I had to work last night, so I was out of the news loop until 6 AM. When I tuned my car radio to the Tom Joyner Morning Show, the upbeat mood of Tom, Sybil and company told me what I wanted to know. Obama won!
He made history in the process. Obama becomes the first African-American presidential candidate to pull off a win in the Iowa caucuses.
Final Democratic returns showed Sen. Obama gaining 38 percent support, with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards edging out Sen. Clinton for second place. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson got 2 percent to finish fourth.
Obama's victory was much closer in the all-important race for delegates. The AP analysis estimated Obama would win 16 delegates, compared to 15 for Clinton and 14 for Edwards. Clinton will win more delegates than Edwards, despite getting fewer votes, because of Iowa's complicated caucus system.
Clinton leads with 175 delegates, including superdelegates, followed by Obama with 75 and Edwards with 46.
A total of 4,051 delegate votes are up for grabs, with the magic number of delegates necessary in order for a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate to be nominated is 2,026.
This win gives Sen. Obama some major momentum going into Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
We have finally reached the point where ballots will begin to get cast in order to determine the Democratic and Republican nominees for the presidency. The road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue starts at tonight's Iowa Caucuses. Kentucky doesn't have its primary election until late May, so the race may be over and done by the time I finally get to weigh in on this.
Then again, it may take a little longer this year to sort out the two peeps left standing that will make their acceptance speeches at their respective party conventions in Denver and Minneapolis (the republicans).
Here's a piece written by Sean Flaherty at VoteTrustUSA.com explaining how the Iowa Caucuses work.
***
A modern caucus, in 13 states still the basis of choosing delegates to Presidential nominating convention, is a descendant of the Congressional nominating caucus, and the early state nominating caucuses, in which members of state legislatures met to choose party candidates for state office, and members of Congress chose party Presidential nominees. The Congressional system died after the 1824 election, and was replaced by national nominating conventions. At the same time, state caucuses gradually gave way to state nominating conventions, and the precinct-level caucus became important.
Caucuses are generally a viva-voce affair, meaning that voters openly declare their choice, but Iowa Republicans now vote for President on a secret ballot.
Many know that Iowa caucus-goers meet among their party members in locations that range from a school cafeteria to a living room, and then make their choice for President. Beyond those basics, the caucus process seems arcane, even for political junkies. It has even been suggested that voting machines of some kind are used in the caucuses, which has made Iowans who have attended caucuses scratch their heads.
The caucuses are entirely party-run, and the two parties' processes are alike in many ways, but differ in important aspects.
Both parties allow any registered voter to participate in their caucus by re-registering as a member of the party on caucus night. A voter can attend only one party's caucus, and since both take place on the same night, "caucus raiding" is not a concern of either party.
In both parties, the caucuses elect delegates to the county convention, rather than to the national party convention. The county convention will then select delegates to attend to a district convention, which will them elect delegates to a state convention. The state conventions elect delegates to the national nominating convention. In neither party are the delegates at the three levels of conventions bound to vote according to the Presidential caucus results, though generally they do so if the national race is still competitive.
The caucuses take place at the precinct level. In both parties, supporters usually make speeches on behalf of Presidential candidates. The Democrats divide into preference groups for Presidential candidates, which must meet a viability threshold to elect county convention delegates. The threshold is either 15% of the attendees or 25%, depending on the number of delegates to choose. If a preference group does not meet the threshold, its members can realign with another candidate's group, as can members of viable preference groups. Then each group elects delegates in proportion to its percentage of attendees.
At the Republican caucuses, there is a straw poll for President and a separate election for county convention delegates, according to Chuck Laudner, executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa. The Presidential straw poll is conducted by secret ballot, in which voters write their choice on paper. The ballots are counted by hand. After the straw poll, other caucus business takes place, and the selection of county convention delegates is nearer the end of the evening. The caucus-goers who run for election to the county convention do not necessarily say which Presidential candidate they support.
And about voting machines: no, they are not used to tabulate votes in either the Democratic or Republican caucuses, according to the Republicans' Laudner and Iowa Democratic Party communications director Carrie Giddins. The Republicans phone in their results to the state party, and the phone call is witnessed, usually by the caucus-goers who made speeches on behalf of the candidates. The Democratic caucus chair also phones in results to the state party, and party rules require a representative from each preference group be present to witness the call.
