Haters Gonna Hate

Comedian Katt Williams spoke some truth here.  

So what she/he keeps talking about you and hating on you. What do you think a hater's job is...to hate. If you have someone hating on you right now you better think of how to get five more people hating by Christmas. You need haters to make you stronger..without haters most people wouldn't try to become better. Just tell them b***h you just hate me because you can't be me.' 

 Well, I have a one line sentence that encapsulates the same thing to my haters.   .  

'You hate me because you wanna emulate me.'

And to paraphrase President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,  I welcome your hatred. 

It lets me know I'm on the right track in doing what I need to do.  It lets me know that you're 'scurred' of me for whatever reason in your minds. It lets me know that you are so bothered by the fact that I am speaking my truth, uplifting a longtime downtrodden community and fear me doing my part to get Black transpeople to see themselves in a positive light.

When I'm getting inspiring e-mail from people around the country and the world telling me they appreciate what I do, a post I wrote inspired them, or a post I wrote dissuaded them from committing suicide, that means more to me than any sniping or derogatory commentary you haters can come up with.

But haters gonna hate   Take a number and step in that long line of people that wanna spout vitriol at award winning Moni with the award winning blog 'nobody reads'.   

All you're doing is talking loud and saying nothing while I empower, educate and enunciate my thoughts as to how we make the trans community better, the TBLG community better, and the nation and the world better..
 
On that note, I wasted enough bandwith on y'all.   Time to do as Dr. King called it,  some more hard, solid thinking and writing on subjects that matter.

South Carolina's Slavery Secession Ball

Today is the 150th anniversary of the day that South Carolina seceded from the Union and jumped off a chain of events that led to the War To Perpetuate Slavery.

So how are South Carolinians remembering that odious date?   By hosting a $100 a ticket ball in which people dress in period costumes at Charleston’s Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, eat, dance the Virginia Reel as a band plays “Dixie.” and reenacts the secession ordinance signing ceremony.

Don't even start regurgitating to Moni the Southern revisionist history 'heritage, not hate' arguments or the bullshit 'it wasn't about slavery it was state's rights' line.  The only state's right your ancestors went into treasonous armed insurrection for was to keep my ancestors in chains.

Here it is in black and white, pardon the pun from the South Carolina Declaration of Secession

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Of course the South Carolina NAACP is on the case and has already denounced the Secession Ball.   They will hold a peaceful march in Charleston on the day of the event, followed by a meeting and question and answer session focusing on slavery..

“This is nothing more than a celebration of slavery,” stated Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina NAACP in an interview with The State. "The reason this can take place so easily is we’re still suffering the effects of the Confederacy in this state.”

 

Amen.   They can be happy happy joy joy and remember their good old days now.  But the best part of this whole deal is we get to celebrate April 9, 2015.

 

The 150th anniversary of Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House and ending the Civil War.  

 

Damn Denny's And 'Errbody' Else, Let My People Pee

Spartanburg, SC based Denny's Inc. is a 1,749-restaurant chain which is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United States.

Back during the 80's Denny's had a corporate 'ethnic cleansing' policy in which managers were under orders not to allow too many Blacks to congregate in their restaurants. I saw firsthand in the 80's the ridiculous extremes that Denny's peeps went to in order to keep their restaurants free of African descended people.

One night when me and my friends went to a Denny's by the Astrodome, they tried to charge us $5 cover just to get in. At another location they tried to make us prepay for food as we watched Whites get seated first without prepaying. Another time at that same Astrodome location me and two Black friends waited for our food while numerous whites who came in after us got in, ordered their food and got out before we saw a single plate hit our table.

The discriminatory culture was so ingrained that on the very day in 1993 a federal court ordered the chain to stop discriminating against Black customers, a Maryland Denny's was sued by Black Secret Service agents for glacially slow service. The class action discrimination lawsuits were eventually settled by Denny's in 1994 for $54 million, but not before a boycott of the chain by African-Americans and countless worldwide retelling of stories similar to mine.

I'm taking this trip down Moni Memory Lane again because those images of past discrimination were on my mind when I heard about the Maine Human Rights Commission case involving Brianna Freeman.

The commission ruled on Monday that an Augusta, ME Denny's franchisee store was guilty of discrimination when it barred Ms. Freeman, a regular customer of the restaurant, from using the women's restroom until she had surgery.

