as we follow our evolutionary destinies and make body and feminine gender mapped minds mesh together.

For all the African-American transwomen past, present and future, I owe it to them to not only live my life open and honestly as an African-American transwoman and share my truths, but to do it in a manner that honors them and our biosisters as well.

Today Is My 20 Year Transition Anniversary!

Today is the day 20 years ago I walked into Houston Intercontinental Airport's Terminal C to clock in at my then seven year old airline job to begin my first nerve wracking work week evolving into the Phenomenal Transwoman you see today.

It had been a long road to get to that April 4, 1994 day.  I'd had my first appointment with my gender therapist Dr. Cole just two months earlier.  

That first work week was filled with me having one on one emotional conversations with my airline co-workers spelling out why I was handling my transition business.   Some of them led to tell it like it T-I-S is revelations and epiphanies.   Others were simply people wanting to know what the process was like as I would evolve in front of their very eyes.

The now 16 years and counting of activism around trans human rights issues started four years later, but from 1994-1998 my thirtysomething self was more focused on becoming the best woman I could be.  

I felt at the time I was going from zero to femininity and needing to play catch up with the other cis sisters in my peer group, my workplace and elsewhere around H-town. 

On that April 4, 1994 day I was facing the task of needing to have the acquired knowledge of a thirtysomething Black woman and not having three decades to learn and make mistakes while doing so.   I also accepted the mission of going through a body morphing second puberty with a wide variety range of reactions from friends, family and society ranging from unconditional acceptance to virulent hostility.  Add to the body morphing and other changes bumrushing me at that moment at a dizzying pace the frustrating at times documentation and paperwork changes combined with rolling down I-45 south to Galveston every few months for check ups and chats at the gender clinic with Dr Emery and Dr. Cole.

Some of those challenges I encountered were quickly learning that sexism, misogyny, and the straight up hatred aimed at Black women is no joke. 

I also received an early reminder of the transmisogynistic hatred trans women face inside and outside our community when Tyra Hunter died at the hands of a transphobic Washington DC EMT a mere 15 months into my transition.  

I had a scary 1996 incident that taught me paying attention to my personal safety was a must and that any lapse in attention could result in severe injury, sexual assault or my untimely death 

I discovered the wallet in my purse was going to take a bigger hit now that I was on the femme gender side because of the added expenses and the new wardrobe I was having to build from scratch. 

I also discovered that the weight gain you pick up after starting HRT is no joke either.  

I already knew this from sitting in locker rooms during my teen years, but it got it reinforced as an estrogen based lifeform just how much men can be pigs at times.

There were humorous and sometimes touching moments along the way as I adjusted to my happier life as Monica. 

I built my network of cis and trans sistafriends who broke down the evolving feminine journey I was on.  They praised me when I was handling my business and put their foot up my ass when necessary to give me that needed motivational kick.  

My sistagirls (and they know who they are) stayed on my behind to make sure that I not only continued to evolve to be a better person, I kept my promise to evolve to be a complement to Black womanhood and not be seen as a detriment.to it.  

And yes, my transbrothers have played their parts in helping me become the person I needed to be. 

Because I stepped out on faith and did so, I have been afforded some amazing opportunities.   I get to travel and participate in discussions about trans and other issues at various conferences and college campuses in Houston and around the country.

I have a blog that has been visited by 5.5 million people around the world since I started it in January 2006.  It has led to a new column at Black Girl Dangerous and being published at EBONY.com, Loop 21, the Huffington Post and a long list of other blogs

I have gotten to meet wonderful people inside and outside the trans community I probably wouldn't have come in contact with otherwise had I continued to unhappily muddle through my pre-transition life.  My network of friends and chosen family encompasses the United States and the world.  

And the question I asked at the beginning of my transition has been emphatically answered in 2014.   The girls like us who share my ethnic background are all across the African Diaspora.   I have also gotten the opportunity to meet and befriend beautiful, smart and talented transwomen of all ethnic backgrounds and ages.