The Republican precinct chairs will usually allow observers to watch the caucus and the ballot-counting, though they have discretion, said Laudner. Democratic rules allow media and citizen observation.
The caucuses are complex, no way to deny it. Say what you will about the complexity of the caucuses, though; they are orders of magnitude more transparent and verifiable than the roster of Presidential primaries using paperless touch screen voting machines that will follow weeks later. Let's hope that 2008 is the last Presidential election year in which anyone will have occasion to make that comparison.
Whenever I'm in one of those moods that even Blue Bell won't get me out of (like I was during the Christmas holidays), I have a few movies stashed in my ever expanding DVD collection that are guaranteed at minimum to put a smile on my face or make me double over in laughter.
So what are those movies? Glad you asked inquiring TransGriot reader!
Here's Moni's Make Me Laugh Movie List. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? is definitely going to to be added to this list once it comes out on DVD.
One of the things that irritates me about some of my transpeeps and others in the at-large transgender community is this lack of understanding of the importance of planning.
I hear a lot of complaining in some African-American transgender circles about why we don't have a community infrastructure similar to our white counterparts.
Some of us who can afford to go to an SCC will attend, then while hanging out with each other surrounded by an ocean of white faces wonder why we don't have a similar event like this that reflects our cultural background and discusses our issues.
While the various factions in the African-American transgender community is one factor that has impeded our progress toward building that kind of infrastructure, one of the major reasons why I believe we don't have it is the lack of people willing to commit their time, money and sweat equity into helping organize these events and commit themselves to doing the work necessary to keep them viable.
We all like a good party, pageant, ball, seminar or convention. I'm no exception to that sentiment, but these events just don't materialize out of thin air. As I know all too well, they can take up to a year to plan and cost money to put on and advertise.
The other thing that annoys me is the peeps who criticize every element of the event. They complain about the cost, bitch about why this speaker, seminar topic, or service wasn't available, the food, et cetera but were 'too busy' to help participate in the planning of it.
When we put together the first Transistahs-Transbrothas Conference that took place in Louisville in 2005, we did it in nine months, but really needed a year. It was hurt in the planning phases by many of the peeps who initially committed to help being MIA for various reasons when crunch time came.
I ended up as a one woman ad hoc crisis management committee, airport shuttle service, DJ and emergency seminar presenter. I did more work during the four days I was off from my regular job for the 2005 TSTBC than I did when I returned to my job when the conference was over. It was moderately successful and we had a subsequent one in 2006. I didn't really get a chance to enjoy myself at the history-making first event and was a little unhappy that TSTBC didn't turn out quite the way I envisioned it. The people who attended were pleased, and that gave me the validation I needed to know it was worth it.
The point I'm making is that if the African-American transgender community desires to have these events (and organizations, et cetera) planning is not only a necessary evil, but a critical part of the process.
The who, what, where, when, why and how much will it cost questions get asked and worked out in planning meetings. The outline, theme and scope of the conference gets fleshed out and takes shape during these meetings as well so that the event runs smoothly.
And most importantly, the financial controls are established, accounts set up and monitored so that the organizing committee not only knows to the penny how much money is in those accounts, but where the money is going with the highest standards of ethical behavior. The cost/benefit analysis work is done to ensure we get the most bang for the buck. The nuts and bolts details are also hammered out in these meetings as well.
It sounds boring and tedious, and to be honest, sometimes they are. Sometimes these meetings can get quite animated and contentious when you have opposing views being discussed. But if you want to put your community's best foot forward and create a signature event that will stand the test of time, it has to be done.
Planning meetings aren't necessarily boring affairs. I've helped participate in some SCC planning sessions in 2000 and 2002 along with the TSTBC ones and some preliminary discussions here for a Louisville Black Pride event. Some of them were more fun than the actual conference. I'll tell you TransGriot readers in a future post the story about a 2002 one that happened on my birthday.
