Happy Birthday, Nikki

Today would have been Nakhia 'Nikki' Williams' 30th birthday. She and her twin sister Nicole would have been celebrating it together.

But unfortunately that won't happen because some scumbag who's still at large right now felt he had the power to take her life. And that has left a void in the lives of all who knew her.

A family is missing a loved one.

The people who called her 'friend' miss her terribly.

Her neighbors who she greeted with a friendly wave, a hello and a smile no longer hear or see that.

A community mourns for you.

And a creative, artistic soul has been extinguished.



Happy birthday, Nikki. We'll never forget you, nor will we give up the quest of finding the persons who did this to you and seeing justice carried out.

The BBC Teen Transsexuals Documentary

Y'all knew that I was going to find that video of the BBC documentary if it was uploaded to the Net and post it here. The first attempt to do so got derailed when the first place I found it on YouTube deleted it, but I quickly found another person who'd uploaded it, and this time I got all six parts of it.

So now, here's the documentary.



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6

'Dirty Sexy Money' Cancelled

The number of transgender characters on network TV is rapidly dwindling. First our honorary transwoman Rebecca Romijn broke the news in addition to her pregnancy that she is leaving Ugly Betty over creative issues with her Alexis Meade character.

Y'all know I hated the Dontrelle character on ABC's Big Shots even though I like Jazzmun, the actress who plays her.

Now comes the news that Candis Cayne may be looking for a new acting gig since Dirty Sexy Money is being cancelled. She plays Carmelita on that ABC show.



ABC is planning to produce and run the shows contracted for this season, but after that, it's done unless they change their minds.

Hate hearing that because this show had a groundbreaking but simple concept. Have a transgender actress play a transgender character. Candis has also been a gracious and wonderful spokesperson about her life and our issues as she's done the numerous interviews about being a trailblazing transgender actress.

Looking forward to meeting her one day, and here's hoping that ABC changes their mind about the show.

Don't Hate On Jasmyne 'Cause She's Telling The Truth

Y'all know I absolutely love me some Jasmyne Cannick because as the late Jack 'The Rapper' Gibson used to say, she tells it like it T-I-S is.

Some white gay peeps already hate on her because of her successful efforts to shut down Chuck Knipp's odious Shirley Q. Liquor performances in the Los Angeles area and because of her blunt, no holds barred unapologetically Black blog.

In the wake of the passage of the Prop 8 same gender marriage ban she's been drawing increasing fire from white gays who took offense at her dead on commentary on why Prop 8 passed and her LA Times op-ed piece that appeared the Sunday after the election.

She's plucked some nerves out there and nationally, but that's the job of us activist types. We're not in it for popularity. If you like us, cool, but in our pursuit to make this a better society for all of us truth is an essential weapon in that struggle. Sometimes we have to bluntly state the obvious to the peeps enamored of denial, spin, sugar coating and outright lying.

Doing that and being unapologetically proud of her heritage doesn't make her or any person of color racist. I'm getting a little sick of seeing that tired comment being thrown out there because you don't like either her for whatever reason or the message.

As Parliament-Funkadelic would say, if you don't like the effects, don't produce the cause.

Many African-American GLBT folks, if they haven't already tuned you out, are millimeters close to saying to hell with y'all after the naked displays of anti-Black racism that erupted in many GLBT communities, the racist comments from some white gay pundits, and the startling ease in which those comments freely flowed from your lips, pens and keyboards in the gay blogosphere and beyond.

Whether you like it or not, Jasmyne has the respect and the ear of the Black GLBT and non GLBT community in LA and beyond. She's just the messenger trying to get it through your thick skulls what it will take to fix the obvious problem you have in crafting a pro-GLBT rights message that will resonate with the African-American community.

If you want to win, it would behoove many of of you trying to figure out what to do and how to approach the African-American GLBT community for help to listen to what she and other African-American GLBT peeps in Cali and elsewhere have to say.

