The Root's Trans Free Black LGBT List

Since June is Pride Month, in honor of the occasion The Root put together a list of 20 notable Black LGBT people    I was curious to see if things had progressed in the African-American blogosphere since I had to call the Grio out about a trans free LGBT leaders list in 2010. .

On the one The Root compiled many of the folks on this list I have had the pleasure of meeting and I admire such as Aisha Moodie-Mills, Phill Wilson, and Donna Payne are on it.   The others they included are familiar ones like poet Staceyann Chin, Jonathan Capehert, Don Lemon, Sapphire, Keith Boykin, Jasmyne Cannick and Wanda Sykes.

What I didn't see in this Black LGBT list was you guessed it, Black trans people.

No Janet Mock (who made the Grio's 100 list BTW).  No Laverne Cox.  No Kylar Broadus, Isis King, Valerie Spencer, Rev. Louis Mitchell, Miss Major, or even some award winning blogger who was part of the first ever trans panel at Netroots Nation 2012..

Just the same old crap, different day in terms of Blackosphere media outlets putting together these Black LGB(t) lists and not including any trans people in them.

Bottom line, if you're going to take the time to put together a list that purports to be representative of the LGBT community leadership, then I, the trans community and our allies expect that trans people be included in said list if you claim it is a TBLG one.

Far too fracking often these trans free lists are overwhelmingly LG dominated, B peeps as an afterthought with no T ones.

Black folks, y'all need to get with that include the trans community program as well because we Black trans peeps are beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired of being erased from these Black TBLG leaders lists y'all put together.  

We aren't ashamed of being Black and trans but the constant erasure and the frequency with which it happens make us wonder if you're ashamed of us.  

That erasure of African descended trans persons leads to situations in which Black transpeople haven't even been invited to discuss trans issues that impact us like the CeCe McDonald case on the Melissa Harris Perry show or NAACP convention LBG(t) town hall meetings with no trans people on those panels

Will be eagerly watching the upcoming NAACP convention next month in my hometown to see if Julian Bond keeps the promise he made in LA last year to ensure the next NAACP convention town hall has trans representation on that panel. 

And the 'we can't find any trans activists' excuse doesn't wash now any more than it did two years ago.

Sadly what I said in the post calling out the erasure and non- inclusion of Black transpeople on Black LGB(t) lists is applicable in this one as well.

My point is that if our own people don't or won't show us some love when you compile these leadership lists, and you write for one of our leading blogosphere sites directed at the African-American community gay and straight, how in the hell can we Black trans leaders who are doing the work expect the predominately white TBLG community to respect us as well?

It's bad enough that Black transpeople get shut out of the predominately vanillacentric upper middle class narrative and get very little to no media attention except when we get killed in a hate crime.   It's disappointing and hurts even more when we get ignored by our own media outlets.

Shut Up Fool Awards- Heat Beats Thunder Edition

Well, after five games, it's over.  The Miami Heat taught the younglings from Oklahoma City how to play championship basketball and closed out the NBA Finals with a resounding 121-106 thumping of the Thunder to close out the series 4-1 and claim their second NBA championship in franchise history.

The other person who is happy this series is over besides the cities of Miami and Seattle is USA Men's Olympic basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski

And yes, it's Friday, so you know what that means.  It's time for Moni to dish out this week's edition of the TransGriot Shut Up Fool Awards.   Time for everyone to discover who exhibited championship level stupidity and ignorance this week and shine a bright spotlight on it.

Group nominations went to GOProud, the Republican Party, the NRA, and Fox Noise.   individual nods went to Rep. Allen West (R-FL) Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) , Sen John Cornyn (R-TX)  Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)  Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) Rep Eric Cantor (R-VA) 
Tucker Carlson, Eric Boehlert, Rep Dan Burton (R-IN)  Rep John Mica (R-FL), Jerry Sandusky. Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, Monica Crowley and Ted Nugent

Honorable Mention goes to congressional car thief Darrell Issa (R-CA) for pimping a partisan witch hunt and bogus contempt of congress citation aimed at Atty General Eric Holder whose only crimes are successfully doing his job enforcing the 1965 Voting Rights Act against the Republican's racist Voter ID suppression laws and being a Black man in that position.   And you wonder why African-Americans have contempt not only for the Republicans in Congress, but your party as well.   

