Dag, White Gays-Stop Trippin'

What's up with the sniping and whining coming from some quarters of the white gay community concerning our president elect?

I suspect some of their dislike for Obama comes from the fact that he came from nowhere to beat Hillary, their (and HRC's) preferred candidate, then ended up in the White House thanks to the votes, money and elbow grease of the rest of us despite their lukewarm, tepid support for him.

But the man hasn't even taken office yet and some white gays are already complaining in some quarters that 'we're being forgotten', 'we're being dissed' and whatever cheese they snack on with the whine du jour.

Hello people, Inauguration Day is January 20. It is way too early to discern what type of president he's going to be for the GLBT community because he's NOT in a position until that date to start creating or implementing policy.

It is way too early to engage in conclusion jumps based on incorrect assumptions you have about Obama based on what happened to the GLBT community during the Clinton administration.

That's two different men, two different historical situations and the only thing they have in common is their party affiliation and some Clinton peeps taking on different roles in this administration.

Now that Obama has invited Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, you've taken even more swigs of the pink flavor Hateraid and let the hatred flow.

Didn't y'all get enough of that after the Democratic primary ended in June and the Prop 8 loss?

I'm warning you now that many African-Americans (gay and non-gay) are still majorly pissed about the anti-Black hate that flowed from some quarters in the white gay community after the Cali Prop 8 loss. You still have major fence mending to do with the Black GLBT community, and it would be wise for you to chill with the attacks on the president elect since it's only pouring gasoline on the still smoldering anger of Black peeps.

I'd also put H. Alexander Robinson's number on speed dial and start chatting with the National Black Justice Coalition. They need to be included forthwith as a facilitator and EQUAL partner to those much needed conversations and whatever future strategizing happens from this point forward.

Many of us are millimeters close to saying to hell with y'all and doing what we should have done eons ago-say goodbye and good luck to you, formulate and push our own inclusive GLBT civil rights agenda to our peeps and others that factors our needs into the mix while you continue jousting at same gender marriage windmills for a small sector of the community.

Don't get me wrong, I'm for same gender marriage, just not at the expense of more higher priority legislation that benefits the entire GLBT community such as hate crimes and ENDA. You can't get married if you're dead or don't have or can't get and keep a job to support a partner.

You can also stop pushing the specious argument that granting marriage rights to same sex couples is going to grease the skids for other civil rights to flow from it.

The bottom line is that marriage is not a high priority right now for me and many GLBT people of color. Getting and keeping a job and keeping people from thinking they have carte blanche to kill us is. Those basic civil rights aren't going to flow from the right to marry, it's the other way around as history books and the Civil Rights movement forcefully demonstrate.

But whatever your deep seated problem with President elect Obama is, it's time to work through getting over it as soon as possible. Just because I supported him for the presidency doesn't mean, nor should you assume that I don't think he shouldn't be criticized. If President Obama does something wrong during the next four to eight years of his administration, I'll be the first one chewing on his behind.

But give the man a chance to at least warm up the damn chair in the Oval Office and implement policy before you start criticizing him.

Grandma Just Got Busted In A Drug Deal

TransGriot Note: It's time for another holiday song rewrite! This one was spawned by the news that Sherry Johnston, mother of Levi Johnston and soon to be grandmother of Levi and Bristol Palin's baby boy, was arrested by Alaska State Police in a drug investigation.

This situation was too irresistible not to put in song format, so fire up those iPod's and sing along with the rewritten holiday lyrics.




Grandma Just Got Busted In A Drug Deal
(sung to the tune of 'Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer' by the Irish Rovers)

Grandma just got busted in a drug deal
By Alaska state police before Christmas Eve
Because the other grandma is the governor
Doesn't mean that you'll get a reprieve

She'd been under investigation
For several months as we now know
She'd been selling Oxycontin,
Got busted as she stepped out in the snow.

Bailed her out before Christmas mornin,'
In Wasilla now she's back.
But next month grandma's got a court date
And the DA won't be cutting her any slack

Grandma just got busted in a drug deal
By Alaska state police before Christmas Eve
Because the other grandma is the governor
Doesn't mean that you'll get a reprieve

Now we're all concerned for Levi
He's probably not takin' this so well.
He's been working in the North Slope oil fields
And he's probably hollerin' 'what the hell?'


Bristol's had her baby shower
She's due any day now that's a fact
And we just can't help but wonder:
If Grandma Sarah thinks the situation's wacked?
(Yes, it's wacked)

Grandma just got busted in a drug deal
By Alaska state police before Christmas Eve
Because the other grandma is the governor
Doesn't mean that you'll get a reprieve

Grandma Sarah didn't call a press conference
But she took pains to enunciate
Through a government media spokesperson,
'This isn't a matter of Alaska state'.

