Becoming Johanna Documentary

I'm always on the lookout for interesting trans documentaries, especially when they tell the stories of trans people of color.   Renee of Womanist Musings talked about this one with a post back in April that's entitled Becoming Johanna-The Struggles Of A Latina Trans Girl

It's part of a series of films from the Youth And Gender Media Project which is producing short films about the complexities and challenges facing gender variant youth.

These films are aimed at and seek to educate teachers, administrators, parents and students in school communities across the United States.    They also are designed according to the Youth and Gender Media Project website to introduce radical new concepts for many audiences.




They point out the very idea that a young child can be transgender and have the wherewithal to fight against the pressures to conform to a binary gender paradigm, to the new and still very rare use of hormone blockers to delay puberty. However, since the films are structured around universal themes such as parenting and acceptance, identity and difference, growing up and coming of age, tolerance, love and self-esteem, they remain accessible and deeply moving even to people who are resistant to the idea of transgender youth.to 

And based on the transphobic Hateraid, ignorance and discrimination we transpeople get buffeted with from all the communities we interact with, they are sorely needed.

Houston 2011 TDOR Musings

The 13th Annual TDOR has come and gone for another year, and for the second straight year since I returned home I attended the Houston TDOR event on the UH campus.   .

This year instead of it being in the AD Bruce Religion Center's chapel, it was at Farish Hall

There were six speakers each making brief statements and one of them was HISD trustee Anna Eastman.  In a moving speech that garnered her a standing ovation, she surprisingly mentioned me speaking in front of the HISD board when they were proposing to add the gender ID inclusive policies back in June.

I was surprised to learn that my speech swayed the board into voting affirmatively for those policies.  Ironically I was pissed off when I left the HISD administration building that night because I felt it was the worst public speech I'd done in a while, but it did the job along with the several years of lobbying by Jenifer Rene Pool and Chris Busby to get us to that point.

The UH LGBT Advocates did a wonderful job in organizing the event.   We had to start it 15 minutes late due to the traffic exiting Robertson Stadium in the wake of the UH-SMU game but it ran smoothly.

I enjoyed seeing my UH younglings again in Marshella, LaKeia, Yesenia, and James.   Sat at a table with Lorraine Schroeder and Jo Tittsworth who shared some info with me about where the 2012 TTNS will take place, but I'll wait until the TTNS folks are ready to announce its location and dates before I post it.

Also enjoyed seeing various people in the Houston TBLG community.   Enjoyed finally meeting Tim Brookover in the flesh, and meeting fellow blogger Daniel Williams' sister Melissa.  I enjoyed seeing Judge Frye, Vanity Wilde, Lilly Roddy, Janet Logan and Jenifer Pool along with a long list of people who attended this event. 

I also got teased by Councilmember Jolanda Jones about the post I wrote about her on the blog.   She was there as one of the people reading the names of the people we memorialized on the 2011 list.  

But the thing that bothered me as I listened to the names being read and how they died is the same thing as last year.  70% of the people being memorialized on the Remembering our Dead lists are trans persons of color.  The one that really got to me was 14 year old Brazilian Erica Pinheiro de Siqueira who was shot eleven times on Christmas Day.

Obviously, hatin' on transpeople doesn't stop during the holiday season.  One of the speakers also mentioned that the GL community needs to clean up its own act internally when it comes to the anti-trans hate in the it's ranks a point which I wholeheartedly agree with and have been saying ad nauseum since 1998 along with countless other trans people.

As Rev. Abena McCoy said during the November 20 Washington DC TDOR, where they had a much more trouble filled year:

“You are unique, and the Creator loves you just as you are. You are not a mistake. God doesn’t make mistakes…We celebrate transgender today. Lord, you knew what you were doing when you created transgender.” Rev Abena McCray

That the Creator did.   It's past time the rest of the world and certain religious denominations got that message. 

Now that another TDOR is in our community's rear view mirror, what are we going to do so that when the calendar turns to November 20, 2012 we aren't reading names of people on the list from the Houston area?  

Will this community do a better job of ensuring the TDOR ceremonies reflect the diversity of this city and state we are all proud to live in and be better representative of a community that is responsible for writing some of the transgender community's history?

And the one thought crossing all our minds is how long will the list of names we read next year be?

FLOTUS Gets Booed At NASCAR Race And Attacked By Rush-Cue Silence From Feminist Blogosphere About It

First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden have been promoting support for veterans families as one of their policy causes.  You would think that has some support in the uber patriotic, military loving, testosterone fueled world of NASCAR racing, right?

Um no.  It was more the FLOTUS race that played into this than the auto racing and the support of veterans as she and Dr Biden were booed.  

Then Rush Limbaugh, never one to miss a chance to attack the First Lady piled on by calling the FLOTUS 'uppity'  

And what was the feminist blogosphere response to the latest dissing of the FLOTUS?




Once again it was Black women to defend the first lady while the feminist blogosphere stayed silent.

Three Beautiful Ladies

Love this pic of my sisters Janet Mock, Laverne Cox and Isis King.   You are not only beautiful, smart and talented in your own rights, you are also doing yeoman's work in busting stereotypes about who and what African-American transwomen are and what we can accomplish if just given the opportunity to do so.

When Are The Po-Po's Going to Use Pepper Spray On The Teabaggers?

Interesting to note that the Tea Klux Klan rallies last year had armed protesters, and you saw not one po-po in riot gear or using strong arm stormtrooper tactics to break up those protests.

Now compare and contrast how po-po's handle unarmed protesters at an OWS event on the UC Davis campus.



Hmm.

Why I Can't Stand Rad Fems-They're Still Hatin'

Once again the Rad Fems are doing their vanillacentric best in terms of pissing people off  by spewing their disco era bull feces and transphobic hate while trying to claim 'they aren't transphobic' or 'that word doesn't exist'.

Yeah, spoken like the true pearl clutching white privilege addled oppressors and hatemongers you are.

Check out this Transmediations blog post from Joelle Ruby Ryan describing her not so pleasant encounter with them at a University of New Hampshire event.