I have had the opportunity to be a witness to the last 20 years of trans history, helped shape some of it, and meet some of the people who made that history before I transitioned like Phyllis Frye, the late Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major.   I get to unearth chapters of our Black trans history as one of the missions of this blog.   

I would be remiss if on this day I didn't mention all the transwomen who started that journey around the same 1994 time with me that for various reasons fell by the wayside and didn't continue their evolution, passed on far too soon, or lived their lives well and are now watching over me with the ancestors like Dana Turner and Roberta Angela Dee.

I also need to acknowledge the people cis and trans who popped in on this journey with me for a short time who had lessons good and bad to teach me but who are now out of my life for various reasons.   

There are some things that have happened in that 20 years I didn't foresee.  Becoming an activist wasn't in the original 1994 plan, that just happened because of my strong social justice leanings that were there long before I swallowed my first Premarin tablet and a jacked up IFGE Tapestry article   The nearly nine years in Louisville was something else I didn't see coming, but overall was important to my growth and development as moi.  

I also didn't foresee at the time having a generation of young trans people who see me as a iconic leader and role model, a fact I got reminded of during Creating Change 14.  That amuses and humbles me at times.   I'm honored that people think highly enough me to not only nominate me for and sometimes give me awards, but actually name them after me as BTAC did.

I  keep that iconic status in mind when I have the conversations with them about the history I've made and seen (and I'm still making) as I encourage them to fearlessly be the best girls and boys like us they can be.

I've seen some amazing progress for the trans community here in the States and internationally over the last twenty years, but we are not done yet.  There is still a long way to go before transpeople have full societal equality in my nation and around the world.  

My transition started 20 years ago today, but it is still an ongoing evolutionary journey that won't end until I'm meeting the ancestors. 

And you better believe I'm deliriously happy I took that first small, nerve wracking step in 1994 that has resulted in a giant leap in the quality of my life.  

TransGriot 5th Anniversary-Now What?

January 1 marked the fifth anniversary of the founding of my blog.   It has grown far larger and more influential as to what it was when I first started it.

Back in 2006 when I founded it, I was looking at a blogging landscape of there being plenty of blogs in the Transosphere, but not one that addressed trans issues from an African-American perspective or that talked about transition from our chocolate flavored viewpoint.    There weren't trans oriented blogs that discussed our history, our trans heroes and sheroes, our leaders, or simply discuss the nuts and bolts of a gender transition rooted in our culture.and how to successfully navigate the process..

They also didn't talk about or ignored how race and class impact a gender transition. 

I noted that the Black transpeople who do start blogs have them quickly fall by the wayside for various reasons.   One of the other problems is that those Black trans blogs that did get started published so infrequently they can't garner a following or build critical mass, much less be in the running for any blog awards..

Well, I've been blessed to be publishing posts on a consistent basis since 2006, be honored with awards from my blogging peers, and be considered as the go to blog when you want info on the African-American trans community or our thoughts about an issue. .

So where do I go from here?  

What, y'all didn't think Moni has a plan?

One of the things I'm planning for this year is to do more guest posts from trans African-American writers.   You've already seen the beginning of that with the Pam's Ponderings posts from Pamela Hayes. I wish to have other African American transvoices speaking through this blog as well.

A priority of mine is to definitely have and get the inputs of African-American transmen in this blogging mix as well.


The TransGriot Ten Questions interviews I've done so far will become a regular feature on this blog.  I have already sent Ten Questions to people such as Kylar Broadus, Ashley Love and have more of them coming so that you can see and get to know the people we consider as our leaders.

And one of the things I'm going to do with this series is to talk to a wide variety of leaders across the country.   There are African-American transleaders on the West Coast, in the Midwest and South who don't get the attention they deserve.    

One of the things my African American trans younglings have asked for is more posts about our trans history makers.  Who are our icons?   What did we do to shape trans, Black and American history?  What did they do to help us get to this point in the 2K10's?   It's a wonderful suggestion and I'll be doing more of that this year and beyond as long as I'm blessed to do it. 


