Who Was The First African-American Transwoman?

In 1906 Kelly Miller stated, "All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritual vision."

Because the half century of transgender history so far has been predominately written by people who don't share my ethnic heritage, it has only covered one facet of the story.

We know for example that Lili Elbe was the first person to undergo gender transition in the 1930's, that Christine Jorgensen in 1953 was the first post-war one that garnered huge media attention, and about the exploits of other transwomen from Coccinelle to Renee Richards to Dana International.

But it's only in the last few years that the stories of pioneering non-white transpeople have been coming to the forefront. Fortunately, some of those stories were recorded in the pages of our iconic magazines JET, EBONY and Sepia. Thanks to the Johnson Publishing Company agreement with Google that resulted in JET and EBONY being digitized and placed online in their book search feature to peruse, some of those stories are now coming to light.

As a transperson of African descent who comes from a family of historians, I want to know and revel in my history. Just as I'm keenly aware of the varied historical accomplishments of my people, I want to know the same things about Black transpeople as well.

I am one of three African-Americans who has won the IFGE Trinity Award. Dr. Marisa Richmond is the first African-American transperson to be elected as a major party convention delegate for her state. I know that Avon Wilson was the first African-American and first person to go through Johns Hopkins gender program in 1966

But what irritates me at times is that I don't definitively know (yet) who was the first African-American person to transition.

I've been encouraged lately to see some tantalizing clues surface pointing to an answer to that question.

About the same time that the media was fixated on Christine Jorgensen, an article appeared in the June 18, 1953 issue of JET magazine.

It began following the story across several JET issues of Pittsburgh's Carlett Brown. Because Denmark's laws restricted the surgery to Danish nationals, Carlett took the drastic step of renouncing her US citizenship in order to be able to have SRS done in Denmark and have her HRT supervised by Dr. Christian Hamburger, Christine Jorgensen's endocrinologist.

I'll have to write up her fascinating story in another post since I'm still reading through more than a few issues of JET to find out how the story ended.

A Sepia magazine article and two 1965 National Insider tabloid articles claim New Orleans born Delisa Newton, who was 31 when she transitioned is that person.

Sepia magazine was a Fort Worth, TX based competitor of EBONY/JET similar in style to Look magazine that published from 1948-1983. The African-American Museum in Dallas, TX has the picture files of Sepia Magazine in its archives.

It seems appropriate that one of the contenders was born in New Orleans. Delisa was billed as ‘The First Negro Sex Change’ in that 1966 article, but they probably weren't aware of Avon Wilson yet. I'd also have to check with what's left of the New Orleans transgender community to see if Delisa is still alive.

These are the articles in question pointing to Delisa Newton. I have yet to find those Sepia magazine articles online or see them.

* Delisa Newton. “My lover beat me”. National Insider, June 20, 1965: 4-5.
* Delisa Newton. “Why I could never marry a white man!”. National Insider July 18, 1965: 17.
* Delisa Newton. “From Man to Woman”. Sepia. 1966.

JET also had a small blurb in its March 16, 1967 issue about 28 year old Philadelphian Carole Small. She was working as a female illusionist-singer in Germany and was reported to be in Denmark getting SRS. Assuming she's still alive, she'd be approaching her 70th birthday.

Carole was quoted as saying in that article, "Black women in America are among the luckiest on the face of the earth and it will be marvelous to be one."

Your late 20th century-early 21st century sisters echo those sentiments as well. It would be nice for us to know exactly who was our first and hear about how their lives progressed post surgery.

In order to continue progressing toward our glorious future, we must know about our past in order to get a better understanding of our present.

As I keep perusing these older issues of EBONY/JET, I'm discovering they did a much better job of covering gender issues back in the day than I'd been aware of.

It's Sonia Sotomayor!

Can I call it or what?

I've been saying since 2007 that the next Supreme Court justice pick would be a Latino/a. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that it was going to and needed to happen. It's also smart politics to start including the fastest growing ethnic group into the upper echelons of our government.