While I've discussed conventions, the same rules apply to smaller scale events as well. Even parties, pageants and balls require some level of planning and organization in order for them to run smoothly.
The bottom line is that if we want more SCC style conferences, seminars or similar events in our community, we need COMMITTED and DEDICATED cadres of people doing the behind the scenes grunt work in order to make them a reality.
If you were one of those people who caught Paris Is Burning in the theaters back in the day and wondered what's up with the New York ballroom community, you'll probably be interested in Wolfgang Busch's How Do I Look documentary. There's a DVD of it available on howdoilooknyc.org
Conceived as a sequel to this internationally known cult favorite, it was shot over a series of balls from 1997 and is produced by Kevin Ultra Omni. It not only takes a snapshot of some old school legends like Octavia St. Laurent, it introduces you to the new legends on the scene
If after seeing this movie or reading this post you'd like more info on what the ballroom community is currently doing, check out Frank Leon Roberts' (we're not related as far as I know) excellent blog Canwebefrank.com on a regular basis.
In addition to the coverage of the ballroom communty, Frank also comments on social issues, the African-American GLBT community and his everyday adventures in his quest for his doctorate.
The cast and crew of How Do I look are also available for lectures and screenings as well, so check the website for further info on rates and availability.
Ever since Paris Is Burning was released, I simply fell in love with Octavia St. Laurent. One day I hope to meet her in person or simply interview her, but in the meantime I'll have to just watch the videos until that day comes.
One thing I promised y'all I'd do a few months ago was let you know on New Year's Day which candidate I planned on supporting in the primaries and hopefully through the upcoming presidential election this November.
It was a tight decision that I went back and forth on a number of times, but I'm supporting Sen. Barack Obama.
While some of you may have thought because of my heritage that I automatically would have been supporting him when he first announced, you would be making an incorrect assumption. I put a lot of thought into this decision and I've been wavering between him, Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards and Gov. Bill Richardson.
Every one of my semifinalists had something on one level or another that bothered me. I've always liked Sen. Clinton, but the early HRC endorsement of her raises questions in my mind. In Gov. Richardson's case I like his broad based experience, but he botched that HRC softball debate question.
I like John Edwards, but I question whether he has the desire to be president. He and Sen. John Kerry in 2004 didn't fight hard enough to keep Bushie boy and friends from stealing Ohio (and the election) despite massive evidence of fraud, GOP African-American vote suppresion tactics employed there, mysterious voting machine malfunctions that came from a company whose CEO promised to do whatever it took to deliver Ohio for Bush, and the sellout secretary of state being the chair of the Bush campaign in Ohio.
In Sen. Obama's case, it was not confronting Donnie McClurkin's homophobia more forcefully at the South Carolina campaign event. He compounded the mistake by sending an HRC-recommended white gay minister, Rev. Andy Siddon to speak to a predominately African-American crowd that required not only an African-American minister to refute the idiocy, but one with stature like a Michael Eric Dyson, or a GLBT one such as Bishop Yvette Flunder.
I'd already heard him call out the misguided ministers of the Hi Impact Leadership Coalition on more than a few occasions, so I narrowed it down to Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama.
Another reservation I have about him is related to my long term experiences as an African-American of seeing African-American candidates be embraced by White Americans, but they are held to a much higher standard of behavior and expectations than they have for a white candidate, even if the African-American candidate is a higher caliber one than the white candidate.
An example of this was the 2006 Tennessee US Senate campaign of Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.
Ford, who is the current DLC chair, downplayed his African-American roots, ran an almost perfect centrist campaign, and built a 9 point lead going into the final week leading to the 2006 election. But as any African-American politicial scientist or any poli-sci student will tell you, when an African-American candidate is running against a white candidate REGARDLESS of party, the African-American candidate has a 10 point deficit going into that race.
Republicans will quickly dip into the race baiting bag of dirty tricks when they are losing as well. They know as well as I and other African Americans do that there are some people in this country who will not vote for ANY African-American candidate, irregardless of how qualified they are.
All it took was the GOP running the race baiting 'Call Me' commercial to sink Harold Ford's chances of becoming the first African-American elected to the Senate from a southern state since Reconstruction.