I also want to talk more about the emerging from the shadows trans communities in other parts of the African Diaspora on the African continent and the Caribbean.


And since I'm tired of my transpeeps being ignored and disrespected every time these so called African-American LGB/SGL leadership lists get posted by BET, the Grio and others, and when I call your behinds on it I hear the weak excuse of 'we don't know any African-American trans leaders', I'm going to eliminate that excuse for you this year and beyond.     For the first time the TransGriot is going to compile her own.

And of course, I'm going to continue to speak truth to power inside and outside of the community,  keep talking about race and class issues and the  world outside of it and how we transpeople of African descent fit in it..

As y'all have probably noted here, I can and will talk about a great many things and issues besides trans ones and won't back away from controversy..

And speaking of talk, if you want the TransGriot to speak at your events, conventions or on your college campuses, let me know and we can work out the details to make that happen this year.  

May even get around to doing a little more of that occasional creative writing you'll see on the blog in conjunction with my 2011 resolution to set aside more creative writing days.

And of course there will be some surprises along the way as well.   

Yeah, there are some personal blogging oriented goals in addition to living up to the mission that I articulated in a earlier anniversary post.

That mission is to talk about trans issues from an African American perspective, give voice to my African descended cousins across the African diaspora, document our history, and serve as a platform for me to talk about the issues of the day inside and outside the TBILG community.

I'd like to get my repeat hits up to the 60% level from the 40% it's at now.   I would like to be a repeat winner in the Best LGBT Blog category for the Black Weblog Awards and take a few more in the process.   So to make that happen, I have to step up my blogging came and come up with content that will make y'all  not only want to surf by here on a regular basis and stay a while to read these over 3500 posts and counting  you'll be proud to tell your friends, family and people who unconditionally love you to do so, too.

I'm cognizant of the fact that I picked up the torch and I'm continuing along the trail that the late Roberta Angela Dee started blazing.   I'm just taking it to another level and hope that when I can no longer carry it forward, someone will care enough to pick up the torch where I left off and continue the journey.      


So yeah, have some big plans for the blog this year, and with God's help and your continued loyal support, it's extremely possible that I will be blessed enough to accomplish those lofty goals and exceed them
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Black Trans History Is A Fascinating And Evolving Story

I was surprised, pleased and honored to see a meme created by TransMusePlanet that quotes me on the importance of Black trans history. 

It's why my blog is named TransGriot and one of the reasons it exists.   While I'm writing many of the posts here to chronicle it and pass it on to my transpeeps that wish to get acquainted with it, it needs to also be seen by my cis Black family and our human rights allies.

I come from a family of historians.  My late godmother Pearl Suel was the founding president of the Houston chapter of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life, wrote the first Black history curriculum for HISD and taught history at the collegiate and high school level.  

That's where she encountered my mother, who was one of her star students, and my late father.   My mom got her bachelors in history, and passed that love of history to me.  I was involved in History Prep Bowl academic competitions in junior high as was captain of the team in my 8th grade year.

My dad was an admirer of Marcus Garvey.   I also count amongst my friends several collegiate history professors teaching at institutions across the country.

The love of history runs deep in my life, and I am keenly aware of the importance of it for marginalized groups and how it can be used to empower them.

Our opponents are aware of the power of history as well, which is why they work hard to keep you from not only having knowledge of your history, but seek to whitewash or eradicate any mention of it every chance they get.  It is no accident that one of the things our Texas conservafool majority is up to is trying to rewrite the history books so that their misdeeds and failures are glossed over.

One of the first questions I pondered when I transitioned in 1994 was about trans history and Black trans people's contributions to it.  Who are our heroes and sheroes?   Who are the people who preceded me and set the table for our community at the time I encountered it?   What can I do to help make this community better than when I first started hearing about it in 1975?

