Time For A Trans Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865 Union Major General Gordon Granger read General Order No..3 from the balcony of Galveston's Ashton Villa and declared that all Texas slaves were free.

Today I submit it is time for the great great grandchildren of Texas freedmen and freedwomen to have their own Juneteenth and engage in some emancipation of our own.

Last Friday night I attended an over two hour local meeting in which several African American transwomen and one of our cis woman supporters were expressing their frustration about the invisibility, marginalization, isolation, and negative 'unwoman' images we are dealing with as Black transpeople interacting with the trans communities of Houston and the state of Texas.

I did a lot of listening during that meeting as some of the participants not only expressed their joy at meeting other Houston area transpeople concerned and disgusted about the utter lack of support infrastructure geared toward the African-American trans community of Houston and in the state of Texas, they talked about many of the same issues I brought up in the Modest Proposal post I wrote in the wake of my return to Houston from last year's Out On The Hill/ALC event in Washington DC.  

And I was heartened to learn they are just as fed up and frustrated with the situation as I am about it. 

It's Juneteenth 2012 and it's time for trans Houstonians and trans Texans of African descent to step up our leadership game just like our great great grandparents did when they walked off the plantations and into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation news and General Granger's Order No. 3 traveled with lightning speed across the state.

In 2012 the plantations that trans African American Texans inhabit are primarily mental ones.  We need to emancipate ourselves as a community from the shame and guilt issues that revolve around us being trans men and trans women and stride boldly toward living better quality lives, having higher expectations and pride in ourselves. 

We don't know our history and who our heroes and sheroes are.  We have transpeople who would like to have a regular job and not have to depend on sex work to pay the bills but don't know who or where to turn to or who can help them to achieve it.  We have folks who would make wonderful trans role models or leaders but stay closeted out of fear of losing their jobs    We have transpeople of color with big dreams they would like to achieve.   We also have Texas African-American transpeople who are sick and tired of being saddled with the negative transfeminine images or being judged by the worst of our community and not our best people.

It is also time for African-American cis Texans and Houstonians to realize that we trans Texans are part of the kente cloth fabric of the African African community.  Our issues are your issues and vice versa.  It is past time our churches and legacy organizations stop hating and ignoring us but embracing their trans children.  We have skills, talents, and intelligence that we can no longer as an African American community afford to throw away.  We African descended transpeople want to contribute those talents to the uplift of our community, but we need help African American cis allies so that we can make that happen.  .

Barbara Jordan once said,"The majority of the American people still believe that every single individual in this country is entitled to just as much respect, just as much dignity, as every other individual. "

I believe that trans Americans deserve that respect and dignity, and so do the trans people in my home state.  It's also critical that trans people of color in Houston, Texas and the nation get to experience that as well considering the state of the Black trans community.

Our great great grandparents in the Lone Star State in Houston, Austin and Mexia pooled their money in the late 19th century to buy pieces of property that became the parks that we held those Juneteenth celebrations in.   They also banded together to build community for the long term benefit of future generations.   They were visionary leaders in far more challenging times than we transpeople face in the second decade of the 21st century.

Some of our ancestors ended up getting elected to the state legislature and passed the laws that set up the free Texas public education system that we benefited from as an example of the visionary thinking prevalent in our great great grandparents generation.

Texas Black trans community, it's time for us and my fellow Black Houstonians to emulate our ancestors and own our power.  It's time to mobilize, take action and begin building that Texas Black trans community infrastructure to last for future generations of transpeople inside and outside our community.

We must do it not only for ourselves, but so that we can be a stronger and more cohesive part of our African American family, the rainbow community, society in general and all the communities we intersect and interact with.  We must make certain that once we set our goals and come to a consensus on what we want to achieve and how our Lone Star trans community should look we exercise maximum unwavering effort in achieving them.

It is not going to be an easy process.  There will be much of hard work involved and those with nanosecond length attention spans are not needed for this task.  Neither will people be needed who don't love this community, want to see it survive, thrive and prosper and aren't committed to the long term success of it. 

Neither will the change we are needing to happen occur instantaneously.  There will be periods of success followed by periods of backlash and retreat in reaction to our success by the Forces of Intolerance.  There will be at times contentious discussion amongst ourselves and our allies as we grapple with this long term and necessary project. 

And yes, the haters will come out to play. 

We will have people who like the status quo situation we find ourselves in, who fear us closing ranks and will fight us tooth and nail to ensure that the Trans Juneteenth doesn't happen.   They will lose because we are on the morally correct side of history.  People are coming to the realization that fighting to ensure the human rights of trans people expands their own human rights coverage.

It is past time we came together for the good of all Lone Star transpeople of African descent, our allies of all colors and build that community that we can be proud of.