President Obama made more history today by selecting US Second District Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. It was something that was long overdue in terms of adding more diversity to the highest court in the land and more women on a court dominated by seven white males and honorary white man Clarence Thomas.

Looking forward to seeing her in the Supreme Court photo this October once she's confirmed.

Happy 60th Birthday, Pam Grier!

I posted last month about how much I loved Pam Grier back in the day and still do. Well, today she celebrates her milestone 60th birthday.









Yes, Pam still has it going on. She was the first sistah to appear on the cover of Ms. magazine back in the day.

Happy birthday, Pam. May you have many more.

Happy Memorial Day 'Errbody'!

Happy Memorial Day 'errbody'.

I hope you're enjoying your unofficial first summer weekend, and are giving those barbecue pits a workout. I also hope you took time to say a prayer for the men and women who are putting their lives on the line and who paid the ultimate price to sever our country.

2009 Houston Splash-Miss You Cookie

Houston Splash happened the week of May 7-11, the same time I was in Washington DC. It's our contribution to the schedule of Black prides that take place across the country.

This year's event probably was tinged with sadness on a few levels. In addition to the fact Galveston is still recovering from the direct hit it took from Hurricane Ike last year, East Beach, where the beach party portion of the Splash events takes place is still torn up from Ike's assault on it.

The other part is that Splash's longtime emcee, 'The Mouth of the South' AKA Cookie LaCook is no longer with us. Cookie is still missed even though its been almost two years since she passed away.

Charles Bolden, Jr. Nominated To Become First Black NASA Head

Retired Marine Corps General Charles Bolden, Jr. made a lot of history during his 13 year NASA career as an astronaut. He logged 680 hours in space on four shuttle mission, piloted the shuttle and was mission commander on two from 1980 to 1994.

On May 23 the former deputy administrator of NASA was nominated for the job by President Obama. Assuming the Senate confirms his nomination, he is set to become the first African-American to head NASA.

"Charlie Bolden is well known to everybody in the space community from the human spaceflight side of the house, where he's had extensive shuttle experience, to the science people he worked with as he was part of the crew that launched the Hubble telescope," says John Logsdon, professor emeritus at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

As a space junkie, in this 40th anniversary year of the Apollo 11 moon landing, I miss the days of frequent moon launches and bold goals for NASA. Much of the medical, computer and other technological advances we enjoy is because of the space program. In order to colonize the moon and land on Mars, we will once again have to put our best and brightest minds to work in addition to once and for all expunging 'intelligent design' from our classrooms.

This nomination comes at a crossroads time for he United States and NASA. While we retire the shuttle fleet next year and wait for the new Constellation and Orion vehicles to be finished for their 2015 launch, the Russians are looking to get their space swagger back.

Japan and several European nations are wishing to become major players in space as the Chinese aggressively work toward their national goals of putting a Chinese space station in orbit by 2012 and landing a Chinese citizen on the moon by 2020

If humanity is going to continue to survive and thrive, we have to step off this planet, explore the solar system and the stars and eventually colonize them. This nominee will have the responsibility of charting NASA's space course for the next twenty years and beyond.

Change Has Come To Philadelphia, MS

Say the words 'Philadelphia, Mississippi' to many African-Americans and the memories of June 21, 1964 and its notorious racist past instantly come to mind.

Visions of hooded Klansmen in front of burning crosses. The picture of missing CORE civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner whose lifeless bodies were dug out of an earthen dam. Edgar Ray Killen, the Klan mastermind of the heinous murders not being convicted of the crime until June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years later.

Much of the African-American community's bitter dislike for Ronald Reagan stems from the fact he started his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia. MS.

Not only did African-Americans see that as a slap in the face given the town's negative civil rights history, he poured gasoline on the fire. By uttering the 'I believe in states' rights' code words in his speech, he solidified his perception among our community that he was an unrepentant racist.

Just as historic change came on November 4, 2008, change has come to Philadelphia, Mississippi as well. 53 year old Philadelphia native James Young, who was nine years old when the events of 1964 happened and remembers the Klan tormenting his neighborhood, earlier this week was elected the first African-American mayor of the town by 46 votes.