This blog is one part of the answer to that question.   We not only need to know our Black trans history, but Black cis people ignorant of our trans existence and the contributions we have made to the Black community.   Black trans people are part of the kente cloth fabric of the African-American community and the African Diaspora, and just didn't pop up out of nowhere in the second half of the 20th Century.

While we have known that trans actresses like Alexandra Billings, Alicia Brevard, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Candis Cayne existed, it was a current actress in Laverne Cox, no stranger to making history and blazing trails, was thrilled to find out that she was walking in the path of a girl like us actress named Ajita Wilson. 

Diamond Stylz and I still chuckle about the time she busted a cis woman on the Net who made the erroneous comment as a joke there would never be a transfeminine JET Beauty of the Week, only to be informed by Diamond, armed with the links to the info,  that Ajita Wilson had done that as well.

There have also been some colorful characters in our history such as Lexington, Kentucky resident James 'Sweet Evening Breeze' Herndon, Georgia Black, Lady Java, Jim McHarris, and Lucy Hicks Anderson to remind us they were fighting to be their true selves in conditions and a time period far more hostile to Black people be they cis or trans.

Back in 1992 we had a transperson named Althea Garrison elected to the Massachusetts state legislature, and hopefully that will happen again in my lifetime.

And while trans models of all ethnic backgrounds like Geena Rocero, Lea T and Andreja Pejic are probably aware there has been a long stylish line of  trans models dating back to the 60's starting with April Ashley. our current Black trans models like Isis King and Arisce Wanzer are also aware of and hopefully inspired by the fact they were preceded on the catwalks and magazine covers by Tracy Africa Norman. 

We know that Miss Major and Marsha P Johnson raised hell at Stonewall a mere 4 years after a group of African-American gender variant kids in Philadelphia kicked off a trans-themed protest at Dewey's Lunch Counter.

And speaking of Black trans leaders, it isn't just Black trans women who have been fighting for and shaping the direction of our movement.   Black trans men like Marcelle Cook-Daniels, Alexander John Goodrum and Kylar Broadus have also been handling their human rights business.

We have people who were plaintiffs in human rights court cases like Patricia Underwood and Patti Shaw, just to name two of them.

We have people in the religious leadership ranks like Rev. Yeshua Holiday, Rev. Carmarion Anderson, and Rev Lawrence T. Richardson among others making the case that Black trans people are also people of faith.

We have had trans trailblazers in the music world like Wilmer Broadnax, Jordana LeSesne, Jaila Simms and Tona Brown who cover many types of musical genres with others following in their trailblazing footsteps..

Black trans history isn't just a recitation of past accomplishments. We have people making history today in tech entrepreneurs like Dr. Kortney Ziegler and Angelica Ross.  We have people in academia like Dr Van Bailey, Dr Kai Green, and Dr. Marisa Richmond.  

And I can't forget Kye Allums and my WMMA sis Fallon Fox.   Kye broke ground as a NCAA Div I collegiate basketball player, and Fallon is kicking butts and taking names in the octagon while representing our community and our athletically inclined transpeeps blazing trails and busting stereotypes in the sports world

And I'm still doing my part to not only help chronicle our Black trans history, but help make some of it as well.  Stories of back in the day Black trans people  that once were untold are now being discovered and told to a new generation of trans people to educate and inspire them to greater heights.

And that telling of our Black trans history is a crucial piece of building up our Black trans kids resistance to the urge to end their lives prematurely, and reinforce the point that #BlackTransLivesMatter.

We still have much human rights work left to do and much left to accomplish.   We have an amazing and evolving story to tell as Black trans people.   I'm proud to do my part as a trans writer walking in the footsteps of Roberta Angela Dee to bring it to you.

Monica's University Of Arizona Speech

TransGriot Note: This is the original text of the speech I'm delivering at this moment in the Gallagher Theatre on the University of Arizona campus.

Good evening University of Arizona students, faculty, alumni, guests and friends.  I bring you greetings from the Lone Star State, my beloved hometown of Houston and the communities I interact with.