Honorable Mention number two goes to Michigan state Speaker James Bolger (R) and Michigan state majority leader James Stamas (R) for banning state Rep Lisa Brown (D) for saying 'vagina' on the House floor during a debate on a bill pimping reproductive rights restrictions and Rep Barb Bynum (D) for referring to vasectomies during the same floor debate..   The conservafools were too cowardly to tell Reps Brown and Bynum to their face they'd banned them but that par for the neofascist course for them.   That triggered a performance of The Vagina Monologues on the steps of the Michigan state capitol building overseen by play creator Eve Ensler in Lansing Monday night featuring Brown, Bynum and other female Michigan state legislators.. 


The Shut Up Fool award for this week goes to Wisconsin GOP US senate candidate Eric Hovde, who is sick and tired of media writing sob stories about the poor.   Please, Tammy Baldwin, kick his azz November 6 so I can gleefully read a sob story about his conservacruel behind losing.

Eric Hovde, shut up fool!

Who Is Woman Enough to Participate in the Olympics?

Guest post from Renee of Womanist Musings

We have all become accustomed to the drug testing athletes must undergo to ensure that their performance has not been enhanced. Female athletes however are subjected to a new form of gender based policing based in the idea that someone have a natural biological advantage because of things like hormonal imbalances. 

There are some who believe that this amounts to an unfair advantage ever as it encourages gender policing that is harmful emotionally to girls and women.

Caster Semenya, the South African runner who was so fast and muscular that many suspected she was a man, exploded onto the front pages three years ago. She was considered an outlier, a one-time anomaly.

But similar cases are emerging all over the world, and Semenya, who was banned from competition for 11 months while authorities investigated her sex, is back, vying for gold.

Semenya and other women like her face a complex question: Does a female athlete whose body naturally produces unusually high levels of male hormones, allowing them to put on more muscle mass and recover faster, have an “unfair” advantage?

In a move critics call “policing femininity,” recent rule changes by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, state that for a woman to compete, her testosterone must not exceed the male threshold.

If it does, she must have surgery or receive hormone therapy prescribed by an expert IAAF medical panel and submit to regular monitoring. So far, at least a handful of athletes — the figure is confidential — have been prescribed treatment, but their numbers could increase. Last month, the International Olympic Committee began the approval process to adopt similar rules for the Games. [source]

Essentially, these tests and probes are meant to define what constitutes woman.  Even if a woman has always identified as female and lived her life as a woman,  simply a complaint to the IAAF is enough to force her to endure a battery of tests and treatment that she may not want or need, to be deemed suitably female enough to be able to compete.  This is beyond intrusive and amounts to cissexist gender policing.


The moment we begin to define gender strictly through biology, we limit the definition of what it is to be 'woman'.  It has also not escaped my notice that this is something that is only happening to female athletes.  No one is looking at men for supposed feminine characteristics largely because anything considered female is not socially understood to benefit men.  We know for instance that women have a lower center of gravity and this could come in handy in sports like gymnastics or even diving, but no one is on a mission to ensure that men are suitably masculine enough to perform.

This policy comes down to policing gender and more importantly, policing womanhood. This standard that has been created will effect all women.  We already live in an extremely cissexist world and trans women are subjected to all manner of abuse daily.  Subjecting female athletes to this test suggests that there is only one true standard for womanhood and failing to meet that marks one as "other."  It encourages people to question someone's gender even when they are clearly identified as female and will give rise to more cissexism.

Woman is a broad category and any attempt to narrow it is an assault on all women.  No one should have to be subjected to invasive testing and medication that they don't need for their bodies to function naturally to run in a race, dive or participate in any sport.  This testing is divisive and any athlete who agrees with this testing to me is only worried about taking home a medal at any cost.

Good Luck Keelin!

The US Olympic Track and Field Trials (called Athletics to the rest of the world) will kick off today and run through July 1 in Eugene, OR to determine who gets those coveted all expense paid spots on the US Olympic team we're sending to London.

I've talked about transman Keelin Godsey, who has been pursuing his dream of competing in the Olympics since 2008.

Starting at 2:15 PM EDT 28 year old Godsey will take the first steps toward sporting history when he competes in the hammer throw prelims competition with 23 other athletes at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, OR.  If everything goes well for Godsey he'll be in the finals that start at 4:15 PM EDT.  

Keelin was a 16 time All-American athlete at Bates College and the Division III national champion in 2005 in the hammer throw before transitioning during his senior year.

Godsey has continued post college to excel in the event and has already passed the Olympic qualifying standard of 68 meters.   He long ago socially transitioned to male, but will compete in the women's hammer throw and is considered by IOC and IAAF rules as a female competitor.  He is forgoing taking testosterone until either after the trials or the London Olympics so that he could make his Olympic competition dream come true.    