But hating on Jasmyne Cannick for simply telling the truth is not an option.

Cydne Kimbrough

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

Cydne is one of of my transsistahs I'm getting to know, but who has been an activist fighting the good fight in Baltimore since 1999. She started her own transition at 16, and her name comes from one her mom was planning to christen her with at birth had she been born with a female body.

She has an ambitious goal. "I want to create a situation in Baltimore city that will reduce bias against transgender people and afford them a better quality of life."

I've admired Cydne and the wide spectrum of work she's done to achieve that goal and help improve the lives of her fellow transpeople in Baltimore. Whether it's HIV/AIDS prevention and harm reduction to getting the Baltimore Police department to be more respectful and cognizant of the fact that they have transgender citizens to protect and serve as well, she's done it.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention she's working on her degree as well from Coppin State University?

This is just the short list of some of the things she's done for the community:

+ Chairperson and President Board of Directors of Baltimore Black Pride, Inc.
+ Former Program Director of TransAm - the pioneering HIV Education/Prevention program for African American Transgender Persons in Baltimore
+ Served 3 years as member of the Maryland HIV Community Planning Group & Membership Committee Chair
+ Member of the Mayor's GLB/T Task Force
+ Co-founder and Executive Director of the Gender Learning Advocacy and Support System of Baltimore (G.L.A.S.S Baltimore) – scheduled to launch the fall of 2008

She serves on various boards in the area and has done a lot of work getting the transgender community in Baltimore to stand up and be proud of who they are. She was recently named an OSI Fellow and I won't be surprised if one day I see her at an IFGE conference becoming the next African-American transwoman to win the IFGE Trinity Award.

The pride in herself is a mantra that she lives by and constantly role models, and she has called on her deep faith in God to carry her through the rough times as well.

God has blessed Cydne, and she has blessed us by being a tireless advocate, eloquent spokesperson and concerned citizen just trying to do what she can to make like better for transpeople in her hometown and beyond.

Rochelle Evans Video

Back in May I posted the Dallas Voice story that answered the question of how transteen Rochelle Evans was doing since winning her battle to be herself.

Hopefully things have gotten better for her and her mother since that story was published and I hope Rochelle realizes her dream of attending college at TCU.

In the meantime, here's the video of Rochelle telling her story. Merry Christmas sis and good luck in your quest to get the diploma and the TCU degree.

Lucy Parker Stirkes Back

The BBC recently broadcast a documentary called Teen Transsexual that featured then 17 year old Lucy Parker. She was awaiting her 18th birthday so that she could undergo SRS. A subsequent BBC documentary followed her to Thailand chronicled her surgery.

Well, Lucy has released a YouTube video that hits back at the folks that posted the hateful comments to the BBC Teen Transsexuals video uploaded to YouTube.

Here's Lucy looking lovely and speaking her mind about her life and the recent changes in it.

SCC-Have Y'all Lost Your Damn Minds?

The Southern Comfort Conference has always been one of my fave transgender events because it's held in the ATL. I attended the 1999, 2000 and 2004 ones and if I wasn't feeling what was happening in the conference hotel, I'd break away, go hang out with my peeps, or hop a MARTA train and check out what Atlanta has to offer historically and culturally.

SCC is now in the planning stages for its 2009 edition taking place September 22-27, and they always organize it around a theme. The last one I attended in 2004 had a Hollywood one, which was pretty cool. They even had one room set aside during the conference as a theater in which they played transgender themed movies.

I have to give SCC credit for making an sincere effort to address the issues and problems that have caused low POC attendance. It led one former African-American SCC attendee I chatted with during my last SCC visit in 2004 to comment, "SCC is definitely Southern and not very comfortable."

The SCC BOD was also embarrassed and concerned about the fact that this conference is held in a city considered to be the Black GLBT mecca, but you could count the number of African-American transpeeps that attended it on one hand and if they were lucky, sometimes two. Up until the recent 2007-08 SCC's, the record attendance for POC's at an SCC conference occurred in 2000 when 26 of us were there.