It also must be done.  We African descended Texas transpeople can no longer afford to muddle around for another wasted decade isolated,  invisible to the world at large, ignorant about what's going on around us, and feeling impotent socially, emotionally, politically and economically. 

It is time for us to be the proud Black trans men and trans women we are, own our power and write our own proud chapter in Black Texas history in the process.
 
What better day to start that process of the Black trans community of Texas owning its power than on Juneteenth?

Rest In Peace Rodney King

From Renee of Womanist Musings

The beating of Rodney King was an example of police brutality that rang throughout the African Diaspora.  Watching the video, we knew that all that separated us from King was a simple matter of time and place.  I remember seeing the video for the first time and believing that finally, cops would be held accountable for their actions in the Black community, only to be horrified when the not guilty verdict was delivered.

As a Canadian, I remember most the smug reporting of our media on this issue, as though Canada does not have its own history of police brutality against people of colour, or its own history of criminalizing driving while Black. There was a failure to understand why this event resonated so deeply with us and it was cast repeatedly as an American issue, rather than an issue of race, which evenly effects all of the descendants of the African Slave trade.

It was with a heavy heart that I learned King was found dead at the bottom of his pool on Sunday.

King was not the perfect victim we were reminded repeatedly, as though one only had to be good  to avoid his fate, as though Blackness in and of itself doesn't have a history of being marked.  To even go down this road, one would have to ignore the impact of living in a White supremacist state as a person of colour. He was reared in a world that told him repeatedly that he did not matter and the verdict itself proved this to be true.  No matter what King was guilty of, no one deserved to have their civil rights violated like this, yet the excuses kept coming.

As Los Angeles erupted in righteous rage, King begged for peace, asking famously, "can't we all just get along?"  The answer then, and the answer now is no.  There is no getting along with White supremacy because it preys on our lives, it preys on our children and it preys on our souls.  Police brutality continues to be a problem in our communities. Racist Stop and Frisk policies continue to disproportionately target Black and Latino communities, and yet we are told that this is a public good and that it's about safety.  Is the world really that much safer believing the lie that only POC commit crimes? What about the psychological effect of  knowing that your race is enough to make you a target?

Our clothing and our manner of presentation is at fault and threatening we are told and yet, even wearing a suit and leaving rehearsal, Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad and Once Upon a Time was recently stopped and frisked at gunpoint.  What could he have done differently?  How should he have been less threatening?  He isn't even the only celebrity of colour to receive this treatment, just the latest. There is no rich enough, or good enough, to avoid being a target of racism.  When you have a cop bragging that he "fried another nigger,"  how exactly is this stop and frisk policy doing any good?  You'll all be relieved to learn that he isn't a racist though. This is why we can't just all get along.

There is some suspicion surrounding King's death and the statements of his girlfriend.  How and why he died is something that will be debated and questioned for some time to come I suspect.  At this moment however, what matters to me is the legacy that he left behind.  He inspired an entire generation to put behind its apathy and fight.  Many still view the riots as simple rampant lawlessness, rather than a result of a community in so much pain that it had no choice but to implode.  The beating of Rodney King revealed to the world the truth of what justice means when you are a person of colour and all of these years later, not a damn thing has been done to fix this situation.  Despite a Black president, and protests by Black civil rights leaders nothing has changed.

Rodney King was not a perfect man and such an expectation is not only unrealistic, it is victim blaming. His life has been dissected and twisted much in the same way that every single Black victim of White supremacy has experienced.  I don't seek now to re-envision him as a paragon of goodness because even that would be disrespectful.   If we remember one thing about King, we need to remember that he was human and respect all that this entails.  His humanity should have protected him, it should have made the brutality perpetrated against him unthinkable and but for the colour of his skin, it might very well have.  King deserved better than life gave him and I hope that in death, he finds the peace he was never able to achieve in life. For the rest of us, there can be no peace, as long as we understood to be sub human.

Sheena Monnin's Faith Based Sour Grapes

Been following the twists and turns of former Miss Pennsylvania USA Sheena Monnin flapping her gums in the wake of her June 4 resignation over so far unsubstantiated allegations that the 2012 Miss USA pageant was 'fixed'.  She also claimed her resignation was based on her right wing 'moral fiber' belief that trans contestants should not be permitted to compete in the pageant.

Yeah, right  Miss Thang.   . 

The Donald is suing her for defamation on that pageant fixing claim and Miss USA officials released the text of the resignation e-mail they received from her.the day after the pageant was held in Las Vegas on June 3.

Can you say transphobia?   Thought you could.

“I refuse to be part of a pageant system that has so far and so completely removed itself from its foundational principles as to allow and support natural born males to compete in it. This goes against ever (sic) moral fiber of my being.”