So there it is my friends and neighbors.
A story as bizarre as it can be
It's a perfect holiday example
Of conservative family values and hypocrisy

Grandma just got busted in a drug deal
By Alaska state police before Christmas Eve
Because the other grandma is the governor
Doesn't mean that you'll get a reprieve
(Sing it, Sarah)

Grandma just got busted in a drug deal
By Alaska state police before Christmas Eve
Because the other grandma is the governor
Doesn't mean that you'll get a reprieve

Louisville Central Repeats

One of the things that I immediately noticed when I moved here was the difference in the level of interest in high school football versus that of my birth state.

In Texas, it's the state religion. State religion status is reserved for basketball here at the high school and collegiate levels.

But when it comes to fan loyalty, the fans of the various schools take a back seat to no one. They are just as loyal and school spirit filled as the ones back home, even if they don't always fill up major football stadiums to the rafters for title games.

Last year historic Central High, the alma mater of 'The Greatest' and the oldest African-American high school in Louisville, made history as its coach Ty Scoggins became the first African-American to win a KHSAA football title in front of excited alumni, students and fans at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium when they defeated Belfry to win the Class 3A title.

This year's edition of the Central Yellowjackets came into the season as the hunted, not the hunters. They also found themselves on a chilly December 12 day at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium in front of 3,917 people playing for another Class 3A title as well.

The 11-3 Yellowjackets rolled up 323 rushing yards, paced by Chance Hughes 169 yards and two TD's as Central successfully repeated as 3A state football champs by beating Breathitt County 40-19 in front of their enthusiastic fans, students and alumni.

Congrats once again to Central as they proved they are the best 3A football team in Kentucky. Can they threepeat? We'll find out when the 2009 season kicks off.

A Transsistah's Secret-Facial Hair Removal

One of the things that annoys any phase of transwoman to no end, be she pre, post or non op is plucking stray facial hairs or picking up a razor to closely shave her face.

You not only have to do it so that you leave no traces of hair stubble on your face, you have to use extreme caution in doing so to avoid nicking and cutting yourself in the process.

It's a cruel irony of male to female transition and taking estrogen that while body hair growth slows to a crawl, if you've started male pattern balding, your hair in the area that's shedding hair won't regenerate. The other cruel irony is that facial hair is a more stubborn beast impervious to anything but its permanent removal, and nothing gets you read faster than five o'clock beard shadow.

Depilatory creams and waxing help, but they are only temporary solutions. To permanently remove it, you have two choices, either electrolysis or laser.

I was fortunate because I had a lower than normal testosterone count so my facial hair growth was relatively light. Even so, I was tired of shaving what hair I did get and starting in 1997 I spent three years back home undergoing electrolysis with my electrologist Marie Asmar.

Basically what happens in this 100 year old method of hair removal is a needle is inserted into the hair follicle bulb at the base of the hair shaft and an electric current shoots into the base of the hair follicle to kill it.

It is a meticulous, time consuming process and as I mentioned earlier, facial hair is a stubborn beast. It will sometimes take multiple applications to kill that follicle for good with varying levels of pain as you undergo it while the cash meter is running as you do so.

As I sat in Marie's office, as she worked on my face I'd listen to her tell fascinating stories about the Houston Arab community and her girlhood in Lebanon. In the meantime the buzz in the local and national transgender community was all about Dallas' Electrology 2000.

Electrology 2000 was founded in 1986 by Ruthann and Bren Piranio. At the time I transitioned in 1994 they'd been in business for almost a decade and had some loyal customers in my TATS group who positively raved about it.

E2000 was doing a booming business with the transgender community inside and outside Texas because it was reputed to be relatively pain free. E2000 and its adherents claimed that it took less time to clear your face over traditional electrolysis techniques, which could only clear small sections of your face in one sitting.

Even though I was a one hour plane ride from Dallas due to my then airline job, as I investigated it, the drawback was its cost. It required large cash outlays up front while you pay many electrologists an hourly rate or can negotiate for blocks of time at a flexible rate.

E2000's large cash upfront business model unfortunately locks out most transpeeps of color. It's ironic because the E2000 technique was purported to be effective at clearing African-American facial hair and stopping pseudofolliculitis barbae, aka razor bumps.

Just like the hairs on African-American heads, the natural curl in it means that when you cut it with the razor, it grows back in a curled pattern. The now sharpened end of recently cut hair penetrates the skin, which interprets it as a foreign body attacking it and causes an inflamed skin bump.

So as usual, most of the folks taking advantage of it had money and jobs that allowed them to take time off from work to fly to the Dallas metro area to do so.