"Obama's election sent a message to our people that it was possible. If we can elect a black man as president we can elect a black man as mayor of Philadelphia. In the last couple of weeks I was hearing that a lot in the community," he said.

When you've been treated the way we've been treated," he told CNN, choking up and then pausing to wipe the tears from his face. He refocused and said, "That's why it's so overwhelming to be a part of this history."

Mayor-elect Young is working out of a makeshift transition office provided by a prominent attorney until his inauguration.

"It's an awesome feeling to have that kind of respect that people support you in this way," Young said near the end of our interview. "I'll never let the people down which called for that."

Uncle Ruckus-The Mascot Of Black Conservatives

I'm a huge fan of Aaron McGruder's cartoon 'The Boondocks' (which doesn't appear in my local paper The Courier-Journal for some strange reason). I have the first two seasons of the Boondocks DVD happily parked by my TV and own two of the Boondocks books.

He started on the TV show, but has now migrated to the strip. There's a character called Uncle Ruckus, who is the embodiment of all self-hating sellout blacks.

But you don't have to believe me. Watch the video montage of Uncle Ruckus.

And oh yeah, video is questionable for work environment and has language issues.




Every time I see Uncle Ruckus, it reminds me of all those Oreo-cookie chomping Stepford Negroes falling all over themselves to appear on Faux News and elsewhere to look and act more conservative than thou.

And screwing their people in the process.

Blacks Must Confront Their Homophobia

TransGriot Note: This is a recent column by my 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning cousin (that's right, my cousin) on a subject that is near and dear to my heart.


Blacks must confront their homophobia
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@miamiherald.com

''The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.'' -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

That's for Marion Barry, who seems to need the reminder.

The former mayor and current city councilman of Washington, D.C. is a longtime supporter of gay rights. So observers were stunned last week when a bill committing the city to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere passed the council on a vote of 12-1.

The ''one'' was Barry.

Wait, it gets worse. Barry said his position hasn't changed but warned that the council needs to move slowly on this issue. ''All hell is going to break loose,'' Barry said. ''We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this.'' Indeed, after the vote, a group of black ministers reportedly ''stormed'' the hallway outside the council chambers, vowing political reprisals.

The Washington Post quotes Barry as saying he voted as he did because ''I am representing my constituents.'' He reminded reporters that ``98 percent of my constituents are black, and we don't have but a handful of openly gay residents.''

That's a lot of words to say what he could have said in three: I punked out.

There's something to be said for representing one's constituents. But there is more to be said for leading them. Barry's failure to understand the difference is galling in light of the fact that he was once a leader in the civil-rights movement.

One wonders how differently that movement might have turned out had white people such as Clifford Durr, Viola Liuzzo, Ralph McGill, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and Lyndon Johnson allowed themselves to be cowed by the angry voices of white men and women saying, ''All hell is going to break loose.'' For that matter, how much longer might the long night of slavery have lasted had white people like Elijah Lovejoy, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott and Thaddeus Stevens bowed to the fact that the white community was ''just adamant'' against freedom.

One wonders, too, whether those black ministers in the hall see their mirror image in generations of white ministers who have used the Bible to condone the evil of slavery (''Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.'') and the fiction of African-American inferiority (the ''curse'' of Ham).

At day's end, though, the great tragedy here is neither historical amnesia nor moral cowardice. No, the tragedy is embodied in Barry's description of African Americans as a people for whom open homosexuality is rare. That description is, unfortunately, too accurate -- not simply for black Washington, but for black America. We are a socially conservative people.

And our conservatism is, quite literally, killing us.

It is no coincidence the community that has yet to make a safe place for its gay members to openly be who they are, the community that still regards gay as a dirty secret not to be spoken in open company, the community in which people still think gay ''can't happen in my family,'' is also the community that accounts for half of all AIDS diagnoses in this country, the community that has lost 211,000 brothers and sisters to this disease, the community where marriages keep popping like balloons from the discovery that the husband is gay on the ``down low.''

The measure of a man, said Dr. King, is where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Marion Barry should take note. We all should.