I have to tell y’all that some of my friends were concerned when I announced I was coming to the UA campus because of what they’ve heard about Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  I told them to chill and I’d be fine because I would be amongst friends.   I pointed out that Tucson and Pima County is pretty much liberal-progressive turf and the home of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

You have had a TBLG anti-discrimination law on the books for almost two decades now and the other reason I’d said to my friends was uh…uh….oops I forgot. 

Darn Rick Perry moments.   

With all seriousness, it is indeed an honor and a pleasure for me to be standing here in Tucson during this 2012 edition of Black History Month at the invitation of my sponsors the ASUA Pride Alliance, the Women's Resource Center, and African American Student Affairs. 

I’m also thrilled to be here tonight for another reason.  Dr. Susan Stryker, one of the preeminent trans historians in academia and a person I admire in the trans community is the director of UA’s Institute of LGBT Studies.

I want to thank Stephan Przybylowicz for coordinating all the hard work behind the scenes that resulted in me being at the Gallagher Theatre to talk about Blogging at the Intersection of Race and Gender on the electronic pages of TransGriot.

If you’re wondering why my blog is named TransGriot, it’s because I love history and come from a family of historians.  My late godmother Pearl Suel wrote the African-American history curriculum for the Houston Independent School District and I was the person she tested it out on when she was compiling it.  My mom’s undergrad degree is in history, my baby sis has a psychology degree with a history minor, and as you probably guessed my parents made certain my siblings and I were immersed in our people’s history.
Griots are storytellers in several western African nations who keep alive the oral tradition and history of a village, their people or a family.   They are able to recite up to five centuries of that history from memory. 

Since I wanted a name for my blog that made it clear I was proud of my African-American heritage, being trans, and the fact I come from a history loving family, it was a perfect fit.  

When I transitioned in 1994, one of the things I was struck by and concerned about was the fact that ever since Christine Jorgenson stepped off the airplane at New York’s Idyllwild Airport to the glare of popping flashbulbs and a crush of photographers 59 years ago on February 12, the trans narrative has been overwhelmingly focused on my white transsisters and transbrothers.

I knew there were African-American transpeople who preceded me, but I rarely heard their stories or about their historical contributions to the trans rights movement.

When blogging began to take off in the middle of the last decade, there were hundreds of trans blogs written by, about and focused on my white counterparts and their dominant points of view about transitions, TBLG politics, and our rainbow community history.  

Conversely, when I surveyed the blogging landscape at the time I was pondering starting TransGriot there was not one discussing trans issues from an Afrocentric point of view or talking about our trans heroes and sheroes.

I was complaining about that one night to Jordana LeSesne in a phone conversation I was having with her in November 2005.  She’s a trans pioneer in her own right in terms of being a trailblazing transwoman involved in the drum and bass music and Afro Punk movements.  After patiently listening to me gripe about this situation, she calmly asked “So when are you going to start that blog?”

Since I wanted this blog done right, it was incumbent upon me to do it myself.  So a few seconds after midnight on January 1, 2006 TransGriot was born.  It has had for now six years the dual missions of not only discussing trans issues from that sorely missing Afrocentric point of view but also to make people aware of the fact that trans people of color have been major players in shaping the history of the trans community here in the United States and increasingly across the African Diaspora.

I must be doing something rights because I’ve either won or been a finalist for Best LGBT Blog awards and I’m closing in on 3.5 million hits.  For those of you who let me know you read it, I thank you for doing so.

But because of the overwhelming focus on my white transsisters and transbrothers over the last five decades, transpeople of color have either been erased from the trans community historical narrative or not discussed at all.   It’s even worse for Black transmen and that’s a nice way to segue into a part of that trans history. 

With the tenth anniversary of his untimely death being this year and my statuesque behind standing inside Pima County I cannot start this conversation about the intersection of race and gender without mentioning a trailblazing transman who lived right here in Tucson, Alexander John Goodrum.

Goodrum was born in Chicago in 1960, and not long after coming out as a lesbian in 1979 at age 19 testified in favor of a gay and lesbian rights ordinance being considered there.  That was his first taste of activism and being the voice of a community that didn’t have one. 