While I'm impressed with the fact that he's garnered a lot of white support in his bid, I'm still skeptical as an African-American that this support, what people say in polls and on-camera interviews will turn in the privacy of the election booth into enough votes in the primary season and the general election on November 4 to see him at noon on January 20, 2009 take the oath of office as president of the United States.
Yeah, he got elected to the senate in Illinois, which has elected an African-American to represent it in the Senate before in Carol Moseley Braun. Obama won in a landslide, but let's get real for a minute, he was running against Alan Keyes. I could have beaten Alan Keyes in a statewide election.
But despite my fears that this race baiting will happen again if he gets the nomination, I'm supporting him. I'll get an idea on January 3 just how serious peeps are about their support for him when the Iowa caucuses happen and the New Hampshire primary later this month.
If he can take these two events heading into the South Carolina primary, then I can begin to have the audacity of hope that America truly is seriously considering putting a African-American in the Oval Office.
I've liked him ever since I saw his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. He had a hard act to follow oratorically in terms of Rev. Al Sharpton and I was impressed by his oratorical skills. I also chatted with my family members in and from Chicago who had positive things to say about him as well.
I've read his books and I'm in the process of doing more research on his policy stances and his record. I think he has some wonderful ideas along with the entire Democratic field to clean up George Bush's mess and get this country moving in the right direction again.
And Michelle Obama would make an excellent First Lady. ;)
As to people who would point to his being only a first term US senator, Abraham Lincoln only served one term in the US House and lost a US Senate race in 1858 before he was elected president. Those of us who study history know how his presidency turned out. This current misadministration was the most experienced in history, and look how they jacked stuff up.
But it's all up to the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire to get this party started.
Whether they follow up their words with positive action or not, I'm supporting Barack Obama during this primary season.
I have a confession and an apology to make to the transgender community.
I'm one of the people that was alerted to the fact that ENDA was in trouble back in May and there was a problem with us being included in it.
I've gotten a lot of questions in the post-mortem over this latest ENDA disaster about why those of us who discovered what was about to go down didn't do more to get the word out to the community and possibly avert what happened.
What for?
This community believed every negative word ever uttered about me, AC, Dawn Wilson, Vanessa Edwards Foster and anyone either associated with NTAC or who didn't buy into the 'HRC is our friends' mantra.
So my thoughts were at the time, why burn up my money, gas and valuable vacation time sticking my neck out there for peeps that didn't appreciate it?
Why set myself up to get criticized by a community that only a few months ago was loudly calling for NTAC to disband and join forces with the all-knowing, all-powerful insiders of the greatest civil rights organization since the African-American civil rights movement?
You believed the hypnotic 'HRC is our friends' PR spin and we were the salmon swimming upstream against the prevailing tide of transgender public opinion. You failed to ask the skeptically critical questions when the news coming from inside the beltway was "We're included, it's a slam dunk."
That slam dunk attempt got slapped into the cheap seats by Barney Frank.
The transgender community has an annoyingly bad habit in its internal discourse of discounting, shouting down or dismissing any voice that isn't white or has a penchant for saying what it doesn't want to hear.
That tendency bit them in the butt this time. The transgender community also has a major race problem that was exploited by our opponents on BOTH sides of this issue.
So when I (and others) were confronted with a situation in which I was being called 'crazy' and an 'uppity n-word' by a certain person being hailed by the community as the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, greatest civil rights leader since MLK, who they believed with all their hearts would lead us transgender people out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land of civil rights equality and can do no wrong, then what was the point of sounding the warning if they believed that feces?
It would have gotten the same reaction from the transgender community that AC, Dawn and I got from Babs Casbar in the Longworth Building cafeteria when we told her during the NTAC Lobby day what we'd discovered. When she asked where we'd gotten our info and we told her, her reaction was, "What do they know?"
Okay, this person is active in the Stonewall Democrats, and she didn't know who the Congressional Black Caucus was or the level of power this organization had acquired since the Democratic takeover of Congress?
Babs did send me an e-mail after everything blew up that we were right, but being right and having the ability to say 'I told you so' doesn't make me feel any better about this disgusting mess. Obviously the CBC reps knew more and were willing to share with fellow African-Americans what your vaunted 'insider' legislators wouldn't tell you.