But bearing the previous paragraph in mind, it has come to my attention that someone on the planning committee proposed a 'Gone With The Wind' theme for 2009 and wanted to know what transgender peeps of color thought about it.

Since they actually asked us, here goes:

Have y'all lost your damned minds?

Some of you peeps may love Margaret Mitchell's book and the movie, but I can say with certainty that me and probably my transpeeps definitely won't be feeling that theme. In fact, when you just have gotten to a point over the last two years where you're drawing an African-American crowd that doesn't number into the single digits for this conference despite moving it into the 'burbs from the Midtown hotel it used to have, why the hell would you even think about a 'Gone With the Wind' theme that would put a screeching halt to the positive momentum you've mustered?

And why select that theme when all African-Americans are basking in the afterglow of a historic presidential election?

Since someone came up with that theme, I have to ask the question just how many peeps of color are actually helping plan this event?

Dawn, Marisa and I at various times participated in the planning of past SCC's. What struck me as a former member of the committee is that in some cases we were the only peeps of color in the planning meeting room.

But it also speaks to just how much 'ejumacation' we African-American transpeeps still have to do in the transgender community as well. That somebody would actually think we'd be cool with that theme, which reflects a period of time in US history that is still personally painful to many of us is beyond me.

But then again, there are some peeps in the GLBT community that seem to think Chuck Knipp as Shirley Q. Liquor is funny, so I shouldn't be surprised.

But the onus is also on us as African-American transpeople to get involved. It's lack of diversity on these boards that leads to these kind of incidents that I'm discussing now. If we don't want these type of racial faux pas to continue happening, we need to start participating in the planning of major transgender community events, and the transgender community needs to do their part to find and retain transgender people of color for these boards who wish to do so.

Nina Poon-Transgender Kenneth Cole Ad Model

This lovely woman in this Kenneth Cole 'We All Walk In Different Shoes' themed ad is transwoman Nina Poon.

She tells her story in the following YouTube clips.

'Caprica' Trailer

Battlestar fans like myself have been impatiently waiting for the final ten episodes of our favorite show to come on next month.

We're anxious to find out who, what, how, and what time period Earth got fried to a nuked out crisp, but who the final Cylon model is among all the other questions raised during the four season run of the reimagined BSG.

In the interim, the news for BSG's spin off prequel show Caprica is beginning to trickle out.

I posted a few months ago about Caprica being greenlighted as a two hour pilot and a series with 18 one hour episodes for the first season. The casting for the various roles has begun or been completed and the trailer has finally been released.



It looks interesting to say the least. The show will kick off with a two hour special, then the series will go into production for a projected debut of 2010.

Unlike BSG, the Caprica action is going to be planet based. More details of the basic storyline have been divulged

It will follow the lives of the Graystone and Adama families 51 years before the events of BSG. Wealthy technologist Dr. Daniel Graystone (played by Eric Stoltz) and civil rights attorney Joseph Adama (played by Esai Morales) cross paths when their daughters die in a religious terrorist attack initiated by Zoe's boyfriend Ben.

Zoe Graystone inherited her dad's technological smarts and as kids do, one upped them. Before she died stored some of her rudimentary personality elements and DNA into an avatar of herself called Zoe-A. The grief-stricken Graystone discovers them, takes these basic building locks, some stolen technology from a Tauron rival and uses cybernetic breakthroughs to create a robotic copy of his daughter called Zoe-R, the first Cylon.

Joseph Adama has overcome his Tauron roots and Caprican prejudice against non-Capricans to become a hugely successful civil rights attorney. He lost his wife and daughter Tamara in the same attack, and Graystone creates a robotic copy of Tamara for him as well.

But ethical and moral concerns about the questionable directions Graystone is taking these cybernetic experiments lead Adama to become a vehement critic of the Cylons.