Yo, Sheena, what the hell is a 'natural born male'?  Never heard of that.

However, bigotry and discrimination goes against my moral fiber. It disgusts me even more when I see people like you who sanctimoniously express transphobic bigotry try to hide behind the Bible while doing so. 

I wonder if your 27 year old hypocritical azz would have resigned if you'd won the Miss USA title instead of Olivia Culpo.  With the revelations coming out about you I thank God you didn't. 

I don't know why you're complaining about transwomen being allowed to compete in the Miss Universe pageant system when there were none competing in this year's USA pageant because the long needed rule change happened far too late for any transwoman to enter it.

Sheena, let's continue to tell it like it T-I-S is shall we? Seems to me you're drinking hateraid from 55 gallon drums when it comes to #girlslikeus. 

Hmm.  You were one of two of the oldest women in this year's event at age 27 and couldn't even crack the top 16 in a 51 woman pageant field consisting of all 'natural born women' while South Carolina's Erika Powell, the other 27 year old contestant did.  

And you threw catty shade at Miss South Carolina for doing so. 

Hating on Jenna Talackova because she's 24, made the Top 16 in Canada's national pageant and shared the Miss Congeniality award with three other women?  Jenna Talackova has more class in her pinky finger than you have in your entire nekulturny body

Makes me wonder what your reaction would have been if the Miss USA 2012 pageant had a open transwoman entered much less made it to the top 16.   

Oops, never mind.  Based on your previous transphobic comment I can reasonably deduce that and the transphobic crap you would have tweeted from backstage.  I submit it wouldn't have been as compassionate as you claim you are on the Miss Pennsylvania website, have exhibited on this issue or toward fellow Miss USA 2012 contestants.
.       

I'd daresay than when the Miss USA-Universe pageant system finally does have a trans contestant competing in it, I'm confident that the trans contestant in question will probably go much farther and with a lot more character, class and moral fiber than you exhibited in this 2012 edition.

Shannon, here's some career advice for you.  Why don't you apply at Fox Noise since they need fresh fembots with 'moral fiber' and jacked up conservative attitudes to stick in front of their cameras?

WWYD? Trans Diner Employee Episode

Finally found the YouTube video of the episode of ABC's What Would You Do? that Carmen Carrera appeared in as a trans waitress being verbally abused by a transphobic longtime customer in a New Jersey diner.

The WWYD hidden cameras are in the house to record the reactions (or lack thereof) of the patros in the diner.

Chile Activists Beginning Push For Trans Identity Law

With Argentina's successful passage and enactment of a groundbreaking Gender Identity Law, their next door neighbors on the western side of the Andes Mountains want to take a page out of the Argentinian activist playbook and enact a similar law in their country.

According to Blabbeando, the Chilean Transexual Organiztion for the Dignity of Diversity (OTD) has already produced a few ads confronting discrimination against transgender individuals but started launching on June 10 a campaign specifically advocating for a nationwide gender identity law.

They are beginning to produce ads and videos like this one with many more to come.



Since trans human rights issues have been on a roll lately in Latin America, South America and the Western Hemisphere, we can only hope that the Chilean 'Fir The Dignity Of Identity' themed campaign results in the same successful conclusion that happened on the eastern side of the Andes.

Fans Gearing Up To Save GCB

I wrote about how much I loved the backstabbing faith based antics of the ABC show GCB, which is based on the Kim Gatlin novel and set in the fictional Dallas enclave town of Hillside Park. 

Was disappointed when ABC announced they would not be renewing the show, but the fans of this creating from the same writers who penned Sex In The City had other ideas.

A Save GCB effort has started with a website and online petition drive that has garnered 100,000 signatures.  In addition a campaign to sell out the just released first season DVD of the show has also been launched (and I'll have get my copy of that along with Scandal)

I loved the show, and the season finale has some cliffhangers in it I'd love to see explored and resolved in a Season 2.  Carlene discovers that Ripp has a Latina daughter named Lucia as her dream of her Condos for Christian Living in unincorporated Juarez, Mexico was a disaster.   Amanda and Luke's relationship is on hold after she discovered that he lied to her about being in Austin when he was in fact down in Mexico investigating whether Lucia was actually Ripp's daughter.  

Speaking of relationships, Cricket and Blake's marriage may be tested because Blake may be about to be yanked out of the closet.   After Amanda put hers on hold with Luke for lying to her, she drowns her sorrows at a Mexican bar and ends up in a kiss with Pastor Tudor.. 

We'll see if the fan effort to save GCB is successful and if we get to see the resolution of those cliff hangers next television season.

Happy Father's Day, TransGriot Readers!