Okay, I and the rest of the transgender community are beyond sick and tired of this bull feces 'bathroom predator' meme the Forces of Intolerance and other ignorant folks who hate on transpeople are pimping these days because they have no logic based argument they can us to deny transgender people their civil rights.

The anti-civil rights peeps have dipped into their old school playbook and recycled the centuries old tactics of deception, fear and lies over the bathroom. The same arguments being used to stir up anti-transgender bathroom passions are the same ones the haters used to justify separate 'white' and 'colored' bathrooms back in the bad old Jim Crow days.

Bottom line, you already share public bathrooms with transpeople and have done so without incident for decades.

I can't tell you how many times at concerts and ball games I saw ciswomen pop into the men's restroom before transition to use it because the lines in the women's restrooms were too long.

The first thing on the minds of many transpeople when we enter a public bathroom is how fast can we shimmy out of our clothes before the pee stream starts, and when we've handled our business washing hands and getting out of there.

We ain't trying to start any static, but too many haters are trying to start World War III with us over peeing in a damn restroom. I transitioned 15 years ago and I'm not going to a men's room where I risk a beatdown or worse because your faith-based ignorance about transgender people makes you uncomfortable.

Deal with it.

In some cases cisgender women are getting caught in the crossfire because of your idiocy.

And let's smack down some more right wing lies while I'm at it. If a predator wants to heaven forbid, sexually assault you in the bathroom, they won't be crossdressed to do it.

As far as the 'pervert' charge, you've got more to worry about from your local priest, 'christian' pastor or straight white males, who commit 98% of the molestation cases against children than you do with your friendly neighborhood transperson.

So to all the haters out there, let my people pee!

Moni's Excellent Memorial Day Weekend

So what did y'all do on Memorial Day weekend?

This year I didn't sit around the house waiting for a late invite to a barbecue or be bored out of my mind watching the Indy 500.  I accepted the invitation of Alice Serna-McDougald, Chris Valdez and United We Dream to join them and Latinx people from five states (AZ, NM, FL, NY and MD) plus Washington DC in Austin to protest SB 4.

After an enjoyable Sunday drive to the ATX with Alice to be there for the fun that was starting at 9:00 AM on Memorial Day,  I was sitting with Alice as we witnessed the silent filling of the House gallery by over 200 people clad in red Fight Back NO SB 4 T-shirts ruining the GOP House majority's self congratulatory back slapping as the clocked ticked toward the sine die moment of the 85th Texas Legislative session

At approximately 10:30 AM chants of 'SB 4 is hate! 'Hey hey ho ho, SB 4 has got to go' , 'Here to stay!' and 'This is what democracy looks like' erupted in the House gallery along with banners being unfurled stating 'See you in court' and 'SB 4 is hate' as simultaneous chanting from the assembled masses on all four floors of the Capital rotunda occurred at the same time.

It was fun watching the shocked, embarrassed and bewildered looks on the faces of the GOP legislators on the House floor who probably thought they were going to escape Austin and head back home without being held accountable for passing that racist law.

Um no, GOP boo boo kitties.  Y'all were not escaping facing the consequences for your racist act on behalf of your party.   I hope they have the same bewildered looks on their faces after the November 6, 2018 election.

Many of the legislators since it was sine die day, had their families with them and probably had to lie to their kids about why they passed the unjust and racist SB 4.

Pro tip to the Texas GOP:  If you don't want to face protests in the Texas capitol, them stop passing unjust and racist laws that will piss people off .

The Texas House leadership reacted by ordering the House gallery cleared as the chanting continued while being herded out of the chamber by DPS state troopers.

Once the gallery was cleared, Texas state Rep. Matt Rinaldi (R-Irving) let his inner bigot out by threatening to shoot a fellow Latinx legislator and telling a group of Latino legislators watching the demonstration from the House floor that he'd called ICE on the protestors.  

Um GOP dude. your pointed hood is showing.  Many of the protestors in that House gallery are American citizens.   You also proved a point I repeatedly make that the most dangerous bigots are the ones who have legislative power.

It's also a bad political move in a city that is 40% Latinx, and you barely won election to your Texas house seat in 2016 anyway.