It is a sentiment passed down to his son, William, the future commander of the Galactica.

As many sci-fi fans know, today's science fiction sometimes becomes tomorrow's science fact. The ethical and moral questions raised on Caprica will probably be some of the same ones our own society will have to sort out soon.

Thanks to ongoing research in robotics and the increasing exponential knowledge gained about our DNA from the Human Genome Project, we are probably close to or soon will have the ability to create our own versions of Cylons.

But we'll get the pleasure of watching it being hashed out on a weekly basis thanks to the executive producing team that brought us Battlestar Galactica, Ron Moore and David Eick with 24 writer Remi Aubuchon.

Why I Can't Stand The 'Gay Is The New Black' Slogan

When I hear or see that 'Gay is the New Black' slogan, it just irks me, especially considering what I've observed over the last decade as a African-American transgender activist.

When we hear people say that, I and other African-Americans, both GLBT and non GLBT, see a movement comprised predominately with a leadership of white moneyed gay men who wish to compare themselves to the Civil Rights Movement but consistently ignore or fail to apply the fundamental lessons of that movement.

What are those lessons? Coalition building, composing civil rights law as broadly as possible to cover the most people, and doing so and dealing with others in a morally ethical manner.

Unfortunately some of our gay white brothers and sisters do that only when it is advantageous or critical for them to do so, like when an anti gay referendum is on the ballot, then they come calling.

Any other time, except when they need melanin in a photo op, they ignore us.

When I look at those documentaries, movies and photos of the Civil Rights Movement, I see most of the signs carried by marchers have something to do with jobs, equal rights, voting and stopping lynching, not marriage issues.

To be honest, short of the obvious one involving the trans Atlantic slave trade, the transgender community has more similarities with the African-American struggle at its inception than the gay one does.

How you may ask? Before y'all start tripping like one gay person did (so far) when I made this statement in a Bilerico comment thread, let me school y'all on some of the things I've observed, and if you disagree, that's what the comment thread at the end of this post is for.

*Once we transition, there's no hiding for us. We are reviled by some members of the general public simply for being who we are.

*At the time the major push of the Civil Rights Movement started in 1954, African-Americans had no elected political representation at the major city, county, and state government or legislative levels. There were only two congressmen, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr (D-NY) and William L. Dawson (D-IL) representing us at the federal level and zero senators of African-American heritage.

Transpeople have ZERO representatives at the federal level, have only one elected statewide rep in the person of Hawaii State Board of Education member Kim Coco Iwamoto, no elected representatives in state legislatures or state governments, no elected county commissioners and no elected city council representatives in any major US city.

*We have an average of two people a month being killed simply for being transgender, and that's the ones we know about.

*Amnesty International has documented the abuse of transgender citizens at the hands of law enforcement.

*A transgender person's rights are still subject to judicial interpretation in the judicial system, are not codified yet at the federal level, and any attempts to do so at any governmental level are met with resistance by the same hostile white fundamentalist anti-civil rights coalition that dogged the Civil Rights Movement. Infuriatingly enough, sometimes that resistance as demonstrated by last year's ENDA debacle comes from our own erstwhile allies.

I agree with the assertion that all oppressions and 'isms' are linked. However, while there are some similarities and some convergence at certain points in our twin civil rights struggles as the life of Bayard Rustin and the late Coretta Scott King so eloquently pointed out, there are fundamental differences as well in how the two movements evolved.

The African-American civil rights movement at its core was a church based, church led one while the gay rights one at its core is secular in nature.

But the major reason why the 'Gay is the new Black' slogan raises African-American hackles is not because as some GLBT peeps have surmised the homophobia within our community's midst.

Many GLBT African-Americans like myself can't stand it because we see it as another example of our history being appropriated and trivialized for your own purposes while excluding or erasing the gay and straight African-Americans that helped make that history.