Today is Father's Day, and I wanted to take a few moments of your blog surfing time to give a shout to all the people who are dads, or who are father figures to some youngling in their lives.

It's a role that's vitally important in shaping the adults we grow up to be.

Happy Father's Day!

Watergate 40th Anniversary

The next time someone gets the urge to rag on a person who is working as a security guard to pay their bills or derisively call them a 'rent a cop', point out that it was an African-American security guard that got the ball rolling 40 years ago today on the scandal that eventually took down the Nixon presidency.

Then 24 year old Frank Wills was working his midnight to 7 AM shift at the Watergate Office Complex on the night of June 17, 1972  when he discovered at 1 AM that someone had taped the latches on several doors (That allows the doors to close but remain unlocked.)  Wills removed the tape on those doors and when he returned an hour later to discovered those same doors were retaped he called the police which resulted in five people being busted inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters offices..

The five men busted in the DNC office burglary, Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications and convicted on January 30, 1973.

However, when it was discovered that one of the burglars was a Republican Party security aide and money the burglars had been paid for expenses was traced by the FBI back to a fund tied to the aptly named CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect The President), the scandal widened throughout the summer of 1973 and into 1974 as more troubling details emerged.

It eventually ended with the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency on August 9, 1974 when he was facing an almost certain overwhelming Senate vote to impeach and remove him from office and the Democrats in a Watergate induced 1974 midterm backlash picking up five Senate seats to add to their majority there and 49 seats in the House.  There was also an overhaul of American Bar Association  regulations to stave off federalizing that responsibility from the various state bar associations, amendment of the 1974 Freedom of Information Act, campaign finance reform and the enactment of the Ethics In Government Act. 

68 people were charged and 49 convicted of various offenses including members of the Nixon administration.  The pardon of Nixon by President Gerald Ford is cited as one of the factors that led to Jimmy Carter being elected president in 1976.

The House Judiciary Committee Impeachment hearings on July 25, 1974 also resulted in a freshman Democratic House representative from Texas named Barbara Jordan making one of the most memorable and still quoted speeches of those hearings



And as for Frank Wills, the African-American security guard who discovered the burglary that brought down the Nixon Administration?  

Sadly while other people including the Nixon Administration folks who instigated the scandal got paid with their best selling books and speaking tours, Wills' life was never the same. 

He quit his $80 a week job after the security company refused to give him  raise for his role in breaking the Watergate scandal.  Washington business and organizations dependent on federal funding refused to hire him for fear their federal funding would be cut off in retaliation.  He later died in poverty from a brain tumor in Augusta, GA on September 27, 2000.

But the Watergate scandal is a lesson to ponder going into this 2012 presidential election (that we liberal progressive never should have forgotten) that the Republifools will go to any lengths including violating the law and the Constitution they claim to reverently respect to win an election and cling to power.

Some Euro 2012 Fans Can't Say No To Racism

The UEFA Euro 2012 tournament is being co-hosted by the nations of Poland and Ukraine June 8 through July 1.   The group play stage is winding down to its conclusion this weekend to determine the teams that will enter the knockout rounds and be in contention for the European championship.

Because it is an international game, talented players of African descent have long been integral parts of European club teams and several national clubs for years.

In the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament the national sides of England, the Netherlands and France have large visible contingents of African descended players.  Italy has 21 year old striker Mario Balotelli and the Czech Republic has Theodor Gebre Selassie as lone African descended starting players on their national teams. 

While soccer is called 'the beautiful game', one of the ugly stains it struggles with is racism in the sport, especially in European football venues.  There has been a long deplorable history of players and supporters of European based club and national teams uttering racial monkey chants, anti-Semitic epithets and throwing bananas on the pitch at African descended players. 

There were concerns expressed before the Euro 2012 tournament started by groups that monitor racist events at European football matches such as Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) about the wisdom of hosting the tournament in those two nations in light of reports that Ukrainian fans had been videotaped during matches doing Nazi salutes and aiming monkey chants at African descended players


FIFA has been engaged in a ongoing Say No To Racism campaign to clean up the bigoted behavior in the sport since 2001 which I believe also needs to be expanded to combat homophobia and transphobia as well. .  

Superstar players in the sport such as David Beckham have also been outspoken about eliminating racism in 'the beautiful game' as well.

UEFA (Union of European Football Associations, the governing body for soccer in Europe) has a zero tolerance policy and rules that make national football associations responsible for their fans' boorish behavior.   Punishments can range from warnings and a sliding scale of fines to points deductions and even expulsion from future Euro tournaments.

Reports out of the first week of Euro 2012 are justifying the concerns that FARE and other groups had when the tournament was initially awarded to Poland and Ukraine.  It seems that old bigoted habits are dying hard. 