If Keelin places in the top three finishers, he not only will make the team, he will become the first open trans athlete ever to quality for their national Olympic team and the US Olympic team.   Keelin already has the distinction of being the first open trans athlete to make a US Pan Am Games squad and competed in the 2011 Pan Am Games, finishing fifth in the hammer throw competition in Guadalajara. 

Keelin, good luck and hope you make your Olympic dream come true.

TransGriot Update:  Sadly, Keelin failed to qualify.   Finished fifth despite a personal best throw of 231 feet 3 inches. Missed a trip to London by 11 inches.

Transfaith In Color 2012 Conference Coming Soon

Charlotte, NC in addition to hosting the 2012 Democratic National Convention this September will be hosting another edition of  another conference I would love to attend. 

It's the 2012 edition of the TransFairh In Color conference at the Hilton Hotel University Place in the Queen City and it's another event that has been gaining a dedicated following and attention within the POC trans community

It's presented by the Freedom Center For Social Justice in Charlotte, and one of the reasons that the event was founded was because of the disconnect they noticed in the community in the organizing around ENDA.

The initial 2010 TFIC conference was held in Los Angeles and I was bummed that a scheduling conflict kept me from speaking at it.  It was held in Charlotte last year and will be once again from August 17-19.

Here's hoping they not only get increasing attendace for this event, but the TransGriot can finally be in the house for it.

2012 TTNS At UH-Clear Lake Approaching

Just another reminder that we are exactly four weeks from the start of the 2012 edition of the Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit that will take place on the picturesque UH-Clear Lake campus July 20-21

The TTNS will start at 9 AM CDT and the University of Houston-Clear Lake campus is located at 2700 Bay Area Blvd in Clear Lake, near NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.

The keynote speakers for TTNS 2012 will be on July 20; Dr. Jean Latting, author of Reframing Change and on July 21 Dr. Genny Beemyn, Director Stonewall Center, University of Massachusetts.

Registration is $10 for students and $20 for all other attendees.

As you TransGriot readers know, I covered the 2010 TTNS event and the 2011 TTNS event and plan to do the same for this one.  

I enjoy reporting on the proceedings and being with folks from the activist, professional and academic worlds around the Houston area and the state to talk about the best practices for making trans human rights and equality happen in the educational setting in Texas.

And yes, I do actually get my learn on at the same time.

This is the 4th annual edition of the Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit.   It is a joint effort of the Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit (TTNS) and the Transgender Foundation of America (TFA) that will have as its gracious hosts the UHCL International Intercultural Student Services (IISS)-Women’s and GLBT Resource Center at the University Of Houston-Clear Lake.

If you wish to attend, time is passing quickly.  The deadlines to lock in you meal choices (yes, they feed you) and get you info in are approaching.  You can E-mail txtgsummit@gmail.com or call 832-409-3363 for info and registration information.  .  

Their snail mail correspondence address is.

TTNS
P. O. Box 1095
Baytown, Texas 77522

Looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible there at UH-Clear Lake July 20-21

TransGriot Nuke A Troll 26-Why Did You Even Bother Stepping To Me?

Been a while since I took the USS Monica out of port to sail the cyberseas for her last troll nuking mission.  

But now it time to do so since someone calling themselves Machteld van Eeden tried to post this comment on the Um I'm not Evangelist Denise K Matthews one.

I'm amazed that race and religion are still such issues in the US.
Why using statements as being a proud African American transwoman. What does that accomplish at all? Why can't you just be a woman I will respect you anyway as a another human being. It's the obligatory political correctness that's making me sick. How would you interpret if I introduced myself as a proud Caucasian old school female?
Grow up!

5...4...3...2..1..launch..

Another day, another conservafool wallowing in white privilege to troll nuke.    Let's get started shall we?

Race and religion are and have been intertwined issues in North America before the United States was founded as a nation.   The Transatlantic Slave Trade had a lot to do with that.  Remember when people who looked like you were kidnapping my ancestors and committing a monstrous human rights crime by forcibly importing them into the Western Hemisphere for unpaid labor to build European colonies and claiming you were doing 'the Lord's work' in the process?

And oh yeah, most of the haters and conservafools in this country hide behind selective interpretation of scriptures to perpetuate and try to camouflage their death grip on whiteness, white supremacy and their racism.

I AM a proud African-American transwoman and won't apologize for saying so. .Why does stating that fact bother you so much?  If you have a problem with that, too damned bad.   

And that's mighty white of you for respecting me as just another woman and a human being.   But other women who share your ethnicity and your vanillacentric privilege have disrespectfully made it clear that in their eyes I'm not and gleefully express themselves on their hate websites and their waste of trees books.