E2000's sensitivity to the transgender community not only contributed to its success, but also meant long waiting times jockeying with transpeeps all over the country just to get an appointment. If you didn't have relatives in Dallas like I did (and at the time they weren't aware of my transition) then you have to add the additional expense of hotel rooms and auto to get around since it's in the 'burbs in Carrollton.

It's been around for 22 years and is now under new management as Electrology 3000. So even though my then airline job paid me well enough to afford it, I said thanks but no thanks to E2000. Marie was also treating other transgender clients at the time and I liked her, the fact she was up the street from my apartment, I was happy with her work and her rate was reasonable.

The other method used is laser. At the time I was starting to undergo electrolysis and ruled out E2000, the first lasers were coming out. However, the early lasers were useless for African-American or darker skinned people and it took several years before the third generation long pulse YAG lasers were developed that actually works for African-Americans.

Laser has the advantage of being faster time wise, less painful than traditional electrolysis and being able to treat larger expanses of skin in one treatment, but shares the same problem of repeated applications until the hair follicle ceases production. It's also more resistant to certain colors of hair such as gray, red or blonde.

But for those of us who wish to look our gender best, in order to permanently get rid of our facial hair, laser and electrolysis are options that we have to consider and decide whether to factor it into or out of our transition budgets.

Under New Management In One Month

We are only one month away from the United States being under new management.

I can't wait to see the inauguration, the parades, the inaugural balls and all the other assorted historical pomp and circumstance that accompany our presidential change in leadership. It's also going to be cool to finally have an A student in charge of the country as well.

It's also going to be beautiful to see Air Force One (or Marine One) take off in the direction of Dallas with Bush on board for the final time as the White House finally get some peeps descended from the original builders of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue moved in.

Sorry Dallas peeps, he's not transiting enroute to the fake Crawford ranch, he's settling there. Unfortunately we'll also have to endure at least a month of furious spinning coming from the Bush misadministration trying to cleanse his odious presidential legacy.

While most schools wouldn't be caught dead with the George W. Bush Presidential Center on their campus, the schools that fiercely competed for it were Baylor University in Waco, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, The University of Dallas and Southern Methodist University.

SMU eventually won that competition because First Lady Laura Bush, presidential adviser Karen Hughes and White House counsel Harriet Miers are alums. Laura Bush also serves on SMUT's (our sarcastic nickname from my college days for that preppy Republican private school) board of Trustees, and Vice President Dick Cheney when he lived in Dallas once served on SMU's Board of Trustees.

He and Faux News can spin until they get dizzy, but nothing is going to save Junior from the harsh judgment of the American people, the world and present and future historians that this ranks (so far) as one of the worst presidencies in US history.

And we're talking historically bad ones such as James Buchanan (1857-1861) whose failures led to the Civil War that almost destroyed this country. Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) had the triple whammy of being drunk, incompetent and unfortunately preceding Buchanan. Warren Harding's (1921-23) brief term had unprecedented level of corruption, Ulysses S. Grant (1868-77) was at the helm during the 'robber baron' era and a depression, and Dubya's alter ego, 'His Fraudulency' Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81) was questionably elected on disputed Florida votes as well and as part of the political deal that sealed his election, facilitated the introduction of racist Jim Crow segregation and an orgy of anti black violence in the South by ending reconstruction and pulling federal troops out of the region.

That's the presidential company that many people consider Bush occupies, but time will tell.

So yes, I'm happy that President elect Obama is determined to leave office being considered as one of our best presidents. He knows that future POC occupants of the Oval Office will depend on him successfully executing the job over the next four to eight years, and so far he is putting together an administration that will help him make that possible.

Because after the last 8 years, the country and the world definitely needs it.

2008 Weblog Awards Finalist Schedule

If you're wondering what's up with the 2008 Weblog Awards like I am, since I was nominated for two categories, (Best LGBT Blog Award and Best Small Minor Blog) the good peeps at the Weblog Awards had over 5000 nominations to sift through which slowed them down considerably.

They've finally gotten that massive number of nominees whittled down, so I and the other nominated blogs will find out next Thursday (Christmas Day) whether we've made the cut to be voted on by you peeps.

Information about the process is in this post along with their updated schedule.

Finalist Announced - December 25

Finalist Logos Available - December 25

Finalist Voting Page Available* - December 29

Finalist Voting - January 2 through January 10


Here's hoping I get something extra in my Christmas stocking this year.

2008-The Year Of The Black Transperson

Ever since Christine Jorgensen stepped off the plane in New York from Denmark in 1953, the media coverage concerning transgender people has been disproportionately focused on white transgender people.