So much for the image of NCTE being the 'insiders'
Even if we did tell y'all, all you peeps who drank the 'HRC Is Our Friends' Kool-Aid would have done is shrugged your collective shoulders, did a 'There they go again' Reagan imitation and blew it off because that info came from 'those crazy NTAC people.'
But it's not like I and others didn't try to sound the alarm. I wrote about the possibility of us being screwed in my TransGriot print column in THE LETTER that was published in July 2007. I posted it on my blog as well.
And here's the paragraph in which I sounded the warning:
But one thing I repeatedly heard in several offices I visited during the recent National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) Lobby Days May 15-17 disturbed me. Several staffers informed me that Senator Kennedy’s bill DOESN’T mirror HR 1592 by including the words ‘gender identity’ and the definition for it as set forth in Section 3.6 of the House bill. I hope by the time that this column is read that it turned out to be just a rumor and the bill does mirror the one that passed the House May 3. But what if that information IS true? There are some gay and lesbian people that would be ecstatic if that happened. Some of them have expressed the attitude that the term doesn’t belong in ‘their’ ENDA bill. That’s a fundamentally short sighted, selfish and myopic viewpoint.
That's what I wrote in July 2007. As a matter of fact, Dawn, AC and I along with other NTACers were disturbed enough to consider putting together a team of lobbyists to storm the Hill unannounced before the August recess. But since NCTE was on the Hill and the community conventional wisdom was arrayed against NTAC, against our better political instincts we punted the ball and let NCTE run (and screw up) the show.
In hindsight, we should have followed our instincts, ran our clandestine lobby day, reported our findings after it was done and said to you NTAC critics who would have bitched about what we'd done 'screw y'all, we're trying to get this ENDA bill passed.'
Others may not be forthcoming about their mistakes, but I will own up to mine.
I apologize to the community for not doing enough to FORCEFULLY get the word out there. That won't happen again.
But even if I or others come up with the info and put it out there, whether you like it or not, you are minorities now. It is critical to your survival and it's your responsibility as American citizens and voters to acquire info, use your God-given critical thinking and reasoning skills to filter it our and act (or not act) on it.
For those of you living in the US, make sure your voter registration cards are active and you participate in the most important presidential election of our lifetimes.
This ENDA mess is reminding me more and more of Battlestar Galactica.
Mara Keisling reminds me of Gaius Baltar, who was seduced by Number Six only to discover to his horror within moments of the devastating Cylon nuclear attack on the Colonies that she was a Cylon. He also discovered that he unwittingly aided and abetted the destruction of the Colonies (think transgender community) by letting his girlfriend poke around the Colonial Military defense mainframe computer. He also submitted a Command Navigation Program to the Colonial military (think the 'HRC Is Our Friends' PR strategy) that contained an electronic backdoor that the Cylons used to neutralize Colonial defenses.
NTAC and current chair Ethan St. Pierre is represented by Admiral William Adara, who because of his previous service in the First Cylon War refused to network the computers on the Galactica, which saved his ship from destruction (and as we found out later and it was expounded on in Razor, the Pegasus as well because it was undergoing a retrofit at the Scorpian shipyards.
Admiral Helena Cain, AKA Dawn Wilson not only figured out what happened after the attack, but has been an unrelenting opponent of the Cylons (oops, HRC).
But people in the transgender community, despite her obvious talents and leadership skills, fear her.
You have President Laura Roslin, AKA former NTAC chair Vanessa Edwards Foster, who has grown into leadership stature despite being attacked by the cancerous whisper campaign orchestrated by the head of NCTE, outright efforts to sabotage her organization by repeated raids on the NTAC BOD and calls by transgender sheeple for NTAC to close its doors and merge with NCTE.
While all this was going on she was being called 'crazy' like myself and others who refused to drink the 'HRC is our friends' Kool-Aid.
Joe Solmonese is Aaron Doral, the smooth talking polished media pro who excels at sowing seeds of confusion and deception. Ask the folks who were in attendance at the 2007 SCC who parted with $20,000 of hard earned cash during his speech how good he is.