Where sexuality is concerned, African America lives by lies. We are long overdue to wake up, grow up and speak up to tell the truth openly and without fear. We are dying in this silence.

And for what it's worth, Martin's measurement still applies.

Octavia St. Laurent Funeral Information

For those of you in the New York metro area, nearby or elsewhere who wish to attend the funeral of Octavia St. Laurent, here's the information courtesy of the Village Voice.

Octavia's viewing will take place starting at 11 AM on Monday, May 25 with burial being on Tuesday, May 26.

Stutzman Funeral Home is handling the arrangements, and is located at 224-39 Jamaica Ave, Queens Village, NY.

If you need further info, the phone number is 718-465-3210 for times or call Linda at 718-347-7740 or Jonathan 347-548-5964

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deal with it.

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

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

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

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

Transpinay Rising

A transpinay is a transwoman of Filipina descent, whether born inside or outside the Philippines. The Manila based organization that has been a strong and vocal advocate for the rights of transpinays is called STRAP, the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines.

STRAP is celebrating its 4th anniversary as an organization and one of its members, Naomi Fontanos edits the PinayTG blog. It not only keeps up with events in her life, but gives you a window on what's happening as our transpinay sisters struggle to attain their civil rights in the Philippines.

This is a tribute video on STRAP's website. It reminds us (and our detractors) that we are everywhere, we are not alone or unique to certain parts of our planet. We are beautiful, talented, and intelligent women, and no matter where we live, all transpeople share the same sets of issues and drama, although at different levels.

It's also a reminder that the struggle for acceptance, love and codified civil rights coverage for transpeople around the world is an ongoing one.



Happy anniversary STRAP! May your journey toward justice be a successful one.

Shut Up Fool! Awards-Post Mr. T Birthday Edition

I pity the fools who didn't celebrate Mr. T's birthday. Our awards mascot turned 57 yesterday

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another episode of the 'Shut Up Fool! awards. As the birthday boy stated, 'fools are everywhere' and we take the time to find them and shine a bright spotlight on them.

So it's time to cut out the jibber jabber and see what person (or persons) gets the honor of being the fool of the week.

For his virtuoso performance last week on the Notre Dame campus, I just have to give it up to perennial sellout negro Alan Keyes. He's also in the running for a Shut Up Fool! Lifetime Achievement Award.

When he couldn't get elected to dog catcher in Maryland, much less to any public office in the state he carpetbagged his way to Chicago for the IL US senate election versus the future prez.

He got his butt kicked by a 3-1 margin with Obama piling up 3 million votes despite being outspent 2-1 by Keyes. It was a US senate campaign in which Keyes called him a "radical communist" and said a vote for Obama was a "vote for Satan."

So yeah, there's no love lost between the two.

He's also one of the conservawackos who is still in GOP Fantasy Land questioning the prez's US citizenship, and last week he accused the prez of 'prostituting' Notre Dame



I have zero respect for a sellout and hypocrite whose 'family values' drove him to kick his own daughter out of his house and cut off funding for her college education when Maya Keyes publicly declared she was a lesbian.

Sounds like the accusation you spat at President Obama about 'Rejecting God's fundamental law of love. . ." applies more to you.

President Obama is a light years better man than you ever will be.

Alan Keyes, shut up fool!

'Comedian' Jay Mohr Disses The First Lady

During a recent interview with ESPN's Jim Rome, comedian Jay Mohr tastelessly slammed First Lady Michelle Obama’s looks. And since she's 5'11", guess where he went to do it?



"Michelle Obama - that is a big dude. When Barack plays pick up games at the White House, you know he picks Michelle as his forward, maybe his [center] depending on who’s in Congress that day."

"That has to be like being married to Elton Brand. She is a big dude. I like when she put her arm around the Queen of England and she put her in a headlock and said, “I’ve been waiting 200 years to put my arms around you lady.”

"I like how she shaved off her eyebrows, and then drew them back way too high and in an arch, and then way back down, so she always looks super surprised. Michelle Obama kind of looks like the Count on Sesame Street. One - ah ah - One Black President - ah ah."