What little coverage we have garnered has been limited to African-American oriented publications such as EBONY or JET, focusing on us when the subject turns to transgender prostitution or repeated inaccurate, insensitive and sensationalized stories filled with incorrect pronoun usage about transwomen who lost their lives to anti-transgender violence.

We had hopes after Los Angeles transwoman Cookie Fields' story was published in the iconic pages of ESSENCE magazine in November 2006 that it would usher in increased positive coverage for transgender people of African descent. Those hopes were dashed as we went right back to the usual fade to invisibility in not only African-American oriented media, but their larger mainstream media friends as well.

This year, there were encouraging signs that the media blackout African-American transpeople have frustratingly endured and fought for decades may finally be starting to lift.

Whether it was some African-American transwoman blogger whose commentary got posted on this blog, the Bilerico Project, and other various spots across the blogosphere to Isis King and Laverne Cox's star making turns on reality TV shows, 2008 will arguably go down as the year that Black transgender people got long overdue recognition and face time.

I'm proud to have played a small part in it when I became the Bilerico Project's first African-American transgender blogger in January. I not only was quoted in various articles and blog posts, in recognition that my TransGriot blog is continuing to grow and gain new readers I was asked to write guest posts for various blogs as well in addition to being invited to speak at various events.

While my transbrothers have gotten even less attention than we have since 1953, they nevertheless got some of this new media love as well.

There was a documentary released called Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen that's garnered attention and racked up film festival awards. Daisy Hernandez's Color Lines article Becoming A Black Man and Nick Mwaluko's Huffington Post story gave some transbrothers an opportunity to tell their stories as well.

Nick's story was interesting because it gave us the opportunity to read about a continental African speaking on transgender issues. Nigeria's Mia Nikasimo did the same a little later and it highlights the fact there are transgender peeps on the second largest continent on the planet as well.

Isis King's history making turn as a contestant on Cycle 11 of America's Next Top Model and Laverne Cox's time on I Want To Work For Diddy drove home the points that we are beautiful, intelligent and are driven to succeed in addition to giving us positive TV face time.

While Isis didn't win the big prize of the modeling contract she was seeking, she became a role model to many people in the process. In addition to the numerous media interviews she conducted, she made an appearance on Tyra's Emmy award winning talk show. Laverne since her turn on I Want To Work For Diddy is working on various projects, acting and producing a documentary.

And in a year in which we proudly witnessed the historic campaign that resulted in Sen. Barack Obama becoming the first African-American elected president of the United States, history professor Dr. Marisa Richmond not only was there to witness history being made in Denver, she made it herself as the first African-American transgender delegate to a major party convention.

But just as these positive things were happening for us, the joy was tempered by the fact that we still have a long way to go before we are accepted by all our people. Too many times the anti-transgender hatred and violence we face comes not only from people that share our ethnic background, but from the people that are supposed to protect and serve us as well.

Those points were driven home by the shocking videotape of Duanna Johnson being beaten in a Memphis police station and several African-American transwomen across the country being murdered. Duanna's story became more tragic as she was found shot to death November 9.

In addition to Nick and Mia speaking their truths about transgender issues, African descended transpeople across the Diaspora made headlines as well with Kellie Telesford's Jamaican-born killer being acquitted in London, the suffering of our transgender brothers and sisters in Jamaica and the bravery of transgender activists in Uganda such as Victor Juliet Mukasa and elsewhere on the Mother Continent fighting simply for the right for themselves and their transgender brothers and sisters to live their lives in peace.

And while we didn't (as of yet) add any new members to the African-American IFGE Trinity winners club that is currently me, Marisa Richmond and Dawn Wilson, there are proud African-American transpeople who are leaders in various cities such as Cydne Kimbrough, Earline Budd, Louis Mitchell and others not only working to make things better for transgender people, but the communities they reside in as well.

We also got to hear from the next generation of African descended transkids like Rochelle Evans who despite facing some obstacles, are determined to do their part to ensure that they are ready and able to write the next chapters in our stories of success.

This year will close with the fact that African descended transpeople are beginning to have their stories be covered and told. When it isn't perfect or inaccurate, we're demanding it be done accurately and respectfully.

And what a story it is. We're doing our part to uplift the race by helping to uplift our communities, are breaking historic ground in various fields, and are shaking off the shame and guilt to forcefully stand up for our rights to simply live their lives.

We can only hope and pray that the positive upward trends for African descended transpeople continue into the New Year.

Documentary-She's My Son

I posted the article a few months ago about the award winning documentary She's My Son by Indrani Kopal.

It peeks into the lives of Malaysian transwomen and once again, underscores the comment I made sometime ago that being transgender is a worldwide issue. We are everywhere, and we are a part of the human family that needs to be embraced, not reviled.

Here's the YouTube uploaded video of it.

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.