Dr. Ousterhout Planning To Retire In 2011

If you're thinking about getting facial feminization surgery from Dr. Douglas Ousterhout, better do it before 2011.

The pioneer of facial feminization surgery is planning to retire, according to comments posted on the Transsexual Road Map website attributed to his office manager Mira Coluccio.

Dr. O as he's affectionately known in the transgender community, is the author of the book Aesthetic Contouring of the Craniofacial Skeleton. He's penning an upcoming book about FFS written for a lay audience and holds an MD as well as a DDS degree.

He is a great friend and a wonderful ally to our community, and his surgical skills have been utilized by many in our community to help them not only look better, but feel better about themselves.

Hopefully, he'll pass on his knowledge to another colleague or younger doctor willing to take on the challenge.

The IFGE-TransEvents Split

For several years the IFGE convention was managed by a group called TransEvents. While IFGE focused on its nuts and bolts educational mission, TransEvents, founded by S. Kristine James and Alison Laing organized and ran the convention.

IFGE is the International Foundation for Gender Education, one of the oldest national gender groups in existence. It publishes Transgender Tapestry magazine and is the creator and presenter of the Trinity and Virgina Prince Awards honoring the transgender community heroes and sheroes.

It has come to my attention thanks to a Phyllabuster I recently received that a split occurred a few months ago between IFGE and TransEvents. As of yet no one knows why, but I'll have to contact my sources inside IFGE to get their side of it and hopefully hear from someone representing TransEvents as well.

The official IFGE convention has already been scheduled for February 2-8 2009 in Washington, D.C.

But that split will lead to an additional transgender convention in 2009. The TransEvents folks are putting on what they are entitling Transgender 2009-The Liberty Conference that will take place in Philadelphia from April 30-May 2.

If I had to pick one, the IFGE event appeals to me on multiple levels. I am a Trinity Award winner who enthusiastically supports the education mission of IFGE, and I occasionally write pieces for publishing in the pages of Transgender Tapestry magazine. Supporting this conference helps IFGE continue that mission.

Being in the Washington DC metro area gives me the opportunity to hit Capital Hill while I'm there to lobby the new 110th Congress on an inclusive ENDA and hare crimes issues. But conversely, since those bills haven't been filed yet, until I get a bill number and actually see how it's worded, it's hard to lobby for a bill you haven't seen yet.

The Philly event would allow me another opportunity to visit the city, hang out with Dionne, engage in more stimulating discussions with her and chat with Alison Laing again.

But judging by the separate conferences for this year, unless some behind the scenes conversations are taking place between the two parties I'm not cognizant of, it looks like the IFGE-TransEvents split may be a permanent one.

Houston Snow Day

For most cities, snowfall is a ho hum event that as the amounts of it increase, bring increased vitriol for it. But in my hometown, it's a big deal since we don't get it that often.



The only time during my childhood we got any significant snowfall was the four inches we received in January 1973 that earned us a snow day off. Me and my friends happily spent that day making snowmen and ambushing each other with snowball fights.

But twice in one decade is definitely a rarity. Just a few years ago on Christmas Eve 2004 a massive snowstorm dumped snow over a region stretching from Brownsville, TX along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast to New Orleans in addition to Houston. That was the first White Christmas in Houston's 140 plus year history

Yesterday's snowfall tied a record for the earliest ever recorded for the Bayou City. According to National Weather Service records dating back to 1894 the earliest snowfall on record for my hometown is December 10, 1944.

What Goes Around, Comes Around Longhorn Fans

As a UH Cougars fan I despise the University of Texas Longhorns and some of their fans almost as much as the Texas A&M Aggies and Oklahoma Sooners fans do.

I'll never forget a Southwest Conference football game versus Texas I attended in the Dome back during my freshman year in 1981. I had the misfortune of sitting next to a group of Orangebloods who not only were shouting the derisive 'Cougar High' sobriquet for most of the game, as they became more inebriated and infuriated that the game was headed to a 14-14 tie started uttering racial slurs at me and my homies dressed in Cougar red and white as well.