Here we go again with that tired 'it's a man' meme automatically hurled at any woman above 5'7" tall. And where is the feminist movement who zealously defended Sen. Clinton and Sarah Palin last year when they were hammered by what they considered sexist attacks?

As usual, when it's a Black woman being attacked, their silence is deafening.

Maine Human Rights Commission Rules In Favor Of Transwoman

All transwoman Brianna Freeman of Lewiston, ME wanted to do on October 25, 2007 was use the restroom.

While at a Denny's in Auburn, ME Ms. Freeman used a locked stall in the ladies restroom while “dressed clearly” as a woman, according to the investigator’s report.

Another customer complained to the manager about sharing a public restroom with a 'man'. “The customer was very upset, was irate, had threatened to call police,” according to attorney Chad Cloutier, who represents the Rockport company Realty Resources Hospitality LLC. who owns and operates six Denny’s family restaurants, including the one involved in the discrimination case.

“A few days later, management decided that it would be in the best interest of Denny’s to ask the customer to use the men’s room until sex reassignment surgery.”

Freeman then filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission on April 17, 2008 after being banned from the ladies room.

On May 18 the Maine Human Rights Commission on a 3-2 decision that Freeman was discriminated against when management would not let her use the ladies room until she had sex reassignment surgery.

Cloutier asserted the decision could have far-reaching, negative consequences for all Maine businesses with shared restroom facilities. His assessment was not shared by the Maine Civil Liberties Union and Equality Maine, who hailed it as a civil rights victory.

“It’s important to know that people have rights, including transgender [people], and that businesses are not free to discriminate,” said Zachary Heiden, the legal director of the MCLU.

Heiden said that many people make the faulty assumption that being transgender is mostly about genitals.

“That’s a part of it, but the essence of who they are is not what their genitals look like,” he said.

Cloutier argued to the commission that a discrimination decision would require that Maine businesses essentially decide whether a person is transgender or if they might want to use a particular restroom or locker room for purposes of “sexual perversion.” Making this accommodation is a violation of a woman’s right to privacy, he said in a press release, as well as a “significant risk to the health and safety of [the restaurant’s] customers, particularly children.”

Yeah, right. Sell that lie somewhere else.

“It’s almost an untenable position for businesses. It really is a slippery slope. This claimant may be perfectly safe and use the bathroom in a perfectly normal way, but what’s to prevent a person of some devious intent ... the right not to share a bathroom?”

Betsy Smith, executive director of Equality Maine, strongly disagreed.

“How does it pose a risk to children that someone uses the bathroom? That assumes that that person somehow harms children,” she said. “It’s so outrageously discriminatory.”

Smith said that forcing a transgender woman to use a men’s room is not safe.

“This company needs diversity training to understand what it means to be gender-nonconforming,” she said.

Kevin LaBree, the vice president and director of operations for Realty Resources Hospitality, said that he was just concerned about the comfort and care of his guests.

“Denny’s is a family restaurant chain,” he said. “I am going to do what’s in the best interest of my customers.”

Mr. LaBree, what's in the best interests of your customers and your financial bottom line is not allowing discrimination against anyone, including transgender people.

And judging by the level of ignorance and transhatred in the comment threads on this case in Abigail Curtis' Bangor Daily News story on the hearing, there's a lot of people in Maine and beyond who need to be 'ejumacated' on that simple point as well.

10 Worst Countries To Be A Blogger

The Internet and especially the blogosphere have become invaluable for the dissemination of information to the chagrin of political spinmeisters, the powers that be and repressive regimes trying to restrict the free flow of information.

With increasing internet penetration in the rest of the world blogging cultures have exploded in Asia and the Middle East. Unfortunately, as the Committee to Protect Journalists will tell you, the repressive governments in the region are moving just as quickly to stifle the information revolution before it gets started.

The CPJ just published their list of the 10 Worst Countries to Be a Blogger. Click on the link to discover why they made the list.