He subsequently joined the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force to work on youth issues.  After moving to San Francisco and taking a respite from activism to transition, he helped organize the first FTM conference in that city in 1995 before moving to Tucson later that year

In 1998, he took on the role of being the voice for a community that didn’t have one.   When then Tucson mayor George Miller held a community  meeting in the wake of the Matthew Shepard killing to discuss ways to prevent a similar hate crime in Tucson, Goodrum and transman Jerry Armsby were left off the invitation list.  They showed up anyway, shouted ‘and transgender’ every time the people in that room only spoke about the gay and lesbian community and took the opportunity to educate the GLB people gathered at that meeting about trans issues. 

As Goodrum and Armsby spoke, the GLB community leaders present wisely realized they didn’t have a clue about transpeople, our lives and our issues.  That led to Goodrum’s participation on the Mayoral Task Force on GLBT Issues, the proto organization which is now known as the City of Tucson Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. 

As the co-chair of the Social Services Committee he was instrumental in getting gender identity added to Tucson’s non-discrimination law in 1999.  

So yes Tucson transpeople in the audience tonight, you owe the inclusion of gender identity in your local non-discrimination law to a trailblazing African-American transman.  

I had the pleasure of meeting Alexander at the 1999 Task Force Creating Change event that was held in Oakland and liked him the instant I met him.  And yeah, the brother was handsome too.  

We shared the same philosophy in terms of rainbow community activism that not only did African-American trans and same gender loving people need to be intimately involved in it, trans people should not be separated from the struggle for rainbow community human rights.        

In addition to serving on the Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues Goodrum was the founder of TGNet Arizona, served with the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance and was a highly respected activist nationally.  But what many of us didn’t know about Alexander was that he was struggling to overcome a debilitating mental illness   

We lost this pioneering transman in September 2002 due to a tragic suicide. In the wake of community concerns about the lack of mental health access for gender variant people, The Alexander John Goodrum Transgender Mental Health Advocacy Project was founded.              

But Goodrum is just one of the African-American transpeople who have blazed trails in Arizona.  Just up I-10 from here in Phoenix Regina Gazelle founded an organization in 2006 called This Is H.O.W. 

It’s dedicated to the betterment of the lives of Trans (transsexual, transgender, and gender variant) persons experiencing crisis situations such as homelessness, substance abuse, familial abuse, and transition related difficulties and does education efforts on trans issues.  It is now run by transwoman Antonia D’orsay who herself is beginning to get respect and attention as a national activist.

Since this particular Black History Month was focused on the contributions of women to our history and we are about to move into Women’s History Month, I do need to touch on some of the transwomen who have helped make it. 

There were transwomen such as Lucy Hicks Anderson, who was born in 1886, was raised as a girl in pre Depression era Kentucky and left in her 20s to migrate to California via Texas.  She found herself on trial in 1944 after she married Reuben Anderson because the Ventura County district attorney discovered she’d been born biologically male and decided to prosecute her for perjury.  

He asserted that Anderson committed perjury when she signed the marriagelicense application and swore that there were 'no legal objections' to the marriage.

Of course Lucy had a dissenting opinion. "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman,” she told reporters in the midst of her perjury trial. “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.”  The jury convicted her of the perjury charge, but the judge sentenced her to ten years probation rather than send her to prison.

The story of history making African-American transwomen extends to the 1965 Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit In and Protest in Philadelphia which was the first trans protest action in the nation

There was Lady Java, who in 1967 fought LAPD bullying struck the blows that eventually took down the odious Rule Number 9 in Los Angeles that made it illegal for performers to 'impersonate by means of costume or dress a member of the opposite sex' unless you had a special permit issued by the LA Board of Police Commissioners.  

Never mind the fact that in 1962 the California Supreme Court had struck down anti-crossdressing ordinances in the state.   Her courageous fight against the unfairness of Rule No 9 eventually led to it being struck down in 1969.