But as entertaining as this Battlestar analogy is getting, I'm going to skip ahead and get to the heart of it. It seems as though the HRCylons and Barney Frank are tired of me and the Admiral Adamas in the transgender Colonial Fleet criticizing them over their duplicitous amoral BS around ENDA and want to hand pick their own leaders to negotiate with.
The word from the transgender grapevine is that Mara is out and they are grooming Susan Stanton to become their new spokessellout. She's perfect in their eyes for the job. She doesn't know the community history because she's new, has a nationally known name, a very public discrimination story that played out in front of television cameras and hasn't had an opportunity to talk to us old HRCylon War vets about HRC's sorry history.
HRC in conjunction with Barney Frank's office are putting together their own transgender 'leaders' that they feel will be pliable enough for them to work with.
I've seen this game run before. It's the same one the Republican Party has been trying to run on the African-American community for decades. The GOP doesn't wanna talk to the NAACP or our elected leadership in the Congressional Black Caucus, so they have spent millions cultivating their network of megachurch black preachers and black conservatives that they conveniently use and ignore when it suits their purposes. HRC and Barney Frank are trying to run the same game on the transgender community.
The information that we do have on the Final Five sellouts thanks to Donna Rose is that they are upper middle class white transwomen.
No peeps of color, no transmen, no working class transpeeps who will inconveniently call them out like Commander Lee Adama on cutting transpeople out of ENDA. So far Susan Stanton's name is the only one that has surfaced, and we are working hard to find out the identities of the Final Five.
Fortunately I won't have to do what Deanna Biers (aka Number 3) did to find out that information and I'll definitely let you TransGriot readers in on the secret when they are revealed.
One of the more amusing conversations I recently eavesdropped on while I was out and about was two brothers trading their 'how to spot a transsexual' tips. In addition to the usual stereotypes about height, broad shoulders, and 'masculine' facial looks, the one that made me chuckle was about shoe size.
"I can spot a transsexual from ten miles away because of them big feet." the so-called tranny-spotting expert proclaimed.
Yeah, right. If that was the case, how'd you miss spotting my elegantly dressed 6'2" behind wearing the hell out of my black Timothy Hitsman pumps, size 12? I have a size 13 navy pair of the same shoes in my wannabe Imelda Marcos sized shoe collection sitting in my closet.
I laugh sometimes when I hear biomen and some biowomen spout that fallacy. While there's a grain of truth to the fact there are some transwomen who have to shop at Payless or online at various websites to get fashionably stylish heels in double digit sizes, we are increasingly jostling with biowomen to grab the limited pairs of size 11s, 12s and 13s that are made available on store shelves.
Take note, alleged tranny spotters. Americans are not only getting fatter, we're getting bigger and taller as well. Feet are keeping evolutionary pace with that reality.
According to podiactric historian William Rossi, the foot enlarging trend for women has been occuring for about 150 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the average American woman wore a size 3.5 or a 4. That climbed to a size 5.5 by the 1940s.
According to the Professional Shoe Fitting Manual, the average American adult female's shoe size in the 1960s was a size 5.5 to a 6. By the '70s it climbed to a 7.5 and in the '80s it had reached a size 8 or 8.5. As of yet stats haven't been compiled for the 90's, but you can do the logical progression and presume that the average American woman's shoe size will have climbed to a size 9.
In addition, thanks to regular wear and tear, pregnancy, and the stretching of foot ligaments and joints, over the course of a lifetime a woman's shoe size tends to increase by about a half to one full shoe size.
My homegirl Tracy discovered that fact to her horror after she gave birth to her daughter a few years ago. She's six feet tall and before her pregnancy wore a size 10. Her foot grew an inch during her pregnancy and she now wears a size 11. She used to mildly tease me when I'd whine about how hard it was for me to find fashionable shoes. Now she feels my pain.
And bioboys, don't be so quick to diss the sistahs about expanding shoe sizes either. This phenomenon isn't just limited to the feminine half of the US population. According to US Army records, the average shoe size worn by male recruits has gone up from about a 6 to about a 9.5 since the American Revolution.