What does it accomplish?  Since you disrespectfully asked, plenty.   When I'm part of a community that battles shame, guilt and self-esteem issues because they are trans, and when non-white transpeople are seen as 'unwomen' and tragic transsexuals' vis a vis the ongoing vanillacentric trans narrative, it's a big fracking deal for me and the trans constituency I represent on the local, state, national and international trans human rights stage to say I'm proud to be an African-American transwoman 

And yeah, I'm sick of the conservaterm 'politically correct'. 

The last part of your comment I'm not going to even dignify with an answer, but the only person that needs to grow up is you.  

You need to wake up and smell the vanilla scented coffee that race matters in the US and has for over 400 years.  The election of our African American president and the uniquely racist and unprecedented levels of disrespect he has received since 2009 make that crystal clear that the United States ain't even close to being post-racial.

Duck and cover fool, and don't look at the flash when the troll nuke explodes.
 

Goodbye, Lowell

After five years as the coordinator for the LGBT Center at Texas A&M, Lowell Kane is leaving Aggieland and headed to Purdue University.  I along with my Aggie rainbow family and the Houston area rainbow community are sad to see him go.  

I met him and some of the LGBT Aggies back in 2010 when I attended my first Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit at Rice University mere weeks after I'd moved back home. 

It led to Texas A&M being one of the first schools inside the Lone Star State I had the honor of speaking at post return home in November 2010 and me getting to spend some quality time on its campus with him and some of the wonderful students there.

While at Texas A&M, Kane received several awards, including the Diversity Service Award and the Phyllis R. Frye Advocacy Award. During his time as program coordinator, the Aggieland campus climate toward the GLBT community improved, according to the LGBT Friendly  Campus Climate Index.

He was also one of the founding members of the now thriving LGBT Center on the Texas A&M campus, a first of its kind program for a Texas college campus and he was named its Program Coordinator in 2007.

It was so successful conservafool state Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Center) tried to kill it during the 2011 legislative session  by starving LGBT centers of funding and banning their housing in state owned buildings.  The Texas House Democrats made him back off by threatening to scuttle the entire school financing bill if he persisted in his phobic lunacy. 

When he gets to Purdue he'll have a similar situation to the one he encountered when he arrived in College Station in 2007 in terms of no GLBT center or full time staff devoted to advocacy work on behalf of that student population but Kane is relishing the challenge.

“I did it here, and I know that I can do it there,” Kane said in an interview in the Batallion. “In fact, I’m going to be more informed because I’ve had five years of wonderful experience here at Texas A&M that I’m going bring with me to Purdue.” 

There will be a farewell event for Kane on the A&M campus starting at 3:30 PM today at the LGBT Center in Cain Hall's POD (B111) that I sadly can't attend, but best of luck to you Lowell in your new position. 

For you folks at Purdue who read this blog, you're about to get one fantastic person headed your way and one we're sorry our community is losing and are definitely going to miss.

Jenifer Rene Pool To Be Houston Pride Parade Female Grand Marshal

When the 2012 edition of our nighttime Houston Pride Parade kicks off on June 23 after the ongoing series of events that started here June 16, one of our own trans women will be front and center as the Female Grand Marshal.

Jenifer Rene Pool, who is one of the hosts for the KPFT-FM Queer Voices radio program and ran for Houston City Council in the 2011 cycle was voted in as the Female Grand Marshal for 2012 .

The 2012 Male Grand Marshal will be Nicholas Brines, a Houston business owner and former president of Pride Houston

Our Ally Grand Marshal for 2012 is City Council Member Ellen Cohen, a former State Representative and longtime advocate for the LGBT community 

Houston Pride, the umbrella organization that helps coordinate our pride celebration here announced the Celebrity Grand Marshal.for 2012 will be Madison Hildebrand, star of Bravo's Million Dollar Listing.  

And if you're asking why do we have the only nighttime pride parade in the US?    Hello, do y'all know what levels the temperature and humidity can hit here at the height of a June summer day?   The temp and the humidity battle it out to see which one can go higher than the other.

But once the sun goes down and it cools off it was worth it to see friends, that giant lit up disco ball they have at the corner of Westheimer and Montrose, the two main streets that cross the Montrose gayborhood where the parade happens and all those various lit up floats.   The Houston trans community has one that they enter as well that is one of the projects of the TG Unity Committee.     .

Well, I was planning on going since the last pride parade I witnessed was in 2001.   I have more of a reason to go spend a few hours this Saturday checking it out. 

And I wonder if they are still doing the giant disco ball at Westheimer and Montrose?

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.