Those fans more than lived up to their reputation that many peeps across the Lone Star State and on the other side of the Red River that don't revere Forty Acres share about UT Longhorn football fans.

I discovered over the years I wasn't alone in telling my Horns Fans Gone Wild story. The boorish behavior exhibited inside and outside of Austin fuels much of the distaste many of us feel toward the Longhorns.

While some Longhorn fans conduct themselves with class and dignity and show the legendary hospitality we Texans are known for, others are pompous, arrogant, and nekulturny in addition to sometimes being straight up racist. Some of them are so spoiled they feel that if UT isn't in the Big 12 or BCS title game, then it was a lousy football season. That season becomes intolerable if they lose to the Sooners, on Thanksgiving Day to the Aggies or both teams in the same year.

The rumors persist despite heated denials from the UT camp, they were the ringleaders in keeping us out of the Southwest Conference until the 1970's because UH was actively recruiting African-American athletes in the late 60's. The perception that they worked diligently to keep the University of Houston out of the Big 12 when it formed in 1995 has not been forgotten or forgiven by Cougar fans either.

The Longhorns never forgot the 1976 season. Not only was it Darrell Royal's last year coaching the Horns, it was the first year UH was eligible to compete for the Southwest Conference football title.

The Coogs administered a 30-0 butt kicking in front of a then record Memorial Stadium crowd that jumpstarted a streak of four SWC football championships and four Cotton Bowl trips for my Cotton Pickin' Cougars in five years.

The Coogs also had a streak starting from 1987-1991 during the Run and Shoot era in which we beat down the Horns four out five times by lopsided scores. To add insult to injury during that streak we beat them in 1988 by a 66-15 score in DKR-Memorial Stadium.

That's probably why they made sure we didn't get invited to the Big 12 and came up with BS reasons to exclude us.


Hey, even as a card carrying member of the 'I Hate The Longhorns Club' I have to get real for a minute.

There's no doubt that UT got screwed in terms of the Big 12 South Division tiebreaker and even Stevie Wonder can see that. I'd be pissed too as a football fan if I had to suffer the indignity of watching two teams my school beat get into a championship game and play for the title.

But I see it as karma for the crap that was pulled on us and the rest of your Left Behind SWC brethren. How do you think we Cougar fans feel watching you peeps play in a conference we should have been a part of at its formation?

We also get the indignity of watching you recruit Houston area high school football talent to stock your Longhorn squads with that you'd have a much harder time hooking (pardon the pun) with the University of Houston as a Big 12 member.

It ain't Miami and the BCS Title game, but at least you're going to a BCS bowl. Most schools would kill to go to the Fiesta Bowl, much less ANY bowl and you're whining about it.

But while you're sitting in the air conditioned comfort of Glendale's University of Phoenix Stadium, you may wish to contemplate the possibility that the arc of the college football universe is starting to bend towards justice.

Stop Tripping Conservatives-Obama IS A US Citizen

You know, after eight years of an administration that had a president who called the Constitution 'just a scrap of paper' and showed their disdain for it at every opportunity, now they want to be sticklers for their specious interpretation of it now that an African-American who was once president of the Harvard Law Review is several weeks away from occupying the Oval Office

They've been loudly claiming that either President elect Obama isn't a US citizen because of his Kenyan father, has dual US and British citizenship, because he lived in Indonesia for a few years, the birth certificate isn't authentic or whatever lie du jour they come up with. The stories and conspiracy theories keep changing faster than their dirty drawers.

First, let's see what the Constitution has to say about qualifications for office.

Article II, section 1 US Constitution

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

That's what Article II, section one says about who is eligible to be president of the United States. That's means you can't run Ah-nold (thank God) for the office.



Now, let's take a look at Amendment 14 to our Constitution.