Even before the tournament started, The Netherlands national squad was highly pissed off about their players being subjected to racist chants during an open training session in Krakow a day after they visited the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp.

Reports have surfaced that during the June 10 Spain-Italy and June 14 Croatia-Italy matches elements of the Spanish and Croatian fan bases started monkey chants aimed at Balotelli.  The Croatians took it a step further by not only doing the chants but throwing a banana onto the pitch.

Croatia has a particularly egregious history of racist abuse.  They were fined by UEFA for deploying neo-Nazi flags and shouting racist chants during a Euro 2008 quarterfinal loss to Turkey and fined by FIFA for an incident in a World Cup qualifying match in Zagreb in which England's Emile Heskey was subjected to racist taunts.

Croatia has been formally charged for the incidents in Thursday's Croatia-Italy match in Poznan and the Croatian Football Federation is rapidly distancing themselves from the bigoted elements of their supporter base.


During the June 8 Russia-Czech Republic match in Wroclaw reports are surfacing that some of Russia's nekulturny supporters aimed racist monkey chanting at Gebre Selassie, and UEFA is investigating those charges with Russia's sports minister vehemently denying them. 

If those reports are true, then it's karmic justice that the Czech Republic qualified for the knockout round despite being beaten 4-1 by Russia thanks to Greece beating the Russians.1-0 in group play.

Now that UEFA is starting to crack down, we'll see if this chills out the racist supporters of some of the national teams still left in the Euro 2012 tournament and if the threat of severe UEFA sanctions or banishment from Euro 2016 will be enough to get those fans to say no to racism at this tournament.

April Ashley, MBE!

April Ashley was one of the first people in Great Britain to have SRS in 1960 when she did so with Dr Georges Bourou  in Casablanca, Morocco.  She led an exciting life as a Vogue fashion model, worked at the famed LeCarrousel trans club in Paris in which she rubbed elbows with Ernest Hemingway, Jean Paul Sartre and Bob Hope, was an actress, a lover to actors Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole and attracted the romantic attentions of painters Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.

She was outed when her so called 'friend' sold her story to the British tabloids, but it didn't stop her from marrying aristocrat Arthur Corbett and setting up another interesting chapter in her life when he filed for divorce in 1969.  .

She was the defendant in the 1970 Corbett v Corbett marriage case that had negative consequences for the identities of British transpeople until the passage of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act Act.   That case has been deleteriously used on our side of The Pond against Christie Lee Littleton, J'Noel Gardiner, and most recently Nikki Araguz and Ms W in Hong Kong as a weapon against trans marriages.

She has worked tirelessly to advance the human rights of transpeople in Britain as is noted as well for her charity work. 

When the Queen's Birthday Honours List was announced yesterday, April Ashley received an MBE for her trans human rights advocacy.

Congratulations to one of our pioneering iconic transpeople    Getting an MBE is a huge honor in Britain and Ms Ashley deserves it.

China Launches First Female Taikonaut Today

Y'all know I'm a space flight junkie, and I found this piece of news to be way cool.

Chinese space history will be made later today when the Shenzhou IX mission blasts off into space with the first female taikonaut on board  

33 year old PLA transport pilot Liu Yang beat out  14 other female taikonaut candidates and will be part of the three person crew along with male astronauts Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang.

Jing Haipeng, the mission commander will make a little Chinese space history of his own when he becomes the first taikonaut to make a return trip to space.   He was part of the 2008 Shenzhou VI mission in which China's first space walk took place.

After blasting off from the Jiuquan launch facility they will head to China's Tiangong 1 space station module launched last September to attempt China's first manned docking with it. 

Once the docking is completed, the taikonauts will enter the space station module and spend 13 days aloft conducting scientific and technological experiments in the longest mission so far attempted by the Chinese manned spacecraft program.

China would become the third nation after the old Soviet Union and the United States to launch a woman into space using their own equipment. 

NY Trans Community Speaking Out Against Stop And Frisk

The NAACP is planning a silent march tomorrow against the odious racial profiling  stop and frisk policy that the New York po-po's are using in a way to disproportionate manner against now white people in the Big Apple.

87% of the people being stopped and frisked are non-white, with a large chunk of those non whites being  stopped and frisked are you guessed it, non-white trans people.

Check out Agnes Chung's report about transpeople in the Jackson Heights area calling out the NYPD stop and frisk policy and how it is deleteriously affecting them.

There was also a meeting at the historic Stonewall Inn involving Rev Al Sharpton and Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP.discussing this issue as well that reported in the Village Voice.

Shut Up Fool Awards- Father's Day Weekend Edition

Father's Day is this Sunday, where we pause and think about the Dads in our lives or the ones who are no longer here and how they shaped our lives.   For my brother it's special because my niece just celebrated her first birthday on June 13.