I also received the honor of getting to make a little speech before the thousands of huddled masses yearning to breathe free from Texas GOP tyranny at the rally on the south steps of the Texas Capitol. .
I loved what Julieta Garibay, one of the co-founders of United We Dream had to say about the Memorial Day SB 4 protests:

“Today was a historic moment in Texas  as brown and Black freedom warriors took over the Capitol to make sure that as Republicans looked up into the gallery that they would forever remember every signal space filled with the beautiful and determined faces of Texans who refuse to be driven out and refuse to be intimidated. This is our state, this is our home and we are here to stay! Today is a turning point in Texas politics — from El Paso to McAllen to Dallas to Houston to Austin we are organizing to create spaces where all people of all backgrounds can survive and thrive. We will resist the Republican attack and we will win!”

Yes ma'am we will, if we work together across the Lone Star State to do so and bumrush the polls on November 6, 2018  to flush the TX GOP out of power.

How (Not) To Write About Black Trans Women

Karnythia of the Angry Black Woman blog had an interesting post I ran across entitled How To Write About Black Women in which she slammed all the tropes, memes and blanket statements aimed at Black women when others outside our community write about us. 

One group she didn't mention is Black trans women, and here's where I was inspired to pick up the baton and happily run with it where Karnythia left off. 

(Moni cracks knuckles) 

Let's get started with this post, shall we?

Only acknowledge the existence of Black transwomen when we are murdered or the victim of a crime, salaciously involved in some scandal or news story you wish to highlight, during the November 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance, you wish to pump up your Nielsen ratings during sweeps week or you wish to use us to insult Black cis women you hate.

Ignore the African descended trans activists who have toiled for decades to represent our community or have eloquently written about those issues for years because only white transwomen do that.  Don't bother quoting Black transwomen on issues of importance to the rainbow community at large, write positive stories about them speaking on trans issues or believe there are engaged Black transfeminine leaders involved in fighting for the human rights of their community and others.        .

Use a sellout Black gay male drag queen, white trans activists at inside the beltway Gay, Inc organizations or local rainbow community orgs to speak as 'experts' on Black trans lives.

Violate the AP Stylebook guidelines on covering transgender people by misgendering Black transwomen at every opportunity.  When known, mention their old male names even if it isn't germane to the story in order to other them and reinforce the point they weren't originally born female.  

If a Black transwoman is a victim of a hate crime or discrimination, you take the police spokesperson or the right wing anti-trans organization word as gospel truth without questioning if the 'man' they are describing in their press conference is actually a transwoman..  Inject the 'deception meme' into the story, add any criminal record your research may have uncovered if they have one and make certain you use either the mug shot or an unflattering picture of her.  Throw in for good measure without any evidence to back it up shady commentary or your presumption the transperson in question was soliciting

Quotes of family members or neighbors misgendering that person work for the story as well.   .


When in the process of rebutting a critique a Black transwoman has written, call her 'angry', 'obsessed about race', take digs at her education and demand she produce dissertation level citations to prove her points. If that doesn't work, call her a racist.  If all of the above fails, call her a 'man'.

If you're a cis female or radical feminist do all of the above, flaunt your ability to menstruate, birth them babies and add misogynist to your list of charges. If you're a white transsexual separatist, obsess about surgical status in addition to doing all of the above.

Position the Black transwoman as the 'unwoman' juxtaposed to cis women and non Black trans women you have anointed with honorary cis privilege.  The Black transwoman doesn't exist except to fulfill the 'tragic transsexual' meme or as martyrs to use in order to fundraise for Gay, Inc organizations.  

They are also handy for browbeating Black civil rights legacy orgs into supporting same gender marriage, taking Black legislators to task to garner support for getting marriage equality laws passed for GL people or ramrod through unjust trans rights laws without public accommodations language.

If Black transwomen object to the erasure or the misuse of their fallen transsisters lives and histories in that manner, accuse them of being divisive, refuse to engage with them, microaggressively engage in tone arguments or lob sexist, bigoted and misgendering comments at them while doing so..

Presume that your cis privileged life and your observations based on collegiate gender theory classes trump the lived experiences and everyday lives of a Black transwoman.  Dismiss it when she states that race matters and aim pre-1963 Dr. King quotes at her while chiding her for not being colorblind   Obsess about the Black transwoman's sexuality and make blanket statements and presumptions that her only interests in life are partying, getting high, getting pumped and turning tricks. 

Make blanket statements and assumptions that she is neither concerned about nor intelligent enough to discuss the human rights issues that affect all transpeople or that she has spirituality, hopes, dreams and aspirations in life just like any other human being on the planet.