Amendment 14

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Did you catch that first sentence, conservaidiots? Let me repeat it for you if you didn't since I know you're used to having Faux News, your so called 'christian' pastor and right-wing talk radio tell you what and how to think and may not be used to actually reading and interpreting things for yourself.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Barack was born in Honolulu, HI. That, for you conservailliterates is a state, is United States territory and had been a state for two years at the time of his birth. That, and the fact that his mother S. Ann Dunham is an American citizen makes him an American under the 14th Amendment irregardless of his father being Kenyan or whatever other ancillary bull feces you wish to dredge up.

I guess Jeb Bush's children George P. 'I just remembered I was Latino in 2000' Bush, Jeb Junior and Noelle Bush based on that conservastandard aren't US citizens either because their mother Columba was born in Mexico and didn't become a naturalized United States citizen until 1987, after they were all born.

That birth announcement and the Hawaii secretary of state confirming that the president elect's 1961 birth certificate is authentic make that game, set and match in terms of swatting down this lame conservalie.

So y'all can stop hollering 'cover up', there isn't one. You were already discredited when you spent most of the 1990's foaming at the mouth and hissing that Bill and Hillary Clinton were serial murderers. You also spent most of this campaign cycle trying to paint the President elect and the First Lady elect as dangerous, militant angry radicals, so your 15 minutes has long ago expired.

Fortunately the Supreme Court (for once) and lower federal courts have dismissed the frivolous lawsuits filed by some of you sore loser Republicans and libertarians who are desperately trying to overturn the votes of 66 million people.

So stop drinking the right-wing red Kool-aid and get over it. You overwhelmingly lost in November and you will again if you send Sarah Palin's clueless Bible thumping behind our way in 2012.

The Muxe Of Mexico

TransGriot Note: The New York Times published this interesting story about the Muxe of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. As I and other transgender people have pointed out, there are various cultures around the world that make room for either a third gender category or simply make room for those who feel from birth they are female to live their lives.


A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of Mexico

By MARC LACEY
Published: December 6, 2008
Katie Orlinsky contributed reporting and photos from Juchitán, Mexico

Mexico City — Mexico can be intolerant of homosexuality; it can also be quite liberal. Gay-bashing incidents are not uncommon in the countryside, where many Mexicans consider homosexuality a sin. In Mexico City, meanwhile, same-sex domestic partnerships are legally recognized — and often celebrated lavishly in government offices as if they were marriages.

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes” (pronounced MOO-shays) — men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

“Muxe” is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish “mujer,” or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.

Anthropologists trace the acceptance of people of mixed gender to pre-Colombian Mexico, pointing to accounts of cross-dressing Aztec priests and Mayan gods who were male and female at the same time. Spanish colonizers wiped out most of those attitudes in the 1500s by forcing conversion to Catholicism. But mixed-gender identities managed to survive in the area around Juchitán, a place so traditional that many people speak ancient Zapotec instead of Spanish.

Not all muxes express their identities the same way. Some dress as women and take hormones to change their bodies. Others favor male clothes. What they share is that the community accepts them; many in it believe that muxes have special intellectual and artistic gifts.

Every November, muxes inundate the town for a grand ball that attracts local men, women and children as well as outsiders. A queen is selected; the mayor crowns her. “I don’t care what people say,” said Sebastian Sarmienta, the boyfriend of a muxe, Ninel Castillejo García. “There are some people who get uncomfortable. I don’t see a problem. What is so bad about it?”

Muxes are found in all walks of life in Juchitán, but most take on traditional female roles — selling in the market, embroidering traditional garments, cooking at home. Some also become sex workers, selling their services to men.

Acceptance of a child who feels he is a muxe is not unanimous; some parents force such children to fend for themselves. But the far more common sentiment appears to be that of a woman who takes care of her grandson, Carmelo, 13.

“It is how God sent him,” she said.