But back to my regularly scheduled post. Transwomen come in all shapes, sizes and shoe sizes. I had a roommate back in Houston who was 5'6" and wore a size 7. My homegirl Lexi is 5'7", is a size 0 dress size and wears a size 9 shoe.
I know more than a few transsistahs that wear anywhere from size 7.5-to 11. Dawn needles me about the fact that she wears an 11, which is the largest size that most women's shoe catalogs display.
Conversely, I not only personally know more than a few biowomen who wear double-digit shoe sizes like my homegirl, but I'm aware that some celebrity women such as Paris Hilton (size 11), Tyra Banks (10), assorted supermodels, and most of the WNBA wear double digit sizes as well. There are some women's college and WNBA basketball team players that have bigger feet than mine. I remember the day I quit griping about my shoe size when I read that Chamique Holdsclaw wears a size 14.
So bioboys, better check your pseudoscience at the door. You may be missing out on a wonderful woman because you're either mistaking her for a transwoman based on her shoe size, or not taking the time to get to know a transwoman who has character, class and substance because of her size 12 pumps.
German Olympian Yvonne Buschbaum, the world junior record holder in the pole vault, announced her retirement November 21 from the sport. She finished third in the European championships in 1998 in Budapest, Hungary, won the European junior title in 1999 and placed sixth at the Sydney Games in 2000. Buschbaum's best year was 2002, when she finished second in the European Indoor Championships in Vienna, Austria and third at the European Championships contested on home soil in Munich, Germany.
The interesting twist in this story is that the other reason she cited for her retirement decision in addition to her persistent injuries was a desire to transition to male.
In a statement from her web site, Buschbaum said, "I feel as if I am a man and have to live my life in the body of a woman. I am aware of the fact that transsexuality is a fringe issue, and I do not want to be responsible for it remaining on the fringe."
Buschbaum also asked for respect for her decision and urged observers not to draw false conclusions. "I do not dope," she said and added that her upcoming hormone treatments to facilitate her transition contributed to her decision to quit along with the persistent injury.
As I keep saying over and over, transsexuality is an international medical and social issue that cuts across class, race, religious and geographic boundaries. Just as transpeople exist who are in politics, business, education, law, and the arts and sciences, we have transgender athletes as well. It's why the IOC and other international sports governing bodies allow transgender people to participate.
I wish Yvonne much happiness and success as a new chapter unfolds in her life.
In a little more than 17 hours we say goodbye to 2007 and hello to 2008. It's been an interesting but tumultuous year not only for the transgender community but for me personally as well.
I started the year with a newspaper column I loved, a job I didn't like and 15 pounds heavier. I lost that job three days into the New Year and got my current one, lost the weight through the course of the year, got a year older and unexpectedly lost my column in September.
And still I rise.
While I don't have my column any more and I miss writing it once a month, I still have this blog. There was a silver lining in the loss of the monthly column although I'm majorly pissed about the way it went down. It allowed me to focus more of my creative energy on TransGriot and other writing projects. I've been blessed to see my readership grow from just 100 hits per day from the time I installed my counter on January 17 to 400 per day.
I set a record for one day hit totals twice. I received 1200 hits for my posts on the Miss Universe pageant and broke it when I received 1500 hits on the blog for my history on HRC-transgender community relations. I composed my 500th post since starting TransGriot. And best of all, thanks to the blog, I'm blessed with the ability to intelligently expound on a wide range of issues. I also get the bonus of corresponding with and meeting some wonderful people and fellow bloggers I wouldn't have otherwise.
The transgender community has gone through similar ups and downs. Here in the States we've not only seen increased coverage of transgender issues in our media, but several television shows that have or debuted with good and bad transgender characters. We've seen a transperson get elected statewide in Hawaii but lose locally in Riverdale, GA and Aurora, CO. We've had several cities and states pass inclusive rights legislation.