The first person to undergo SRS in the gender program at Johns Hopkins Hospital was African-American transwoman Avon Wilson. 

It includes Stonewall veterans Miss Major and Marsha P. Johnson, A Dionne Stallworth, who was one of the organizers of GenderPac, the trans community’s first political PAC.

It includes Dawn Wilson, myself, Lorrainne Sade Baskerville, Dr. Marisa Richmond and the African descend transwomen who have made history but we haven’t discovered it yet.  It also includes all the transwomen whose names are lost to history as well and our deceased ones such as Lois Bates, Dana Turner, and Roberta Angela Dee, the trans writer whose pumps I walk in.     
  

I also can’t forget the women who are making history as I speak such as Janet Mock, Isis King, Tona Brown, and Laverne Cox or the unknown ones who are currently matriculating in secondary schools, or our nation’s college campuses.  

So why haven’t you heard about this history?  As I mentioned earlier, the dominant narrative is focused on my white trans brothers and transsisters.   As I’ve said on the blog and elsewhere, the GLBT community is a microcosm of society at large.  

Translation: all the ills and isms present in the parent society are also embedded in our little subset of it.   So yes, race matters even in the trans community.

Before any person of color can even begin to deal with the issues of a gender transition, we still have to deal with the issues or being non-white people in a vanillacentric privileged society.

And then we get the happy happy joy joy experience of how to deal with navigating that society in a feminine body and how race and class affect that gender transition differently from my white counterparts. 

As an African-American transwoman, I have to not only deal with the same old same old racism, bigotry, prejudice and microaggresive behavior aimed at me before I morphed into this body, I have to deal with sexism and the unwoman meme aimed at Black women whether we are cis or transgender.

I’m noticed for the color of my skin first.   That means the centuries old baggage of that comes into play before the trans issues even enter the equation.  There are trans issues unique to being a person of color on top of that we have to navigate in our own communities.    

And that’s before I even get started discussing the hatred aimed at trans people from the radical lesbian separatists ranks since the late 70’s, some gay and lesbian people and our self hating transsexual separatist transphobes  
 
The rainbow community needs to be better than our oppressors. Sadly in some cases they aren’t, especially when it comes to being fierce advocates for the human rights of trans people.  

Sometimes gay and lesbian people along with radical feminists have been more virulent opponents and oppressors of trans human rights than fundamentalist right wing conservatives have been. 

Because the issues of trans people are intertwined with gender politics, probably need to segue into that for a moment and bring Alexander Goodrum back into this conversation. 

In 2000 he was quoted as saying, “When transgendered people are denied rights, it's often the because of the perception that they're homosexual. With gay people, it's often as not because they're perceived to be violating gender norms. It's the same fight against the same enemies.  GLBT people have to realize that in order to move ahead.”

He’s absolutely right on those points, but yet you still have people on the GL side saying we aren’t part of ‘their community’ and we have some on the trans side saying we need to cut the GLB folks and forge our own civil rights path. 

Um, no.  Transpeople have invested too much time, energy and blood into building the rainbow community to simply walk away from it.   We’re part of the GLBT community because some of us actually are gay, bi, or lesbian.   We trans people also blow a Mack truck sized hole in the gender binary the GLB community grapples with.

Something else GLBT people need to realize is that in order for the entire community to move forward on human rights issues, they will need the help and major input from trans and same gender loving people of color as well.    

And some of what we have to say and what we persons of color consider as policy priorities will not in some cases neatly line up with the aspirations and goals of a vanillacentirc privilege laden GLBT movement with a senior leadership that is overwhelmingly white and upper middle class.

This nation is increasingly becoming a majority-minority one.  There are four states, Hawaii, New Mexico, California and my home state of Texas that are majority-minority.   Two of those states are solidly blue, New Mexico is a swing state and only the 2003 Delaymandering has kept Texas from going that way.   

In Arizona, the non-Latino white population has fallen below 60% Hispanic as it has in Maryland, Nevada, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Mississippi.  