Today is Friday, and you loyal TransGriot readers know what that means.   It's time for another edition of my weekly Shut Up Fool Awards, where we shine a bright spotlight on the fool fool or group of fools that need to be called out on their ignorance and stupidity.

This week we had the usual bumper crop of idiots, starting with Mitt Romney, Eric Boehlert, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI), Rep Eric Cantor (R-VA), Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), Gov Rick Scott (R-FL) Rep Louie Gohmert (R-TX) Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) and group awards for Fox News, the Rad fems, the Arkansas Tea Party and the Republican Party.

Honorable mention goes to Chad Holley, who after getting beat down by the Houston po-po's for being arrested for committing a robbery and getting probation for it which expired in April because a tape surfaced of the beatdown which led to the firing of the four cops involved and trials for official oppression of which one got off, complicated matters iin the remaining trials Wednesday by getting his azz arrested in northwest Harris County for breaking in houses with some knuckleheads.

This week's Shut Up Fool award goes to conservafool pastor Terry Jones, who is back in the news not for burning Korans this time, but for hanging an effigy of President Obama in front of his 'church'

When the Secret Service came knocking he hurried up and changed it to a different effigy still holding a rainbow flag in protest of the POTUS' evolution on marriage, but too late for him not to avoid getting the honors this week and Secret Service scrutiny.

Terry Jones, shut up fool.

Apparently, Black Women Are Making a Mistake Not Wearing Makeup

From my Timmy's Ice Capp drinking homegirl at Womanist Musings who is all that and four bags of ketchup flavored chips.

I don't know about you, but I am not particularly happy about men deciding what I should look like.  Sam Fine is a makeup artist and Fashion Fair Creative Makeup Director. He recently did an interview with Fashion Bomb Daily.  Fashion Fair's makeup is specifically targeted to WOC, which means that it is one of the few lines where you don't have to struggle to find a product that matches your skin tone. Considering that many makeup companies are hard pressed to cater to our needs, Fashion Fair is important. I do however reject the idea that I must wear makeup to be beautiful.

“I think the biggest beauty mistake is really not wearing makeup.”

I know that it is his job to sell this product, but seriously, who does this man think he is? With his explanation, he only manages to put his foot, even deeper down his throat.

“I think the biggest beauty mistake is not understanding how to enhance your beauty,” Sam added. “And I think a lot of [women of color] are scared that makeup is going to make [them] look fake, ‘It’s not gonna look like me, they’re not going to have my color.’ I think that they just tend to step away from the category when a brand like Fashion Fair, is releasing a liquid foundation in July to add to the range of colors. Nineteen shades! There will be 17 shades in liquid! And if you look at that, that’s not a range that’s broken up for general market vs. African Americans. So you really are getting a wealth of coverage options and colors. I think the biggest mistake is not participating in the game at all.”

 Silly women, with all of these choices, how dare you walk around with no makeup on your face.  Just look at what Fashion Fair has done for you.  How dare you be so ungrateful.  It's not really about your comfort level.  Don't you know that as a woman, it's your job to be beautifully made up everyday.  That's right ladies, fake it until you believe it.  Look how generous he is,  he's not even asking that you wear a lot of makeup.

“Pressed powder, mascara, and lip gloss, because I think those things aren’t intimidating,” he said. “Once you get past the shade of powder, I think that becomes easy to apply. But if I had to go two steps further, I always start out with some kind of a coverage product. A concealer, or a foundation that you can use as a concealer. Underneath the eyes is the thinnest area of skin, so you really want to make sure that any redness or discoloration can be covered.  Also powder. Powder’s going to set the foundation or the concealer so it can stay on longer. I always say powder is to foundation what topcoat is to nail polish. It really holds it in place and keeps it from rubbing off and settling in fine lines.”

With the application of these products, you can be fit to leave the house.   No one wants to see your make up free face. As a woman, beauty is your job and you are shirking your responsibilities by avoiding it and not supporting Black business.   

Yeah, I am simply not impressed by this shit at all.  Fashion Fair is great, but it's also damn expensive compared to drug store brands.  Make up as a requirement means women who already earn less than men have yet another unnecessary expense.  Please keep in mind that on average, Black women earn less than White women.  We are in the lucky position of negotiating both a gender and race based income gap. As women, we already pay more to get our hair done and more for clothing.  How far does this man think a dollar stretches? When phrased as Sam Fine did, makeup becomes a female tax.  Black women already spend a ton of money on hair due to a Eurocentric beauty ideal, and the idea of then being pressured by a man to conform more is beyond distasteful.  A WOC could spend her entire paycheck on makeup, but as long as we live in a White supremacist world, we are always going to be seen as unwomen.