But in late September our world got rocked by being messily cut out of ENDA by so-called allies. It's triggered not only a schism in the GLB_t community, but a long overdue American transgender community reexamination of how we do business as a community, how inclusive we really are, what tactics we use to pursue our twin legislative Holy Grails of a transgender inclusive ENDA and hate crimes bills and our place in the GLBT community. We transpeople are also searching for, as Aretha Franklin so eloquently sang, R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
It's been a mixed bag of success and failure in the worldwide community as well. We've had legal reversals mixed with success. They too have experienced increasing popularity and media coverage as well. But at the same time while my transgender cousins in Jamaica and on the African continent are catching hell, my African cousins are garnering more positive press as well. (hey, that rhymed)
Around the world, it's becoming more obvious by the day that being transgender is a worldwide medical issue that calls for a compassionate medical, social and legal response, not faith-based hatred and condemnation. Despite what the Catholic Church, fundamentalists and many conservative pundits think, we exist, we have human rights and we aren't going away.
That's one part of the worldwide struggle that will continue into the New Year, and we'll also see the various societies and governments around the world adjust to varying degrees of success or failure.
As for the Phenomenal Transwoman herself? I've been spending the last few days in my traditional end of the year assessment of my life. Been reassessing goals, rechecking my New Year's resolutions I wrote down at the beginning of 2007 and seeing how much progress I made (or lack thereof) toward achieving them.
I'm also at a personal crossroads in my life on a few fronts. Over the next year I'll be working diligently toward successfully resolving those issues. The issues need to be resolved in order for me to continue maintaining my forward progress toward evolving into the type I woman I want to be.
But the best news about 2008? It's a presidential election year.
Transtasia is a documentary about the 2004 World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant. It not only shows scenes from the pageant, but interviews several contestants about their lives.
BBC America Sunday, December 30, 2007 10:00pm EST /7:00pm PST Repeated at 1:00am EST / 10:00pm PST
All Richard Parker wants for his 18th birthday is to be Lucy Parker. Richard has spent his life dealing with gender identity issues and has long dreamed of the day when he can have surgery to become a real woman.
Unable to get the surgery until he turns 18 and has proven to doctors that he is psychologically committed to life as a woman, Richard has spent the last two years living as Lucy. This is her story.
Premieres December 30th at 10pm et/pt. Part of BBC America Reveals.
Tonight is the first night of Kwanzaa, which runs from December 26 to January 1. The celebration was founded by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966 in the wake of the Watts riots in Los Angeles.
Dr. Karenga searched for ways to bring African-Americans together as a community. He founded US, a cultural organization, and started to research African "first fruit" (harvest) celebrations. Dr. Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of Kwanzaa.
While Kwanzaa has the flexibility to be celebrated by people in many ways, it's based on seven core principles called the Nguzo Saba. They are values of African culture which contribute to building and reinforcing community among African-Americans and each of those core principle is celebrated over the seven nights of Kwanzaa.
The core principles are:
Umoja (Unity) To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
The core principles are not just for being remembered during the Kwanzaa celebration, they are also to be used to help not only organize the community, but be used by individuals as well.
Kwanzaa is growing in popularity among some African-Americans since it's founding as people look for ways to reconnect to our African cultural roots.
I'm a huge Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker fan. Any time I have an opportunity to see a movie that has either one of these guys acting in it, I'm jumping at the opportunity to head to my favorite multiplex, chow down on some popcorn and watch these gentlemen work.
I get to double my pleasure in the movie that just opened yesterday called The Great Debaters.
Denzel plays Wiley College Professor Melvin B. Tolson. He inspired students in 1935 to form the school's first debate team, which in reality went on to challenge Southern Californa, but in the movie is depicted as debating Harvard in the national championship.
The movie has already been nominated for a Golden Globe Award and is produced by Oprah's Harpo Productions.
One little known tidbit about my hometown is that Houston is a city with a great debate tradition. Texas Southern University has a outstanding debate team that was founded in 1949 under the leadership of the legendary Dr. Thomas F. Freeman. The late US Rep. Barbara Jordan was a member and a national champion along with my former Texas state senator Rodney Ellis. The TSU debaters were also technical advisors for this film as well
Another little known fact about Houston's rich debate tradition is that Lyndon B. Johnson, before he became Texas' US senator in 1948 and a future president was briefly a teacher and an award-winning debate coach at San Jacinto High School.
I'm looking forward to checking out this movie this weekend and seeing another piece of my people's history portrayed by a great actor.