So if we are looking at the short and long term political goals of trans human rights and rainbow community rights, we need to build an inclusive movement that takes this information into consideration and ensures that we don’t fall into the trap of building a movement that ignores the lived reality of much of its constituents. 

According to the Task Force-National Black Justice Coalition NCTE  National Transgender Discrimination Survey, Black transpeople face an unemployment rate of 26%, four times the general population and double what the African-American community faces and the trans community as a whole at 14%.    34% of us reported living in extreme poverty, which is a household income of less than $10,000 a year.

The numbers from the NTDS survey for Latino-Latina transpeople are just as alarming.  The unemployment rate is at 20% and the number of Latino transpeople reporting living in extreme poverty is at 28%

Those number point to why many rainbow community persons of color don’t see marriage equality as the end all be all number one priority as a GLBT political organizing issue.  We are the ones disproportionately getting brutalized by hate crimes aimed at this community and facing crippling unemployment or underemployment, so it stands to reason we need to have those issues dealt with first before we can even think about getting married.    

It’s hard to get married when it takes money to not only support your spouse, but it takes a steady cash flow to purchase the wedding license, the wedding ring, the wedding gowns, and the hall for the wedding and the reception and honeymoon afterward. 

And if some misguided people have the jacked up attitude that it’s open hunting season on transpeople, what’s the point if we’re not going to be around to enjoy it? 

We trans POC’s see it as instead of pushing same sex marriage which only benefits a few people in the rainbow community, the emphasis on community organizing should be on getting ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed and on President Obama’s desk for him to sign. 

It’s why Kylar Broadus founded TPOCC, the Trans People of Color Coalition in 2010 to ensure that our voices were heard in these policy discussions. TPOCC is in the process of conducting a series of town hall meetings around the country to talk to groups of transpeople about what our needs are and what they think TPOCC should be focused on.    

Not that we don’t know that already.  Here’s a hint Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.   Number two is slowing down the HIV/AIDS infection rates in my community along with stopping and reversing the near genocidal levels of violence aimed at non-white transwomen so they can live long enough, prosper and help build the trans community like I’ve been able and blessed to do. 

The trans people in this generation are the most tech savvy and the best educated generation in our people’s history.  I have no doubts if given an opportunity to do so they will be the ones who will etch their name on our nation’s history books as the first congressmembers, mayors, judges, open athletes, models and parents getting married and raising kids as they do their parts to uplift the African-American community inside and outside the trans and SGL community. .   

But for this to occur, one thing that will need to happen in the cis community straight and gay is the realization that the genitalia you possess between your legs does not always neatly line up with the gender identity between your ears and your gender expression. 

Being transgender is not an excuse for cis people gay or straight to oppress us, pimp a regressive political agenda, or a reason to deny our human rights to make you feel better as men and women in our ciscentrist society.   

We transfolks are human beings who are part of the diverse mosaic of human life and that madness needs to stop.  

As former South African President Nelson Mandela once said, “What challenges us is to ensure that none should enjoy lesser rights and none tormented because they are born different, hold contrary political views, or pray to God in a different manner.”

I’m a Black transwoman who is proud to be both.  Those identities are not mutually exclusive, nor are they disqualifications from me participating in the greater society and doing my part to make my community, my state, my nation and the world a better place to live.

It’s past time we realized that transpeople of color have much to offer our various communities in terms of our leadership skills honed by having to constantly fight oppression aimed at us and wanting to be a contributing part of the greater society.   We are closing ranks now to be better able to do that, but we will also need help from allies to do so as well          

I will continue to do what I can with every fiber of my being to make trans human rights happen in my lifetime.  I will educate and empower my African-American community and any others willing to listen about my trans brothers and sisters and facilitate the ongoing race, class and gender conversation as I do so.

The challenge of ensuring that transpeople enjoy first class citizenship is one that we will need maximum effort from all parties concerned to make this a reality in the rest of this decade and beyond. 

And I look forward to seeing that happen.