Makeup should be a choice for all women, not something we need to wear to be acceptable to appear in public.  It is worth noting that men have no such requirements on their appearance. I am thankful that Fashion Fair exists, but I refuse to feel duty bound to purchase or utilize their products based in my race and gender.  As far as I am concerned, Sam Fine can have a big cup of shut the fuck up.

Yo, Canada! Wonderful Week For Canadian Transpeeps

Transpeople in the Great White North have had a wonderful week and I couldn't be happier for y'all peeps north of the 49th parallel.

First came the unexpected news that the province of Alberta, a bastion of Canadian style conservatism reinstated funding in their provincial health care plan for SRS. 

That was quickly followed up on Wednesday by the unanimous Third Reading vote in Ontario for Toby's Act.  That makes Ontario the first Canadian province to pass trans human rights coverage and the second large Canadian jurisdiction after the Northwest Territories to do so..   

There's also word that similar trans positive human rights legislation is pending in the Manitoba provincial legislature after the province's.human rights code is being expanded to cover trans people. 

I also can't forget to point out that C-279, the federal trans rights bill, passed a Second Reading vote by a 150-132 margin in a Conservative dominated House of Commons chamber on June 6 with support from some Conservative MP's..

Hoping the positive trans human rights momentum keeps going for y'all    We'll certainly be watching from south of the border what happens from this point forward.

4 Year Old Killed For Perception He Was Gay

I wrote a post a while back talking about the deadly combination of homophobia and hypermasculinity in the African-American community and how it's leading to the deaths of our young children.

Here's another sad case of a 4 year old being killed courtesy of Diamond Stylz's video blog..

Feminists Need To Stop The Rad Fem War On Transwomen

Chelsea Sayre, one of my fellow Transadvocate columnists with whom I have disagreed with before,  just wrote another post in which I need to point out what she failed to discuss. 

In her post she calls out elements of the trans community for the escalating nastiness as she saw it between the feminist and trans feminine communities that needs to stop.  On that point I agree with Chelsea that it is deplorable and needs to stop before somebody gets hurt on either side. 

However, where I part company with her is in noting that her focusing the post on trans women is problematic.  She also failed to understand that what has been done unto transwomen in the first place by rad fems is the reason why the hostility between the two camps exists.

I note you ignored the War on Transwomen was started in the 1970's by predominately white radical feminists.  In the last four decades in addition to sliming us at every opportunity, they have gleefully done everything possible to thwart the enacting of desperately needed trans human rights legislation and policies. 

You do recall the paper Janice Raymond wrote in 1980 to Congress that erased the ability of low income trans women to use Medicare and Medicaid to pay for trans health care and was the impetus for insurance companies to enact trans exclusionary riders in the policies we insultingly pay hard earned T-bills for?

They have pimped their disco-era dogma in transphobic books like The Transsexual Empire and countless other wastes of trees others penned that have called us 'Frankenstinian', for transwomen to be 'morally erased from existence' and called for the worldwide banning of SRS surgeries.

They have also used their positions of vanillacentirc cis privileged power to oppress trans women by any means necessary and swarm attacked in the blogosphere any trans advocates or our cis female allies who have dissenting opinions about their jacked up vanillacentric and racist points of view.


Hmm.  No mention of the 17 year old transteen being outed at his school for daring to express his First Amendment rights online to criticize one of the more vicious ringleaders of the War on Transwomen and whyte rad fem womyn engaging in cis privilege filled right wing intimidation tactics of calling the jobs of trans advocates they don't like and who tell it like it T-I-S is about them in an attempt to frack with their lives.

Curiously, no mention of the 'womyn born womyn' pimping disco era trans hate and feminism ignoring and in some cases leaders like Gloria Steinem and Adrienne Rich co-signing it.  That transphobia egged on by feminists has had a deleterious effect on the lives of trans people and transwomen of color to the point we're getting murdered at the rate of two per month

So yeah, you damn skippy we transwomen have a right to be angry and pissed about that.  I'm not surprised that in your feminist sisterhood of the traveling white pantsuits supportive point of view in your post you'd ignore the right wing bullying tactics they have been engaging in to support their failed disco era dogma..

The point is that I have something you don't as a POC transperson.  I have decades of experience in living as a marginalized person before I even transitioned and I see things from the perspective of being an oppressed person. 

When you are subjected to daily microaggressive and macroaggresive tactics aimed at your humanity by a group that is wielding societal power (and don't even go there in vanillacentric denial that white women don't hold societal power) that they gleefully exercise when they have the opportunity to do so, it is inevitable it will cause resentment and anger in the marginalized community that is targeted by said attacks.