1. Burma
2. Iran
3. Syria
4. Cuba
5. Saudi Arabia
6. Vietnam
7. Tunisia
8. China
9. Turkmenistan
10. Egypt


The CPJ determined this dishonor list by compiling a series of questions compiled by Internet experts to assess blogging conditions worldwide.

* Does a country jail bloggers?
* Do bloggers face harassment, cyber-attacks, threats, assaults, or other reprisals?
* Do bloggers self-censor to protect themselves?
* Does the government limit connectivity or restrict access to the Internet?
* Are bloggers required to register with the government or an ISP and give a verifiable name and address before blogging?
* Does a country have regulations or laws that can be used to censor bloggers?
* Does the government monitor citizens who use the Internet?
* Does the government use filtering technology to block or censor the Internet?

These criteria were used by CPJ regional experts to nominate countries for this list. The final ranking was determined by a poll of CPJ staff and outside experts.

MP Siksay Tries Again To Get Canadian Transgender Bill Passed

The conventional wisdom says that the third time you try anything is usually the charm. New Democratic Party MP Bill Siksay (Burnaby-Douglas) is hopeful that the saying is true.

Siksay, the NDP critic for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, introduced a bill May 15 in the House of Commons that addresses the lack of explicit protection for transsexual and transgender people in provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code of Canada.

“I believe that enshrining explicit protections for transgender and transsexual people in our human rights legislation and our Criminal Code will go a long way towards full equality and acceptance for transgender and transsexuals people."

"Finally, we will be recognized in the eyes of the law as full persons -- the full persons we always were." said Érica Poirier, president of the Coalition des transsexuelles et transsexuels du Québec.

His private member's bill is titled An Act to Amend the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (Gender Identity and Gender Expression) in the House of Commons. It passed first reading on May 17.

MP Siksay's Bill C-389 will "add protection for members of the transsexual and transgendered communities to the Canadian Human Rights Act, by adding gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Act. The bill also adds gender identity and gender expression into the Criminal Code so that it can be taken into consideration at the time of sentencing for hate crimes."

His previous attempt to pass it died when Parliament was prorogued or dissolved prior to the 2008 Canadian elections. Private member's bills in Parliament are drawn through a lottery system, with Siksay's bill being 65th in line for private members' business.

That means for those of us reading this south of the border, if Parliament survives until the fall, the bill could come up for debate in the House of Commons.

"It's a stretch to get it all the way through the House and the Senate in a minority Parliament, and that's generally a stretch anyway for most private members' legislation. "I'm hopeful that we'll at least have a chance to debate it in the House this time around."

Siksay hopes that the ENDA and hate crimes legislation currently being discussed in the United States Congress spurs momentum in Canada toward passing this bill.

"What's important is when you talk to members of the trans community, it's not long in the conversation that you hear about overt acts of discrimination and prejudice that they suffer," says Siksay. "Members of the trans community will tell you that they feel like it's acceptable for people to spit on them on the street, and that's a kind of overt hostility, overt discrimination, overt oppression that we don't tolerate in Canadian society."

He also hopes that the changes under Bill C-389 ensure that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has an explicit mandate to do education work around discrimination against trans people, and to raise awareness in Canadian society.

"For merely challenging society's expectations of what is expected of males and females, transgender individuals are often misunderstood and subject to fear and discrimination. Transgender and gender-variant individuals suffer disproportionately higher rates of discrimination, unemployment, denial of services, addictions, infectious disease, depression and suicide. Transpersons are too frequently the victims of verbal and physical attacks that can occur at any time and place, including the workplace. This Bill will contribute to addressing this discrimination." said Victoria Stuart, Chair, Trans Alliance Society

Siksay adds that there is currently protection under existing laws for Canadian trans people, but it is not explicit.

"I don't want anyone to think that there isn't protection for trans people already in Canada — it's indirect through gender and through disability," Siksay says. "That's not the appropriate place — the appropriate place should be explicitly on the basis of gender identity and expression, and that's what this bill will do."

Here's hoping that the third time for our Canadian transgender cousins is indeed the charm and Bill C-389 successfully passes.