This is simply a reaction to the almost 40 years of dehumanizing trans rhetoric combined with active work by radical feminists in the War on Transwomen.   I'm not saying it's justified, and like I said in the earlier paragraph I agree with you and Monica Maldonado in it needs to stop.

But it needs to stop on both sides. 

If the feminist community is going to point fingers at the trans feminine one and demand we get our over the top misbehaving peeps under control, then you need to do the same thing with your feminist bad actresses as well in order to help ratchet down the developing bad blood.  

Feminism's decades long silence and inaction with the rad fems combined with what it has done to our community is why transwomen are pissed off in the first place and feminism has the negative connotation it does with elements of us. 

Feminism also needs to stop crying white women's tears about the pushback from transwomen against the nekulturny negativity aimed at us by rad fems.   It also needs to immediately stop pretending they are the victims in this kerfluffle and ignoring the fact that the transfeminine reaction to this just didn't organically occur in a vacuum. 

So Chelsea, when you feminists start actively working to rein in the hate group that whyte womyn born womyn claim is part of your movement in addition to feminists actually being seen more frequently unequivocally standing up for transwomen's human rights, maybe then transfeminine women will not feel compelled to go to Defcon 3, 2 or 1 levels to defend their human rights, their femininity and their humanity.

Secretary of State Clinton's Pride Message

I still have much love for Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton despite the contention 2008 Democratic presidential primary.   She's made it clear she's a supporter of the rainbow community, but I still have my doubts that if she were in the Oval Office right now the trans community would be seeing the explosive progress federally we have seen under the Obama Administration.

Then again, based on the fact that surgery is no longer a requirement to get a gender code change on a US passport, maybe President Clinton might have been as trans friendly as President Obama has undeniably proven he has been.  Anyway, stepping off the electronic soapbox and back to the post.

Here's her taped pride message for the rainbow community

Thanks For The Blog List Love!

The Wherethegirlsgo blog recently put together a list of Twelve Queer Blogs To Watch, and guess which blog is mentioned at Number Four on their list?

Yep, moi.

Wow, this is an unexpected blessing and it is most deeply appreciated.  Nice to know that people like reading TransGriot and enjoy my posts.   It's also wonderful to discover (as I did during Netnoots Nation last week) people like the Afrocentric focus on TBLG issues this blog provides.

Thank you for the honor, Wherethegirlsgo Blog and thank you dear readers for continuing to spend your valuable web surfing time here at my cyberhome..

Appreciate the blog love

Trans United For Obama Launched

As I've stated more than a few times on TransGriot, while elements of the GL community have sniped at President Obama and in some cases delusionally called him 'the worst president ever on gay issues', as far as the trans community is concerned, he's been the best president ever on trans issues in US history.

A national volunteer organization was recently formed called Trans United for Obama (TU4O) that is designed to rally transgender people, supporters, allies, and families to re-elect President Barack Obama and ensure he is taking the oath of office on January 20, 2013 for his second term.

Here's the TU4O announcement post courtesy of Meghan Stabler, elected Texas delegate for the upcoming 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC.

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President Obama has led so many historic positive policy changes for transgender equality--- more than any elected official in history! We are involved on all levels, from door-knocking, doing data entry, fundraising, registering voters, and getting the message out that President Obama must be re-elected... all the things a victorious campaign and our community needs.

I am personally inviting you to be a part of this community.

We are trans leaders, advocates, educators, bloggers, authors, and allies out to educate people about the historic accomplishments that the Obama Administration has made in the past four years to secure equal rights and protections for transgender, transsexual and intersex identified, and for for all LGBT Americans.

Did you know that more has been accomplished by the Obama administration for trans rights equality than all 43 other presidents combined? For example:

• Ended the Social Security Administration’s gender “no-match” letters and allowed for true gender passports
• Ensured that transgender Americans can receive true gender passports without surgery
• Established guidelines to help protect transgender federal employees from discrimination in the workplace
• Made sure transgender veterans receive respectful care according to their true gender through the Veterans Health Administration

You can read additional accomplishments here

This is where you play a part. We are standing with our President and ask that you join us, and help build TU4O!

• We will hold frequent conference calls with you and with the campaign where you will be invited to participate.
• We will work with the campaign to make sure that all of the campaign offices are ready for and respectful of trans volunteers. 
• We will work with the campaign to register trans voters and make sure trans people aren’t denied the right to vote because of the recent new voter ID laws in certain states.

So join us! Together we can re-elect President Obama for another 4 years of solid progress, legislation and policy for the trans community.

Sign up now to join Trans United for Obama.

Donate to the campaign

Click for more information on Trans United for Obama and follow us on Facebook.

Don't forget to donate whatever you can to get President Obama re-elected; $25, $50, $100 can go a long way to help protect our community!